I got started with 737 training this week and I think I've already flushed most of what I knew about the MD80 in a desperate attempt to make room for new information. There's only so much room in my head, and with weeks of school left to go, it's already getting quite full up there.
So far things have gone smoothly, but there have been a few unexpected bumps in the road. One of those is the fact that my training partner is another First Officer. Usually, when two pilots are paired together for flight training, one is preparing to be a Captain and the other an FO. It's seems so obvious and simple, but it doesn't always work out that way. In my case, there were more First Officers than Captains in need of training this month and my partner and I drew the short straw. When he's in the right seat, I will act as his Captain and he will do the same for me. Unfortunately, this adds a lot of extra work for me as I now have to know my job and the Captain's too. I'm sure there will be some leniency with respect to my work in the left seat, but it adds a level of difficulty I really didn't need.
On a positive note, you might be surprised to learn that my class only has two students. We meet every day with an instructor who reviews the information we studied the day before through self-paced computer based training modules. The instructor review takes about three hours, then we move on to a procedures trainer where we practice checklists and learn muscle memory for standard flows. These trainers come in three basic types, paper, electronic, and full motion simulators...I'll get to that next. Then we head to the computers where we spend another three hours on the computers packing our heads with more systems information for the next day's review. After finishing the lesson assignments for the day, we're on our own to review and study.
Below is one of our paper trainers. This one happens to be back-lit, which helps a bit. It's only a photograph of a Boeing 737 cockpit, so the switches don't work, but that isn't really the point. The idea is that the student has a way to practice checklists, flows and memory items without taking up space in a multi-million dollar flight simulator. Sometimes, if we're lucky, we get a simulator anyway.
The next picture shows my favorite new toy. It's very similar to the one above except that the instruments are shown on touch sensitive computer screens that allow the student to push buttons and flip switches. Better still is the screen mounted above and to the right the instrument panel (the one with the black background) that shows system information. In this picture, I was performing the initial power-up and pre-flight inspection. As I powered up the airplane, the electrical schematic showed every move I made and how the switches I was flipping were affecting the electrical system. We spend a lot of time working with schematics in ground school, but I've never seen one that interacted with a cockpit procedures trainer. The student can choose to view any of the aircraft systems...hydraulic, pressurization, fuel, etc...and view the affect moving any switch in the cockpit has on that system.
We spent part of day three and four in a full motion simulator, which is about as close to the real airplane as you can get. The first picture below is what the airplane looks like with the lights on, but before position initialization. Until the POS INIT procedure is complete, the airplane doesn't know where it is or which way is up, so the attitude and heading displays are mostly blank and full of failure flags. The second picture below shows the instrument panel after everything was initialized. You might notice I was performing the Captain's duties at the time.
The initial cockpit procedures, checklists and initial pre-flight preparation take a crazy amount of time when you are first learning how to do them. Once I'm comfortable in the jet, I'll be able to complete them all and be completely ready to fly in around 15 to 20 minutes. Right now it takes me more than an hour. We were only supposed to complete the items required to be complete before takeoff, but the instructor decided to let us go ahead and fly.
We took off from DFW and flew the airplane to MEM to get a better idea about how the Primary Flight Display and Navigation Displays actually worked. I wasn't really prepared for that and hadn't studied some of the procedures we were doing, but actually seeing the instruments in action helped me to better understand some of what I had been reading. It also helped me to realize that I'm going to like these new displays a lot. Everything I need is on that one screen. It took at least six instruments on my old airplane to display the same amount of information.
Now I'm off for two days...although "off" doesn't accurately describe how I'll be spending my weekend. I'll spend the next two days reviewing what I learned this week and cementing some of the procedures and checklists I've put to memory. I have four more days of ground school next week, two more days off, then a few days of review before I'll be tested over my systems and emergency procedures knowledge.
That's it for now. The closer I get to exam time, the less time I'll have for updates, but I'll post as I can. Thanks for checking in.
