Image: © Rathke | iStockphoto
This article is the sixth in a series on landmark events in aviation since Flight Safety Foundation was founded in 1945.
For much of aviation’s history, flying an aircraft required a constant scan from one side of the main instrument panel to the other. Pilots monitored separate round gauges for each flight parameter. Those flight instruments became known as the “six-pack” — airspeed indicator, altimeter, vertical speed indicator, turn coordinator, heading indicator, and attitude indicator. (If the pilot was lucky, all six instruments were on the instrument panel. But the earliest fliers managed without a gyroscopic heading indicator and got along instead with a simple magnetic compass, bouncing around in its fluid during turbulence.)
In addition …
