Change of perspective

I was using the simulator at my flight school the other day and overheard an FAA examiner administering an oral exam to a perspective instrument pilot. Along with questions for the applicant he would inter-mix stories and examples from his numerous years of flying with the airlines. While listening to this I thought that here is a guy who I would like to sit down and have a beer with. Imagine the stories that he has to tell. Just a good lesson in how I feel we, as a society, do not take advantage of those who have gone before us. It is equally important for those of us who are experienced to share these stories before the time comes when you cannot share them. This is one place where I think the internet has really been a blessing to us. It is one of the reasons that I thoroughly enjoy the blog of Captain Rand Peck. Captain Peck currently flies for a major US airline and his blog is well written, entertaining, and contains fabulous photographs. In fact his blog was my inspiration to start my own. I encourage you to check out his blog at http://randsaviationphotos.blogspot.com/

Now let’s return to my original point of this story. It is amazing how quickly your perspective can change when you sit down and think about or analyze a situation. This particular examiner has an intimidating reputation and some may say he administers tougher exams than some of the other examiners my school uses. For these reasons I intentionally scheduled my exam with a different examiner. Here it is just a little over a year later and instead of avoiding him I am wishing I could sit down and have a beer with the guy.

My outlook on him changed when I began to think about my future life as a professional pilot. If I am going to fly for the airlines I will have to take check rides at least annually and they may be with some real tough instructors. I should get used to intimidating examiners now while I can still afford to learn from mistakes. You’re not always able to pick and choose your situations in life and I was doing myself a disservice by scheduling around the so called “tough” examiner. That all said I fully intend to schedule my commercial check ride with Captain Carpenter and I hope he has plenty of opportunities to share his pearls of wisdom with me during the exam.

Speaking of the simulator, my perspective on that has also recently changed. During my instrument training I hated the simulator and I had no problem spending the extra money to fly the actual airplane instead. Probably that is the reason my instrument rating seemed to cost more than originally estimated. I decided that I needed to embrace the simulator because again as an airline pilot most of your training is done on a simulator. Unlike taking a Cessna 172 up to practice engine out procedures you can’t very well take a Boeing 757 loaded with passengers up and shut down one of the engines for training purposes. Also, most airlines have a multiple stage interview process. You have an interview with the Human resource people, and then you have a session in the simulator to judge your flying ability and skills. Depending on the airline or the company the simulator I do this in may be exactly like the one at my school. I need to get used to it now while I can still afford to make mistakes in it.

With that in mind and because when I arrived at the airport this morning the wind gusts exceeded the limits of the school I booked a simulator session with my instructor. I was coming due on my six month instrument currency requirement anyways and the beauty of instrument currency is that you can accomplish it all in the simulator if you want. The instrument rating allows you to fly when you do not have the ability to see outside references such as the horizon. Clouds, fog, snow, and rain can all create a situation where you need to fly even though you cannot necessarily see outside. The FAA requires that at a minimum you fly at least six instrument approaches and you demonstrate the ability to navigate to a destination relying solely on your instruments, and that you practice holding over a navigation fix or other predetermined point. This all has to be accomplished every six months. If you fail to maintain this currency you cannot file an instrument flight plan and if you let it go over a year you have to accomplish an Instrument Proficiency Check which basically amounts to doing your instrument check ride over again.

For a pilot like me who does not fly into busy airports my holding skills deteriorate the fastest. I planned to work on those solely today and then planned to do another simulator session to knock out the approaches. Holding in its basic form is flying circles over a point. You typically fly a timed pattern which for my aircraft size amounts to flying one direction for one minute, turning to the other direction and flying to the fix and the turning around again and repeating until released by air traffic control.

The difficult part is determining how to enter the holding pattern. Your holding pattern is based on airspace that ATC has protected for you and means that you and only you have that particular area of airspace all to yourself. It is very important to understand how much protected airspace you have because at a busy airport there may be eight or nine airliners all flying the same hold over the same fix just at different altitudes. You must stay in the area ATC expects you to stay in because there may be an aircraft above and below you. There are three different ways to enter a holding pattern and depending on what side of the fix is the protected airspace and the direction from which you are approaching the fix determines the entry. The three entries are direct, parallel and tear drop. Direct is the easiest but really all three are no problem once you understand them.

For an hour and half I practiced each type of entry and flew at least 2 complete circuits in the hold. The other nice feature of the simulator is the ability to pause it if you have a question. That is not a luxury in the airplane since you very well can’t pull off to the side of the sky.

My next session I will get to do some approaches which are far more fun than holding, and unlike before I am looking forward to it.