Well after my IR Diary I thought I’d write a little TR diary, bear in mind I am away all week so I will only get chance to update it at weekends. I’ll try and keep all content pertinent.
The first week was induction week, so hopefully not too stressful, it turned out to be just this, a good stress free week and a chance to get to meet the diverse selection of people who are on my conversion course.
Day one started with meeting the other 12 who are on the course with us, albeit 5 are converting onto the jet.
Everyone seemed decent people, the mix is far and wide, we have investment bankers, current captains, I.T guys, car salesmen etc etc. Alot had just come off an integrated course as well.
Initially we spent the morning session signing all the paperwork, there was alot to sign, for instance, contracts, training fees agreements, emergency details, company insurance details, staff travel benefits (the best bits), pensions plus alot more.
Then we had a meeting with Flight ops training where we received our manuals, that’s company S.O.Ps and the aircraft tech manuals. The the sheer size of these is enough to make you gulp and your eyes to pop out.
After lunch it was time for our security training, the ways in which people try to bring down aircraft will boggle the mind.
Next we had to undertake our fire & smoke training plus drills, this included going into a mock up of an aircraft with a smoke hood on etc ensuring we put out the fire & rescue whoever needed it, quite a sobering moment I can tell you.
Day Two involved a talk by Rostering, then flight safety, the flight safety department is quite impressive, however, without divulging too much let’s just say big brother is watching.
We then had a meeting with BALPA who outlined the benefits of joining (as they would), it is definitely worth joining that’s for sure.
Then we had uniform fitting, this was quite bizarre, donning a pilot’s blazer seemed quite surreal, almost like it looks out of place on me, but it brought home the fact that you are now an airline pilot.
Day Three involved going to the swimming pool for the wet drills, we had to dive in the pool and show we can swim with a lifejacket and clothes on, also that we can don a lifejacket whilst in the water. This finished with demonstrating you were a strong enough swimmer to actually hold someone’s head above the water whilst swimming with them.
Next was dangerous goods, we got to handle a real AK47 and some famous pistols, a typical boy’s dream haha, plus some explosives, best not walk through a terminal for a week or two LOL, the sniffer machines will detect it on us.
Next we had our photos taken and our crew I.Ds issued, followed by lunch and then a first aid session.
At 5pm we finished but we got to look around the aircraft we were going to fly, wow didn’t she look massive stood under her, just the sheer size of the wing was bigger than the Seneca I used to fly, we had a comprehensive look at her including a trip up to the tail section which was near the roof. The plane in question was in for maintainance so it had all the platforms around. I have some photos but I will have to decide whether it’s legal for me to show 1 or 2.
This was a long aircraft visit, and at 8pm we could go back to the hotel for some well earned food.
The next 2 days was spent doing the company CRM course, so pretty regulation if you have done the Human Factors & MCC courses.
The highlight of the week was definitely the aircraft visit, we actually had the SAS Q400s in for inspection on the main gear problems, this was the plane we looked around. We were shown the actual problems with the gear, I won’t divulge the results of what they found on this one for obvious reasons again.
Well the problem with this week being over is that now the hard work REALLY starts, it’s off to Farnborough on Sunday evening for the first week of the Type Rating ground school. Oh the joy.
I’ll try and keep this updated as much as I can throughout the next 6-7 weeks.
Dean
By: Mark L - 22nd October 2007 at 22:49
Cheers guys
Mark, the restaurant is called the Crab & Anchor, it’s more like a pub but doesn’t cater for the drinkers etc, but it is a restaurant, the food is all home cooked and the menu is superb, not your average pub menu. You can find it if you make your way to the Ively roundabout by Farnborough Airport entrance, (the roundabout has the old jet on it), head north towards Reading and cross 2 roundabouts, then keep an out left and you’ll see Morrisions, and it’s at the back of there 😉 it’s about ¼ mile away from the airport.
Cheers for that, I know exactly where it is! I’ll try and check it out when I’m down at Christmas now I think 🙂
By: Deano - 22nd October 2007 at 20:14
Cheers guys
Mark, the restaurant is called the Crab & Anchor, it’s more like a pub but doesn’t cater for the drinkers etc, but it is a restaurant, the food is all home cooked and the menu is superb, not your average pub menu. You can find it if you make your way to the Ively roundabout by Farnborough Airport entrance, (the roundabout has the old jet on it), head north towards Reading and cross 2 roundabouts, then keep an eye out left and you’ll see Morrisions, and it’s at the back of there 😉 it’s about ¼ mile away from the airport.
Darren I am unsure as to how long we are supposed to get doing CPT and have nothing to use as a benchmark, I’ll tell you how I get on and whether it was enough 🙂
By: DarrenBe - 21st October 2007 at 23:33
Superb news on finishing the groundschool Dean. I am a bit surprised over the short time they are giving you guys for CPT, prior to the sim.
Good luck with the sim training!
By: paul the wall - 21st October 2007 at 12:12
Truly well done Deano.;)
By: Mark L - 21st October 2007 at 00:32
Great stuff Deano, thanks for taking the time and effort to write it all up!
Oh, and where on earth did you find a great restaurant in Farnborough? I’ve been looking for 20 years… :p
By: Deano - 20th October 2007 at 23:13
Hi Ian
Yes mate being type specific gives you the enthusiasm to learn it (and the fact that you’ll be booted if you don’t ;)) so it is nice to learn “non generic” material for a change.
Week 3
Monday 15th
Here goes for another week of stress, no sleep, no spare time to myself and constant ramming of information into my bottlenecked head (this is what it felt like).
Week 3 on last months conversion course was, how can I say it, quite a shambles, so they have got everything sorted for this month haven’t they? I was about to find out.
We were greeted with a line pilot who has been assigned as a GTO, or Ground Training Officer to cover week 3. We, or at least I thought we were going to get a structure to the week, i.e. what we are covering on each day and the timescales for everything, this didn’t happen. We were issued with our folders and some literature to go inside it. We were then told the subjects we were covering this week consisted of:
FMS
Weight & Balance
Performance
Low Vis Ops
Flight Planning
Emergency Procedures.
So to kick us off we started with the FMS, I was looking forward to this because I knew it had the same FMS that is modelled in the PSS Dash 8 for Flight Sim :D, so as it stood I was pretty up together with it anyway, there were obvious bits that aren’t modelled on Flight Sim that are on the real one but this caused no hindrance at all.
This subject was no big deal, it all sunk in reasonably well.
Late in the afternoon we started Weight & Balance & Flight planning, this is where it started to get a bit tricky, and this was for a couple of reasons, the first reason was I had not seen one of these load sheets in 2 years, and they were 737NG specific (generically they are the same). The second reason is that we didn’t really cover the filling out of one of these in great detail, we skipped over some pertinent bits of info. We then had a practice at filling one out but I was still refering to my notes on how to do it. Then he mentioned the LMC or Last minute Changes, but he didn’t go into detail and we didn’t put them on the practice load sheet. Then it came to working out the underload (the excess weight you have available for LMC etc etc), again not explained that well to us but using the notes I got by. This was definitely one of those things I am going to have to practice during the evening.
Tuesday
Today we started with a closure on W&B before moving onto everyone’s nemesis which is performance. I friend who started a month before me stated that this was one of the most difficult subjects he has ever done. With this in mind I was expecting a nightmare.
After the night in the hotel reviewing W&B I was still unhappy with the LMC & underload sections so when he asked if there were any more questions on M&B before moving on I took the opportunity to shout up. I am glad I did or I would have been left wondering, and lucky for me I wasn’t the only one in class scratching their heads, the usual thing is that we all sit there nodding that we understand it when in reality we don’t.
Onto Perf then, The art of this subject is to master reading a myriad of tables and figures. It looked daunting to start with but I must say I found it reasonably straight forward. The graphs looks at finding your Regulated Take Off Mass, giving you a flap setting and if necessary a Flex setting (Derate), also it gives you a V1, Vr & V2 speed but you only take into account the V1 because this is the only one that is runway limiting, the other 2 are dependant on weight, you then have to determine the condition of the runway, whether you are in icing conditions etc and ensuring your calculated V1 does not undercut V1min, (V1min is limiting in the negative sense).
You get the Vr & V2 from a thing called TOLD cards (Take Off & Landing cards).
There are other graphs there for landing weights & distances taking into account of failures, icing conditions, runway conditions etc etc, so there is alot to learn but it seemed to go in fairly easy. I think it helps that it’s a reasonably interesting subject.
This took up the whole of Tuesday so I spent Tuesday evening lightly studying the week’s work so far.
Wednesday.
We started Low Vis Ops in the morning, we need this because we can operate to CAT II, but to be CAT II certified we need to pass the exam and have training in the sim. You then have to be signed off before you can operate to CAT II.
We spent some time reviewing how we have to set up an approach to allow the plane to fly a CAT II approach, this was revision from week 1+2.
This subject was pretty straightforward so nothing else to say really.
Well back to the hotel about 4pm with the dreaded 3 exams the following day, and as usual I always feel undercooked even though I stay up all night studying. But time to bite the bullet, if I don’t know my stuff by now I never will.
Thursday.
Exam day today as stated before, but for some reason I wasn’t nervous, it was more of a resigned feeling than anything else, I think this is tension release because it’s been pretty intense, at least I hoped that’s what it was.
Exam 1 was W&B, first of all we had to fill out a load sheet which takes a while (if you’re not used to it), so I had better ensure the figures are correct and the CofG plot gives me the correct %MAC or none of the answers will be there HA.
Anyway all that time spent in the hotel practicing the load sheets seemed to pay off, all the answers were there. I finished the exam before everyone else but I didn’t want to get up and leave because I was convinced I must have done something wrong. I waited another 5 minutes and then left.
Once everyone came out the room and had a cuppa we went back in and went over the answers, luckily I came out with 100%, or as they say in aviation – 25% wasted effort then haha (the passmark is 75%)
We then sat the Performance exam which was coupled with the flight planning exam.
To cut a long story short I came out of the exam thinking I had to resit it. You just know when you have done ok and you know when you haven’t, my feeling was the latter. This was confirmed when one of the skippers came out and we were reviewing the questions, he told me his answers to at least 4 that differed from mine.
Anyway all back in, we marked it and to my amazement I only got one wrong, so a nice healthy 94%, wow, 2 down and 1 to go.
We had lunch then did the 3rd exam which was the FMS, Low Vis Ops & Emergency Procs.
This exam seemed a breeze, I was out of the room after 15 minutes with the result that I had got 100% in this too.
This all equated to a massive relief, groundschool finally out the way woohoo.
The late afternoon was spent with a Stewardess going through their role in the cabin and showing us how to operate every bit of safety equipment that is on the plane. Certainly worthwhile.
We could actually relax back at the hotel now, so much so we even went out for dinner, we found a great restaurant that served the best Tiramisu on the planet, marvelous 😀
Friday
Today was spent doing CPT or Cockpit Procedure Training, we had an early release which meant I was home by late afternoon.
So what did I think of week 3? it was ok, some things can be improved like it would have been nice to get some questions set for us to complete in the evenings to further our understanding of a couple of subjects, but on the whole I am glad to have come through groundschool unscathed which is something I thought would never happen.
I have 4 days off now, it’s back to Farnborough next Wednesday for a day of CPT then the sim sessions start, back to full on pressure then 😉
Thanks for reading
Dean
By: wysiwyg - 17th October 2007 at 10:09
Great stuff Deano. Makes some great reading. You’ve got to admit it’s way more fun than CPL and IR training as now this is specific stuff you are actually going to use.
Below is a picture showing a set of manuals for the A320 on the left compared to the equivalent set of manuals for the B737.
By: paul the wall - 13th October 2007 at 16:34
Keep your head down Deano, you’ll get there in the end I’m sure.
By: Deano - 13th October 2007 at 08:29
Hi Darren
Yes mate, ,1 week left, but we only get 1 day plus a few hrs for CPT, then straight into the sim the following day for 10 sessions
By: DarrenBe - 13th October 2007 at 01:15
Another cracking thread Dean.
Presume another week of groundschool, followed by a few days for flightdeck procedures training and then into the sim for a couple of weeks?
By: Deano - 12th October 2007 at 23:51
Week 2
Monday 8th Oct
Well this week is a big week, we have the technical exam on Thursday, and ahead of us are the biggest subjects. Today’s subject is Props & Powerplants, it’s such a large subject that we will be talking about it all day.
I spent most of the day feeling pretty stressed, I think this is a by-product of the fact that this is the week that counts.
The subject started off with a review on Variable pitch props & constant speed units which was good as I had not long given a long brief (50 minutes) on props for my F.I.C. course test. Then came the crunch, we are going to start dissecting the engine bit by bit, this included looking at the reduction gearbox, accessories gearbox, the autofeathering system, FADEC, and all the other good things that make up a complex engine.
By the end of the day it was overload time, coupled with the fact that we had 45 review questions to do in the evening too it was left to having minimum time at the restaurant and more time in my room reading the whole section again to ensure the info stuck, it didn’t help that I also went to the gym for an hour to unwind a bit.
Time to bed, 12:30am, time studying in room – 5½hrs
Tuesday.
Today was going to be a better day, so I thought, we had Instruments & Communications. How hard can this be? one asks oneself, well within the first hour I was completely lost, purely because of the style of the instructor, and purely because we are using acronyms for everything, and trying to keep up is quite frankly a nightmare. When lunchtime came I was very stressed out thinking I had not learnt anything so during the lunch break I stayed in the classroom to start the evening questions, purely to take some pressure off.
The afternoon session on Comms was actually great, there was an acronym used by the instructor throughout the first week about the “ARCDU”, it was mentioned in the breath that this was almost a sacred bit of kit, almost like some horror movie that the ARCDU is the brain of the evil being that is the Dash, and that it needed it’s own section alone just to understand it. Well it is an impressive bit of kit anyway, and once mastered it does just about everything you want it to do in the way of Comms & Nav etc.
By the end of the day I was feeling a tad better, certainly better than the morning session that’s for sure. What with 80% of the evening questions already answered I may be able to relax a tad tonight.
The instructor then mentioned the exam, we had a spare session Thursday afternoon when it is supposed to be taken, but a few of us mentioned doing it Friday because how can we possibly fit in the questions from Wednesday and the study for the exam during Wednesday night? a few captains wanted it done Thurs so they can go home, but it’s ok for them, they’ve been through it before.
Once back at the hotel room it then dawned on me I still had 3 subjects to cover from last week that I hadn’t done yet, these being the APU, Fire protection & Fuel Systems, curse my luck for being a lazy git during the weekend but this is what the course does to you, once you get away from it you don’t want to touch the material for a couple of days.
Time to bed – 12:15am, Time spent studying – 6hrs
Wednesday.
Subjects today are Navigation & Autoflight. Great something I am really interested in (not that I wasn’t interested in the other subjects).
These subjects were actually alot harder than they look, what with the acronym fest hitting you back in the face again, and all the failure modes there are for everything it turned out to be quite taxing. I won’t go into detail about the nav & autoflight systems as it’s pointless (unless you want to know about them).
The usual thing applies, I did the evening questions in class during the lunch break to take the pressure off, and we were told that we could sit the exam on Friday which was a big relief as this meant we could have Thurs afternoon off plus Thurs evening to study for it. We only had to go in Thurs to go through the evening questions plus the limitations factors.
So back to the hotel, 1 hour in the gym again with the promise to lay off the cooked breakfasts (which I have managed very well) & the free muffins etc.
Time to bed – 11:30pm, time spent studying – 2½ hours.
Thursday
Fruit for breakfast with yoghurt (aren’t I good? :D), then off to do the questions which is pretty straight forward, ok ok I did have 1 chocolate muffin whilst I was there, but they’re so moist & yummy 😉
I was going to drive to Flight Safety today for the first time this week, we used hire cars the previous few days, I jumped in my new car that I had only just bought only to start it and receive a warning to stop the engine, I also had a red symbol showing that I hadn’t seen before and it wasn’t in the manual, GREAT, something else to stress me out now.
Anyway back to the Hotel for 1:30pm for lunch, then some hardcore studying for the exam tomorrow. I started studying at 2:15pm, by 4pm I was feeling very tired and sleepy and nothing was going in my head so I slept for an hour, woke up at 5pm, straight to the books again for an hour before going down to the restaurant for dinner. 1 hour spent doing this, time to hit the books again, I finished studying at 1am feeling absolutely knackered.
Time to bed – 1:15am, Time spent studying – 8¾ hours
Friday
I woke up at 6:45am after 5½ hours sleep, time to pack as well as I am heading home today to get some washing done etc. I took a quick shower but whilst in there my brain was going 10 to the dozen remembering lots of questions that I didn’t know the answer to, by the time I had got out the shower I forgot what most were to read up on them, never mind. 1 was, “what systems are connected to the accessories gearbox & reduction gearbox?” hmm must read up on that one. Suffice to say I started writing them down at this point.
Well the exam was 1 exam of 76 questions but in 3 parts, you had to get 75% in each part to pass, part 1 was 56 questions on a/c technical, 2nd part was 8 questions on EFIS, yes 8 questions, so 3 wrong you fail, and the 3rd part was 12 questions on limitations.
Anyway the exam went reasonably well, I got to the EFIS questions and low & behold the first question I was unsure about so I left it, then the 2nd question I didn’t have a clue about (well I did but it felt like it at the time), so great, 1st 2 questions I may get wrong, this leaves me with no more wrong answers or I fail. Once the exam was done I went back to these 2 questions, and to cut a long story short they were to do with EFIS displays, i.e. Map & plan mode, but I couldn’t remember for the life of me which one was the “arc” mode & which one was the North orientated display, so naturally I thought, “well map mode must be the north orientated one as if you had a map it reads with north up” . I based my 2 answers on this theory and it was the opposite way around, so I scraped this section by the skin of my teeth.
Lucky I finished with an overall pass mark of 91% so I can’t be too disappointed, the hard work I put in this week has paid off. Now it’s in to week 3, and the rumour has it that this week is even tougher than the last 2, it includes 3 exams within the week on Performance & Low Vis procedures, Weight & balance & something else that eludes me.
It was great to get home to see the wife & kids.
Sorry for the convoluted affair, I am trying to keep it as brief as possible.
Dean
By: Deano - 6th October 2007 at 01:42
Thanks chaps 🙂
Ok, well the next installment is here.
I left home last Sunday night en-route to our company hotel in Surrey only to be met by a 40 mile contraflow from Swindon to Maidenhead on the M4, this obviously meant arriving quite late in the evening.
Got to the bar and met a few others from last week who decided to have a drink, we were all rather concerned at what was to greet us the following day.
Monday 1st Oct
We travelled to Flight Safety, got our security passes and then all met up in the rest room area, Flight safety is bloody marvellous, free chocolate muffins all round, NOT good for the waste line.
Our groundschool instructor met us and lead us to the room we are to spend the next 3 weeks in, and to all of our great horror was a folder on each desk that I can only describe as being as thick as a suitcase. The trepidation & fear was evident amongst the whole class, I made a light hearted joke to the instructor, “just this?” which lightened the mood.
I must say it has to be common for everyone doing their first conversion to feel like this.
We were joined on the course by another 4 people who didn’t come to the induction week, they were joining as direct entry captains which evened up the ratio of captains & f/o’s (for the simulator section evidently).
One of the guys there only has one arm, and he flies, I find this an extraordinary achievement, fair play. More of him later.
We started off doing the usual introductions, as I said 8 of us already knew each other so it was a good opportunity to meet the other 4.
We then started the conversion which was to follow a set pattern, the first thing was to have a look at the aircraft in general, so all the bits attached to it, the walk around etc.
We then did the oxygen system, Doors, and the lights to finish the day off. So theoretically we have started to put the bones of the aircraft together.
The downside is that now we had lots of work to do in the evening. All the subjects we covered we had questions to answer on each, and this involved tracking back through the suitcase manual to find the relevant bits, quite a balls ache I can tell you. So off to the hotel, a quick evening meal followed by a few hrs in the books, bed time was midnight.
Tuesday.
When we arrived the first thing we did was go through the review questions we did the night before and then had chance to ask any questions on them.
Today’s subjects were Electrical Power & Air Systems, so alot tougher than yesterday.
Once we started Electrical Systems it was apparent how indepth this is going to go, you literally go through the whole system, but it’s not necessarily the content that is difficult, it’s the sheer volume of the content coupled with what each system does which affects another part in a certain way, and if there are faults what caution lights come on and what else does it affect, so it is getting quite mind boggling now. It’s one of those where you daren’t drift off into a state of daydream, not even once, because if you do then you may miss a vital piece of information. I found taking notes keeps the mind focused.
Air Systems covers the pneumatics, air conditioning & pressurization, which again is a large subject with no let up in content.
Daily review questions done (80 of them) it’s time for bed at 12:30am.
Wednesday.
We were hoping for an easier day today but it wasn’t to be, the subjects were Ice & Rain Protection plus my nemesis, Hydraulics, again the subject matter is large, and I am having trouble remembering yesterday’s content let alone today’s as well.
Anyway without going into too much detail we can see why they cover it comprehensively, there is simply alot to learn.
Home for the daily review questions, only 40 tonight, but they still take eons, bed time was 11:30pm
Thursday
I thought there was going to be a lull today with the nice “easy” subjects of Landing Gear & Brakes plus Flight Controls, how wrong was I? again massive subjects and a surprise at how much there actually was.
At this point we are all knackered and it’s only the middle of the week, we still have the practice exam tomorrow which we were all dreading, luckily tonight we only get to do the Landing Gear review questions, we can do the Flight Controls over the weekend, woopee, more homework.
We actually had time to relax in the bar a bit tonight, not being a big drinker I limited my alcohol intake to 1 pint plus a bootfull of diet coke. Best not have a bad head for the practice exam.
The evening was spent revising during the rest of the spare time we had, bed time was 11pm.
Friday (today)
Usual morning ritual of answering the review questions first, then we had the dreaded exam. Question 1 – Which of the doors can be xxxx blah blah blah, ooo that’s easy, it’s this answer, and the usual thing with multiple choice is that you can “normally” eliminate 2 answers leaving a further 2, the only problem is that they are both correct but one is more correct than the other, go figure :rolleyes:
Anyway exam out the way, I left the room whilst the others finished, 3 of us finished first which gave us chance to discuss the answers, well great start, I got the first one wrong it seems. You’ve all heard of the phrase RTFQ? well in my case it was RTFA (Answer).
Once we’d all finished we went back in to go through the answers, luckily I came out with a 92% pass mark which I was happy with, it could have been better had I read the answers properly to 2 of the 3 questions I got wrong, but there we go. The pass mark is the usual 75% so anything above this is wasted effort anyway HA.
Once lunch was out the way we went through 3 reasonably small subjects, The APU, Fire Protection & The Fuel System. This left us all with alot of homework to do plus trying to go back over the previous week’s work to ensure it is instilled on the brain.
I travelled back up the M4 to be greated by my children who I’ve seen a couple of times in the last few weeks, it was a welcome sight.
I guess the main thing to come out of this week is that I can see everything coming together now, mentally the aircraft is taking shape quite nicely, and once we’ve added Instruments, Communications, Navigation, Autoflight & Limitations into it we should have a fully built aircraft (in theory).
So after week 1 how do I feel? well, I have been through alot to get here, PPL exams, PPL GFT, ATPL exams, CPL/IR test etc, but this is by far the most difficult of the lot of them, by a long way, I think this is backed up by the fact of knowing that if you fail you will be booted off the course and out of the company, no pressure then 😉
Dean
By: paul the wall - 30th September 2007 at 00:35
Congrats Deano, glad to hear everything is going well:) .
By: PMN - 29th September 2007 at 17:37
Interesting stuff, Dean. Looking forward to reading more!
Paul
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September 29, 2007 at 3:23 pm