Alaska Guard Hawk
- Thread starter Nark
- Start date
The Fez
Analog Millennial
The Army lower console and center instrument panel is soooo different! I wouldn't like the radar altimeter being towards the center of the instrument panel. I like being able to look past the side of the dash and/or down through the chin bubble and see the rad alt without moving my eyes and head too much, especially on nvg's.
Definitely need to go fly in AK though!
Definitely need to go fly in AK though!
The Fez
Analog Millennial
We have a Heads Down Display right in front of the cyclic. It has FLIR and pretty good symbology for enroute, approaches, and hovers, but you definitely have to develop a good scan pattern to employ it properly. At night I've found it very important to keep my head as still as possible to prevent erroneous inputs, especially doing high hovers with guys fast roping or rappelling. I'd hate to be the guy who started drifting around and caused someone to miss the rope or drop onto cactus and such.I guess you're not flying HUD then?
What is the bright display next to the co's right leg? Looks very different than our CDU.
Um... please do not do that. Please move your head and scan continuously - especially under goggles. Otherwise your only possible reference points are right in front of you in a 40 degree field of view and you'll have no chance of detecting fore/aft drift.
That's an EDM - it's a portable moving map/ BFT computer. (It does a bunch of other stuff, but it's not that impressive.) They suck ass.
The Fez
Analog Millennial
I do look around...it's hard to explain. I just mean that a lot of head movement ends up getting me unstable at night. Always has. I like picking a reference 45 degrees off the nose so that I can pick up drift in all directions. Depending on available references, I'll pick something off the nose and out my door to help with fore/aft and lateral in addition to my 45 reference that I check with small, smooth head movements. But for me, in a high hover over featureless terrain or where I'm kicking up a lot of dust, I use my hover cues and listen to my scanners.
Water ops are much the same. I've had the "wagon wheel" explained to me several times but I just don't see how guys are picking up drift based off of rotor wash on the water that is moving with the aircraft. Drop a doghouse or a waypoint and keep my symbology overlayed and I'm right on the money...except for my first few attempts over open ocean when I stayed over my point but unknowingly swung the nose almost 90 degrees.
I've learned to change up which references I use on nearly every iteration I fly so I can keep my skills up between all of them. One visual, one composite, one inside on the cues only. Rinse and repeat. I still have a lot to learn though and the aim is to get better with every flight.
Your EDM does sound like a pain. Our HDD has integrated moving maps, FLIR, and SADL all in one. Kinda hard to learn, but once you've got it, you're on that thing like a teenage girl on her iPhone. I love it. Too bad AD is trying to make us get rid of it for their wildly expensive but barely functional version.