The panel is a bit unusual compared what you expect in a 4-place single in the US.
The IAR has dual primary instruments, the left side is electric and the right side is vacuum driven.
There are dual propeller and throttle handles, but only a single mixture control. I tend to be ambidextrous using them depending on what phase of flight I'm in.
When I first saw the orientation of the gear handles I thought it was poor attention to detail, but after operating it awhile I don't even notice it. The gear handles have 3 positions, up, neutral, and down, with detents for each. You pull the white collar to switch positions so you have your hand on the collar, not the "wheel" when operating the gear, so one would have to be very inattentive to confuse it with the flap switch despite their close proximity. The operating manual tells you to put the gear switch in neutral after raising or lowering the gear, but I'm not trusting enough to do that. The right side gear switch will override the left side switch, (i've tested it in the air) so it has to be in the neutral position normally. The gear is electromechanical with no up locks. Its driven by a flexible shaft and angle drive arrangement which reminds me of someone who went wild with a Dremel motor tool kit. The plane has a rather low gear operating speed of 180kph (~100 kts) which took some getting used to.
There's also dual flap switches.
The instrument on the lower left center is the original chronometer that came from the factory. The lettering is Cyrillic, but its rather conventional otherwise. It's like a 8-day clock, but it only runs a few hours (I haven't checked the actual run time). The left knob is the wind up, which turns in reverse of what you'd expect, pulls out to set the hour/minute hands, and pushes in to reset the top inner dial, a smaller clock face for hours and minutes elapsed. The right knob is the "on/off" for the clock and you push it to start/stop/reset the lower inner dial which is a 60 minute timer with sweep second hand. Good for timing tanks, but a little small to time an approach imho. Pretty cool for a clock.
The top center instrument on the left side is the original AI which for some reason the Eastern bloc countries paint red on the top half and blue on the bottom half of indicator. It also has a turn and bank/slip/skid indicator built in. The electric gyro sounds like a APU starting.
The 3x4 "warning lamps block" in the upper left corner indicates various conditions, such as Stall Speed, Door Unlock, Fuel Pump, Engine Fire, Check Gear, etc. There's also an audible stall buzzer. The fire bottle has been removed.
The small instruments at the top center are the engine analyzer, electric tachometer with "hundreds" and "thousands" pointers, and the manifold pressure gage which has been changed out to read in inches Hg rather than the original mm Hg. It took a little getting used to reading the small dials but now it seems second nature. I'm considering a portable optical tach to set on the glareshield as the installed tach indicates about 50 rpm low when checked during prop balance. I could just placard it, but we only took a couple of data points.
The Flight Manual is rather interesting, including a diagram for performing the engine run-up, sort of a time line vs rpm for heat up, prop cycle, and mag check. There's also a checklist in the Emergency Procedures section titled "Rescue by Parachute".
lancefisher said:
I think your eyes are fine. I am surprised to see what appears to be two landing gear selectors (and I wonder why the "wheel" on each switch is rotated 45 degrees). I'm also having trouble recognizing a few of the instruments such as the one located at lower center on the left side and the center and right instruments above the radios. What are they?
