Aircraft Instruments

What Does Aircraft Instruments cover?

Aircaft Instruments is a large subject covering the whole range of instruments on the aircraft.

It first of all looks at the pressure instruments, that is the pitot static system, its operation, properties and errors.

Then the magnetic instruments, both direct and gyro compasses as well as eerrors and the earths magnetic field.

Next is the subject of gyros, how they work, their errors and the instruments and systems that use them.

We will look at the Inertial Navigations System (INS) and the more modern Inertial Reference System (IRS) and how it integrates into the Flight Management System (FMS). We will also look at the FMS in great detail.

A large part of the subject covers auto-flight, the Autopilot and Flight Director (FD), how it works and operates. This leads on to Autoland and the Autothrottle.

Two systems that have increased the safety will be looked at, TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) and EGPWS (Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System).

Then finally the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and Flight Data Recorders (FDR) will be looked at.