Heard a junior guy say 'who even uses analog gauges anymore' and it got me thinking
I was grabbing coffee last Tuesday before pulling a panel on a King Air, and one of the younger techs was complaining about having to cross-check a mechanical altimeter. He said something like 'we should just rip all this old stuff out, it's dead weight.' And I mean, I get it, digital is faster and cleaner. But that analog gauge has been up there for 35 years and it still works fine. There's something about being able to see the needle move and feel the pitot-static system working that a screen just doesn't give you. Plus half the time when a digital readout goes haywire, you're chasing bad grounds for three days. My first shop had a '62 Beechcraft with nothing but steam gauges and that thing never lied to me once. Maybe it's just me getting old, but has anyone else had a digital system fail in a weird way that an analog gauge would have just kept working through?