The "Box" Sim Recurrent Continued

I thought I would continue this week with this special journalistic look into the life of flight training in the world of corporate and fractional aviation.

While we arrived a few days ago, this is the first time I was able to get a good image of the building. It sets across the street from the Hawker Beechcraft manufacturing facility it Beech field in Wichita KS. This facility goes back to the very first days of Beechcraft and has build some of the most name recognizable aircraft in the world. Staggerwing, Bonanza, Baron, King Air, and Hawker are all assembled at this location. Quite a history in aviation!

In a previous post ("It's day two and the clock is ticking...") I spoke about what we did in the classroom environment. This post will cover some of what goes on in the simulator.

What is missing in the image to the right is the wing of the building that houses all the simulators. Thirteen at this time that range from King Air's through the Premier, Hawker 400, 800XP, 900XP and the Hawker 4000. The entire range of the top end of Hawker Beechcraft's offering.

Everyday when our classroom session is complete we take a small break and head to the sim bays for a briefing session with our instructor (Udo pictured). In the briefing session which lasts about an hour we discuss malfunctions that may occur, the flight plan for the session and any other issues that may have arisen in the training process. Of course this is just a plan and will likely change during the simulator session. This had been my 37th time at a recurrent on the 800/900 series Hawker and not too much surprises me or that I have not seen before. I do however enjoy learning little tidbits that I either did not know or have long forgotten about the aircraft. The big change in this session which I was looking forward to was a scenario based profile the company had put together for the crews to all go through. It was a nice change from the years of checking training boxes then take a checkride.

The left shot in the trio of photo's is the instructors station where he can inflict all sorts of pain and suffering upon the crewmembers up front. The center photo is of the actual cockpit and the third is an example of the daylight visual. Combine the motion base, visuals, sadistic instructor, and a pilot that is hand flying the sim with turbulence on and there is a great mix for a barf bag unless you are an active player in  the program (read observer).

So far we have had engine failures during takeoff, engine fires, flap and landing gear system failures, auto-pilot and trim malfunctions, wind-shear, very low ceiling and visibility (the easiest BTW), gear up landing, high altitude emergency return, electrical and fuel system failures, pressurization loss (emergency descent), steep turns, stalls and finally a couple of unusual attitudes. All great stuff to keep us on our toes for the possibility of any of these issues that may happen in the real airplane.

That pretty much wraps the recurrent training session at the training center, and now it is checkride time tomorrow. After all the training the last three days the checkride is often the least amount of work as it is only a sample of maneuvers and failures that what we have been trained on.

My checkride report will be here tomorrow.

Cya, Doug