Phase I Complete: Multi-Engine Pilot

As of yesterday, I've completed phase I of the ATP Airline Career Pilot Program, and I'm also now a multi-engine rated pilot! It's been an intense couple of weeks. Between studying, flying, and sleeping, I haven't had a lot of time for anything else, much less updating the blog. Here's a rundown of the past 10 days:

Day 1
Arrived at ATP at 9:00 in the morning. Spent the first couple of hours doing paperwork and absolving ATP of any responsibility should I crash and burn. Then it was a couple of hours of ground school covering Piper Seminole systems and twin engine flight dynamics. I was glad that I had spent time preparing and had already memorized a lot of the information that was covered. I also met my classmate (call her "M"). The two of us are going through the career pilot program together. She has actually been here since April, as she started without a pilot's license. There was an FAA SNAFU which held up getting her class-one flight physical, which delayed her training quite a bit. Normally she would have been finished with the whole program by now, but she has another three months to go. I will say that its nice having her in my class, as she's closer to my age. Pretty much everyone else around here is young enough to be my kid :)  M has two kids of her own, so at least we have something in common. I have the distinction of being the oldest student here.

Day 2
More ground instruction. My instructor definitely knows his stuff, and he expects us to know it as well. After ground, it was a couple of hours in the flight simulator, or as it's known here, "the Stimulator." Flying the sim is rough. It's very sensitive, and since you don't have the feedback you get from flying in a real airplane, it can be very difficult to fly. My instructor said that if I did well in the sim today and Wednesday, we'd fly on Thursday.

Day 3
More ground, more sim. My instructor was very pleased with my progress and scheduled a flight for Thursday.

Day 4
First flight in the Seminole, and it went very well. We practiced flight maneuvers and takeoffs and landings. The Seminole is easier to fly than a Cessna. It's heavier, and has a higher wing loading, so it's more stable in the air. Landing it is also much easier. All you have to do is power to 15", put the gear and flaps down, and then fly it around base and final at 88 kts. To land, just fly a foot over the runway and cut the throttle, and it plonks right down. My instructor was impressed that I was able to put it exactly where I wanted it on the runway every time. One thing that is definitely different about flying twins is that you have two engines, and you can fly with one of them stopped. We practiced flying with the engine out and I grabbed this picture:

It is very strange flying in an airplane with an engine not running!

Day 5

More maneuvers in the Seminole. We practiced steep turns, slow flight, power-on and power-off stalls, emergency descents, and Vmc demos. A Vmc demo is were you kill one engine, slow down and pitch up to the point were you are about to lose directional control of the airplane. This is done in order to understand what can happen with one engine out. It's probably one of the most important maneuvers to learn when flying multi-engine airplanes. We then headed back to the airport to practice more landings, including landing with one engine out.

Day 6

Today was ground school and simulator. 

Day 7

Flight number three. Things seem to have degraded. My landings and maneuvers have all gotten worse since I started. It's not helping that the temperature as been over 100 every day, and the cockpit is like a greenhouse. I am starting to get familiar with the local terrain. It's easy to get lost in the desert since it's just a flat expanse of brown with some brown bumps. Two of the biggest challenges I'm having are with radio operation and breaking my Cessna habits. On the radio, I often miss hearing the controllers because I'm used to listening for the callsign of my airplane. Here I'm flying a different plane all the time, and I'm not used to the new callsign numbers. Also, the controllers here talk so fast it's hard to understand them. Since I normally fly in the mountains into small, uncontrolled airstrips, I'm not used to  the chaos of a busy airport like Mesa-Gateway. I also frequently revert back to the habits I've picked up flying Cessnas. I'm used to certain controls being in certain places, and sometimes it takes me a second to figure out where something is.

Day 8

Last flight before my checkride. Overall the flight went well, and my instructor says I should have no problem passing, but I'm very nervous. Spent the night doing more studying.

Day 9

Check ride. Got to the airport at 9:00 AM for my 10:30 checkride. I found out at the last minute that the examiner only accepts cash, so I have to scramble to find an ATM. Unfortunately the ATM has a $160 limit. So I have to go to another. That one has a $200 limit, so I have to go to a third. Get to the third and realize I left my card in the last ATM. Head back to that bank, fill out paperwork to get my card back, and then back to bank #3 to get the rest of the cash. Back to the airport, only to sit around and wait for another hour as the examiner hasn't finished with his previous student. The examiner and I hit if off really well, as he's an older guy and shares my haircut :)  During the oral I answered every question and the examiner finally said "it's clear you know this stuff, let's go fly." The flight exam couldn't have gone better. I nailed every maneuver. We landed for the last time and he said "congratulations, you passed." Now I have a multi-engine rating.

Day 10

The last two flights of Phase I are supposed to be VFR cross-country flights to build cross-country time towards the commercial rating. Since I already have enough cross-country hours for the rating, we elected to fly these flights as IFR to get an early start on my instrument training. IFR means "instrument flight rules" which basically means flying while blind - i.e. flying in clouds without being able to see anything outside. We filed an IFR flight plan to Yuma, AZ, and took off around 3:30 PM. It was a fun flight, but flying only by looking at the instruments is very hard. In addition to flying the plane, you have to talk to ATC on the radio, and anticipate everything that's going to happen next. There's a million things to deal with, and if you can't multi-task you're in big trouble. It's definitely going to take awhile to get used to this.  

On the approach to Yuma, we did what's known as a "PAR," or Precision Approach Radar approach. This means that instead of getting guidance from your instruments, a controller verbally talks you down. He continuously talks to you through the radio telling you if you are too low, too high, or left or right of the flight path. These kinds of approaches are almost exclusively done at military airports, and Yuma is predominately a Marine Corps base. It was pretty interesting. 

Upon landing we taxied over to the civilian part of the airport, and parked at the local FBO called "Million Aire." The place is VERY swanky. When we parked the airplane, A line boy ran up and as soon as we opened the door he handed us a couple of ice-cold bottles of water. We went inside and the place was gorgeous. They had private pilot lounges with big overstuffed leather recliners where you can relax and sleep, and they will run out to any of the local restaurants for you and get food for you. They also offer all the free sodas you want. They also have a free courtesy car, and unlike most airports that beat up old clunkers, this place had a brand new Mercedes Benz. We decided to order some awesome shrimp tacos from a local Mexican restaurant and watch the presidential debate on a big screen TV. 

Once it got dark, I pre-flighted the airplane and we headed back to Mesa. Flying across the desert at night is very cool. It is absolutely pitch black, except for the occasional light on the ground, or from another airplane. We had a small UFO encounter, when we saw a bright light at our two o'clock exactly matching our pace. We couldn't figure out what it was. After a couple of minutes we called ATC and asked if there was any traffic around us, and he said that it was an A-10 Warthog ground attack plane flying next to us. Eventually he turned the light off and disappeared. It was pretty trippy.

We finally landed back at Mesa around 9:30. I was exhausted, so I drove back to my apartment and crawled into bed. Thus marked the end of phase I.

Well, that's the recap of phase I. Today I started the instrument phase. We did a little bit of ground school and then hit the simulator. My instructor said there was only one person he's ever seen do as well as I did on the first day, so I'm hoping that bodes well for the rest of phase II. The instrument part of the program lasts a month, and some say it's the most difficult. There's a LOT to learn, and your flying has to be very precise, so I have a lot to learn before my checkride on Oct. 30. I have seven more simulator flights before we go back up in the plane again, and a ton of material to study by then.

Now I'm off to hit the books.