Flying the CRJ simulator has
been fun. It is great that finally
after sitting in the classroom and memorizing procedures for so long I am
finally getting to put everything to use!
I did my first three
simulator sessions last weekend – they really went fairly smoothly. I again find myself drawing on my
Continental Express training from last year to make things easier this time
around. Again, different airplane, but
same concepts. The first three sessions
were pretty much normal procedures – no emergencies or serious
abnormalities. Pretty much just
practiced all of the preflight and postflight duties while getting used to
flying departures and approaches. We
also did maneuvers such as steep turns and stalls. It’s funny that just a couple of months ago I was teaching these
same procedures in a Cessna 172. I
thought I was pretty good at them myself until I stepped into this jet. “Damn it, lost another 200 feet.” I’m getting the hang of it though.
Two days off and then I took
my oral exam on Wednesday. It was a
slam dunk – I really prepared for it this time, including a 14-hour cram
session the day before with some of my classmates. I wanted to make sure there would be no doubt about getting
through it, and there wasn’t. My
training partner, an upgrading captain and a really cool guy, celebrated our
success with me with a few beers and buffalo wings. That is a big load off my mind because I no longer have to worry
about all the extra non-flying related systems knowledge. Now it’s just flying.
Then came simulator lesson
#4. Wow. They started throwing us every emergency in the book and I really
don’t think we handled them all that well.
Engine failures, fires, emergency descents and more. We didn’t crash the simulator or anything
but if there had been passengers aboard they would have been REALLY upset. However, I guess that is very common for
that particular simulator lesson because our instructor said we did very well
and signed us off to progress to the next lesson.
We did simulator lesson #5
last night and they gave us even more emergency situations. I think we did quite well last night and our
instructor agreed. I think it was
easier because we had just been in the simulator the night before and we both
did of better job of preparing beforehand.
Tonight we do another flight in the simulator, then tomorrow we do a
ground study session called line-oriented flight training (LOFT). This basically is designed to teach us the
procedures of doing an actual flight from start to finish. After that we’ll have a two-day break and
then we’ll do the actual LOFT flight in lesson #8. It might sound easy simply doing a cross-country flight, but the
way I understand it we get one emergency after the other for the entire four
hours.
It’s tiring, but it’s
fun! Last night our lesson was delayed
so I didn’t even get home until 5:00 this morning. Slept until 12:30. Then
tonight we do it all over again.
My training partner Nate has
been very helpful. He has been flying
the CRJ as a first officer for two years and his experience makes him somewhat
of an extra instructor for me. For
example, when I am flying with an engine failure and not using enough rudder
pressure he will occasionally tap my rudder pedals to remind me that I am not
in coordinated flight. Things like this
are very helpful. He’ll make a good
captain.
I’ve also found the quality
of flight instructors to be excellent so far, unlike our systems ground
instructor. Unlike COEX, we frequently
have different instructors from night to night so we get a number of different
perspectives. There is also a minimum
of inconsistency which says something about the standardization of ACA flight
instructors. Hopefully that will
continue for the rest of training.
Back to studying.