Field Note #5

 

Technology should justify its place in the aircraft by usefulness and survivability.

In field aviation, more instrumentation does not automatically mean more usefulness. A cockpit should be judged not only by how much it can display, but by how reliably it delivers the information that actually matters under vibration, dust, heat, rough landings, and repeated remote use. In that context, sophistication and suitability are not always the same thing.

This is not an argument for old technology against modern technology. In the right setting, advanced avionics can reduce workload, improve situational awareness, and make general aviation safer and easier to manage. The problem is that much of that usefulness depends on a supporting environment: current data, reliable electrical systems, specialist maintenance, readable mapping, and infrastructure that allows the equipment to function as intended. In remote African field operations, those assumptions often begin to weaken. There may be no meaningful weather reporting, no useful network support, no dependable terrain data, and no straightforward maintenance pathway when integrated systems begin to fail. In that context, the question is not whether the equipment is impressive, but whether it remains appropriate.

The issue is not only technological complexity, but environmental punishment. Dust, heat, vibration, glare, and repeated rough-strip use are hard on equipment. Even supposedly rugged devices deteriorate quickly under that combination. Large screens may promise information density, but they are not always ideal in bright sunlight, and they do not always lend themselves to the fastest scan in a working cockpit. A well-placed round gauge, by contrast, often gives the pilot what is needed in a fraction of a second.

Round gauges are not immortal, and they fail as well. But they often tolerate punishment longer, fail more discretely, and are easier to isolate, replace, or work around than integrated systems whose weaknesses may only become obvious once several dependencies begin to unravel at once.

These observations are drawn primarily from personal experience with the Super Cub, whose limited cockpit space makes panel decisions unusually consequential. In an aircraft like that, every square inch needs to justify itself. That matters not only because of space, but because the kind of flying a Cub is often used for is very different from a conventional general aviation sortie in a Cessna 172 or similar aircraft.

I became even more aware of this while flying a Cub on floats in the Yukon, often manoeuvring close to mountain ridges where severe downdrafts could throw the aircraft violently up and down, costing hundreds of feet within seconds. In those conditions, even properly stowed items could shift, and anything less securely restrained could become a projectile. Luggage, tools, and loose equipment were occasionally thrown forward with enough force to strike the panel. On one occasion, my head took the impact instead, which was no great improvement. In a cockpit built around delicate large-screen avionics, that kind of environment would have posed a very different level of risk.

The same principle applies in African field operations, even if the source of the punishment differs. Severe wind shear, midday heat, rough strips, vibration, dust, repeated loading and unloading, and the cumulative wear of remote operations all place stress on aircraft and equipment. Cargo should always be secured properly, and handling should always be supervised carefully, but field reality is not tidy. Things come loose. Things get knocked. Equipment gets leaned on, bumped, shaken, and exposed to treatment gentler systems do not tolerate well.

This is not a criticism of individuals so much as a recognition of operating context. In remote environments, aircraft are often handled by whoever is available to help, not always by personnel trained to think in terms of cockpit fragility or avionics vulnerability. Their task is usually practical and immediate: move the load, turn the aircraft around, get the job done. In that setting, highly integrated and expensive avionics can become surprisingly exposed, not because anyone intends damage, but because the surrounding environment does not protect delicate systems particularly well.

That matters because a damaged round gauge is usually an inconvenience. A damaged integrated display or associated avionics component can become a logistical event. It may be expensive, difficult to source, slow to replace, and in some cases enough to interrupt operations entirely. In remote aviation, fragility is not just a maintenance concern. It is an operational one.

The first panel

My first panel was neatly laid out and, in conventional general aviation terms, well equipped. It had the familiar “magic T” arrangement of gauges and, in fairness, it was well suited to the intended ferry flight from Germany to Kenya. There was limited IFR capability built into it. An unintended encounter with cloud, or a climb through a low overcast into clear air above, was possible with that instrumentation. Visually, too, the panel looked right. The instruments were arranged in a way that was orderly, balanced, and pleasing to the eye. It made sense in an aviation sort of way.

It also reflected the same mistake many people make, myself included. I had judged the requirements of the cockpit largely by what was available, and by the advice of someone well trained in regulated airspace but with little knowledge of rough field operations or the practical demands of the wild. The underlying instinct was familiar enough: if more information is available, and more capability can be built into the panel, the aircraft is somehow better prepared.

On paper, that made perfect sense.

In field use, the logic became less convincing. Then it began to crack.

The failures

A number of the more sophisticated or less mission-relevant items either failed early or became recurring maintenance irritants. That did not make them fraudulent instruments in themselves. It simply exposed how poorly some of them matched the kind of flying the aircraft was actually doing.

The electric directional gyro was one example. In theory, it added another layer of conventional cockpit capability. In practice, I hardly used it at all. A directional gyro requires regular resetting, typically every half hour or so, to remain reliable. In low-level field flying, that was not only unrealistic but largely irrelevant. It added weight — around three pounds — without contributing much that proved useful in the environment in which the aircraft was actually being flown. After only a small number of off-strip landings, it failed.

The same happened to the electric attitude indicator. It too was relatively heavy, and in operational terms I almost never looked at it. On the ground roll it was of limited value in any case, possibly because the Cub’s nose-high attitude already placed it outside the sort of stable reference it was designed to present. Whatever its theoretical usefulness in another kind of flying, it did not survive long enough, or matter enough, to justify its place in that cockpit.

The manifold pressure gauge raised a different question. It did not simply fail; it kept returning as a maintenance irritation despite being of questionable relevance in that configuration to begin with. It had to be replaced twice. At some point, the issue was no longer whether the instrument could be made to work again, but why it had been given panel space at all.

The primer followed the same pattern. In African operating conditions, where temperatures rarely dropped below five degrees Celsius, it was of little practical use. Yet it brought with it copper lines and fittings that added complexity and eventually vibrated themselves to pieces. In the end, the primer ports had to be sealed off. The system had not failed in some grand, dramatic way. It had simply revealed itself as unnecessary.

None of this was catastrophic. That was precisely the point. The panel was not defeated by one violent event, but gradually edited by vibration, rough use, unnecessary weight, maintenance burden, and irrelevance. Because the instruments were separate, their failures remained mostly local. One failed, and the rest continued to do their jobs. In a more integrated cockpit, the same pattern of punishment could have had much broader consequences. What had been an irritation might then have become a grounding event.

What I actually looked at

What mattered in flight was simpler. In real field use, my attention went to the instruments that directly informed immediate decisions: airspeed, rpm, oil pressure, oil temperature, fuel state, and the few essential cues needed to keep the aircraft and engine honest. A GPS map was useful for heading and groundspeed, and therefore for reading wind direction and strength in practical terms. The turn-and-bank indicator had its place as well, particularly the ball for coordinated turns. These were the instruments that earned their place because they changed what I did, not because they made the panel look complete.

What I stopped caring about

Other instruments slowly fell out of practical relevance. Not because they were fraudulent, but because they belonged to another style of flying. In repeated low-level VFR work from rough strips, with limited infrastructure and no interest in pretending the aircraft was a miniature IFR platform, some of the panel simply stopped mattering. The field is an efficient editor in that sense. It reduces admiration to use.

The altimeter still had its place for QNH setting and field elevation. The vertical speed indicator, by contrast, was of no practical importance in the kind of flying the aircraft was actually doing. The directional gyro and attitude indicator have already been mentioned. In that environment, they simply ceased to justify themselves.

The manifold pressure gauge turned out to be more complicated. For months, it had seemed unnecessary enough to raise the question of why it had been installed at all. Then the tachometer drive failed, and a replacement could not be organised for some time. The first spare disappeared into the usual thicket of African customs bureaucracy before it ever reached the aircraft. During that period, the manifold pressure gauge became the only instrument that allowed me to approximate a sensible power setting with any confidence. In normal field use, it remained far from essential. But as a light, inexpensive redundancy instrument, it had proved its worth after all.

That was a useful reminder in itself. The problem with a field cockpit is not that every non-essential instrument is always useless. It is that every instrument has to justify its place not only in ideal operation, but also in failure, delay, isolation, and the long pauses between intention and spare parts.

What my future panel would look like

That experience changed how I think about cockpit design. Not because I became hostile to modern avionics, and not because I developed some sentimental attachment to older instruments, but because field use forces a different standard. The question is not how much can be fitted into the panel. It is which instruments genuinely improve decision-making in the environment where the aircraft is actually being used.

In a Cub, where panel space is limited and the mission often punishes fragility, every instrument has to justify more than its informational value alone. It must also justify its weight, complexity, vulnerability, and maintenance burden. That tends to favour a more restrained panel: one that provides the information the pilot actually uses, in a form that remains readable, durable, and replaceable under rough operating conditions.

For that reason, less integrated complexity is often the stronger choice in a simple and physically demanding environment. A traditional panel leaves room for partial failure. If one instrument fails, the others usually continue to do their jobs, and the aircraft can often keep flying without the entire cockpit becoming a technical event. An integrated system changes that arithmetic. A single instrument failure may be an inconvenience. A system failure can become something much larger.

That difference matters particularly in remote operations. Even where the immediate failure does not create an emergency, it can still determine whether the aircraft finishes the mission with one missing instrument or sits grounded for weeks or months while parts are sourced, shipped, cleared through customs, and installed by the right people. In places where maintenance capacity, avionics support, and logistics are limited, that distinction is not theoretical. It is operational.

My own preference now is therefore not for a primitive panel, but for a selective one. A compact GPS remains useful, provided it is readable and self-contained. The rest should consist of the core instruments that genuinely earn their place: airspeed, rpm, oil pressure, oil temperature, altitude, fuel state, turn coordination, and a few simple supporting references. Even the manifold pressure gauge, despite its mixed record in my own aircraft, would probably return — not as a central instrument, but as a light, inexpensive redundancy aid if the tachometer ever failed again.

The aim is not austerity for its own sake. It is to build a cockpit that tells the truth quickly, survives punishment honestly, and can still be kept working when the mission is far from the sort of infrastructure modern avionics usually assume.

In the end, cockpit design in field aviation is not a question of fashion, nostalgia, or technological virtue. It is a question of fit. The best panel is not the one that displays the most, but the one that gives the pilot the right information, in the simplest reliable form, under the conditions in which the aircraft is actually being used. In remote flying, where dust, vibration, heat, handling realities, and limited support all shape what remains workable, simplicity is not backwardness. It is operational margin. For aircraft expected to work regularly in remote conservation settings, that distinction is not cosmetic. It shapes reliability, downtime, cost, and ultimately whether the aircraft remains useful when it is most needed.

 

 

 

This note forms part of the operational thinking that grew out of Fly4Elephants, was sharpened by wider remote flying experience, and continues to shape a more durable next chapter.