Why Integrate the Autopilot ?

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Well, you are a supermariner then, neither mortal nor human, as far as I'm concerned, rather some kind of Sailing God.

As a mere mortal sailor, I work like hell to avoid mistakes on my boat.

I wish it wouldn't require effort I will not leave for a passage without knowing exactly what, how, where and when, and which options I have for changes to the planned route. While underway, I will not make any turn until I have confirmed the course change with at least two nav-aids. I rather stop (which I do sometimes) than let any uncertainty into my course.

I do touch the seabed now and then and remember once it was unexpected in the Florida Keys (lost my trust in US charts right at that moment). It mostly happens dead slow while sounding out a possible anchorage. We are often in uncharted areas.

Oh I now remember a second grounding in Naples, Florida. Also inside the channel which is meaningless there too.

At night once, in pitch darkness with no moon, navigating through the twisting channel leading through shoals to the Hamble River, I saw a green lighted buoy which seemed to be part of the series I was following, and failed to iniate a turn at the right moment to follow the channel. I was double-checking myself against the plotter and caught the mistake in time -- but it was a mistake.

Now ask yourself this: do ships with professional bridge crew navigate through a channel in the same manner that you did? I can tell you they don't. The reason is that they are further ahead with the navigation. I come from a shipping family (father even born on a ship!) which might make me different... but I have been on the bridge of ships often enough to know that I use the same technique. So let me explain how I do this, it might help readers here in general;

In unfamiliar waters incl. channels, I will always plot a route. My instruments are integrated, so the route shows up on my radar screen, as does the radar image overlay on the chart. While on a leg of the route I will confirm GPS position using bearings and depth. Those bearings are most often radar bearings (EBL). I also confirm buoy locations with the radar. When things are under control, I will make a radar bearing on the buoy that marks the destination of the next leg. I then take my binoculars with integrated compass and find & confirm it. I then study the lights and features around it so that I can locate the light quickly, which I keep doing as we go. Now, while approaching the turn into the next leg, I already know exactly towards which light my next leg leads me, no matter how many lights there are. When in route mode, the AP will beep asking for permission to turn into the next leg. I confirm and look ahead to see if my course indeed changes to the light I identified before. If it does and the AP has put the rudder midships again, Josie verifies my COG line on plotter and heading line on radar, while scanning for other boats with radar and eyeballs. Then I am ready to prep for the next turn and so on.

The difference with your method is (I think) that I don't even attempt to find the right light/buoy among the sea of lights out there. I find it with my chart plotter and radar and the radar-bearing then guides my binoculars to it followed by bare eyeball. I also do not hand steer. This gives me more time but when I still need more time I go slower or even stop.
Without radar I would only attempt this in very calm and easy conditions. I'll sail a bit up and down outside until it gets light otherwise.

ciao!
Nick.

[s/v Jedi]

On AP wind vs nav modes: my AP has a tack/jibe protection feature that works in every mode. So even when in nav mode towards a waypoint, the alarm will sound as soon as the wind angle enters the danger zone, which is programmable. You do need a dangerous integrated setup for this protection feature though...

ciao!
Nick.

[Ex-Calif]

Originally Posted by sidmon

?

So it can bite the hand of the guy in the left seat if he attempts to touch anything??!?!?!

(full disclosure-was on a 'bus last night fine airplanes)

And of course the guy in the left seat is there to feed the dog...

Part of the issue today is the speed of communication and the qty of cameras.

I was sitting in my office in Singapore when the QF A380 failed the engine. Before the airplane dumped fuel and landed there were internet reports of the "crash" incuding pictures of engine cowl identified (incorrectly) as cargo door.

Once an opinion is posted with no fact to back it up too much energy is spent debunking the bs and false reports.

I believe the same thing happens in any commercial industry. Regardless of individual cruise ships and oil tanker incidents, I bet the people that really know maritime safety would point out the improvements in maritime safety as a result of modern navigation systems incuding the dreaded integrated ones.

BTW a better question from the OP would be - how many of you have integrated your autopilot? I am sure only a small percentage of those railing against the risks of integration have not or would not integrate their autopilot. However, in reading posts most of them are superior sailors and can handle the complexity of watching their AP steer to a waypoint...

[sidmon]

Originally Posted by colemj

Try to keep up here. Let me repost what I posted on #208 (with added bold emphasis to help out):

How about this quote from this thread then:

"Integrated electronics allow stupid people to look smart until they hit something easily avoided, perhaps killing themselves or others in the process."

And many more like this one warning about deadly head on collisions, assigning the loss of a leg during a reef wreck to integrated electronics, and many others warning of personal harm. While not directly stating that people will be killed, that sentiment is deeply implied throughout.

Did you read this whole thread or just jump in at this point?

And I'm pretty sure the posts I mentioned were from you and not a figment of my imagination.

Mark

YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT THAT...

NONE of that was from me. If you are going to criticize my position on the issue, please make sure that you use something I actually posted.

(printed in bold so to help you keep up)

Again...Here is the archive of ALL my posts at cruiser forum.

Now, back to the subject at hand...

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

For example, we're still not done with he Port Royal. You state the grounding was caused by complacency. The US Navy has refused to make a statement on he cause but has retired the captain.

Wrong again Nick. Never NOT ONCE did I say that the Port Royal grounding was due to complacency....Although I do cite complacency as a potentially lethal byproduct of an overreliance on electronic nav systems.

Nick, hate to say it... but...You don't understand how things work on the bridge of a navy ship. The Captain was not driving. He got sacked because US Navy Captains will ALWAYS be fired if their ship runs aground. Makes no matter if they were in the crapper or dead asleep. Indeed, that gent was one of the most competent skippers in the navy, which is why he was given command of the star Ballistic Missile Defense ship in the navy. So you are wrong about his competence too.

Anyway, in that generation of ship the ships' officers do not physically the the helm at all. Typically there is a an Officer of the Deck (OOD) Junior Officer of the Deck (JOOD) who give steering and speed orders to a "helm" and "lee helm" (look them up, don't want to have to teach you everything).

There are various levels navigation readiness on a ship like the Port Royal (oh-did I mention I spent a full 10 years aboard USN destroyers?...Before working as a navigator on seismic research vessels....Make sure you google up the navigation capabilities of those). There is Sea and Anchor Detail, where the Navigator is on the bridge supervising the nav party when in close proximity to land such as when entering and leaving port. And the Combat Information Center stands up a full nav team to take radar fixes to back the bridge team up. Modified Sea and Anchor Detail, when in close proximity to land, but standing off in deep water. There are more limited teams stood up on the bridge, and in CIC.

Another thing you are wrong about. The navy made all kinds of statements about this accident...But please look those up on your own too. They are out there.

What I want to highlight is this training ppt the USN has made for their new officers

It actually highlights three nav blunders. The Lamour County. The Burke. And the Port Royal. The above primer I provided should get you past some of your misconceptions (like your issue with heat seeking missiles etc).

It wasn't complaceny that got the Port Royal in trouble, it was the tacit belief in the infallibility of their electronic systems. After all, this ship could shoot down an object the size of a basketball at the edges of space so of course they had a culture of trusting their electronics....

But anyway, don't believe me. Here is the statement from the Navy:

•In short, the Nav Team relied solely on VMS without question.

[St. Elsewhere]

Sidmon,

Thank you for the data on the Port Royal grounding. I was in Hawaii when it happened, and have wondered how they could have done it ever since.

[colemj]

Originally Posted by sidmon

YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT THAT...

NONE of that was from me. If you are going to criticize my position on the issue, please make sure that you use something I actually posted.

(printed in bold so to help you keep up)

Again...Here is the archive of ALL my posts at cruiser forum.

What was that all about? Your "quote" of mine wasn't even one of my posts - it was a couple of them mashed together and leaving out the parts that specifically addressed what you are complaining about here. That was funny!

Again, I will spell out this silly little argument for you:

1. In response to a comment I made, you stated (and I quote verbatim) "Never. Not Once. Has anyone ever said that here Mark." Please note the word "anyone". That is your word, not mine. I emphasized it in the previous response, but apparently not well enough. "Anyone" is not defined as "you". Although it could contain "you" as a subset, its meaning is far more encompassing than "you". Unless your actual name is really and truly "Anyone", and you have a predilection for referring to yourself in the third person, then my response was valid and correct.

2. My response was to post an actual quote, from this actual thread, showing that "someone" (a specific of "anyone") had indeed said that here.

It is that simple. SOMEONE said that. Which is what you are denying or not understanding.

Unless your actual real name really is "Anyone", in which case I apologize for being so thick.

And also note I wasn't criticizing your position on the topic here, I was simply correcting your claim about content within the thread. You keep reading something else into this silly little point and also thinking I am responding to you when I quote and respond to other people.

Maybe you should take a break from me and get some rest?

Mark

[sidmon]

Replace "Sea and Anchor Detail" with "Nav Detail" where seen in my previous comment. For an old ("red stripe"- look it up Nick) OS like me, it meant the same thing. Might add that when "my" CIC was engaged in war games and we were close to land (perhaps I will relate how we found an overturned catamaran about 30nm SSW of Giglio in 1978...) I always made sure I had somebody taking radar fixes and comaring witht he QMOW on the bridge.

But I'm Old School and that was in the very early "SATNAV" days.

As for the La Moure County...and how maritime issues intersect discussed here with aviation ones...Perhaps ex-calif can help explain the phenomenon known as "map shift" .


As for how such cases may relate to readers of the board...I would yet again bet that most here are the ones who, when operating their boats, are usually the only ones they would trust to conduct precision navigation. Indeed, many take aboard folks who cannot be regarded as crew, so much as passengers.

If you count yourself one of those, remember this. You are effectively single handing, and that makes you a potential single point of failure in a precise, high stakes navigational situation. I would recommend you take away some wisdom from the Port Royal grounding:

Nav Evaluator assumed duties as Plotter

Lost situational awareness when duties became single-scope and had NO supervisory oversight.

Resulted in a one-man navigation detail

Speaking of the La Moure County. Here is a pic taken on the Guided Missile Destroyer I was on Way Back When, on the "Gun Line" (look it up Nick) off the Beirut Airport supporting the Marines when they were engaged in UN Operations there in 1982. If you look in the background off the port bow, I am pretty sure that LST was the La Moure County, as she was there *(thats not me standing front of the missile launcher):

[s/v Jedi]

Sidmon I am giving up on you... there is no hope. You really brought up the Port Royal as example of your complacency integrated instruments theory. Now you deny it. Captain was the best too. All the news articles are wrong according to you. Different missiles were fired, what they have to do with complacency is utterly unclear too; Port Royal article I linked you deny too. Yet you do not link anything that supports your claims. So they are just your personal claims and it didn't happen.

Now you want me to look up all kind of things that have absolutely nothing to do with the subject. I have looked up a couple of things and they show you wrong. Now you need to come with references that show you are right, before bringing up new things.

cheers,
Nick.

[colemj]

You do understand that none of us are sitting in darkened holds in front of glass bridges being fed multi-dimensional and multi-modal data while barreling along at 30kts with no capability to just quickly and simply stop the ship and regain bearings if we get confused, don't you?

And that all of us understand that on our boats the navigator and plotter and helmsman and chief engineer are all the same person, or at most shared duty with another person, but rarely at the same time?

And that none of us are navigating our boats several miles in the air with exposure to sudden and catastrophic death if we stop them?

And that although we might not have the uber-training in all things vehicular that you have, those of us making passages have sufficient skills and awareness to do so with reasonable expectations of safety?

You keep chasing some demon around on this and warning us of something that isn't clear to us. Or at least sounds patronizing to us. Is it just something as inane as "be careful or you will put an eye out"? Or is it something dire like "stay off the water and out of the air or you will all be killed"? Or what?

If you could just use one single sentence to get your point across, what would it be?

Mark

[sidmon]

Originally Posted by colemj

You keep chasing some demon around on this and warning us of something that isn't clear to us.
Mark

Can't say I much care if you -or Nick- "Get It" or not.

Again...Sometime down the road you and Nick will be excoriating someone for being such an idiot on the water when in fact they fell victim to the "modern sirens" that lure the unwary in.

Is that blaming the electronics? NO!

Like the fable of Odysseus the story is really all about our own shortcomings.

I am sure that some who have browsed through this exchange came away with some insight regardless of the nastiness you two brought into it. So I am good with that.

I am sure you will misrepresent this in the same disingenuous manner you have already Mark, so spin it however you want.

Nick, I am so glad you have quit trying to redeem me. I have grown weary of your various shades of reality that you wish me to bend to.

I feel so much freer now.

adieu

[Ex-Calif]

Originally Posted by sidmon

.

As for the La Moure County...and how maritime issues intersect discussed here with aviation ones...Perhaps ex-calif can help explain the phenomenon known as "map shift" .

The citation you link about the Cali accident is 15 years old. The citation is a human factors citation and not the NTSB accident report. I do not know the researcher or the motivation for that researchers work. Scholarly? To obtain funding? To dog pile on the topic and appear smart? The report looks pretty factual but may not relate to this forum discussion.

The navigation on that flight was VOR nav not gps nav. There is no Moving Map display in that cockpit and to go into what is in that cockpit, what the controllers and pilots did on that flight would be time consuming and at the end of the day solve for a cockpit that is 15 years old and doesnt solve any of the duscussion here.

In summary - the controller didnt know where the airplane was, he wasnt really required to. The controller cleared the flight to a radio beacon. The pilots entered the frequency for a radio beacon behind them, not being aware the beacon was behind them. The airplane started to turn around. By the time the pilots figured out the problem and reentered different steering information they were below a ridge line and steered the airplane into the ridge.

Also the transition from enroute nav to terminal nav can be tricky. Pilots know where they are coming from and expect a final approach clearance based on weather and conditions. When the hand off from enroute to terminal nav controller happens and the appraoch controller gives out a different "unplanned" arrival procedure, the pilots have to find that procedure and brief it. Basically it adds some workload - while you are approaching an airport at 250mph.

Yes - it was a total loss of SA not only for one pilot but for two pilots. But for the casual observer one must understand they were not looking at a gps coupled moving map display. They were basically looking at a display that looks something like a radar display with a course line to a waypoint.

Generally the display is "course up" and depending on zoom level you may not even see the next waypoint/turning point. Overlaid on that display is a section of compass rose at the top indicating heading. Hard to describe unless you have seen one. There is other information overlaid but the point being, you could have the course line up, be on a heading of 170 for example and it looks normal but in fact the waypoint is wrong and if you dialed the right waypoint you would have course up and be flying 270. Other than heading it would look pretty much the same. In that generation of nav equipment the pilots have altitude data but they are not receiving vertical guidance other than GPWS which is a little too little too late.

This was also night - pilots aren't flying along with a chart on their laps. There is nothing to see at night from 30k feet other than large targets like, "oh, look at that pile of bright lights on our right, that must be las vegas and we are flying 270 so we must be south of las vegas headed for the coast. That makes sense."

I am not sure what you mean by "map shift" as relates to Cali. The pilots were not looking at any electronic map data.

And a final kick on aviation before I we get back to boats. Did you know that globally a commercial airplane flight takes off about every 5-10 seconds. There arre literally millions of flights per year. The amount of data collected and the amount of flights being successfully made is astounding. The industry has issues but never stops debating them and making improvements. It is an industry in which every single person I have met has safety as their first priority.

Buses crash, trains crash, ferries and cruise ships sink. No one says, "no way am I getting on a train." Flying is still mysterious to most people and when the industry has a big incident it is in the news for months.

Anyway - sorry for the diversion...

[Shoalcove]

I've followed this thread with some interest since I'm adding some new electronics this spring. It's been also interesting to follow the drift into aviation. Like Ex-calif, I'm not sure I would blame the Cali accident solely on instrument integration. There were many other factors involved including controller phraseology, confusion over clearance limits verses direct routing and other comminication issues. As the report says, there was more than one factor. There always is.
I do believe that there are lessons us sailors could take from this such as understanding the potential for trouble when entering a waypoint or changing destinations at the last moment and not noticing the possible dangers.
The report did not address some of the other issues that were factors in the accident but it does point out the potential for trouble when someone gets distracted and fails to use all the info at hand. There was a rather famous case of an accident in the 70's where the pilots were distracted by a light bulb and managed to fly into the ground so the problem has existed for quite a while.
BTW, without knowing the specific controller situation at the time, I will say that usually the controller is very much required to know where the aircraft is since it is that information that allows him to safely separate them from other arrivals and deparures.

[colemj]

Originally Posted by Ex-Calif

Did you know that globally a commercial airplane flight takes off about every 5-10 seconds.

That is lower than I thought it would be. I have sat in O'Hare, Miami, etc and watched planes lined up forever and launching every 30 seconds or so. I figured worldwide, there must be dozens of planes taking off at the same time.

Mark

[Ex-Calif]

Originally Posted by Shoalcove

.
BTW, without knowing the specific controller situation at the time, I will say that usually the controller is very much required to know where the aircraft is since it is that information that allows him to safely separate them from other arrivals and deparures.

Like I said it is complex. In the USA the whole country is covered by enroute radar. Across oceans and in most small countries theree is no enroute radar, only terminal radar and many small airports in smaller countries may not even have terminal radar.

The Cali flight if I recall was not yet in terminal radar coverage but even had it been the controller is not responsible for navigation. If he notices a deviation from the clearance he is required to question it but if he is working multiple targets he may not notice a deviation for a while. He issued a clearance, the pilot accepted the clearance and the controller had a reasonable expectation the pilot would fly the clearance. Unfortunately a sequence of events that started with misidentifying the frequency for the first fix ended in disaster.

In the world of human endeavor putting 850 people in an A380 and lofting them to 40k feet is an unnatural human act. Cramming thousands of people into a cruise ship so they can stand in floating buffet lines while not a "lofty" endeavor, sure seems to some (including me) to be an unnecessary one. The expectation that it is zero risk is the human mistake. So outlaw cruise ships because once in a great while 20 humans might die? You may as well outlaw cars cause they kill a lot more people every minute on a global basis than cruise ships or planes ever will.

I never second guess the guy in the cockpit or on the bridge. Spatial Disorientation - Anyone who has not spaced out and missed their freeway exit and then said, "WTF? Where am I? Did I pass my exit or is it ahead?" for at least 15 seconds may be able to judge but I am not that perfect. Do it in 3D in the mountains at night and convince yourself you aren't where you thought you were when in fact you were where you thought you were and the consequences can be dire.

@Mark - it slows down a bit at night...

I can dig up some other interesting factoids like there are only between 6-7000 commercial airplanes flying in total. There are only something like 140-150 airports globally handling 80-90% of all passengers. In the history of commercial aviation the industry on aggregate is about break even. i.e. Its a non-profit industry - LOL. These numbers are magnitude order off top of my head. I have them in a pitch somewhere.

[Shoalcove]

Well, I don't mean to split hairs here but I never said the controller is respnsible for navigating the aircraft. I said that the controller is responsible to know where the plane is. In a non-radar environment that is accomplished by position reports and estimates for the next fix amongst other things. Again, I don't have the specific information at hand but as a controller I would be using that info to confirm separation and missing a report at an expected reporting point would be cause for concern.
As far as Enroute radar coverage goes, aircraft often fly below the coverage, particularly on departure and approach at smaller fields or in mountainous areas in Canada and I think you'll find the same situation in some areas of the USofA.
I really don't want this to drift into a discussion of ATC but merely wanted to agree with you that there was much more involved in the accident in Columbia than relying on electronic navigation aids.
Best regards!