All this talk of blind cockpit drills got me to thinking about the basic
design and layout of the drivers station...
Tonya and I went to New Orleans to tech a car on the way to speedweek... Ole
Blue hair is building a car called the "Stinkin Lincoln"... JT Nesbitt is
quite a character, so when he called and asked... I just couldn't refuse....
He's a very talented writer and designer... but he's very into CHEAP.... and
confusing... The gage layout in the car was wickedly complicated... He had
attitude gauges as well as every engine monitoring gauge in the world... all
from different cars... the dash looked like the bridge on the star ship
enterprise.... ( okay it wasn't really that bad... but I'm using it to make a
point here )
The way I set up the Berkeley after building the Camaro was to put all the
gauges directly in front of me and to limit the information the driver had to
a bare minimum.... Oil pressure, Water temp, RPM... I had lights that give
you the ability to look at nothing but the tach... The warning light comes on
if the oil goes below 50psi or the water gets above 220. A shift light and We
ended up putting in a white light to tell you if there was wheel slip in
excess of 10 percent... The real point being here everything was Directly
in front of the driver...
The Camaro has the gauges off to the right in the center of the dash and
Everytime I look at them I had to remind myself not to turn the car.... one of
the things that happens as a matter of course... is that if you look right...
you will turn right... look left and you will turn left...
The point of the blind cockpit drills is to keep you from having to physically
look at a handle to actuate it... everything should be placed so that it's
easy to find and require a minimum of movement to get to. ( you want your arm
restraints as short as possible )
I like the idea of having different style handles which indicate different
things...
Okay guys what am I missing?
Keith
_______________________________________________
Land-speed mailing list
http://autox.team.net/mailman/listinfo/land-speed
|