The Flight Simulator
Its finally time to go have some fun. The flight profiles have been memorized, checklists burned into long term memory, flows burned into muscle memory and call outs that can be spit out in my sleep. Put this all together and you have a pilot ready to step into the hot box.
Some guys (like my sim partner) loath the sim. They hate getting engine failures, V1 cuts, fires, single engine approaches, stalls, go arounds and hand flying the plane. I am at the other end of the spectrum, I love it. I get to go in there and do what I do best, fly the plane. A funny part about my training so far is that I'm getting chastised a little bit by the instructor because I don't use the auto pilot enough. Typically after takeoff and you are climbing through 600ft agl, the normal call is "auto pilot on". I am hand flying as much as I can and usually don't turn "Otto" on until the instructor tells me to, or we get busy in the cockpit trying to fix something or prepare for an approach. Another airlineism I need to get used to is calling for things on the flight control panel. I'm so used to doing things myself that I find myself reaching up and setting things that I am not allowed to touch when I'm hand flying. For example, if I'm hand flying and ATC gives us a new heading, I cant reach up and turn the heading bug to the new heading, I have to ask for my sim partner to set it. I think I'd learn my lesson if the instructor was sitting in the back seat with a yard stick and gave my hand a whack every time I went to reach for something I wasnt supposed to touch. I had to laugh tonight when I read my comments from the instructor. He wrote in big bold letters "HANDS OFF THE FCP WHEN HAND FLYING". We joked about it during the debrief. I suppose I could make things easy on myself and just use Otto more, but whats the fun in that? The airlines are trying to turn me into something I really don't want to be, a button pusher.
I gotta tell ya though, flying glass is friggin sweet. This is a hellva lot easier than steam. It makes me a much better pilot. I'll get into the details of how glass is better in a later post. Here are some pics of the sim. They are a little blurry so I'll see if I can get some better pics.
Some guys (like my sim partner) loath the sim. They hate getting engine failures, V1 cuts, fires, single engine approaches, stalls, go arounds and hand flying the plane. I am at the other end of the spectrum, I love it. I get to go in there and do what I do best, fly the plane. A funny part about my training so far is that I'm getting chastised a little bit by the instructor because I don't use the auto pilot enough. Typically after takeoff and you are climbing through 600ft agl, the normal call is "auto pilot on". I am hand flying as much as I can and usually don't turn "Otto" on until the instructor tells me to, or we get busy in the cockpit trying to fix something or prepare for an approach. Another airlineism I need to get used to is calling for things on the flight control panel. I'm so used to doing things myself that I find myself reaching up and setting things that I am not allowed to touch when I'm hand flying. For example, if I'm hand flying and ATC gives us a new heading, I cant reach up and turn the heading bug to the new heading, I have to ask for my sim partner to set it. I think I'd learn my lesson if the instructor was sitting in the back seat with a yard stick and gave my hand a whack every time I went to reach for something I wasnt supposed to touch. I had to laugh tonight when I read my comments from the instructor. He wrote in big bold letters "HANDS OFF THE FCP WHEN HAND FLYING". We joked about it during the debrief. I suppose I could make things easy on myself and just use Otto more, but whats the fun in that? The airlines are trying to turn me into something I really don't want to be, a button pusher.
I gotta tell ya though, flying glass is friggin sweet. This is a hellva lot easier than steam. It makes me a much better pilot. I'll get into the details of how glass is better in a later post. Here are some pics of the sim. They are a little blurry so I'll see if I can get some better pics.
posted by Windsor at 1:45 AM
2 Comments:
Did you ever sort out the legal side of things with the traning cost from your previous employer?
No, its being worked on.
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