The danger of the keyboard

[flyingdrill]

Oh, my goodness. This is how the fat finger can get you into trouble!

I was vectored to the ILS 6 for San Bernardino, and was given a new altimeter setting. As this was only a hundredth of an inch different from what I was at, I could well have left it alone!

I was flying the Epic 1000 with the latest v2.2 of the Skyview panel (X-Plane). So, being an idiot perfectionist(?), I pulled up the virtual keyboard and typed in the new pressure - only I didn't. Instead of 30.01, I typed 33.01 without noticing it! This is above the highest pressure ever recorded on Earth (I believe), so maybe the software shouldn't allow it, but a bad workman blames his tools. BTW, the plane and panel are great, and the convenience of being able to input so many values with the virtual or actual keyboard, rather than fiddling with the mouse, is usually a plus.

The controller had issued me with a new altitude to fly, but immediately asked me what I was doing and asked me to call out my altitude, whereupon he ventured that I had a faulty altimeter, and was heading for a 2000' tower (which I couldn't see). I climbed quickly, saw the error, corrected it and got back on the ILS and completed the approach safely.

This is the sort of thing you just couldn't really do with a conventional altimeter, nor would you be likely to manage it on a real G1000.
Garbage in, garbage out! A perfect example.

This was an interesting bit of fun, and my congratulations to the controller (Joe), who handled it all so professionally. What these episodes do is reinforce how an error in RW flying can really spoil your day............

[Kyle.Sanders]

Crazy

[tbaac]

Interesting story, both of how we can get in a mess and on how the PE controllers behave professionally to save the situation.

Shame there's not a 'Like this' button