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The
main flight instruments on a B747-400 are shown below. |
If
you have never seen an instrument panel before this probably
looks complicated.
Believe it or not it
is a great layout for pilots. The screen on the left is
called the "Primary Flight Display" (PFD),
and the screen on the right is called the "Navigation
Display" (ND). The ND displays the map which is generated
from one of the flight management computers. The aircraft
position is shown as a white triangle and the magenta coloured
line
is where the pilot wishes to fly.
The
scale shown is 40 nautical miles, which is expandable to
640nm. It is on this screen that other planes flying within
40nm and within 2,700 feet above or below would be displayed.
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pilots have the same panels in order to cross monitor each
other. |
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The
left display is the PFD. This holds the aircraft attitude,
airspeed (342 knots), and height (14,110 feet).
To the right of the altitude is the vertical speed indicator, showing here a
descent at 950 feet per minute.
Below is a compass rose displaying track.
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At
the top left hand side you can see the wind, airspeed and
groundspeed. The current track is 133 degrees. Navigation
aids for monitoring aircraft position are shown at the
bottom left and right of the screen. |
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To explain further read the descriptions
below: |
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Look
at the top of the PFD |
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The
green writing at the top displays the autothrottle (maintains
airspeed,
a lot more sophisticated
than your car cruise control!) is in Hold. This means here
that the engine power is at idle. An autopilot is flying,
shown as "CMD"(see the ND above), and flying
in LNAV and VNAV SPD. |
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This
means that the autopilot is flying in a lateral navigation
mode (that is,
flying the magenta line as shown on the map on the ND), and flying a speed
as programmed by the pilot. |
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Attitude |
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The well defined white lines indicate the wings of the plane relative to the
horizon and bank angle.
Here the plane is in level flight, the wings are level and the nose is on the
horizon. On take-off a B747-400 is commonly rotated to an angle of 12 degrees
or more to climb away from the runway |
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This
is the most important instrument for aeroplanes that fly
at night or in cloud. This instrument shows which way is
up! Here the blue indicates the sky above and the black
is below the horizon. |
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Speed |
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On
the main pilot display (PFD) you can see the speed tape
on the left hand side, here shown as 342 knots.
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Altimeter |
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The
altitude is displayed on a tape, here the height displayed
is 14,110 feet.
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