WST 01

It's been nice to have these past two days off. I have time to study, read, and catch up on other things besides work. I had WST 01 on Monday, and it went well. The nosewheel steering is a little different from anything I've been used to up to this point. It has its own separate little wheel off to the left of the control wheel on the pilot side. It's very sensitive since it's hydraulically assisted, and the sim messes with my gyro's when it turns by I'm not actually moving. The 180 degree view is pretty nice, and the "flying" is decent. We just flew some touch and go's using 100% and 50% flaps. No malfunctions. Those may start tomorrow in WST 02.

Flying at Night

Monday was supposed to be my second night contact flight, but we were canceled for lack of aircraft. I flew that event yesterday night instead. We did a visual approach over at International and then did the pattern work at the aux field. It reaffirmed how I like flying at night. The air is calmer, less aircraft are up, and the lights and the stars make everything a little mystical. It's nice. One more night contact, then off to a slew of instrument sims.

Wow

I thought today was going to be one of the worst yet. I even had a terrible attitude going to work, but it turned out to be a great day. I flew with the Ops Group Commander, and even though I hadn't flown contact in 2 weeks, I did pretty well and didn't make any huge mistakes. My landings weren't terrible either. On top of that, I had the greatest sim of my life, my very last instrument sim. Nice! Tomorrow we're all flying to Fort Worth for our cross country. Should be fun, though much planning needs to get done before tomorrow at noon.

Sim anytime you want (time share flight sim)

Today we had the review session for the contact academics. No real take-aways besides the fact that I have more numbers to memorize - parameters and settings for entering and recovering from various maneuvers.

My sim today went pretty well. Could have been better, but I wasn't terribly disappointed. I need to trim the airplane quicker and increase the pacing on my EP procedures. I got an F on my ground ops, which seems bad, but the scale goes from U(unsatisfactory) to F(fair) to G(good) to E(excellent). You can make it through most of UPT on pure F's. Most of the standards right now are still U's.

We got checked out to use the sims without instructors today too. So now we can practice a whole lot more AND do it more efficiently. Actually flipping switches really beats looking at a cockpit printout. Most classes don't get the check out done for awhile, so we're ahead of schedule on that despite being behind on our dollar rides.

So now I have access to an expensive flight sim. We're getting somewhere.