One way to lighten the workload

[bbuckley]

Glad everything worked out safely! Do you have a Stratus or other AHRS? I don't and can't see spending that much unless I was going to be IMC a lot more than I am.

[tngarner]

Take a look at Keith's Twitter post tells the story.

Keith if that was the weather at the time that was all kinds of fun. Truly glad you had the Stratus and ForeFlight. Amazing how that toolset alone has changed how we fly.

[Keith Smith]

Bruce, i have a stratus. it was vmc, but not by much. my concern was the possibility of having to shoot an ils at the destination and the storms.

having that view of the radar through ads-b is a game changer. I knew how widespread the systems were, how fast they were moving and how much time there was between systems at the destination.

[bbuckley]

That is another big Stratus plus. Maybe I'll ask Santa.

@tngarner: have only used Twitter to vote for The Voice... But now @coma24 is right up there on following with Adam Levine.

[stevekirks]

Someone managed to trigger a vacuum failure on me during my flight yesterday. Unfortunately, it wasn't in the sim! ForeFlight's synthetic vision definitely came in handy.

Not being a real pilot (yet!) does a vacuum failure for pilots without an iPad/FF require an immediate landing?

[bbuckley]

The vacuum system provides suction to run the gyros in a traditional gauge airplane. You would lose attitude indicator, directional gyro, so IMC without backup instrumentation it would be good to get VMC as soon as possible. If that's not possible you need to be prepared to fly a no gyro descent and approach. ForeFlight alone can give you GPS track. With Stratus you have an AHRS linked by Bluetooth and can put on the PFD like display with synthetic vision. And you get ADS-B weather. Nice.

[Keith Smith]

Steve, Bruce nailed it. The implication of losing the attitude indicator and directional gyro (heading indicator or HSI) is that you use the turn coordinator to manage your banks (although you don't know your actual bank angle) while you no longer have an immediate pitch reference. You're basically using the altimeter (the VSI lags too much to be of a lot of help, although it does show you the recent trend. ie, if the VSI is increasing, then you were pitching up a few seconds before).

It's hard to overstate the utility of of ForeFlight/Stratus providing a PFD-like display with immediate pitch/bank information along with groundspeed and GPS altitude.