Archive for March, 2009

Overall, it went okay. Our instructor was unable to get on the earlier flight from Phoenix, so he didn’t get to the sim until about 2345. That still gave us an hour to brief. My sim partner and I went to the sim location early, in hopes of finding a procedures trainer where we could practice callouts beforehand. Partner had clearly not done much effective studying, so it ended up being a couple hours of me teaching him.

I elected to fly first. Normally, the person who flies second has an advantage, because you get to learn from the mistakes the first guy made. In this case, I was worried that if Partner went first, that we’d spend the whole time stuck on the ground.

I discovered immediately that my basic instrument skills were worse than rusty. Fortunately, I used to be a pilot, so my abilities are coming back. The Dash controls are really heavy, and it’s incredibly sensitive in pitch, but rolls like a pig. I did some turns, climbs and descents without the auto pilot to get a feel for it, then we went right into the stall series. They were to standards on my first attempt, which is much better than I managed on the jet. After that, a couple of ILS approaches to landings in Memphis. There were a few malfunctions, but being the first day they were all pretty easy things like deice malfunctions, or fuel filter bypass indications. The last approach terminated in a miss, which went okay.

I was surprised at the number of little bitty things from the CRJ that I missed. Things like the autopilot controls in the jet all have clicking detents. So if you want to turn a heading bug 1 degree left, you turn the knob one click left. The Dash doesn’t have any clicks, so I wasted a lot of time trying to get things pointed in the correct direction.

The big thing it’s missing, though, is the moving map. In the CRJ, there’s a map that shows the aircraft’s position relative to the currently-important navigational aids. This is nice in a missed approach, where it’s hard to keep your head around a complicated series of things that you’re only going to do if you don’t get to land.

Other quirks: The airspeed indicator is not at all intuitive and reminds me of the one in T-37. The control wheel is enormous compared to the one in the CRJ, and it feels like it’s in the wrong place. The landings are straight forward enough, and the approaches are nice and slow so I’ve got time to watch it all happen. In a lot of ways, that’s been my saving grace: I’m used to how fast things happen in a jet, and the slowness of the turboprop helps out.

I was still very overwhelmed, but it was nowhere near as bad as my first lesson on the jet. Now that I’ve been through it once, I have confidence that I’ll be able to handle it as I get there. I’m still pretty nervous about single engine procedures, but we don’t actually get to those until Lesson 5.

Tonight is basically the same stuff we did last night, only it’s a “sign off” lesson, which means I need to be able to do everything I learned last night to standards. I’m not anticipating too much of a problem.

I went to sleep around 6am, and unfortunately woke up to a fire alarm at about 1:20pm. I felt well rested when I woke up–not sure how I’ll be doing tonight.

So, Jonah and I stayed up until 2am last night. My plan was that I would be tired this afternoon, so I could sleep when I got to Vancouver, and then be awake for me 12:45am-4:45am sim session.

I woke up around 7am this morning, far earlier than I needed or wanted to. Jonah drove me to Denver and I got to my flight as they were boarding. My boarding pass made the machine beep loudly, which turned out to be a good thing. It meant that I’d been upgraded to 1st class. This was a vast improvement over the middle seat I did have in the back of the plane.

There was a loud, large, friendly man next to me, but fortunately he decided to watch The Day the Earth Stood still when they started playing it. I had no intention of watching it, but started second-guessing that decision when I noticed Jennifer Connelly. Still, she hasn’t been in anything good ever since Beautiful Mind, I don’t think.

I spent most of the flight going over callouts, flows and memory items in preparation for the sim. I ate some totally unidentifiable saladish goop and a turkey sandwich for lunch. They were unimpressive — thus far I’m inclined to think that Delta has better first class food than United.

After exiting the plane in Vancouver, we were funneled through some sort of strange walkway with beaches. I’m not sure if there were live sea creatures, or just placards talking about them. Eventually, we got to the arrivals lobby, and was astounded at the thousands of people waiting in line to clear customs. It looked like a 3-4 hour wait. After waiting about 10 minutes, I realized that I’m in uniform and that ought to count for something.

Sure enough, one of the people marshaling us pointed me to a crew line. “Uniformed Flight Crew or Diplomatic Passport Holders only,” said the line. I keep my pilot certificate in my passport so I don’t lose it, but forgot to take it out when I handed it to the immigration agent. She wanted to know who was pictured on the back. “Orville and Wilbur Wright,” I told her. She seemed content, then asked me why I was staying 16 days. Flight crew stays for 1 day at a time. That took some explaining, but she eventually let me through. This is good, otherwise I might still be there.

After checking into the hotel, I tried to take a nap, but gave up after an hour. So much for that plan. Instead, I asked at the front desk where the nearest grocery store was, and set out on a walk. The weather is typical northwest Pacific winter: temps just above freezing, overcast, a bit foggy, and drizzling precip.

I’m in Richmond, BC. Everything feels somewhat cramped. The streets are big and busy, and there’s not enough room on the sidewalks. I walked under a monorail track, which made me think of the Simpsons. I never saw an actual train on it, though. This area appears to be a sort of Chinatown. The predominant ethnicity is Asian—presumably Japanese, but I’m not good at figuring this out. There’s many Japanese restaurants, but some Dim Sum as well. There’s zillion Asian grocery stores, even a large Asian supermarket. Not as big as the one in the Phoenix cultural center, but still big. There’s lots of promising looking restaurants of all kinds.

I stopped at an ATM to get some funny looking money, even though I probably could just use my credit card. I withdrew 40 Canuckian dollars, which, on my bank statement is $32.39 US including the $1.50 CDN ATM fee. Not bad.

I found the normal (well, if a Canuck grocery could be called normal) grocery store. I have a microwave and a fridge in my room, so I considered what sorts of food I might could buy. I settled on some orange juice (My usual Tropicana, but the label’s a little different and it’s avec pulpe), and some cranberry juice.

The total was $20 which seems outrageously expensive, but I didn’t have a store discount card, and it’s not real money.

My change consisted of a bills with old guys on the front and hockey players on the back. Seriously. And some two-loonie coins, which are nifty. They’re a bit bulky, but not thick or heavy.

I came back to my room, and heard some of my classmates behind a door across the hall, so I stopped by to say hi. We hung out for a bit, then walked downstairs to the Irish Pub attached at to the hotel. Yup, that’s right, I’ve got an Irish Pub attached to my hotel. What more could a guy want? It’s called the Foggy Dew.

I had a pretty good lamb burger with some decent fries and.. water. Drinking water at an Irish Pub should be criminal, but I’ve got a sim session tonight, thus on duty, so I can’t drink.

It’s quarter to 10pm now, so I’m going to change clothes and head downstairs to meet my sim partner so we can practice callouts before we go into the actual sim. Instead of proofreading this post:)

I don’t think I’ve posted photos yet. Stolen from the web.