User Guide

150
ALL THESE RADIOS…
With this much equipment even in a “simple” 172, you
need some way to select which of the many radios you’ll listen to
and talk over. The gadget that allows you to do this is at the top of
the radio stack, and is called an “audio selector panel.”
Compared to most of the other gear, it’s pretty simple. The
marker beacon receive is particularly important; most ILSs, and a
few other airways and approaches, use very simple low-powered
radio transmitters, pointing straight up, to advise pilots when
they’ve passed a given point. These signals not only produce
audio tones, but light up the blue outer (O), orange middle (M),
and white inner (I) marker lights on the audio panel.
The double row of ten switches selects which of the various
receivers you’ll hear in the headphones or, in FLY!, the cabin
speaker (always selected in the simulator). Pushing any of these
switches so that its little green indicator bar lights up selects that
source to be heard; note that you can listen to as many receivers
at once as you care to. The selector at the right of the panel choos-
es which transmitter you’ll speak over. In the airplanes in FLY!,
only the COM1 and COM2 positions are active for transmission.
NAV1 and NAV2 can be used to listen to morse code ID of tuned
Navaid and MKR can be used to turn on/off the marker beacon
audible signal.
Flight Instruction
151
Piper Malibu Mirage
INTRODUCTION
If you’re coming into the Malibu Mirage right out of the
Cessna 172R, you’ve covered the entire range of current single-
engine airplanes in one grand leap. You’ve gone from one of the
simplest and most basic of all airplanes to the Malibu Mirage: cer-
tainly the most advanced and complex single-engine civil aircraft
in current production, and arguably the most advanced in its class
ever built. The Malibu Mirage is every bit as sophisticated, in
terms of systems, equipment, and capability, as business turbo-
props. Indeed, while we’re concerned here with the piston-pow-
ered version, you can even buy a turboprop Malibu Mirage--
either the new “Meridian,” right from Piper, or a conversion pack-
age for existing Malibu Mirage airframes.
Flight Instruction
The Mirage: “Every bit as sophisticated...
as business turboprops.”