Well, it’s been some time since I posted this (background) thread, and I have progressed a fair way through my training. For those who can’t be bothered clicking and reading the link, I’m getting upgraded to First Officer on the company’s Dash 8 which is a mid size regional turbo-prop (essentially jet engines driving a propellor.) I think they normally seat 37, ours are set up a little differently as we don’t carry passengers.
The ground course was held over approximately three weeks. It included some very company specific stuff such as standard operating procedures but the guts of it was two weeks of engineering classes followed by exams. I don’t think I’ve ever done so many exams in such a short space of time. Performance, electrical systems, hydraulics, flight controls, caution/warning sytems, powerplants, pressurisation, limitations etc. It seemed endless.
It was actually easier than I expected (which is a good way to be I suppose.) The material itself was not hard, but there was a lot of information to cram into my small human brain.
Anyway, that part is all finished now. I think I’ve probably forgotten more than I’ve retained, but the grounding is all there. When I need to know the stuff again it’ll just require some quick revision.
So now I’m in the simulator.
This is pretty cool. Actually, it’s very cool. The sim is relatively old but it is still amazingly realistic. Full motion, good visuals, with lots of little details such as cars travelling down the highway, and very realistic weather.
Normally the sim sessions are intended to be done with a new Captain and a new FO. I’m going through with another FO which is good in that we each get a chance to play at being Captain, but not so good in that we are both new to the aircraft so there is no experience in the cockpit to help either of us out. So, the learning curve is steep.
The first session was mainly normal procedures, take-off, departure, landing, circuits etc. It probably doesn’t sound too hard but flying the aeroplane is nothing compared to knowing all of the procedures, particularly knowing what to say. It all runs like a theatre show. We each have lines to say at specific times and these are cues to accomplish certain actions, so if someone forgets to say something or do something then the whole thing can fall apart very quickly, even just doing some normal operations such as taking off, getting the gear and flaps up and setting climb power. The upside is that when everything is going smoothly, it all runs like clockwork.
Ideally at the end of it, we’ll be able to fly with someone who we’ve never met and they will do exactly what we expect them to, when we expect them to, because they’ll be following very specific procedures that won’t vary from person to person. Nothing is ever ideal of course, but that is the aim of the exercise, standard operating procedures allowing anyone to fly with anyone else with no surprises.
Today’s session, number two, was more normal procedures in which we are expected to be improving over our last attempt, and also some additional exercises were added including instrument approaches, missed approaches and some emergencies.
When you learn on smaller aircraft, any emergencies are very much pretending. You don’t actually have an engine failure, your instructor just reduces the power to idle, then you don’t really shut the engine down, you just touch the appropriate controls and say what you would do.
In this kind of simulator though, failures occur with complete realism and all crew actions are followed through to the end. The beauty of it is that when we make a complete hash of it all, the instructor can stop the sim in mid air, reset us back to some point before it all went wrong and then give us another go at it. This means we get a lot more valuable training in a shorter period of time. This also means that a four hour training session is pretty intense. There are not many moments where you can sit back and relax.
Session three and four are coming up. These include a lot of engine failures after take off which is the most critical phase of flight to have a problem. These are expected to be the most demanding sessions. Everyone jokes that new crews are put on a suicide watch at this stage as they start feeling that they are complete failures and will never make it through the sim training.
In fact everyone I’ve spoken to about the training has said the same thing without prompting, “After session three or four you will wonder how you ever got an instrument rating in the first place.”
They also say that it gets better after that critical point. All the same, I’m expecting to feel a little less upbeat in a couple of days.
Well, that’s about it for now, standby for further updates.
