Flight training for many turbine powered aircraft is like drinking from a fire hose. In fact, I've never hear any other analogy in over twelve years of piloting such aircraft. It's so much information presented in a such an abbreviated time line that it can be, and at times is, simply overwhelming. Depending on the sophistication of the aircraft's systems and flight guidance computers, initial training can last from 2 week to 6 weeks. Normally, the Citation V (CE-560) pilot initial course is a full 14 days; but, with the certain time constraints I elected to do the 7 day short course. The primary difference is the short course is 4-6 hours of ground school followed by 2-3 hours in the simulator where the regular course is a week of ground school followed by a week of simulator. Since the Citation series of aircraft has many similar models, the FAA has designated 1 pilot type rating, the CE-500, for models 500, 501, 550, 551 & 560. It's confusing at first, especially when Cessna throws in the model names: Citation SP, V, Ultra, Encore and Bravo.
My Simcom Instructor, Jim Lawson, is a retired American Eagle airlines captain. We briefly chatted about the airline industry for a few minutes before getting down to business. Jim then startled me by offering the opportunity to save 2 days of training by means of the upgrade program since I was already SIC typed in the V with about 30 hours logged. I politely declined. Since I am the only customer in the course, I received one-on-one attention as we dissected the V's operating limitations, power plant and fuel system. As you can imagine, this scenario has its pros and cons when it's time to answer end of unit review questions.
After a brief break, and a briefing on what tasks we were going to accomplish in the simulator, I was introduced to my training co-pilot, Joann. Joann is a twice furloughed United Airlines pilot and seat filler when folks like me go through the course without a training partner. She did her job professionally reminding me of simulator nuances as we taxied out and departed 4R at JFK, flew to the practice area and carried on through the stall series, steep turns and finally ATC vectors back to JFK for some approach work.
Simulators run on computer programs. 1 + 2 = 3. Everytime. Always. Never, never have I flown a simulator that acted exactly opposite of how the actual aircraft behaved. When flaps are selected in many aircraft there is a tendency for the airplane to balloon and gain a bit of altitude. An experienced pilot anticipates this behavior and compensates with the appropriate control input. When selecting flaps in the real world the aircraft, in described, balloons. In the sim, the aircraft sank requiring quite a bit of back pressure on the yolk for what seemed like eternity before it wanted to climb. This is what's called a "sim-ism." Most "sim-isms are exaggerations of the ship's handing characteristics, meaning they are amplified and more sensitive requiring less input. Not only did this require more input, but it was the exact opposite input!
Joann and I aced our autopilot coupled ILS to a missed approach, our hand flown ILS to a missed and our vectors to a full VOR approach as autopilot malfunctioned over JFK. I turned the heading bug to the left to intercept the 208 radial from the JFK VOR and the ship goes right. In my confusion I'm verifying what I did and making sure I fat fingered the correct buttons in the correct sequence. I mean, I'm new and I'm going to make mistakes. Thankfully, Joann's experience kicked in (I think she knew the profile) after about 10 seconds of me muttering "what's going on here...?" and she guided me back to reality ensuring me the auto pilot had indeed failed. We (I) regrouped and refocused using CRM and landed safely back at JFK to end the session.
My goal in any training event is to be somewhere between the best the instructor has ever seen and the worst to date. Jim seemed happy even as Joann bolted for the door (I was told to her son's birthday party--suspect) during the debrief, systems review and preview and assignment for the next day's classroom and sim sessions. Tomorrow will be the last day the airplane works without a single failure (minus the last takeoff and landing my intuition is telling me) for the next 6 days. While I fly the V with everything broken I'll test my flying ability and challenge my command-leadership.
Training and testing is what helps make us better pilots and operate as professionals even if we are not. Professional is a mindset and philosophy that Elite Aviation Training teaches and encourages our students to follow every lesson, every flight. Elite's instructors do the same even when they are the student!
No comments:
Post a Comment