MLS

Wednesday was just another CPT trainer where we looked at more malfunctions, this time in the hydraulic system and went through the reject procedures again. Not too bad. We had a really good student engineer, so things were teetering on the edge of boring. Good to have sims like that sometimes.

Yesterday's WST sim was a little frustrating. I flew a terrible ILS, and then the sim broke. It just lost all power and my instructor called it quits. We were technically done, but I just felt I'd ended on a bad note.

Today made up for it, in that I flew a good MLS, which is almost indistinguishable from an ILS when you're flying it. MLS stands for microwave landing system. It's a precision approach that the military used to think was going to be the next big thing. Eventually GPS took off and MLS was left mostly obsolete. It's conceivable that the Air Force may still use them someday, so we practice shooting MLS approaches every once in awhile.

The Herc can do some pretty cool stuff. We did a windmill taxi start, where you get three engines up and taxi at high speed down the runway to get the fourth engine started. You could do that if the starter in one of your engines was broken. We also practiced a three-engine takeoff, which is another nice trick to have available.

When we were all done, we just practiced landing after landing. I probably got six or seven reps, and it was nice to get the practice and the confidence.