Im sick of gadgets. Im sick of browsing through the Sportys catalog and seeing 500,000 things that every pilot needs in his or her flight bag. Im sick of looking in the local pilot shop and seeing office supplies with a pair of wings silkscreened on them and the price quadrupled.
I get tired of student pilots asking what handheld transceiver they should buy, when what they really need is another hour of crosswind landing practice. But what bugs me most is the apparent conviction pilots seem to exhibit that one more gadget will somehow guarantee their safe flight.
The assets a pilot can carry that enhance the potential for a safe flight are three legs of a stool: information, skill and judgment. It seems like curmudgeonly pilots emphasize skill and judgment, while the whippersnappers focus on information, with a passing nod toward skill.
Gross generalizations, sure, but how else do you explain the popularity of handhelds among renter pilots who cant use the thing outside the traffic pattern anyway because theres no external antenna? This is a safety item?
Before latching onto any gadget, you have to ask yourself if its going to enhance the safety or comfort or convenience of the flight in a realistic way. Too often they address the perception of safety rather than a bona fide safety issue.
Take portable traffic detectors, for example. Buyers genuflect in front of them with credit card outstretched, without stopping to realize that midair collisions are virtually non-existent outside of traffic patterns, and in traffic patterns the darn things are squawking so much you cant get any useful information out of them anyway.
But yet, when youre cruising along you will occasionally get notification of an airplane you didnt see – but that wouldnt have required any action on your part anyway. Whew. Thats a relief.
Now there are some gadgets that represent a safety advance, in my opinion. Id count handheld GPS units and quality headsets among them. But little wheels that tell you what kind of entry to a holding pattern or a level to tell you if youll be in that cloud ahead? Please.
Id like to see pilots take the weight they devote to gadgets and put that much more fuel in the tanks. Id like them to spend the money they devote to gadgets on training or airplane maintenance or introducing a potential new pilot to the world of flying.
Id like to see them concentrating on the airplane and the instruments or the view out the window instead of being heads-down trying to figure out how to turn on the gizmo that will add useless nuggets of data to their already-occupied brains.
As air show season approaches and you find yourself gravitating to those big vendor-filled hangars to get respite from the sun (or rain), ask yourself if not buying anything might give you the time and motivation to prop up those other legs on the stool.
-Ken Ibold
