Work Promotion (aviation related--paging Broomstick)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have just been upgraded to a Dash 8 First Officer! Or at least I’ve been put on the course. Whether the upgrade is successful or not depends on how hard I study over the next couple of months.

It will be my first multi crew aircraft so I’ll have a heck of a lot to learn, e.g., what all this stuff does! I have to get used to having someone else doing stuff for me, and vice versa. I’ll also have to get used to not being the pilot in command.

First I head away for a three week ground course on the technical aspects of the Dash, then I’m home for some days off, then away again to do the simulator training. To top it all off, my wife is pregnant and due a few of weeks after the training has finished. Talk about everything happening at once.

I’m taking six weeks leave so that I can be there for the birth and help out with the baby for the first month. It probably won’t be till after the leave that I’ll get into the real aeroplane.

The laptop is coming away with me so I’ll try keeping up to date with the SDMB when I’m not studying. Maybe even post a Broomstick style “Airport Story”.

Speaking of which, Broomstick, I haven’t heard about your tailwheel training for a while, how is that all going?

2

Congrats! Which one of those controls the rubber band tension?

3

Boy, are you ignorant! Everyone knows the rubber band is wound up by the ground crew before flight and they set the tension. The pilot only pulls the finger out so it unwinds (the Dash 8 is a twin-engine plane, so 1920s Style “Death Ray”, as First Officer, gets to pull the finger out to start the engine on his side).

4

Just push the buttons until something happens!

5

Excellent! I’m learning stuff already and I haven’t even started the ground school. I’m gonna be way ahead of the other guys.

6

Too cool and way to go… good airplanes and I hope you do well with them and get good people to work with.

Some in depth strories about the sims and how that all goes would be interesting…

Nice thing about the Dash 8 is that you can’t forget to put the gear down…

Bad thinhg about the Dash 8 is that you don’t keep in practice of putting the gear down.

Good thing there are check lists…

Keep us posted …

7

Are you sure? DHC-8

You might be confusing it with the Twotter, one of the few RPT aircraft to be in danger of a birdstrike in the tail :smiley:

1920s Style “Death Ray” - well done and good luck. Keep us posted. I’ll keep smashing bugs for you :wink:

8

Ah yes. I couldn’t quite make sense of the landing gear comment :slight_smile:

Thanks for the good wishes. I’ll keep all y’all posted.

9

Welcome to the world of the pros. It’s a pretty exciting feeling; try to savor it so you can remember it. 10 years from now it’ll be part of what keeps you going through yet another long chaotic day after not enough sleep the night before.

My best advice is to study like hell and be as humble as you can. That and know the profiles cold; there isn’t time to be struggling to remember the speeds or power settings or canned commands when you’re still learning to keep the sim right side up & trying to scan unfamiliar symbology. To a much greater degree than your previous flying, this is done by a very rigid script and if you don’t know your lines, you’re screwed.
One of the hard things about transitioning to a two-pilot crew is that somebody as good as you, in fact probably far better, is watching your every move every second. Off altitude 30 feet? I wouldn’t say anything to you, but I’d sure notice it. Stay that way for 2 minutes, and your status starts to slide from "newbie still getting the feel " to “goofup not even trying” in my eyes. You can’t get so focussed on needle-ball-airspeed that you lose the big picture, but at the same time, letting basic precision slide will bite you in the butt. Be demanding of yourself; you can wire this thing. Laziness & sloppiness are two cardinal sins in most pilot’s books.

Here’s a rule of thumb to use throughout the sim, line training and the first 3-ish months on the line: If you’re sitting in your seat & not doing something useful at that instant moment, your’re screwing up & getting behind the airplane.

All in all, it can be a wonderful life; it just takes a little getting used to and a lot of learning and hard work.

Enjoy. In a way I’d like to be young & starting over again.

10

Oops, I was thinking of the Twin Otter and welded landing gear… Sorry… Nice to see you getting into much bigger “Iron” than what I was thinking. You will got lots of ‘gear’ practice.

*:: no excuse but being on dial-up, I don’t always wait for the full picture to load up and way back there was an ‘8’ associated with the “T-Otter” as I recall so I made incorrect association there. :: *

11

Goodness - you asked me a direct question and yet I still feel off topic here.

The tailwheel training has progressed to that awful almost-finished stage where I am waiting for very, very specific conditions in which to prove that I can handle anything the real world is likely to throw at me (presuming I’m following the rental rules on weather and common sense). Specifically, I need a good, 15 to maybe 20 knot direct crosswind and satisfactory landings in same for, oh, a 8-10 repeats. Plus the usual “Ohmigosh! The engine quit!” and other emergency drills.

Last week I didn’t fly because my instructor was ill. Actually, he was ill for almost a week and still wasn’t quite a bubbly as usual this weekend. The morning was almost too calm, but I went up to keep the skills sharp. Then the wind started picking up, I got a few engine-outs in, and discovered new ways to put side-loads on the landing gear (oops). Guess I’m not quite there yet. Round two this afternoon was cancelled due to too much wind (do not want to exceed instructor’s or airplane’s capability!)

Next week - assuming the usual disclaimers about weather, airplane condition, and human health, etc… the plan is as follows

IF we have 15-20 knot crosswind suitable to “finishing school” (and lacking hail, tornadoes, lightning, etc.) we do that,

IF NOT, THEN, if we have beautiful calm day AND Stearman is available, I do that (for just one hour ~whimper~ - the spirit is willing but the wallet is weak :frowning: )

IF NOT, THEN reschedule with similar for second week in September because there’s an airshow scheduled for the Labor Day weekend and therefore no lesson opportunities, BUT I fly anyway, assuming suitable weather, again, to keep skills in state of preservation.

Eventually I’ll finish. >sigh< The last lap always seems hardest. But I don’t want to cut any corners. I already have had a request for a ride in the Citabria (hard to refuse - the man does let me fly his Mooney and it’s about time I repaid him)

Meanwhile, I hope to have a new edition of “Airport Stories” out soon. And please use the same “header” for your stories, because that would make them easier to find.

I’d love to hear about a side of aviation I’ll never visit, at least not as PIC. Or even SIC.