CBT Day

Computer based Training... Day 1
Today was slightly different. Normally we would have been into ground school for day 2, but our instructor was off on some personal business. The company "knew" about this, but went ahead and scheduled us for school anyways. Pressure was laid upon Flight Safety, and rather than getting 3 days off after 1 day of training, We got to do the CBT which is normally done at the end of training. No Car for us, pushing the training facility around - Quality I guess.

But, I digress. CBT is Computer based training. We use it for free and easy practice for a few things. Today's major lesson was the Universal FMS. universal being the brand... not a 1 size fits all FMS trainer. basically it's software on a computer that simulates what the equipment does in the the aircraft. Looks like this:

The screen is hard to see, but the black screen to the right with the keyboard is the representation of the FMS it's self. The FMS is a computer used for navigation and flight planning. It uses input from GPS, VOR,DME to derive a current location of an aircraft allowing it to come up with it's own navigation solutions. The big screen with circles next to it is the MFD(Multi function display), on this screen in the aircraft we can display NAV data, Systems, Radar etc. more on that later. All the way to the left is the PFD - the digital representation of our instruments. Everything on the top is the simulation settings; speed, altitude, CRS and auto flight settings. Basics of what we learned How to initialize the FMS, program it a flight plan, and amend it. IFF and coffee. the two most important things regarding FMS.

Following that, we reviewed systems and pre-flight walk arounds... Nothing exciting. Back to the hotel room for more study time.

Yesterday they dumped all of our learning materials in our laps... As seen below there is a TON of information. best part, we've got just over a week to learn it. The actual Aircraft Flight Manual is 1886 pages long.


Sorry the updates aren't exciting today... but off to the books. Tomorrow is a day off, so I'll prob. explore St. Louis a little - And as proved above... i shall smell ok while doing it.

TNT