This is the day at Simcom Scottsdale, AZ where the workload increased exponentially and would remain high until the check ride that was scheduled for early Sunday morning. I could no longer keep up with writing Aptitude & Altitude and had to singularly focus on the remainder of my ground school and simulator training. I was foolish (maybe even a bit brazen) to figure I had any additional time in my day beyond ground school, sim training, studying, eating, a quick workout and sleeping. So, after my instructor Jim Lawson through the kitchen sink at me in the simulator on day 3, I knew from the lump on my skull that my daily routine had to be modified.
The fact that Dunkin' Donuts coffee has migrated westward to Arizona made each morning's early wake-up a bit more palatable. The school day began with a brief interrogation, err question and answer forum, addressing aircraft limitations and emergency memory items I would need to know cold for the oral exam followed by a review of pertinent aircraft information. Then, after 4 hours of discussing the Citation V's pressurization, air conditioning, oxygen and ice and rain protection systems, we left the classroom and headed up to the sim lab for what I will now refer to as a "kick in the pants."
The two previous sim sessions were geared toward getting to know the new airplane and sim partner in normal operational situations with minor malfunctions to impress practical systems knowledge learned as theory in the classroom. The third session of the short course assumes that, with normal progress, the student is ready for catastrophic emergencies. The session started with a "new" airplane that was to quickly deteriorate into a flying lemon after an initial "hot start". After the virtual mechanic cleared that malfunction, we taxied from the ramp, lined up on runway 31R where during the take off roll we promptly got a right engine fire light at the co-pilot's "V1" call. Joann and I continued the departure, followed safety protocol, ran the emergency checklist (testing the memory items I was quizzed on earlier that day) and were able to extinguish and restart the failed engine during turns in a holding pattern.
We landed back at JFK airport after a hand flown ILS to landing. During the next departure, that pesky right engine's thrust reverser deployed at V1 and my co-pilot and I again ran through the procedures to secure the malfunction and landed after an auto pilot flown full ILS approach. The next takeoff included a left engine failure we were not able to restart in the air; so, we pointed the ship back to JFK for an emergency landing. Well, due to ATC issuing a take-off clearance to another airplane on our landing runway, we executed a publish missed approach on our remaining engine and received vectors back for landing (and apologies) from JFK Approach Control. We landed single engine after flying a LOC approach to runway 22L. Again, our virtual mechanic cleared the malfunction and we were treated to another new airplane. Joann and I took off without incident and received vectors from Approach to fly directly to DPK VOR for the full GPS approach procedure to runway 22L. Something was up. I could feel the tension building in Joann and hear something different in my instructor's voice as he played the roll of ATC. During the procedure flying the intermediate segment, right on cue, things went from perfect to really, really bad...
To be Continued...
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