"Byrd, Ray" wrote:

I remember an old second-hand story...General Dynamics used voice

warnings

in the B-52 Hustler.  Voice was very pleasant feminine.  "Your

afterburner

temp is redline"...drove pilots nuts. They had to get rid of it.

Ray Byrd

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
 
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