the two St. Louis. I show up with the wife for lunch before my flight in MHT. Somewhere around 12:40 i make my way through security to the gate. Somewhere near 2pm we board. Then near 2:05 we deplane. At 2:45 we board again. Near 3:00 we deplane. From that point on, the update times from EWR just keep rolling bye. Turns out there was a nasty line of thunderstorms from S Connecticut to somewhere near Albany NY.
Final Result is a 7:20 departure on what was supposed to be a 1:35 Departure. I Hate Newark.
I finally get into St.Louis at an hour near 10pm Local... 11pm my time. Funny thing about STL... there are 3 different holiday inn's. The company never told me which one. Once i made my way to the hotel, and checked in, it was close to 12:15am. A 6:00 am wake for training, and it was a rough day. Home for the Next Three Weeks
6am Wake Time
All of our training will be done in the St.Louis Flight safety facility. Flight safety is most known for their Full motion Simulators and well developed programs. The have branched out to marine safety as well. Our Classroom is a failure feeling. They all look identical, no matter what facility your in. Just a well set up classroom for training. We will be in this room for the next 4-7 days before we move into the Sim.
The Only down side is transportation. The Flight Safety facility is about 7 miles from nowhere. The "Company" has determined that there is no need to get us a car, as the hotel said the shuttle service will pick us up, and take us where we need to go. The problem with this, is that we have a fixed schedule, and the hotel shuttle needs to pick up passengers from the airport almost continuously. We hardly fit in. This next picture was taken at 12:20... 35 minutes after our "Pick up" time... we almost didn't get lunch today, and this is a Wednesday. Wait until Friday. We are not thrilled. Notice the Invisible "Van" that the training department says will be there for us?
We were standing outside so long, even this little rabbit came out to mock us.
Once we hit the books today, mostly we covered an Overview of systems, and started to run through using all the high tech goodies. First item was Crew Alerting. The new airplane has two warning tone generators... they make lots of fun noises for us when something happens. It is also smart... it sets a priority for which tones we get. Terrain call outs come first, then traffic, engine fires, master warnings, and then master cautions. Ground, planes, fire, red yellow... etc. The CWP in this airplane is much better than the 1900D. The Yellow lights gain a flasher and steady yellow light on the warning panel. A red light gets a flashing light on the CWP, and a master warning flasher. When you cancel the flasher, the CWP goes steady. This way, if you get a new Red light, you can pick it out because the new one will be flashing.
The Electrical system is only about 15 times easier than on the beach. it automatically does about everything, and for the most part we have 5 sources of power. 3 batteries, 2 DC generators, 2 AC gens, which through 2 TRU's can power the DC system. We don't start to worry until 2 DC gens, and 1 AC gen or TRU has failed. As a classmate said, that's battle damage. The plane does everything, and then when we get around to it, we actually moves the switches to make sure they conform. We hear talk of some new features, learn about cockpit lighting, doors, emergency exits, external lights, and the most important thing of all...
How many things can break with out denying us our coffee. All we need is 2 AC gen's to make coffee.
Homework for the night, and then off to CBT's for tomorrow. (computer based training)
So long. Drive fast, Drink lots, and take risks ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment