Should we Still Teach Old Tech???

[Buster1]

Is old tech still worth teaching? A brief article that discusses this while looking at the "old school" E6-B.

Thanks for looking.

http://engineout.weebly.com/articles/dust-off-your-e6-b-and-save-a-dinosaur

[CraigCantwell]

Wizz wheel never needs batteries and if you don't know how to manually solve the problem, how will you be sure the electronics are giving you valid info?

[DaleB]

For you guys who flew a lot before the advent of smart phones, tablets and even electronic calculators designed specifically to replace the E6B, it can be useful... and maybe a comfort to have along. It's like the decade old Rand McNally road atlas that sits untouched in the back of my truck, "just in case". No one will ever use it again, but it's a last ditch backup we both know how to use. Never mind that anyone under 40 probably wouldnt recognize it.

I learned to fly at 52 years of age. I bought the required E6B and got more or less proficient witn it. I had no choice, since the trainers had no EFIS, no GPS and I didn't own and would not have been allowed to use a tablet. But... I don't think I've touched it since taking my checkride. For the first couple of years I carried it along in my flight bag, but haven't ever needed, wanted or missed it. Not even once, not even a little bit. I don't carry it now for the same reason I don't carry a surgical kit. The odds of needing it are vanishingly small, and I lack the proficiency to use it in a meaningful way anyway. I have never suffered a simultaneous failure of my GPS, phone and tablet, despite the dire predictions of the flying related web boards.

Is it still worth teaching? That's a separate question. I mean, they still teach slide rules in school, and middle school students are still not allowed th use calculators, right? Oh... wait. Never mind.

[lnuss]

Schools these days are debating whether to teach cursive (some have quit). You're asking about E6B. Same principal, in my mind; both are useful skills to have, and sooner or later you'd wish you had the relevant skill.

[CraigCantwell]

The Navy last year, started requiring all midshipman to learn celestial navigation, and is going to be doing the same for NROTC members.

[rwanttaja]

I'm preparing a 20-part Youtube series on care and maintenance of whale-oil lamps.

Generally, there's little reason for retaining outdated technology and the ability to handle it. Vacuum-tube test stands disappeared from stores about 30 years ago, and you don't hear the populace whining about it.

The problem with modern methods is that they don't reinforce an intrinsic knowledge of the subject. Saw that when electronic calculators replaced slide rules. Hard to operate a slide rule without a *feel* as to what the results should be...a person punching numbers on a keypad doesn't have a clue.

The "Doomsday" scenarios are mostly bogus. No, we shouldn't force EE students to take a year of vacuum-tube theory just because a megawar may force them to fall back on making vacuum tubes for stereo amplifiers.

Military, though, is the exception. If there's electronics in a weapon system, it can be exploited, jammed, spoofed, or just die when the batteries go flat. The USN and celestial navigation is a prime example of this. In a wartime situation, you aren't going to be able to depend on GPS being available, nor the bad guys not warping the signal (like Iran got that drone of ours) or even detecting your presence due to emissions from your GPS set. The WWII German radar warning receivers were a classic example of the latter.

Ron Wanttaja

[Bill Berson]

I think knowing that 60mph is one mile per minute and 120mph is two miles per minute is close enough for VFR.

[Frank Giger]

Ron hit on the point I am going to make.

We encountered the same thing in the Artillery, where manual "charts and darts" for computing the charge, quadrant, and deflection of the guns was replaced by computers, and even in land navigation, where paper maps, coordinate scales, and a compass has given way to GPS.

The answer is that one should learn the E6-B, paper charts, and all the fun that entails to take the mystery out of what the magic box is doing. Understanding what manual procedures the box is automating means that if it ever spits out garbage one can recognize it for being garbage. It also teaches the relationships between direct course, heading due to wind, and even kts to mph.

Now when the pilot plugs in the end point to a cross country he can look at it and put in logical waypoints, understanding that yes, he really does need waypoints.

Learn to navigate with a sectional and the habits of comprehending where one is on the magenta line are established.

[edit]

Bill, you've hit on my methods! Since I cruise at about 60 mph, figuring cross country stuff gets a bit easier. I just have to convert wind given in knots to MPH.

[CHICAGORANDY]

Not gone to flight school.....yet....... but I think I can relate to a valid analogy. I scuba dive recreationally and am also certified for Nitrox use. Yes I 'can' plan a dive using the dive tables and gas absorption charts..... I had to learn to do so in the classroom to pass the written tests. But in my experience virtually NOBODY dives without a dive computer strapped to their wrist or attached to their BC hose that calculates that important life essential data in real time and real depth and which doesn't make a paperwork error or forget a decimal place. Now 'could' a properly serviced piece of dive electronics fail? It's possible but highly improbable.

I can see some value in being able to understand the basic principles involved and how they relate to each other, but if an electronic E6B or other flight data App can provide the correct answer with simple inputs? Why wouldn't a pilot be taught to use the modern technology they will actually find used in the cockpit? I am making the assumption that the goal in aviation is to calculate the correct course to fly, for the expected time, consuming fuel as intended and allowing for variance in wind speeds and direction. If that goal is achieved electronically I don't much fret over 'how' the computer did it. When I microwave a frozen TV dinner, I don't care 'how' that machine works either, I just need to know how to work it to achieve the desired result.

I recall reading a long time ago an article by a pilot who stated he flew IFR, by which he meant "I Follow Railroads". I'm an old geezer Luddite to be sure, but I have come to learn to trust very affordable digital gizmos like GPS, smart phones, and sophisticated software (aka Apps) as being the better mousetrap.

[Frank Giger]

The E6-B is nothing more than a circular slide rule. It's not rocket science, though it's often taught that way - or rather not taught. The student is told to "follow the instructions" which, depending on the manufacturer of the slide rule, can read like radio instructions. As I have zero pride when it comes to all things flying, I freely admitted that it was all gibbly-gook and I was lost, and my instructor broke it down into simple terms.

The big thing about the E6B and a paper sectional is that it's tactile. Making a mark on the back side in the little transparent wheel for the course, then adjusting the wheel for crosswind and making another mark shows the relationship between course and heading in a visceral way. For a lot of people learning hands on is the best way to comprehend concepts like that.

Do I use my E6B? No, I don't, unless I want to convert kts to mph accurately. Loads of stuff it does is neat but almost irrelevant in today's aviation environment. However, it can come in handy. My airport's automated weather station is FUBAR right now, giving only visibility and wind, and the grumbling mumbles from the airport manager does not give one hope it will be fixed soon (it's been that way for two months now, with a bonus that it also jams my crappy flip cell phone on that end of the runway, making it impossible to dial out to make a call). So today just for fun I calculated density altitude, and checked my result against an airport ten miles away at the same ground altitude....and was just about dead on. My little plane doesn't care that my 528 feet above sea level runway was actually at 2,500 feet due to heat and humidity, but it might matter to someone else starting a long cross country close to max weight.

I'm a mix of old and new tech in my cockpit. Yes, I have a little smart tablet with true GPS and the iFly app on my right thigh; it's so inexpensive that it's almost dumb not to have it. I also have a sectional on my left. Overkill? Probably. But the screen on the tablet is small, and the sectional gives me context to the terrain ahead, behind, and to the sides. Plus I have an open cockpit and more than once sun has shone on the screen, making it unreadable.

Don't knock landmark referencing for navigation (IFR - railroads, roads, and rivers), as in short cross country (or even longer ones, thanks to the interstate) they can greatly simplify things. For example, if I want to fly from my airport, which is east of Birmingham, Alabama to, say, Fort Payne, AL or Chattanooga, TN, I could do a lot of super planning with a nice magenta line. Or I could fly North by Northwest up the Coosa river until it hits Gadsden, AL, fly NW until I hit I-65 and follow it due north until I hit either one. I'm right on I-20, so if I were to fly to West Georgia or into the super veil of Atlanta, the magenta line is going to put me right over it anyway.

Bear in mind that most of the guys talking about navigating this way are in "low and slow" type aircraft. My cruise speed in my Nieuport 11 is 60 MPH, and I rarely fly higher than 5,000 feet AGL. Mac flying his Baron, using oxygen and saying things like flight level isn't thinking "the big peach water tower is my halfway waypoint to SRFI in the lower third of Alabama." :cool:

Then again, I've had the pleasure of having BOTH glass panels on a FlightDesign CTLS go blank - completely powered down - on the takeoff climb. From full instrumentation to just the whiskey compass in a blink of an eye. It's not as scary as it sounds - it was extreme clear daytime VFR - and one doesn't need all that crap to actually fly the airplane. My instructor pushed some buttons on it to reboot the darned things, and I just went around and landed normally. Turns out it was some sort of ground wire problems, though that doesn't explain why the backup batteries weren't working (or maybe they were being used the whole time?).

If I were alone and on my way cross country and that happened, knowing where I was and big, helpful aids like roads and rivers would come in mightily handy.

I haven't done long division by hand in a long time, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't teach the rote way of doing it in an age of calculators and smart phones.

[rwanttaja]

You kids with your fancy-dan E6Bs.

Almost exactly 50 years ago, I joined Civil Air Patrol as a 13-year-old cadet. Aviation crazy then, aviation crazy now. Things don't change much, I guess ('cept my weight is about three times higher).

Progression through the ranks was difficult. You worked your way up the enlisted ranks until you were ready to take the tests for cadet officer. There were six textbooks that covered particular aviation and military subjects. Getting a stripe required passing formal, written test on each book. Each weekly CAP meeting included a class on one of the books. The classes would go for several months, then the tests would be requested from CAP national. The test sheets would arrive, those ready would take the exam, and the test sheets would be sent back to national for grading. It took four to six months to complete the requirement for just one stripe. None of it was at your own speed; you were dependent upon the squadron holding the proper classes and ordering the tests when everyone was ready.

About eighteen months after I'd joined, I'd worked my way up to two stripes, and was rather frustrated at the slowness. Then I found out CAP had a loophole. If you passed the Private Pilot written test, you'd get full credit for completing the four books of the sequence that dealt directly with aviation. So I decided to take that route. I grabbed "The Private Pilot Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge" and started studying.

The navigation part was the hardest. I was just 14; I couldn't afford one of those slick flight computers. The time/distance math was easy enough...but how could I do the wind triangles?

One of the adults took pity on me, and showed me how to solve them by hand, using a chart, protractor, and ruler. I'd draw a line on the map in the desired direction of flight, and mark off the scale airspeed along the vector. I'd then draw another vector at the airspeed point for the direction and speed of the wind. The length of the third leg of the triangle would give the ground speed, and the required heading offset would be the measured difference between the two lines.*
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Wind_triangle.jpg

A few days after my 15th birthday, I went to the FAA office to take the Private written. I got a lot of weird looks...I was years younger than everyone else, and was working awkwardly with a protractor, yardstick, and a big sheet of paper.

Got the results a month later (addressed to "Ron ad" Wanttaja...which became my handle for a while): I'd gotten a 70%, the lowest passing grade.

Took the FAA letter into the next CAP meeting. They were surprised...but agreed that I had met the requirements. Cadet Airman Wanttaja became Cadet Master Sergeant Wanttaja.

My squadron nemesis quit that week. I'd jumped him by two stripes.

Here's a picture of me from roughly that period. I'm the one standing on the left.
http://www.wanttaja.com/camp.jpg
There was a bit of fall-out. As I said, I took the test just a few days after my 15th birthday (which was on the 20th of the month). However, the test results were valid for only two years. I started lessons when was 16, and had only a 10-day window between my 17th birthday and the date my written would expire.

And, of course, I was unable to get the flight test in during that time. So my written expired, and I re-took it about a month later. This time, I had an E6B.....

Now, there's ABSOLUTELY NO QUESTION that my manual wind triangles gave me a better understanding of them than those flipping their Flight Computers so adroitly. But I don't think it should necessarily be a skill folks need to retain....

Ron Wanttaja

* When writing this, I tried to re-create a manual wind triangle. Couldn't do it...had to research it online.

[CHICAGORANDY]

My High School adventures started at age 12 in 1961. We learned on the venerable slide rule....becuz pocket calculators hadn't been invented. Had they been we wouldn't have gone half blind properly aligning that hairline cursor - lol

I sometimes chuckle at the notion of things that are viewed as being 'old school'. They aren't. Old school was actually the state of the art technology in whatever year you want to insert. I actually still enjoy planning a road trip using a paper map.... but enroute I use my GPS and connect my smart phone to the car's Bluetooth for hands-free use if needed. I guess I 'could' try to connect to this forum online with a Commodore 64 (MY 1st PC) but I feel no shame using my current Dell desktop or Acer tablet. Maybe I'm not as much a Luddite as I sometimes feel - lol

[martymayes]

Now, there's ABSOLUTELY NO QUESTION that my manual wind triangles gave me a better understanding of them than those flipping their Flight Computers

Most people who used an E6B had no idea of the arithmetic functions they were performing and it didn't really make a difference. So those punching buttons on a electronic device don't have any more or less knowledge. In both cases it's all about feeding in information to get an answer. Which one is better is like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Once upon a time a student left his E6B on the glare shield and the compass rose on the back side for calculating WCA fell off. I told him all he had to do was glue it back to the plastic disc but he was worried if it was glued on the wrong way, the device would no longer be accurate. I ended up gluing it back together and reassured him that I calibrated, checked and tested it for accuracy........so,

some people are probably better off with the electronics. I've never heard of a plane crashing because they didn't have an E6B on board with someone proficient in it's use.

[CraigCantwell]

I'm moving up in technology in the airplanes I'm restoring.... My Stinson L-5B has a compass, the Fairchild AT-21 has an SCR-269 Radio Compass to go with the regular compass. Whoo whoo... Losing my Ludditeness one step at a time. :rollseyes:

[martymayes]

I'm moving up in technology in the airplanes I'm restoring.... My Stinson L-5B has a compass,

In a few yrs you can upgrade to a vertical card compass!!

[Mayhemxpc]

Ron's comments about why it is good to teach non-electronic means of navigation are spot on. I used to get frustrated with the loss of basic map and compass skills in the military. (Since I retired I don't stress about it too much anymore.) Before may last deployment -- to West Africa -- they had us go through a map course using a hand held GPS. Anyone who has ever done geocaching knows the pitfalls of this. After getting NEAR the first point (GPS CEP 22m on a good day. WAAS accuracy is unrealistic in Africa) I looked at one of the officers who would deploy under me. "Capt Amadi (USMC), do you know your pace?" Yes sir! "Fine, you are pace, I am compass" (taking out the silva compass I have carried since 1986.) We finished the course long before anyone else with their fancy hand-held GPS.

2d story: My annual check ride for CAP as a Check Pilot, flying a G-1000 C-182 from the right seat. After the end, the check pilot asked why I didn't use reversion to bring the PFD in front of me. (1) Because this is simulating an instructional ride and I would want the pilot being instructed to have best view of both displays and (2) What makes you think I ever looked at the PFD? (pointing to the three round dial back up instruments.)

3; +1 on the understanding aspect of learning "old school" before applying new tech. UNDER-standing: to know what lies beneath appearances. Ron's wind triangle. Overall situational awareness. Having a good idea of what the answer should be before relying on the digital device for precision. Otherwise you wind up like the crew of Air France 447, relying on electronics to tell them how to fly the airplane.

Final note, my 13 year old son is in 8th grade algebra. They are still teaching them to do everything by hand, so there is some hope for the future. (He is also a CAP cadet. Sorry, Ron: that loophole no longer exists -- but they do allow self-paced study and on-line testing.)

[Ivanstein]

This will probably show my level (or lack thereof) of knowledge, but aren't "wind triangles" just graphical vector addition?

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[DaleB]

Ron's comments about why it is good to teach non-electronic means of navigation are spot on. I used to get frustrated with the loss of basic map and compass skills in the military. (Since I retired I don't stress about it too much anymore.) Before may last deployment -- to West Africa -- they had us go through a map course using a hand held GPS. Anyone who has ever done geocaching knows the pitfalls of this. After getting NEAR the first point (GPS CEP 22m on a good day. WAAS accuracy is unrealistic in Africa) I looked at one of the officers who would deploy under me. "Capt Amadi (USMC), do you know your pace?" Yes sir! "Fine, you are pace, I am compass" (taking out the silva compass I have carried since 1986.) We finished the course long before anyone else with their fancy hand-held GPS.

2d story: My annual check ride for CAP as a Check Pilot, flying a G-1000 C-182 from the right seat. After the end, the check pilot asked why I didn't use reversion to bring the PFD in front of me. (1) Because this is simulating an instructional ride and I would want the pilot being instructed to have best view of both displays and (2) What makes you think I ever looked at the PFD? (pointing to the three round dial back up instruments.)

3; +1 on the understanding aspect of learning "old school" before applying new tech. UNDER-standing: to know what lies beneath appearances. Ron's wind triangle. Overall situational awareness. Having a good idea of what the answer should be before relying on the digital device for precision. Otherwise you wind up like the crew of Air France 447, relying on electronics to tell them how to fly the airplane.

Final note, my 13 year old son is in 8th grade algebra. They are still teaching them to do everything by hand, so there is some hope for the future. (He is also a CAP cadet. Sorry, Ron: that loophole no longer exists -- but they do allow self-paced study and on-line testing.)
All true. I would point out, however, that learning to use an E6B really does not teach the fundamental principles, it just teaches one how to manipulate an E6B.

[rwanttaja]

This will probably show my level (or lack thereof) of knowledge, but aren't "wind triangles" just graphical vector addition?
Yep. And by using the term "just," you demonstrated that you're probably more intelligent than 95% of the people out there.... :-)

Ron "Thataway" Wanttaja

[Ivanstein]

Yep. And by using the term "just," you demonstrated that you're probably more intelligent than 95% of the people out there.... :-)

Ron "Thataway" Wanttaja
Well, not necessarily more intelligent, but more practiced...?

I have a minor in mathematics in addition to my AE degree. That is an elegant way of saying I have very little personality left and can bore the socks off anyone with things I find interesting.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[Mayhemxpc]

All true. I would point out, however, that learning to use an E6B really does not teach the fundamental principles, it just teaches one how to manipulate an E6B.

The E-6B is actually the back side of the computer. That is a graphic representation of the wind triangles and does a very good job of helping the pilot to understand what the wind does. The front side was originally called the Dalton Ded-Reckoning Computer. It is a circular slide rule and involves all of the estimation skills of a regular slide rule. Besides, if Mr. Spock in Star Trek TOS is using one in the 23d century, it must have some value.

[martymayes]

The E-6B is actually the back side of the computer. That is a graphic representation of the wind triangles and does a very good job of helping the pilot to understand what the wind does. The front side was originally called the Dalton Ded-Reckoning Computer. It is a circular slide rule and involves all of the estimation skills of a regular slide rule. Besides, if Mr. Spock in Star Trek TOS is using one in the 23d century, it must have some value.

What's your source on that Chris? Slow day at the flight school one day and we had several people researching the history of mechanical flight computers from every imaginable angle (no pun intended). They have been called by a dozen different names, even three variations for E6B, also written as E-6B and E6-B. Dalton didn't call his the E6B, the "E" names came several yrs later from the Army Air Corps, E-1, E-1B, etc. E6B became the default name during WWII (A WWII pilot once told me it got the "six" name because it performed 6 basic flight calculations-anecdotal evidence only). I have come across flight computers that did not have a graph for plotting wind triangles, time speed distance on one side, TAS on the other side and those too are called E6B. There are some pretty unique flight computers that show up on eBay from time to time.

Interesting in the Star Trek episode is Leonard Nimoy is using the calculator side. Could the Vulcan brain not do simple arithmetic? But then the wind drift side would be pointless in space?
Leonard Nimoy was an avid general aviation pilot so I'm curious if he and Gene Roddenberry consulted before using the E6B prop. There is an episode where Capt. Kirk, signed a glass faced tablet with his finger which makes Gene Roddenberry one of the greatest visionaries of all time, basically predicting an iPad tablet device!!!

[rwanttaja]

Interesting in the Star Trek episode is Leonard Nimoy is using the calculator side. Could the Vulcan brain not do simple arithmetic? But then the wind drift side would be pointless in space?
Solar wind, laddie, solar wind. If you look carefully, you can even see Sulu pressing left rudder pedal. :-)

Back when I flew early-warning satellites as a young lieutenant, our birds would tend to weathercock in the solar wind. The silver section was all electronics and focal planes, and the blue section was basically an empty drum. Plus there are nice paddles back there, too. The center of mass was about the level of the red star sensor RBF covers.
http://space.skyrocket.de/img_sat/dsp-4__1.jpg

Ron "Looks good to TAG" Wanttaja

[Mayhemxpc]

To be honest, the information came from an article in AOPA some years back that compared the different computers in use by the various air forces of WW2. I now understand that some of that information was incorrect. The front side being the Dalton Dead Reckoning Computer is correct, although Dalton and Weems may have ever called it that themselves. It seems that was the British nomenclature for it. Several versions in the Smithsonian's collections carry that name.
6677

[2ndsegment]

My comment pertains to charts. If you want to learn Celestial Navigation, I recommend an old copy of AFM-4-1 "Navigation Training" which describes how to make precomputations for a B-52. eBay may have one. You have to stay ahead of the airplane.

Charts, -- I began at work making my own Mercator vellum latitude lines and longitude lines. 60 n-mi is 1 degree of latitude. Let's see if that is right--yes 21,600 n-mi. You could look up the earth's radius and multiply by 2 pi but that varies. We only want chart.

The Inertial system in an F-4B was rhumb line for heading. The later F-4J inertial navigation system was great circle where the heading keeps changing. When the LTN-51 came out for the lead the force C-141 and could do polar great circle without magnetic reference it was then put into 707's and DC-8's with some challenges about classification.

I met ONC's and GNC's before I met WAC charts. I had to hark back to the NDB's and A/N I had learned from my dad teaching his doctor and Chuck Corbishly, a haberdasher, about radio navigation to do 1998 Microsoft Simulator of a 737 flying to the post deregulation Midway airport decades later.

No, it was jet penetration from altitude that needed JN charts. In university I had Goode's Atlas of Equi-area and equi angle projections. In the 60's and 70's I met Lambert conformal, conical projections and then polyconic as well as polar projections for the North pole.

That was then, this is now. Even the national keepers of charts did not complete the full set of WAC charts and when I got a "Lightning II" simulation in 1997 the Army had made new Transverse Mercator charts for the world to coordinate air and ground perhaps for helicopters or tilt wings.

Google maps? I have Side looking radar tapes of Venus and Mars by the Planetary Society. Quite old now in VHS. My watch keeps close tabs on me to my surprise much more accurate than the 30 feet CEP once predicted. (But not Lat, Long).

On the KC-135 I began with in 1965 it was the boom operator who did navigation taking sun shots and getting wind from Doppler. Dead reckoning got him to the rendezvous with Apollo in the Pacific with satellite and ships in 1969.

Weems plotter? B-6 calculator? My boss was more interested in the mechanical wheel measurer of the plots I made of how an antenna cone masked by a rocket nozzle intersect a sphere laid on the Apollo track estimated for Declinations of the moon made by a computer from NASA.

[2ndsegment]

The kind of navigation that is so pervasive (like that word?) today I first met in the TAB or Thor Vertical Assembly Building, a very high bay enclosure that had domes for presenting data captured from rocket launches and fly offs. DELTA was the launcher of NAVSTAR which Global Positioning System grew from after a lot more rocket launches. DELTA was Thor Delta.

It was not the biggest satellite booster. That was Titan which became CSB for Commercial Space Booster with two big strap-on solid boosters. Even Atlas was much bigger. DELTA had much smaller strap-ons in as many as 5 around the base. NAVSTAR was Geosynchronous on orbit.

Now where I became disinterested. My father was the radio guy. I could content myself with gyros as they were mechanical and even hands on if a toy. And folks became aggressive about MANPAD which was a siting in of a mobile platform for a shoulder launched missile. This went on from mortar bases.

So, I was happy decades later when my son gave me a Christmas present of a Polar watch that had a chest band to monitor heart rate even though it would be decades before I had one from Garmin that did not need a foot pod to track from calibration to stride but not only could tell space time without being pinged on line by Boulder, but could follow my telemetry and show a record after.

Along the way my father received a Magellan that could locate and track his car except on a divided road or when the road came to a bayou where the other side was only 40 feet away but there was no ford and no bridge.