User Guide

Learning To Fly with Rod Machado
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Anything that’s primary is important. And primary instruments give you the most important
information for precision control of pitch, bank, and power. Each attitude you select uses three
primary instruments, one for pitch, one for bank, and one for power. But how do you know which
instruments these are? After all, you have several to choose from. To answer that question let’s go for
a hamburger.
Instrument Names
When you order food from the hamburger emporium, the server pushes a button with a picture of the
item you selected. Order a soda and he pushes a button with a soda on it. This neat visual method
frees up the server’s mind to think about more important things, like philosophy, ethics, and an
alternate proof to Fermat’s last theorem. Of course, if you say, “Beautiful weather,” the server might
say, “I’m sorry, I don’t have that button.” Let’s use a similar labeling system to identify the primary
instruments on your panel.
I’d like you to place the labels shown in Figure
2 directly onto your computer screen, under
each instrument shown. (I’m assuming you’ve
got your computer on and Flight Simulator
running.) We won’t label the VSI for now. Use a
small quarter-inch strip off the sticky end of
one of those sticky notes. Don’t use labels with
permanent adhesives. (There’s always a job
open for you at that burger joint if you do!)
Also, create a label that says POWER and put it
on the manifold pressure gauge, which is not
one of the primary instruments shown in Figure
2. You’ll need to check it, though, any time we
talk about setting the power to a certain
manifold pressure (MP).
Identifying Primary Instruments
Figure 2 identifies the primary instruments for any given flight condition. Assume that you’ve just
selected the attitude for straight-and-level flight. Which primary instruments should you radial scan?
Look at the panel and find those instruments labeled straight (heading indicator) and level (altimeter).
The heading indicator helps you fly straight, the altimeter helps you fly level and the MP gauge shows
the power setting selected. In other words, you can fine-tune the attitude for straight-and-level flight
by scanning only these three instruments. Easy, huh?
Figure 2
CLIMB/
DESCEND
START
LEVEL
TURN
STRAIGHT
Figure 2