Sim Day 5

As with all my flight training experience, the day after a plateau is always a pretty strong day. I woke this morning commited to doing everything in my power to be the copilot my captain needs so I spent several hours chair flying to nail the procedures and calls.

Getting in the plane, I started out with much more confidence and even found myself enjoying the flight as the procedures were now becoming familiar. Although the captain himself had a few hiccups in the flight, I felt I was everything I could be for him and the instructor was very pleased with my efforts and my progress.

In my flight I had to do a couple decompressions and emergency decents to nail the procedure but I slowed down and nailed it. We then got vectors for an arrival and a step down localizer only approach which flew with a standard constant descent approach (SCDA) which mimicked a glideslope and that was also successful. In the missed procedure I got an engine fire and had few struggles with the maneuver when hand flying, but was able to do it without issue on autopilot – which I was told was satisfactory.

I then had to fly single pilot as my captain was incapacitated so I took my time and got delay vectors so I could setup the ILS approach on my own. Everything went very well until I had to disconnect the autopilot and with the single engine I struggled to bring it down smoothly and after a rather firm landing, the instructor remarked that I had forgotten to take out the rudder trim which caused the yaw and in the repeat, I was able to bring the plane down perfectly.

My last maneuver of the evening was an ILS to a circle to land using the autopilot, a first for me and a very difficult sim maneuver because the visuals aren’t great. I flew the maneuver well but ended up too high on the visual approach and had to go missed. The instructor said it was decent for a first attempt and we’ll fine tune that tomorrow.

In the briefing, the instructor and the captain both remarked what an improvement today’s flights were. We discussed that the captain was ready for the ride and I was pretty close. The instructor offered the opportunity for an additional 2 hrs of sim time for me tomorrow and I gladly accepted.

Tomorrow is going to be another long day of training but not that I am more comfortable in the plane I am confident I’ll be ok.