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Tony N
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+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
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Peter Robertson
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Hi 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
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PaulSS
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"Traffic, 200 ft above, descending, 2 o'clock, 3 miles". The direction of the traffic is last place you look. Definitely not to my liking.If you then want to add in an algorithm that only gives the relative height first if it's more of a threat than lateral displacement then you're opening up a massive can of worms and one, in my opinion, that wouldn't help. I say this because our brains are accustomed to sorting the data in a particular way. If you then change that way (and I do appreciate why you are suggesting it) then our brains have to spend those extra milli-seconds re-sorting the information and then diagnosing it. It certainly wouldn't work having the human on the transmitting end of the message (imagine having some poor AT person trying to decide what part of the message comes first) and I believe it would actually slow things down having a human on the receiving end.
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Tony N
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I completely understand the comments about keeping to "standards" as employed by ATC. It was only a suggestion that, perhaps, having height (including climbing/level/descending) announced first would help SE2 users quickly be able to determine if an audio alert needed pilot action straight away.
My particular SE2 "experience" was on the last good flying day before lockdown Mk2. It was a very busy circuit at Sandown (approx. 5 aircraft arriving at the same time) and not only was I keeping a good visual lookout (and having to fly the circuit twice due to airfield operational issues) but I also received two warnings about an aircraft overtaking me at 330 Kt whilst I was overflying the airfield. This sort of un-nerved me and only at the end out the audio announcement did I hear that the overtaking aircraft was at 35,000 ft! That audio alert was a SD glitch (reported in a separate post) but was the trigger for this post.
Out of interest what do you think the negative aspects of SD announcing height etc. first in the audio alert would be? Tony
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grahamb
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/thread and product drift/
For that very reason, PilotAware should colour code METAR consistently with the system used at military airfields. :-)
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Peter Robertson
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Tony,
I have significant experience over more than 40 years of the use of communications in a variety of fields - including military and civilian emergency services and ham radio, as well as in aviation, and strongly agree with Paul on this one.
The use of standard message formats and terminology is of vital importance in critical (or emergency) communications - especially in potentially stressful, busy, high noise or poor radio quality environments, as it helps the brain to subconsciously recognise, register, decode, interpret and act on the message, without distracting focus away from the job in hand - in our case flying the aircraft and continuing to maintain effective visual scan. For this reason it is essential that we keep the format and content of audio warnings as close as possible to the standard (ATC style) format.
Significant deviation or variation will only lead to confusion with potentially critical consequences.
Best Regards
Peter
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PaulSS
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My thinking is that ATC knows the height of conflicting target from their radar display and can see what is likely to happen.
So, probably announces the avoidance information in a certain order to suit the risk.
ATC will always use the same format, Tony. They don't vary it according to what they perceive as the most relevant threat. Of course, if they saw an immediate danger then it would be perfectly acceptable to just instruct a climb etc and then follow up with the details but 99% of the time it will be "Traffic 2 o'clock, 3 miles, 200 ft above, descending through your level" etc.
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Tony N
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+xNo, let's just keep it how ATC would do it and how it's always been done. The tried and tested method has served us well for many years and there is really no need to change it. My thinking is that ATC knows the height of conflicting target from their radar display and can see what is likely to happen. So, probably announces the avoidance information in a certain order to suit the risk. When having to wait for the full SD audio announcement in order to determine the risk level of the conflicting target, my suggestion was to have, in my opinion, the most important information first. That is, the height of the conflicting target first and whether level, climbing or descending. However, I take your point about keeping things like ATC does it. Thanks Tony
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PaulSS
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No, let's just keep it how ATC would do it and how it's always been done. The tried and tested method has served us well for many years and there is really no need to change it.
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Tim Dawson
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Why would you ignore it when the target might be climbing?
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