+xHi Tony,
My post wasn’t intended to in any way denigrate your suggestion, merely to explain that from my own experience based on many years of training and assessing others in Critical Incident Decision Making, I am aware that human beings recognise and react far more quickly to notifications where the information is presented in a standardised / recognised format which is much more easily - and generally automatically - recognised and assimilated by the human brain, which can then immediately start to evaluate and act on the information that has been received.
Hearing the term ‘Traffic’ immediately prompts us as Pilots to expect ‘Direction’, ‘Range’ then ‘Vertical Position’ - followed where appropriate by additional information such as ‘Climbing’, ‘Descending’, ‘Passing Left to Right’, etc., all of which our brains are pre-programmed by familiarity to process with minimal interference to other existing workloads. Changing the information from the ‘expected’ order (other than in an extreme emergency*) immediately causes subconscious confusion, directing ‘brain-time’ to working out what is going on to the detriment of other tasks it was performing prior to this unexpected intrusion.
* The system of course depends on the principle which is built into all good traffic awareness or information systems, of warnings being given in good time, before avoiding action becomes critical. In critical situations a ‘human’ operator may well advise instant action, where electronic systems should be (are) designed to avoid this.
The high overtaking speed warning you report receiving from SkyDemon during your approach at Sandown was presumably the result of either a ‘deliberate’ decision to set the vertical reporting distance in SkyDemon to well in excess of the ‘normal’ +/- 500 to 2000 feet, or a failure to check this setting at some point, with the result that the unanticipated warning caused just the sort of alarm and confusion I refer to above. That said, my only concern is that I would have expected the ‘Overtaking at 330 Knots’ to have come right at the end of the SkyDemon announcement, i.e. AFTER the relative altitude information - which from my own recent flight experience with SkyDemon Audio is I’m pretty sure usually the case.
Best Regards
Peter
Peter,
No, I haven't changed my SD audio alerts settings. Actually set to +/- 4000ft in the Navigation options setup section.
The flight in question was my third flight testing SE2 and I have never heard SD announce target conflicts that high above me before.
As mentioned, the warning occurred at least twice, possibly three times, in the circuit at Sandown..
I can only assume it was a glitch in the SD target processing algoritm as the Ryanair at the time was flying straight and level way above me.
To be honest, I probably only get "real" target advisories from ATC a few times a year so wouldn't have remembered if the phraseology used by SD was conventional or not.
Based on my limited operational experience with SE2/SD audio alerts it just semed a good suggestion to have height warning info first, based on my experience with the false alerts at Sandown.
Tony