Ryan Ferguson
Pre-Flight
I feel like I live here. Honestly.
I know all of the front desk folks here at the Amerisuites by their first names. I know most of the shuttle drivers. I know each and every convenience store within walking distance, and I know the Grapevine Mall pretty darn well, too. (I also know to avoid the local Whattaburger - oooaaahh, my aching gut.)
I arrived at CAE Simuflite DFW on June 6. As I write this, we're just 45 minutes shy of June 19. The checkride is June 21. It seems like I'll never get home to my wife and daughter.
Today was "cold weather" day in the sim. Various sundry electrical failures (inverters, buses, alternators and generators), icy runways, lots of twists of the TKS egg-timer, engine anti-ice failures. Oh, and of course the ever present rejected takeoffs, V1 cuts, second segment climb flameouts, and engine fires. Fun stuff. (Well, it was fun a few days ago, but now this stuff is just getting long in the tooth.)
Perhaps the most fundamentally different concept in most turbojet airplanes, and the one that's been hardest to "train out" of me as a piston driver, is that only rarely does an in-flight emergency require any immediate action other than flying the airplane. This is especially true at low altitudes.
For example, say you lose #1 at V1. This is a "ho-hum" event because all you're gonna do is pitch to the command bars (12 degrees nose up in Go-Around mode), override the APR if necessary, and retract the gear at positive rate. Pitching into the bars automatically gives you V2. If you feel like it, and you probably will, use aileron trim to ease the control pressures. If the engine's on fire, you'll probably want to isolate the warning bell, just because it's so loud you can hardly hear yourself think, and it's causing your passengers to wet their pants.
Oh. And leave your feet on the floor. Rudder bias (which is a function of engine bleed air) will actuate the rudder for you, and apply the proper amount of pedal pressure.
For now, you're done. There's no flurry of activity in the cockpit. The PNF will make a leisurely call to ATC and declare the emergency. The PF doesn't call for checklists, doesn't let loose a bunch of cockpit-kung fu, he simply flies the airplane. V2 up to 1500 feet AGL.
If the density altitudes are low, and/or you're light, you'll zip right up to 1,500 feet. If not, it may be a rather ponderous climb at 500-700fpm, using a good chunk of your 5 minute APR window to get there. Single engine performance can be surprisingly poor.
At 1500 feet, the PF accelerates to V2+6 for single-engine flap retract speed, calls for Flaps 0, and maybe considers taking a radar vector for the ILS. As you do this, accelerate to Venr.
The entire time this is taking place, #1 might be burning a bright, blazing trail in the night sky, but you're not worried about much in particular except keeping the stars above and the streetlights below. (More than likely, in the sim, you're solidly in cloud and the departure airport is reporting 200 and a quarter.) Now, you finally call for the Engine Fire checklist, shut the mother down if it's not producing power (and/or you don't need it), and complete the engine shutdown checklist.
It is, at best, a leisurely pace. If the engine falls off its titanium engine mounts in the process, so much the better. Either way, the problem is contained beyond the pylon, you're doing fine on the good remaining engine, and you don't care a lick about that sick dog.
This is a fundamental shift from how this sort of training was once conducted. Once upon a time, a V1 cut would cause the flight deck to descend into a frenzy of activity right after rotation. It seems that this burst of activity combined with the inherent weaknesses of human memory often made an emergency worse. Hence the change.
Another change to which I've become accustomed is the greatly-increased role which the autopilot plays. It's permissible (encouraged, actually) to fly most of the type checkride using Otto. Coming from a GA flight training background, this was hard for me to initially accept. I probably spent too much time trying to learn how to hand-fly the sim. (The real airplane is much easier to fly.) Today it finally "clicked" for whatever reason, when I learned to simply trim off the control pressures and stop nudging the yoke! Just set it and park it. It doesn't fly like an airplane, it flies like a sim, and I had to learn how to fly the sim.
The easiest way to set power in the jet, incidentally, is with fuel flows. This is an instantaneous readout of power, vs. attempting to set power with %N1. It takes a while for that big fan to spool up or down. In the 700, setting 750pph/side is a great way to get 200KIAS for training maneuvers and approach intercepts. 400pph/side is a good non-precision approach descent power setting (returning to whatever was set prior to the descent when levelling off.) Dive and drive is king here. Attempting to fly a virtual glideslope via derived VDPs is discouraged. Too much thinking involved, too great a chance for errors.
Single-engine fuel flows? Just double what you had with two. If 750pph/side gave you 200KIAS, 1500pph (single engine) will give you pretty close to the same.
Speaking of those emergencies again. Got a great piece of advice from a grizzled old aviator - "the only real memory item you need to worry about on those checklists is 'EMERGENCY O2 MASK - DON'." He has an excellent point; smoke in the cockpit, or depressurization is probably the only time you need to race to get something done, and that something is to get your mask on post-haste. Everything else can be dealt with in turn.
One of the maneuvers which must be accomplished per the PTS is an approach with a circle to land. We're flying an NDB approach (groan) with a circle to land just beneath an overcast and just above our MDA. If you disappear into the clouds, back 'round you go, and of course, per the AIM you must miss starting with an initial turn towards the landing runway. This results in a big 360 back onto the published missed approach. It's something you really want to avoid, because the chances for checkride-busting errors are everywhere.
Anyway, this is far more challenging than it would be in a real airplane, because your view at 90 degree angles in the sim is limited and you can't see the airport for much of the circling maneuver. As a result, part of the circle is really a "dead reckon" maneuver. We cheat and use the RMI to tell us when we're abeam an on-field VOR, and can turn in. Additionally, this must be hand-flown (Otto must stay off below 1000AGL unless he's coupled) and it's a heckuvalotta work to stabilize that sim and hold altitude while looking outside for the lead-in lights. This being a Level C simulator, the FAA must individually approve each approach used to meet the PTS requirement for the circle-to-land. So we know this is how it'll go on our checkride (a bonus.)
My sim partner and I have each crashed the sim twice. The first time was a great learning experience. Our instructor that day was stacking emergencies up on us; we were single-engine after dealing with an FCU failure on the #1 engine, flying a VOR/DME approach when #2 (our only good engine) caught on fire. As we were above 1500 feet I automatically called for the engine shutdown checklist before I realized how stupid that idea was, so we continued. We broke out at minimums to find nothing, and realized we hadn't activated the runway lights. I flew a very low downwind while we worked that out, lost sight of the runway as it slid past the edge of the side monitor, and tried to guess the right amount of time to turn inbound. I guessed wrong and was much too high and fast to make it in safely, but elected to continue since we had an engine fire on our only operative engine. Got a big sink rate going and couldn't negate it at the flare. I crunched it in at 2.8G. OUCH!
Attached is a picture of my sim partner Eddie on the right. The low-quality is due to the lack of light in the sim (plus, my cell phone isn't equipped with a flash.) The other photo features one of the Simuflite instructors in the H125-700 briefing room.
I'll try to sum all this stuff up when I get the sam hell outta here. I am ready to go home in a big way. 17 days is wayyy too long to be away from my family.
Best regards to all,
-Ryan
I know all of the front desk folks here at the Amerisuites by their first names. I know most of the shuttle drivers. I know each and every convenience store within walking distance, and I know the Grapevine Mall pretty darn well, too. (I also know to avoid the local Whattaburger - oooaaahh, my aching gut.)
I arrived at CAE Simuflite DFW on June 6. As I write this, we're just 45 minutes shy of June 19. The checkride is June 21. It seems like I'll never get home to my wife and daughter.
Today was "cold weather" day in the sim. Various sundry electrical failures (inverters, buses, alternators and generators), icy runways, lots of twists of the TKS egg-timer, engine anti-ice failures. Oh, and of course the ever present rejected takeoffs, V1 cuts, second segment climb flameouts, and engine fires. Fun stuff. (Well, it was fun a few days ago, but now this stuff is just getting long in the tooth.)
Perhaps the most fundamentally different concept in most turbojet airplanes, and the one that's been hardest to "train out" of me as a piston driver, is that only rarely does an in-flight emergency require any immediate action other than flying the airplane. This is especially true at low altitudes.
For example, say you lose #1 at V1. This is a "ho-hum" event because all you're gonna do is pitch to the command bars (12 degrees nose up in Go-Around mode), override the APR if necessary, and retract the gear at positive rate. Pitching into the bars automatically gives you V2. If you feel like it, and you probably will, use aileron trim to ease the control pressures. If the engine's on fire, you'll probably want to isolate the warning bell, just because it's so loud you can hardly hear yourself think, and it's causing your passengers to wet their pants.
Oh. And leave your feet on the floor. Rudder bias (which is a function of engine bleed air) will actuate the rudder for you, and apply the proper amount of pedal pressure.
For now, you're done. There's no flurry of activity in the cockpit. The PNF will make a leisurely call to ATC and declare the emergency. The PF doesn't call for checklists, doesn't let loose a bunch of cockpit-kung fu, he simply flies the airplane. V2 up to 1500 feet AGL.
If the density altitudes are low, and/or you're light, you'll zip right up to 1,500 feet. If not, it may be a rather ponderous climb at 500-700fpm, using a good chunk of your 5 minute APR window to get there. Single engine performance can be surprisingly poor.
At 1500 feet, the PF accelerates to V2+6 for single-engine flap retract speed, calls for Flaps 0, and maybe considers taking a radar vector for the ILS. As you do this, accelerate to Venr.
The entire time this is taking place, #1 might be burning a bright, blazing trail in the night sky, but you're not worried about much in particular except keeping the stars above and the streetlights below. (More than likely, in the sim, you're solidly in cloud and the departure airport is reporting 200 and a quarter.) Now, you finally call for the Engine Fire checklist, shut the mother down if it's not producing power (and/or you don't need it), and complete the engine shutdown checklist.
It is, at best, a leisurely pace. If the engine falls off its titanium engine mounts in the process, so much the better. Either way, the problem is contained beyond the pylon, you're doing fine on the good remaining engine, and you don't care a lick about that sick dog.
This is a fundamental shift from how this sort of training was once conducted. Once upon a time, a V1 cut would cause the flight deck to descend into a frenzy of activity right after rotation. It seems that this burst of activity combined with the inherent weaknesses of human memory often made an emergency worse. Hence the change.
Another change to which I've become accustomed is the greatly-increased role which the autopilot plays. It's permissible (encouraged, actually) to fly most of the type checkride using Otto. Coming from a GA flight training background, this was hard for me to initially accept. I probably spent too much time trying to learn how to hand-fly the sim. (The real airplane is much easier to fly.) Today it finally "clicked" for whatever reason, when I learned to simply trim off the control pressures and stop nudging the yoke! Just set it and park it. It doesn't fly like an airplane, it flies like a sim, and I had to learn how to fly the sim.
The easiest way to set power in the jet, incidentally, is with fuel flows. This is an instantaneous readout of power, vs. attempting to set power with %N1. It takes a while for that big fan to spool up or down. In the 700, setting 750pph/side is a great way to get 200KIAS for training maneuvers and approach intercepts. 400pph/side is a good non-precision approach descent power setting (returning to whatever was set prior to the descent when levelling off.) Dive and drive is king here. Attempting to fly a virtual glideslope via derived VDPs is discouraged. Too much thinking involved, too great a chance for errors.
Single-engine fuel flows? Just double what you had with two. If 750pph/side gave you 200KIAS, 1500pph (single engine) will give you pretty close to the same.
Speaking of those emergencies again. Got a great piece of advice from a grizzled old aviator - "the only real memory item you need to worry about on those checklists is 'EMERGENCY O2 MASK - DON'." He has an excellent point; smoke in the cockpit, or depressurization is probably the only time you need to race to get something done, and that something is to get your mask on post-haste. Everything else can be dealt with in turn.
One of the maneuvers which must be accomplished per the PTS is an approach with a circle to land. We're flying an NDB approach (groan) with a circle to land just beneath an overcast and just above our MDA. If you disappear into the clouds, back 'round you go, and of course, per the AIM you must miss starting with an initial turn towards the landing runway. This results in a big 360 back onto the published missed approach. It's something you really want to avoid, because the chances for checkride-busting errors are everywhere.
Anyway, this is far more challenging than it would be in a real airplane, because your view at 90 degree angles in the sim is limited and you can't see the airport for much of the circling maneuver. As a result, part of the circle is really a "dead reckon" maneuver. We cheat and use the RMI to tell us when we're abeam an on-field VOR, and can turn in. Additionally, this must be hand-flown (Otto must stay off below 1000AGL unless he's coupled) and it's a heckuvalotta work to stabilize that sim and hold altitude while looking outside for the lead-in lights. This being a Level C simulator, the FAA must individually approve each approach used to meet the PTS requirement for the circle-to-land. So we know this is how it'll go on our checkride (a bonus.)
My sim partner and I have each crashed the sim twice. The first time was a great learning experience. Our instructor that day was stacking emergencies up on us; we were single-engine after dealing with an FCU failure on the #1 engine, flying a VOR/DME approach when #2 (our only good engine) caught on fire. As we were above 1500 feet I automatically called for the engine shutdown checklist before I realized how stupid that idea was, so we continued. We broke out at minimums to find nothing, and realized we hadn't activated the runway lights. I flew a very low downwind while we worked that out, lost sight of the runway as it slid past the edge of the side monitor, and tried to guess the right amount of time to turn inbound. I guessed wrong and was much too high and fast to make it in safely, but elected to continue since we had an engine fire on our only operative engine. Got a big sink rate going and couldn't negate it at the flare. I crunched it in at 2.8G. OUCH!
Attached is a picture of my sim partner Eddie on the right. The low-quality is due to the lack of light in the sim (plus, my cell phone isn't equipped with a flash.) The other photo features one of the Simuflite instructors in the H125-700 briefing room.
I'll try to sum all this stuff up when I get the sam hell outta here. I am ready to go home in a big way. 17 days is wayyy too long to be away from my family.
Best regards to all,
-Ryan
