What Would You Spend Your Money On?

[MMike]

So if you had an aircraft, and you were going to do "something" to it, what would it be? Improve the lifting, or the avionics? Or are both equally important to you that you'd find a way to do both?

[ame206350]

So if you had an aircraft, and you were going to do "something" to it, what would it be? Improve the lifting, or the avionics? Or are both equally important to you that you'd find a way to do both?

 

Depends on what your customers need more. Some aircraft don't have the option for any mods that improve lift so avionics are certainly a universal option. I like aircraft have the the right amount of jam right out of the box (i.e. I'll take an AS350B3 over an AS350FX2).

 

Make the changes that will make you money. If you travel light and can sell an upgraded avionics package to get an advantage go for it.

 

Of course I am assuming this is a commercial aircraft otherwise lift would probably not be a concern.

[MMike]

I guess I'm just curious if fancy avionics really provide any real value to people other than "gee whiz". I mean if you're flying day VFR anyway, do glass displays add anything to what you're doing? Or are basic analog gauge just fine, making fancy avionics somewhat superfluous? Or is there an element of safety or reliability that is improved by having better flight displays?

[Amphibious]

you can never have to much lift

[dimit]

Lift! But I'm just a bush pilot. If there's 2 VHF and 2 FM radios, I call that fancy avionics!

 

DM

[Deep Throat the third]

Lift any day of the week I can't for the life of me remember the last time I was moving a drill wishing I had the latest sageem glass cockpit!!!!

[MMike]

Interesting.....though not too surprising.

 

I wonder if this is part of the reason the 417 was canned......because say (I'm making this up now), a mod along the lines of a 350FX...(again I'm making this up).... The mod gives you power but also comes with a bunch of new avionics. If the avionics makes the mod prohibitively expensive.....and you (the user) don't care about the avionics anyway, then why not just go for the simple®/cheaper power upgrade?

 

Or are there times that you MUST have the glass in front of you? (And yes I know that the newer engines have fancier FADECs that need the glass displays....I mean from a "user preference" point of view)

 

.....and actually....now that I've said that....it's possible that inventing a way to get a newer/more powerful engine to talk to old analog gauges might be harder than just tearing everything out and installing displays. I will have to ponder this.

[Blackmac]

Ponder This;

 

In 1960's there was a helicopter called the Aloutte 2 and then the 3 and after that came the "Lama" which consisted of a 2 airframe and the complete drive train of the 3 which made it the most powerful helicopter in it's class. The power settings were governed by a degree gauge.

 

Somewhere along the line the designers (engineers) forgot the "KISS" principal.

 

IMHO most helicopters built today don't have a enough reserve energy.

 

Don

[MMike]

Also interesting.......

 

So now are you guys all just a bunch of "old curmudgeons"? Or do you think it depends on the mission? I mean....do HEMS guys rely more on displays...because they would more often be in built up areas? ..for traffic avoidance and general situational awareness etc?

[pilot5]

MMike

 

To address your question about becoming a curmudgeon you can probably understand how these types of annoying occurrences would annoy most .Like anything else MMike no industry is perfect, there are small and large deficiencies that become annoying over time like working for for forestry who say they keep us minded as professionals but certainly do not appoint any professional respect. So these little games of lip service that inevitably just get ignored for the cause of not pissing them off. For if the company backs the professional as they should and stands by their guy, who is only trying the make it safe this attention will ruffle too many feathers and have a detrimental effect on future hiring, seen it happen many times. Forestry will black list the company. There are many pilots I know who will not and refuse to work with forestry (Many). So when there is soooo many its hard from a statistical perspective to say that its always the pilots fault. Does the pilot have any recourse? No he does not! He has no one who he or she can turn to for advice, vindication or protect his job. His "apparent" professional opinion counts for very little in the end game. An association would help but we all know that this will never happen for many reasons.

 

 

Ya see MMike everybody who rides in a helicopter or has ridden in a helicopter becomes an automatic expert. As this seems to be an accepted rule in principal, I have personally decided to take advantage of the sale on Dremel Power tools at Canadian tire and open my own dental clinic. After all I too can become and expert.

 

 

My 2 cents