Aircraft taxi awareness courses

We would not rule out the idea LL.
Our JP is just about ready for engine runs. We have current ‘sooties’ who ensure the work we have done is correct, and a handful of ex JP jockies / current taxiers, who have agreed to take her out to stretch her legs.

We have rightly written out the temptation to taxy her with nothing but enthusiasm, and have already partly written the H&S rule book, including no engine starts without a techie, and no-one taxies her except an current JP pilot/ taxier.

What we already realise however, is that someone in the other seat will be tempted, and that is in itself a risk, that anyone could be prone to granting in the heat of enthusiasm.

We want to run a recognised training schedule, so those with no previous experience may get the chance to do something, but only once all concerned parties are totally satisfied the individual has reached a ‘recognised’ standard, and if necassery a very high and hard worked for one. Your scheme idea could be spot on, we should talk again on this. Expanding the syllabus to marshalling, fire precautions, refuelling etc etc, interesting indeed ………….

Paul
XS186 CREW

Tis just a thought…… 😀

Well I’ve been qualified to run the engines on various jets (single and multi) and would find it quite amusing to be able to carry out taxying brake checks myself with this new qualification as oposed to getting the aircrew to do it on the pre-flight taxi. It would make the day more fun anyway!

Sounds like a good idea in principle – basically a civvy version of the Line training Flight I went through in trade training at Cosford..

My immediate thoughts however are:

Assuming first you are talking it about it being carried out up your neck of the woods..

Most operators (myself included) are having to perform their hobbies (let’s not forget that is all they are after all) with a very minimal budget..the course initially sounds like it would be an extra outlay which would need to be found, particularly with regard to travel and accomodation. I for one would struggle to find the money to commit to such a scheme.

Secondly, most operators fit the hobby into their spare time, so I imagine timings being an issue. Again, speaking from personal experience, I could only manage 1 day of a weekend, as the other day I need to catch up on domestic duties after spending the first on my hobby!

Lastly, and this may not be case at all actually, just an observation – would hobbyists be all that interested in making their fun, enjoyable passtime a more official, trained and almost certificated project? I think I might not want to get too deep into courses and things and would rather just enjoy learning “on the hoof”. That said, I have had the RAF version of this training so might be biased in that I wouldn’t want to re-tread old ground. I therefore cannot speak for others and offer these comments purely as my inital thoughts.

I can certainly see the possible benefits though, I’m am definitely not knocking your idea 🙂

No, but a general course could nonetheless improve safety and provide a common introduction to the hobby…. Good points though. The aircraft which has been suggested at this point is the good old JP which provides reletively simple and cheap operation along with differential braking steering…. and is almost indestructable under normal use. enerally, the most common aircraft to be used in this fasion are small jets with tricycle u/c. By using differential braking, we make the handling more difficult. Multi engined aircraft can be treated the same as singles when it comes to taxi runs – only there is another set of dials to read. In much the same way, engineers are trained on 1950/60 ex-RAF aircraft and out of date technology, and yet have to be able to cope with the leap from JP to A380 with minimal practical training! (lots of theory, I hasten to add).

More comments / concerns welcome!!!!

That’s an awfully broad spectrum for a single ‘Aircraft taxiing course’.

Just look at all (for example) the different types at Bruntingthorpe, some single engined, some twin engined, some multi engined.

Some will have nosewheel steering, some differential braking. Some types will have really good on the ground visibility, some really poor. CofG will be an important issue on one type but not another……

I’m not sure you could cover the in depth detail on a particular aircraft type to satisfy an insurance company.

Table tennis bats provided……….. Bring your own table…….

Might need to be a big table … 😀

Bizarrely Newark does something very basic on this subject for one of its Scout Badge activities on Airfield Safety!

LL Sounds interesting. Would be loads to sort out but worth a try?

Table tennis bats provided……….. Bring your own table…….

Do you have to bring your own “table tennis bats”? :diablo:

Sorry I couldn’t resist! 😀

Being serious it does seem like a good idea!