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I then saw the smile on the face of Stephen Rutherford, my simula- tor instructor. It was so much fun, we climbed back up to FL400 and did it again. How I love practicing emergencies!
I was in the midst of my initial training for the Beechcraft Premier type rating with my long-time friend, Horacio Valeiras. Horacio and I were in Wichita at the FlightSafety Textron Aviation Training (FSTAT) Center. The training was 16 days and entailed 80-plus hours of ground instruction, 8 hours in the FlightSafety MATRIX Graphical Flight Systems (GFS) proce- dure trainer, 14 hours of instruction in the simulator, concluding with a five-hour oral and practical test. The goal: a Premier single-pilot rating (RA-390S).
Preparation
The work starts before arriving at FSTAT, with pre-study materials provided via FlightSafety’s “My Flight Bag” iPad app. I used the same app three weeks earlier for my Part 135 PC-12 recurrent in Dallas. This was my third training event in the two months since my discharge from the hospital for COVID-19 (see “A Close Call with COVID,” T &T July 2020). I guess I was trying to catch up for not flying while in the ICU!
While I enjoy the flexibility of the comprehensive iPad app for studying, I find printed versions for some of the documents are more effective. In addition, you can lose access to the aircraft materials when the Internet is not accessible – hence, when you need them in flight, you can’t access the documents.
Upon arriving in Wichita, we re- ceived a backpack filled with a com- prehensive collection of material, including the Aircraft Flight Manual (AFM) and Pilot Operating Manu- al (POM). All jet ratings start the same way – systems and limitations. Denny Reid was our initial ground instructor, and with over 1,600 pages of information at our desk, we began.
With a swept-wing design, rela- tively high wing-loading (compared with other light jets), multiple lift dump panels (roll spoilers, speed
brakes, lift dump), and redundant trim systems, it was initially a chal- lenge to understand the integration. It sometimes left me scratching my head trying to understand the design philosophy. When you first practice the cockpit pre-flight it isn’t unusual for it to take an hour. Denny told us the goal was to reduce it to 30 minutes. That is a long checklist! The Premier utilizes Rockwell Collins Pro Line 21 avionics, which was fa- miliar to the three of us in the class, and FSTAT’s Cary Wangelin provided very comprehensive information on those systems.
FlightSafety MATRIX
FSAT utilizes FlightSafety’s MA- TRIX, a multi-component learning system designed to integrate with the Level D flight simulators and encom- passes courseware, desktop simula- tors and the Graphical Flight-deck Simulator (GFS). The GFS training platform can support a number of aircraft easily selectable by the pilot. With multiple touchscreens, includ- ing an overhead panel, it displays virtually the entire cockpit. As you activate switches you can simultane- ously watch animated schematics of the various systems. Since it is avail- able 24 hours a day to the clients, I would practice as many procedures as I could from pre-flight to landings late at night. Using the GFS, I was able to reduce the checklist time to 20 minutes which meant more time flying in the sim.
On to the Sim
The next phase was flying FSTAT’s full-motion Level D simulator. My first instructor was Brett Friederich who had a previous career with a regional airline. During the training, my goal was to experience a vari- ety of situations, including shorter airports representative of my home base, Montgomery Gibbs (KMYF) in San Diego. The Premier is not exactly a short runway star, and KMYF has a runway landing length of 3,400 on our three runways. After a flight from John Wayne (KSNA) to San Diego International (KSAN), we opted for Santa Monica (KSMO). As pilots know, the runway was recently
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