One friend of mine is a former Navy pilot who flew S-3 Vikings off carriers and commanded P-3 Orions. Despite such experience his transition to civilian light GA was full of new experiences—like mixture controls. He texted me one day thrilled over a bit of old school buried in the glass-panel display options. “This thing has an RMI! It’s like coming home again.”
What he was talking about were the bearing pointers, which are for glass panels what a radio magnetic indicator (RMI) is for steam-gauge cockpits. The RMI combines a heading indicator with a needle that simply points to the station. They’re like an ADF except they point to a VOR location on the ground. The bearing pointer puts that needle on the HSI of your glass panel. So, you have the primary left/right indication of a CDI, plus up to two arrows that point to a selected station. Bonus is that you can point to a VOR or a GPS waypoint, because everything flies by GPS these days.
