Formation Airdrop Sim

On Monday I had my first and only Day Visual Formation Sim (as opposed to nighttime on NVGs). As wing it was fairly straightforward. Just had to help the pilot with SA in regard to where lead would probably fly next, the time status to the target (early or late), and double check all the Nav's instructions for the pilot against my map. We simulated dropping heavy equipment, and then I flew the route. I also got to fly an overhead and a downwind recovery. I performed copilot duties for max effort landings as well. Max efforts are for landing on really short runways way out in the sticks. You have to be really slow in order to stop on a really short runway. The max effort takeoff, I found, is one of the most amazing capabilities of the aircraft. I've been doing some pretty cool stuff lately, and it's just in the sim. Can't wait to go fly!

Personnel Drop

Yesterday I had the second single-ship airdrop sim. We simulated dropping personnel this time (paratroopers). We flew the run-in to the DZ three times - normally (AC flying), with a malfunction on the drop, and then I flew it. Again the whole low-level environment made flying fun, but my responsibilities are fewer than what I'm used to. These sims have lots of prep, but they're low-stress, and I'm flying with a great IP which makes it even better.

Single Ship Low Level Airdrop

For the past two weeks we've had nothing but academics. That's why I haven't posted anything new. It's hard to write about someone talking to you for hours, let alone read about it. Today, though, we finally started the application of what we've been learning about - the C-130's mission of flying around at low altitudes hauling cargo or personnel and dropping it/them out the back right where the user needs them (hopefully). So, today we flew a low-level mission. I was the copilot, since most of this training with be almost exclusively in the right seat, and we had a nav and a flight engineer. My IP sat in the left seat and flew most of the mission. We simulated dropping heavy equipment, and CDS (containerized delivery system) bundles. With a nav on-board, I actually felt like my workload really wasn't that bad. The copilot gets to flip the switches and push the buttons that make stuff actually fall out the back, so that's fun, but the nav does a lot of the map reading and turn point briefing that I no longer have to do. Overall, I felt prepared, but always have things to study.

After the debrief my IP showed me a picture of the aircraft that he owns and explained a little about aircraft owner maintenance, annual inspections, and other little things about owning your own plane. Maybe someday.

CRM

Today we had five hours of academics on CRM (crew resource management). CRM is just aviation speak for effectively working as a team. It encompasses ideas like effective communication, leadership, assertiveness, situational awareness, and decision making. It was mostly a discussion of mishap case studies, which seems to be the most effective method of learning CRM. I was glad to have an early start to the weekend. On a mostly unrelated note, I was pleasantly surprised to find the following article posted on facebook:

Initial Checkride Passed

I passed my checkride today. It was in the sim, so everything went as planned. The instructor reminded us it will probably be the easiest checkride we'll ever have, since it was in the sim, where everything happens like it's supposed to when it's supposed to, nothing breaks and no outside factors affect you. Words of wisdom. I flew fairly well. My airspeed control was sub par on several occasions, but I came out unscathed. Glad to have that complete. It's on to Phase II academics and sims. Next week is all academics.