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On September 25, 1929, U.S. Army pilot Jimmy Doolittle taxied his airplane onto the runway at Mitchell Field, New York, opened the throttle, and took-off. Doolittle navigated a short, predetermined course, and then landed just a few feet from where he had left the ground. A very routine flight except for one thing: Doolittle never saw outside of the cockpit. He couldnt see the ground, the sky, the horizon, the airport, or even any part of his airplane other than the confines of his cockpit. With his cockpit completely covered with a canvas shroud, Doolittle had made the first completely blind flight in history. The radio equipment (avionics) that Doolittle used to navigate to and from the airport and which guided his landing approach, while effective, was archaic in todays terms. But the technology of avionics has progressed very rapidly during the decades since Doolittles pioneering flight. However, the same cannot be said of the flight instruments that Doolittle used to control the airplane. The flight instruments that told him how high the airplane was, its speed through the air, and whether it was climbing, descending or banking have remained basically unchanged until very recently. These instruments each provide only their specific bit of data, which the pilot must compile with the bits of data from the other instruments in order to understand the status of the airplane. For example, one instrument gives the altitude, the next the airspeed, another tells the heading of the airplane, and yet another tells whether the airplane is climbing or descending, and so on. Part of learning to fly with reference only to instruments involves learning to scan all of the different instruments in an orderly and methodical fashion, constantly repeating this scan so that the most current data from each instrument is combined with the others to give a moment-by-moment picture of what the airplane is doing. And in addition to monitoring all of the flight instruments, the pilot must also monitor the health of the engine(s) by frequently checking the engine instruments, and must also reference the navigational displays to verify that the airplane remains on the proper flight-path. But the recent innovation that is often referred to as a glass panel combines all of the flight, navigational and engine data in one location. With a glass panel, the pilot is no longer required to gather the necessary information from so many different sources spread across the instrument panel. Instead, the pilot can get a complete picture of the position, track, attitude and engine health from one centralized location, usually displayed on color LCD screens. With most technological innovations in aviation, the larger, more expensive aircraft are usually the first to benefit, and this has also been the case with the innovation of glass panels. But as the technology becomes cheaper and more available, its use rapidly spreads to the lower echelons of aviation. This progression is occurring rapidly with glass panels, as evidenced by Cessnas decision to make a glass panel standard equipment on their new Light Sport model, the SkyCatcher. The old-style instruments that Jimmy Doolittle flew with - sometimes referred to as steam gauges, a term that conveys both derision and nostalgia - have served well for decades. And with tens of thousands of airplanes still flying that were manufactured before the day of the glass panel, the steam gauges will be in use for many years. But glass panels are undeniably the future of aircraft instrumentation.  |