Being able to select info upon button press would eliminate excess

chatter

from the CAWS, but... what if you pressed the button, and nothing

happened?

You wouldn't know the box had failed until you requested a reading.

Then

what? If you still have analog standbys, I think you'd end up

scanning

them

anyway in your instrument scan pattern. Maybe would work OK with a 3

or

4

line LCD too.

Not quite right Mike. Each button press would go through its list with
good or bad data. If you got nothing your EFIS failed. Just as an LCD
based EFIS can fail. PL

So 1 button would scroll through all measured parameters? I was

envisioning

1 button per parameter and maybe a separate one for full scroll.

Still, if you weren't listening to the thing continually, you'd not know

it

failed until you pressed. With LCD, if it goes out or stops updating,

you

know immediately, and if you don't have standby instruments, you know to
start looking for a friendly place to land. Depending on aural checking
frequency, could result in a few extra minutes of powered flight

(assuming

something WAS wrong with engine).

Only way around this that I could see would be to have the thing scroll
continuously, with maybe a 1 or 2 minute pause between. Or a longer
interval, but a beep to let the pilot know it was still alive.

Mike Harrington

You got to look at things once in awhile. You also have to press a button
once in awhile. I had a vacuum pump fail at night so my attitude and

direction

gyros failed. Looking at them gave me no indication of failure. According

to

them I was still flying straight and level. If it were not for the smell

of

burning phenolic(s?) I never would have checked the tiny hard to see
vacuum gage. My fault for not having the IFR training to include the
vacuum gage in my panel scan.

Pressing the button could become part of your scan.

Paul Lamar

I would think scanning time should be fairly frequent, how long does it

take a 20B to do damage at climb power should a coolant line rupture ?

Perhaps less time critical parameters could require a series of limit
exceeded readings before setting off alarms. Once triggered, an overide
button could be used to silence the warning for a preset time. Build in self
test loop that turns on an idiot light in the event of failure. The highest
failure rate in instrument flying ( and probably VFR aswell ) is the pilot
and his scan. You missed the vacuum guage and you also missed the dicrepency
between both your AI and HI and your electrically driven turn coordinator.

Do not make the system pilot dependant as you're just inserting a known
weakest link. Also do not use this to replace regular instrumentation, but
rather to wake up an inattentive  or busy pilot. This would take up no panel
space at all, one light, one button or splurge and get one that is both (
Boeing store pehaps ? ). By the way does anyone know why this is called
experimental aviation ?
Cheers all,
John Gibbons

 
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