It's actually pretty awesome. There is no instrument scan in the T-6...there's an instrument stare.
Once you figure out the buttonology, it's probably one of the better cockpits in the inventory. There's really nothing you have to mess with except for some line select keys and some T9 english type button mashing. Everything is either right in front of your, or on the power lever or quadrant. As far as human/machine interface, it's pretty well thought out. Just wish it had a real keyboard.
Yep- the rest of the switches are laid out pretty well for a smooth pattern doing the ground checklists when you're starting the plane up or shutting it down. I think Pickle's squadron was even trying something a lot like flows followed by checklist verification for a while (mind blowing!!).
It takes a lot of practice to get good at trimming it, but the airplane has
very strong pitch-speed stability and roll stability... makes it especially good to fly instruments and forms. In the flare, the bottom tends to drop out suddenly and hard if you pull the power back too high/too soon, and strong landing crosswinds need a lot of force on the stick for the right aileron input. Those are about the two worst things I can say about the handling, which is to say that it's overall pretty great.
The HUD is great when it works. For a few years, several of them had this weird quirk that they'd randomly turn on full bright and not respond to the dimmer switch (no dedicated breaker either). The best solution was to put an approach plate on the projector. The overlords at NAVAIR/Wright-Patt/JPO were quite slothly in providing us a solution to that problem (lazy would be putting took kindly). They wouldn't approve Mx taking it apart to disconnect the cannon plug and zip tie it off, even thought it was blindingly bright when it did it at night. Since then, most of the ones that don't work are just burned out or the collimator is inexplicably out of focus. Avionics have always been a big weak point on the T-6... the original radios would overheat (solved with bigger cooling fans), when water leaks into the avionics compartment it's like it all dumps on the single-point-of-failure audio amp... At least the avionics in the B don't leak eye-watering smoke like some ADIs have done in Alpha hazreps.
