Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft Checklists

[Stuart B. <stu...@gm...>]

On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 11:56 PM, Alan Teeder wrote:
> The reason for my query was that I have found making a representative set of
> checklists is becoming  very unwieldy.
>
> With just my "entering the cockpit checks", I have already made 9 separate
> checklist.  Each one has about 10 checks. I have made one checklist per
> check list card on the real aircraft. These  checklist items disappear off
> the top of the menu list screen, and there is no indications as to which
> checklists/cards have been completed, or which is the next to do.
>
> Having got this far it is obvious that the current system will not cope for
> the rest of the aircraft checklists that I intend to replicate.

OK,  sounds like you've got much longer checklists than I have encountered
myself.

I'll see what I can do to support multi-page checklists.  I can probably add
Next and Previous buttons to page through the checklist.

One question:  Would you prefer that the UI itself split the checklist up,
or for the checklist author to do it themselves?  The former would be
automatic, but wouldn't allow the author to place the page-break where
they wished.

> Yes, my level of simulation will include such detail as the "fail to relight
> in 20 seconds" scenario.

Very good :)

> For background info my suggestions were based upon an interactive checklist
> system that I was involved with in the 1980´s as part of a joint BAC/Hawker
> Siddeley  glass cockpit simulation. This was before the two companies merged
> to form BAe.  AFAIK this was the first glass cockpit project to have an in
> depth simulator evaluation. Our two target aircraft were the VC10 (
> completely eliminating the flight engineer station) and the A300 which was
> state of the art at that time.
>
> This electronic checklist also bought up the relevant systems displays on
> one or more other front panel CRT´s . In normal use (e.g. start-up) the
> electronic checklist was selected by the crew, but the relevant set of
> checks were automatically initiated when aircraft failures were detected.
> The system was intelligent enough to follow the sequence of events following
> an emergency (e.g. my relight scenario) , and also had a priority system to
> deal with the major faults (engine failure, fire, etc)  before lesser ones.
>
> At the moment my TSR2 is not a glass cockpit, but having a usable checklist
> system would save a lot of paper.
>
> AS an old fogey I am not up to speed with current developments in this
> field, but am sure that some of our work has a modern counterpart.

Yup, and I think that would be the glass cockpit of the aircraft itself rather
than the simulator UI.

> Anyway - you asked for comments on your checklist system ;)

Yup, and very good feedback it is as well.  Thanks.

-Stuart