{"id":975,"date":"2014-03-08T06:12:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-08T11:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/?p=975"},"modified":"2014-03-26T17:23:11","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T22:23:11","slug":"march-01-2014-drinking-from-the-firehose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/?p=975","title":{"rendered":"March 01, 2014 (Saturday) Drinking from the Firehose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After arriving yesterday and relying on Flightstar to take care of my airplane, I stopped at RTC to introduce myself and scope out the area. \u00a0I let them know that regardless of the incoming snow storm, I&#8217;d be there early for the first day of class. The locals I&#8217;d spoken too expected a few inches of snow Friday night (tonight), but up to 20&#8243; locally and to the south starting in the afternoon of the next day (Saturday). Most of the instructors lived to the south, where the accumulation was to be heavy.<\/p>\n<p>The stress of getting to Champaign (potential starting or mechanical problems; changes in the weather; work or life interruptions) was behind me. Now it was the stress of a major snow storm that could keep me worthlessly locked in a hotel room, or could prevent my instructors from getting to the facility.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-990\" alt=\"IMG_1505\" src=\"http:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/IMG_1505-150x150.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/>The few inches did arrive overnight, \u00a0but didn&#8217;t keep anyone from getting to the facility. \u00a0The major blast everyone expected was expected during the day today, but at least I&#8217;d get the first day accomplished. \u00a0Even though I was only a few miles away, I threw a change of clothes into my backpack \u00a0in case it became clear this storm was a monster. \u00a0I wanted to be able to stay there and encourage the instructor to work all night. \u00a0Luck favors the prepared mind&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday was entirely classroom based. \u00a0Bill was the instructor, I was the primary student, and Keith was an auditing instructor and experienced retired Falcon jet pilot. \u00a0I was also introduced to Jim, an active instructor and A&amp;P who I&#8217;ll be flying the simulator with in the morning.<\/p>\n<p>Keith shared his significant knowledge base of operational experience. We had several worthwhile side-conversations that added to the course content, and hit a number of key topics:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Electrical systems<\/li>\n<li>Powerplant\n<ul>\n<li>Anti-ice \/ vanes in jet engines<\/li>\n<li>Starting procedures\n<ul>\n<li>(Hot start, hung start, no light start)<\/li>\n<li>Starter generator in motoring mode to clear fuel on errant starts<\/li>\n<li>\n<p style=\"display: inline !important;\">Starts limited to 40 second tries followed by 30 second cooling: three times. After the third time wait 30 minutes.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>Generator off when starting to protect current limiting devices on the tie bus<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Fuel systems<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li>cross feed (kind of limited to engine failure)<\/li>\n<li>motive force \/ terminology<\/li>\n<li>Additives in jet fuel (Fungicides, anti-icing)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Pneumatic systems\n<ul>\n<li>Cabin pressurization procedures<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Landing gear<\/li>\n<li>Propeller systems\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Use a beta mode, reversing of propellers<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Annunciation&#8217;s and panel configurations<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I also had the chance to do approach chart reviews and watch a TERPS tape.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Approach chart review<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>MSA<\/li>\n<li>inbound course<\/li>\n<li>intermediate altitude<\/li>\n<li>how to determine final descent point<\/li>\n<li>MDA or DH plus step downs<\/li>\n<li>how to determine MAP<\/li>\n<li>missed approach altitude heading<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>After a long day in class, and still winding down from an intense work schedule, I headed back to the hotel about 5 miles away. I hadn&#8217;t gotten a weather update before I left class, but it was incredibly cold and grey outside. Local folks still expected major weather to hit us here, and I was fairly certain that all the airports (and my wife) were going to get slammed. The logistics and risks of this trip were all still in front of me.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Dinner at Applebee&#8217;s was surprisingly good. I came back to the room and opened the books while I listened to storm updates. I called it an early night, but wasn&#8217;t able to sleep more than four hours the entire night. \u00a0I was concerned about my performance the next day, as a result, and would have preferred to be well-rested.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After arriving yesterday and relying on Flightstar to take care of my airplane, I stopped at RTC to introduce myself and scope out the area. \u00a0I let them know that regardless of the incoming snow storm, I&#8217;d be there early for the first day of class. The locals I&#8217;d spoken too expected a few inches [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-home-page","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":998,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions\/998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.airdorrin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}