WEEK 55: BACK IN THE SIM #42

Airline Prep

I've had a very productive week. I back seated DJ's second asymmetric flight early in the week which was good fun and quite beneficial. It's good sitting in the back and observing when the pressure's not on, it allows you to focus on or pick up certain things that might not necessarily be so clear whilst you're doing the flying.

The back of the twinstar

Good shot of the twinstar cockpit

I then had my third asymmetric lesson which is just asymmetric circuits for an hour. This was one of the hardest lessons I've had so far. There was a 12 kt crosswind gusting up to 20 kts to start with then I had the instructor failing engines on me after every take off, where I would have to go through the memory checks that I mentioned in my last post (this time learnt well). Once the aircraft was under control I'd turn downwind and complete the circuit. Once the aircraft is trimmed out and the checks have been completed it's really not too bad flying on one engine. What really disappointed me about the lesson was my landings, they were pretty shocking apart from the last one. My cross wind technique definitely needs some work. Other than that though although the lesson was pretty hard work I thought I managed it okay. Everyone else on my course have said that is one of the hardest lessons they've done too so I'm not alone on that one.

                                               
                                                        an example of a left engine failure

On the same day we had our penultimate mass brief which covered the final instrument techniques for us to learn - NDB's, ILS and DME arcs. It was then into the sim the next day to put these into practice.

Excellent photography from DJ ( whattheflight on instagram) during my asymmetric circuits

There are another six sims to get through before going back in the air. I managed to do four this week which is a miracle considering it took over a month to do the last block of sims! So far I've done NDB tracking and holding, NDB holding and approaches, ILS approaches (into Aukland) and asymmetric flight in IMC conditions.

All of these were intense and draining, each about an hour and a half. With the sim you don't get any down time to recover really it's just one thing after the next. You need a great deal of concentration. I found the NDB stuff ok generally. It's very similar to the VOR but when you're turning you just need to account for the dip which can be a pain when you're trying to intercept precise tracks in the hold and on the approach.

At the end of one of my NDB lessons my instructor thought it would be funny to give me a double engine and electrical failure whilst I was on the missed approach which meant I had to try and glide it back in which to my surprise I actually did. To be honest it was probably one of my better landings in a twin which is slightly embarrassing but it was fun. I wouldn't want a situation like that in real life though, much better to happen in the sim I reckon!

Aukland ILS plate for 23L

Hamilton NDB DME plate for 18L

The ILS was good fun. It wasn't as easy as I was expecting though, I assumed that simply following the horizontal and vertical commands would make it a lot easier but it's very sensitive and it's important not to chase the instruments. Anticipating and making small corrections is vital! I think I got the hang of the ILS quite quickly but as always in the sim it took a lot of concentration. It reminded me of the initial aptitude tests I did for my selection by controlling the moving bars with the joystick whilst focusing on shapes and numbers etc. I can see why that test is relevant now.

Finally, asymmetric flying off the instruments was again a challenge but very good practice. My memory checks were so much better than my first asymmetric lesson and I managed to fly pretty accurately on the instrument departures and arrivals. It's very important to keep your scan up because not only do you need to control, identify and deal with the problem, you also need to fly the specific instrument tracks as accurately as possible and if you fixate for too long on one particular thing then you can almost guarantee that something else has broken down and gone horribly wrong.

I've been spending a fair amount of time with a few course mates going over twinstar and CPL theory. It's a lot more interesting and helpful working with other people I find. You bounce ideas off each other and things just seem to make more sense when you're discussing them rather than just reading it out of a manual. There's quite a lot of electrical knowledge in there and it's reminded me of how much I hate electrics. It would be so much simpler to agree that it's all just magic and move on with life.

I have just two more sims left and then I'm back in the twinstar. Only twelve or thirteen flights left until my CPL now!