Find It by Feel: A Pilot’s Essential Cockpit Lesson

One of the most important lessons I learned as a student pilot came with my eyes closed.

It was finding the location of the flight controls and circuit breakers in the cockpit, and knowing what each one did. The idea was if the cockpit filled with smoke, or I was caught out at night with no flashlight (highly unlikely for me, but this was training), I would be able to find the  throttle, propeller, carburetor heat, and mixture controls by feel, and identify the circuit breakers by their position—for example, “three buttons in from the right is the autopilot.”

In the Cessna 172, this isn’t that difficult. The carburetor knob is square. Next to it is the smooth, cylindrical throttle knob, and the one next to it is the mixture knob, identified with ridges. When I moved up to a complex aircraft, the propeller knob was discernable because of the gouges in the knob.

The circuit breakers are labeled so you know what they connect to. Their arrangement varied in the fleet, so it was recommended you double-checked before each flight. If the circuit breaker was connected to an instrument that had been de-energized and placarded in-op, it was ziptied to make it inaccessible. 

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The circuit breakers with the bright orange plastic collars were the really important ones when it came to in-flight emergencies. The collars made it difficult to pull the circuit breaker by hand, but the seat belt cutter multitool I had strapped on would do the job. Since it was training, when we practiced emergency scenarios that required the pulling of the collared circuit breaker—such as wingtip fire—I would touch the circuit breaker and announce, “Circuit breaker pulled!”

In addition to knowing where all the circuit breakers were located, my military-trained instructor made sure I knew where all the electrical switches were in the cockpit. He told me a story about a student pilot from a nearby airport who had been caught out after dark and crashed when he was distracted trying to find the switch for the landing light.

The student pilot was on the last leg of his first solo cross-country flight. He wasn’t supposed to be out after dark, but he was. The student tried to follow the highway that ran past the airport. He was transmitting on the unicom frequency, telling his CFI, who was waiting for him inside the FBO, that he didn’t have a flashlight and couldn’t find the switch for the landing light or wingtip position lights, and wasn’t sure where the airport was.

The CFI tried to explain where the light switches were and told the student to activate the runway lights by pressing the push-to-talk switch five times. The student was apparently disorientated in the dark and didn’t notice how low he was—until he hit the ground.

The find-it-by-feel technique goes back to World War II, and I highly recommend it. If you are a renter pilot, it helps to do a quick review of the cockpit layout before you start the engine. Every cockpit is a little different, so before each flight, take a moment to see where everything is before you need it.

At my first flight school job the fleet included 17 Cessna 172s. I made notes on the backs of business cards for each aircraft, noting their quirks, such as if the airspeed indicator was marked in knots or mph, if the airplane was carburetor equipped or fuel injected, how many strokes of prime it usually required, position of the landing light on the exterior, if the seats were fully articulating, and how many turns of the crank I needed to see over the glareshield. I kept these cards in a pouch attached to the lanyard that held my airport ID. 

With the invention of the smartphone, many learners make it a rule to take a photo of the new-to-them cockpit, then they blow up the image on their computer to study it. This is particularly useful to determine the location and function of each circuit breaker. They are there to help  prevent fire. Of all the life-threatening experiences you can have in a training airplane, fire tops the list.

The purpose of circuit breakers is to protect electrical instruments from damage caused by overloading circuits. When too much current is sent to an instrument, it causes heat, and the circuit breaker pops to prevent further damage. This cuts off the flow of electricity to the instrument. If the instrument continues to get too much current, it potentially causes a fire. 

Pulling the circuit breaker can help prevent this. Read that line again, because before 2010 there were some POHs that suggested that when a circuit breaker pops, give it a few minutes to cool down, then push it back in—if it pops again, leave it out, and continue the flight without the instrument.

A Seattle-area flight school followed this practice until one day a CFI and a commercial pilot were in the pattern in VFR conditions when the GPS suddenly went black. They decided to continue the flight, but a moment later, when the cockpit began to fill with smoke, they returned for landing.

Moral of the story: If anything electrical acts up in the airplane, it’s a good idea to get it on the ground ASAP.

Trim and Autopilot Considerations

If the airplane has electric trim and or an autopilot, know where those are. If the trim and autopilot malfunction, also known as “running away,” it can result in a challenging situation, perhaps even one that causes a crash.

Runaway trim can result in an extreme nose-up or nose-down situation, and an autopilot that enters an uncommanded roll.

You have probably heard stories from someone who wasn’t exactly sure how the autopilot worked, and when activated, found themselves in an unusual attitude because of a malfunction. To avoid this, get training on the autopilot from a qualified instructor, and the first time you attempt to use it, be at an altitude that will allow for recovery if something goes wrong.

Don’t be afraid to pull the circuit breaker to stop the runway event.