Very little has happened
this week since I have been off most of the week except for a half-day class on
Mexico operations on Tuesday.
I took a redeye flight out
of Portland Monday night to Houston to maximize my time at home. After arriving in Houston at 6:00 Tuesday
morning, I had enough time to head back to the hotel, get a shower, and file my
Jeppesen chart revisions (yes, I have to “file Jepps” now like everyone else)
before heading to the training center.
I didn’t do a very good job
staying awake in class! It was kind of
an experiment for me, seeing how well I could sleep on an all-night
flight. Luckily I was lucky enough to get
a seat in first class so I had plenty of room to stretch out but I still only
managed about 2 ½ hours of sleep on the 4-hour flight. Coffee kept me pretty well wired for the
first hour of class, but then things got sleepy in a hurry. It’s OK, many other folks in the class were
the same way.
Even so, I picked up what I
needed from the class and caught a 3-hour nap that afternoon. I headed back home the next day after some
study sessions and a viewing of “The Right Stuff” with my roommate, Steve.
I’ve been spending the last
couple of days at home studying “flows”.
These are basically sequences of tasks that we do in each phase of
flight. For example, the “After Start
Flow” for the first officer consists of resetting the FADECs, setting the
takeoff data, enabling the standby hydraulic pumps, turning on the ice sensors,
and programming the takeoff speeds into the multi-function display. Did I mention how computerized this thing
is? Anyway, we have to memorize the
flows so we can do all the tasks quickly, then pick up a checklist to make sure
we hit all the important stuff.
I have to memorize 20 of
these flows. 12 down, 8 to go. I have a poster of the cockpit controls that
I use for this purpose. It’s kind of
silly, but it gets the job done!
I’ll start cockpit
procedures training on Wednesday, and finish on Sunday with the two-hour oral
exam. I’m really looking forward to
doing some hands on stuff and getting into the flight training device. Then it’s back home for a week before
starting simulator training.
I posted it in an earlier
report, but if you haven’t seen it you can take a very cool virtual tour
of the EMB-145 on the Continental Express website. Look at the cockpit and you will get a feel
for what I am actually doing. Don’t
forget to check out the nifty overhead panel.
My uniforms arrived at our
house this week. Now I can even dress
like a real pilot!