Sim time.
The simulator is can be fun or hell depending on how you look at it. I love it. It gives me the chance to practice maneuvers and procedures that hopefully I'll never have to do in real life. As with my last simulator sessions with the Falcon, I get the chance to get the feel of the aircraft before I ever get in and fly it for real. I'm hoping that the real aircraft is a lot less sensitive than what is portrayed in the sim, because it's a handful. So far it has been the most difficult aircraft I've ever had to fly. It handles like a fighter, but that's not necessarily a good thing when your first learning to fly it.
The Lear is a very fast aircraft. Like I stated in earlier posts, it has awesome performance. When you apply that terrific performance to a pilot that is just learning to fly the thing, its spells "red screen" in the sim. Thankfully neither my sim partner or myself has killed eachother in the sim yet. The other guys in my class, not so lucky. In the sim, we get the chance to "feel" how the plane fly's. The Lear has completely different handling characteristics than the Falcon. The first difference is that I finally get to taxi again. In the Falcon, the capt. has a steering tiller and handles all the taxiing. The Lear has a little button on the yoke that will engage the nosewheel steering. On takeoff, we will almost always be doing a reduced thrust takeoff. Full power is just not needed unless you are hot and heavy. Besides, the plane is extremely loud and doing reduced thrust t.o's reduces the noise level so as to not upset the surrounding neighbors or noise sensors. Once the plane is in the air and climbing, its still a little strange to see the vertical speed indicator (VSI) pegged at 6000 feet per min. Everything happens a lot faster in the Lear. As soon as you start accelerating you need to be on the trim, otherwise its going to get away from you and the control forces can get pretty heavy in a hurry. Steep turns are a handful as well. You need to almost man-handle the aircraft to get it to remain within tolerances while transitioning into and out of the turn. Its completely different from the Falcon. Stalls are still taking some getting used to. Its hard to break the habit of letting the nose drop to recover from the stall. Everything that I've flown previous to now required the nose to drop for recovery. Now all I do is add power and continue to add back pressure to the yoke to maintain pitch attitude. The plane will power its way out of the stall. In the sim, I've had the tendency to release a little of that back pressure, the nose drops and I lose altitude, but I've gotten a handle on it now. The other major difference between the planes is our approach speeds. The Pig Jet is slow, typically our ref speeds are between 115 and 122, so our approach speeds at ref+10 are around 130kts. The Lear is quite a bit faster. Today in the sim we did a flaps 0 approach and our ref speed was 159kts. You come zipping down the ILS at those speeds. Well I have 1 more sim session before the checkride. I'm looking forward to it.
The Lear is a very fast aircraft. Like I stated in earlier posts, it has awesome performance. When you apply that terrific performance to a pilot that is just learning to fly the thing, its spells "red screen" in the sim. Thankfully neither my sim partner or myself has killed eachother in the sim yet. The other guys in my class, not so lucky. In the sim, we get the chance to "feel" how the plane fly's. The Lear has completely different handling characteristics than the Falcon. The first difference is that I finally get to taxi again. In the Falcon, the capt. has a steering tiller and handles all the taxiing. The Lear has a little button on the yoke that will engage the nosewheel steering. On takeoff, we will almost always be doing a reduced thrust takeoff. Full power is just not needed unless you are hot and heavy. Besides, the plane is extremely loud and doing reduced thrust t.o's reduces the noise level so as to not upset the surrounding neighbors or noise sensors. Once the plane is in the air and climbing, its still a little strange to see the vertical speed indicator (VSI) pegged at 6000 feet per min. Everything happens a lot faster in the Lear. As soon as you start accelerating you need to be on the trim, otherwise its going to get away from you and the control forces can get pretty heavy in a hurry. Steep turns are a handful as well. You need to almost man-handle the aircraft to get it to remain within tolerances while transitioning into and out of the turn. Its completely different from the Falcon. Stalls are still taking some getting used to. Its hard to break the habit of letting the nose drop to recover from the stall. Everything that I've flown previous to now required the nose to drop for recovery. Now all I do is add power and continue to add back pressure to the yoke to maintain pitch attitude. The plane will power its way out of the stall. In the sim, I've had the tendency to release a little of that back pressure, the nose drops and I lose altitude, but I've gotten a handle on it now. The other major difference between the planes is our approach speeds. The Pig Jet is slow, typically our ref speeds are between 115 and 122, so our approach speeds at ref+10 are around 130kts. The Lear is quite a bit faster. Today in the sim we did a flaps 0 approach and our ref speed was 159kts. You come zipping down the ILS at those speeds. Well I have 1 more sim session before the checkride. I'm looking forward to it.
posted by Windsor at 9:49 PM
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