Page 26 - Jan22T

You Can’t Win, Only Break Even
Pilots going to training are ev- erywhere in this hotel. They scurry around the lobby for the free hot break- fast before their scheduled pickup time to the flight academy. Even in civilian clothing you can tell that they’re pilots and not normal guests. We all look alike, even the ladies and even without a kit-bag. It was that way in the mili- tary, too. Unless you’ve worked for a Part 121 operation in which there are thousands of pilots in line for your job, and you’ve been through the career- threatening ritual of training over and over and over, it may be difficult to relate to the stress and moderately unpredictable nature of the arduous ordeal. It’s like a flight physical: You can’t win, only break even.
I sat outside as the sun came up, after my free hot breakfast (for which I did not scurry), writing this article and enjoying a coffee. I watched as the pilots in training reluctantly, sol- emnly and silently boarded the shuttle to the flight academy to be tortured, I mean trained. The day begins with the sound of the cargo and passenger doors slamming closed and the rough driving technique of the hotel’s non- CDL drivers. The ride is eerily quiet, as if the pilots are a group of puppies, whimpering softly with darting eyes as they are driven to the vet, trying to not wet the seat. It’s that bad. You don’t see many of them with tongues hang- ing out, nervously panting or wetting – but it would not be out of character.
24 • TWIN & TURBINE / January 2022
My ground school classmates.
Dial-A-Disaster
The Part 121 simulator schedule begins extremely early. The sun is already rising, and the first six-hour block that began several hours ear- lier is half-finished. Those pilots left the hotel long ago, well before the hot breakfast or even coffee was available. The crews now boarding the van are the lucky ones with the primo simula- tor times. Likely with more seniority or based in a western time zone. Like the early shift, they’ll be getting two hours of oral review followed by four hours of “Dial-A-Disaster,” an accurate designation used to describe the way in which the simulator instructor/ evaluator can select some of the most hair-raising scenarios and weather known to mortals. It’s always night- time in the sim, you are always in the weather, always in icing conditions, the RVR’s are always 600/400/300, crosswinds are within a few knots of the limit, and something is always on fire, leaking, losing pressure or about to fail – like a motor, flight controls, hydraulics, pressurization or fuel sys- tem. A trip to the vet would be better – even with wet pants.
Sims by the Letter
Not many Level A simulators still exist. They have unsophisticated vi- sual systems and very little data for simulating terrain and airports. One aircraft still using Level A simulators is the Lockheed JetStar, one of the first business jets. Level B sims barely exist. Level B can give you 80 percent of ini- tial training for a type rating and 100
percent of recurrent training if the sim has circle-to-land privileges added to its certification. Level C steps a notch higher. There are tighter tolerances on data, and the scenery is more accurate. All instrument currency and type rat- ing requirements, landings and circle- to-land approaches can be met in this simulator. Last is Level D, and you can do everything in it. Daylight scenery is a requirement, and they have better data and tighter performance toler- ances. The most obvious benefit of the simulator is the Dial-A-Disaster function. We may hate it, but we can safely experience and practice all in- strument procedures and some really bad things that would be difficult or foolish to recreate in the air. Psycholo- gists would tell us that our heightened sense of sight, sound and smell during an event such as simulator training is due to apprehension, anxiety, adrena- line and our over-achiever desire to succeed. Apparently, this is true even if the training is “just for fun.”
The Yerkes-Dodson Psychological Concept
Simulator training is a necessary part of every professional pilot’s career. But anxiety can hurt our per- formance if we get past the apogee on the Yerkes-Dodson bell curve. You know, performance up the left axis, anxiety along the bottom. This applies to the real airplane and non-f lying events as well. We train in simulators and practice hair-raising scenarios in order to learn and to prepare. And the preparation includes desensitizing ourselves to the initial shock when a malfunction is actually happening. I’ve had it happen to me and heard it from countless others: “When it hap- pened, I couldn’t believe it. For three or four seconds, I was in disbelief.” Other than improving our scan, crosscheck and hand/eye coordination, simula- tors help to make the amount of time in disbelief shorter. Because once we believe it’s really happening, we can work the problem.
The Next Adventure
I’ve spent over 600 hours in the box and four times that amount in un- logged hours instructing and evaluat- ing in it. I used to be the one behind the curtain of Oz creating disasters