Simulator #4 -- Windshear, Missed Approaches and V1 Cuts

5:45 AM - Monday, Oct. 17, 2005
Simulator #4 -- Windshear, Missed Approaches and V1 Cuts

I think… well, it’s hard to imagine…. but, uh, I think I’m finally starting to punch back! I most definitely still have a black eye, but I’m starting to defend myself a little better and actually to fight back!

Actually, on second thought, here’s how I’m going to look at it from now on. I’m not in the boxing ring with the sim. It’s more like I’m on the back of a highly sensitive, overly spooky dressage horse. She’s flighty, she’s touchy and she’s still better trained than I am. But I’m getting there, and rather than being adversaries we’re starting to become friends. Okay, maybe we’re more on a “what was your name again?” basis, but we’re getting there! And, as with any new acquaintance, it takes a bit of time to get to know each other, to smile at the good things and to breathe when the not-so-good things appear from time to time.

So tonight I got reared up on and had to deal with a few bucks once in awhile, but I didn’t get flung off this time. Whew! After last night’s “ride” I was getting worried, but I’m now suspicious that it’s going to turn out a-okay in another 10 days….

Poor Steve, bless his heart, managed to fly us right into the ground on approach to the runway when we got hammered with a wicked windshear. Yes, we got the Dreaded Red Screen Of Death. We were told the shear was going to happen, but we’d never actually had to deal with it in this plane yet. Sure enough, about 300 feet from the ground we lost massive amounts of airspeed, and sank quite deliberately right into the field at the near end of the runway. And with our vertical speed I’m sure we didn’t leave much other than a smoking crater…. And, I was helpless to be able to save us, as he had the controls and it was a lesson he needed to learn. I kept calling out that we were sinking and he needed to pitch the nose up, but I’m not sure he heard a word. Thankfully it was just a sim -- though we may have bruises underneath our shoulder harnesses tomorrow!

Then my turn came to fly (I was his “pilot monitoring” to start, and then we switch seats, allowing us to fly from the right seat for 2 hours each). But I’d learned from his mistakes and took matters into my own hands, not waiting for the command bars to guide my flight path. I didn’t get the autopilot kicked off as quickly as I’d have liked, but I did get our nose pointed up and got climbed out of it way before we made grass contact! It wasn’t excellent technique, but it worked! And we’ll have time to tighten it up tomorrow night.

The good news tonight was that I was enough ahead of the temperamental little plane (yeah, it only weighs 53,000 lbs) that I am starting to feel like by the 26th we’ll be riding together like old pros. Well, okay, not THAT comfortably, but we’ll at least know each other well enough to get the job done. And we’ll do it with as much grace as one would expect after a mere 16 hours of time on her back….

I will admit that my most challenging struggle tonight was the “V1 Cuts”. In the Citation they weren’t much of an issue. But this plane is funkier when it looses an engine on take off. It’s not happy. And it tends to careen off the side of the runway, making death imminent. My first cut, though I knew it was coming, was survivable but not pretty (I destroyed all 5 tires). WAY not pretty. People would definitely been puking back there. I nearly departed the runway on the ground, not using enough rudder to counteract the zigging motion from the dead engine. And then when I finally got us airborne I nearly induced a Dutch Roll, which also could be fatal at low altitudes. But I didn’t, somehow. As long as I remember to breathe every few minutes up there, I’m starting to get the feel for how much control input is enough and how much is too much. In the CRJ-200 that line is very, very blurred. At least at this point in my training. Sometimes I realize that I’m so tense that I haven’t moved or breathed or even blinked in minutes! And I wonder why I almost get tossed off with each buck and rear?!

So, one of the beauties of the simulator is that we can be slewed back to any position over and over again to get a maneuver right. I had to do the cut 3 times, each with more rudder input but still not enough, before I got it on the 4th try. The Citation was cake compared to this sucker! But I had my usual small-dog-with-tasty-large-bone attitude and when Keith asked how I was feeling and if I wanted to get it knocked out tonight, my response was something like “Hell yeah, I’m not leaving this chair until the passengers can’t tell that we’ve just lost an engine!” And though my 4th cut wasn’t quite that smooth, it was within parameters and with that we called it a night. If I had had my way, we’d be in there until the sun rose!

But it was definitely a good way to put the sim to bed, with a pat on her back and a “thanks for the lessons” nod. And a deep breath….

Simulator #3 -- Stalls, Missed Approaches, and Single Engine Approach & Landings

5:40 AM - Sunday, Oct. 16, 2005
Simulator #3 -- Stalls, Missed Approaches, and Single Engine Approach & Landings
I can honestly say that I psyched myself out tonight before I even got to the simulator. I woke up with a feeling of dread, that dread lasted the entire day, and by the time 9pm rolled around I was wishing for an arm amputation as opposed to getting in the “box” tonight. Or at the very least, the removal of a few fingers.

The good news is two-fold: I finished the Stall Series (which demonstrates that I can hand fly (no autopilot) the aircraft when the poop hits the fan and we’re on the verge of being out of control. It took me longer to get them (there are 3 – “clean” at altitude, approach to departure and approach to landing), but I got ‘em. I still don’t feel like I did them well, but Keith said they were good enough for him to mark “SAT” (satisfactory) on my evaluation form. Hopefully they’ll come together more smoothly by the checkride in 12 days, though we won’t get to practice them until the last sim session. The other good news of the night is that Steve was abducted and replaced by a CRJ pilot! He flew the heck out of the plane tonight relatively speaking and his confidence has soared. Now, if I could figure out why mine has plummeted….

Actually, I have a pretty good idea about how I got myself psyched out. I came in here having a darn good clue about how tough these months would be, and about how much there is to learn in such a short period of time (though it seems like I’ve been living at the Red Roof Inn my entire adulthood). But I also guessed that I’d do better than average because of my jet background. That I’d be light years ahead of my sim partner, who has spent his professional years as a flight instructor in small trainers. And all through ground school, and all through CPT (sitting in front of a mock cockpit “mind flying”) I was ahead. And even in the first 2 sims comparatively speaking I was WAY more ahead of the plane than Steve. But tonight I walked in there feeling unsure of myself, nervous about knocking out the stalls once and for all, and dreading the whole evening. Not a situation ripe for learning…. I set the bar too high for myself, thinking that because I can fly a Citation competently I should also be able to a CRJ without much trouble. But I realize now that’s akin to expecting the Space Shuttle pilots to go from flying all the high tech fighter jets to completing a mission in the the Orbiter without all that training. Just because I’m a good pilot doesn’t mean that I can hold myself to the standards to which I’ve been holding myself. Not only is it unrealistic, but it’s now messing with my mind. Which is something I can’t do with one iota less of right now!

So, my instructor reiterated tonight that I was doing fine. I’m still ahead of the (gasp) “average” new hire and I’m still definitely on track for an on time checkride on the 26th. He even wrote in my daily evaluation form that I did a “good to excellent” job tonight. “So”, I ask myself, “why are you having a hard time letting the compliments in? Why are you making your self-esteem worse than shaky when you’re DOING FINE?, DAMIT!” Because I expect better than fine? Because I know I’m not “average” and I almost never accept an average performance from myself? Because I have clung to the fact that I had a bit of a head-start in my class of flight instructor guys and I’m doing everything I can to retain that lead? A lead that I’m SO not used to having in the aviation aspect of my life! I was the one who struggled the most at PanAm, or so it seemed. And indeed I felt confident coming here to ASA, but I think I’m on the verge of eroding that confidence dangerously low if I keep up this pressure. Now is the time to nip it in the bud, accept that I’m doing the best I can and that somehow it’ll all gel in the last 5 sim sessions. Now is the time to, as Bob Jex would always say, “press the ‘I believe’ button”. I realize I’m not doing myself any favors by keeping this pressure on myself. It was humbling to see Steve fly so well tonight – and good for him! Good for him for trusting that it would happen. Now’s my turn to believe. Competition is good, to a point. I’m learning that….slowly.

On a good note, I’m very proud of my eating, sleeping and exercise habits while on this weird schedule. I’ve been eating very healthy (and ravenously – you’d think I was a maggot!) and have been getting at least 8 hours of sleep a day. Sometimes not all at once, but my 1-2 hour naps before hitting the sim are making a lot of difference in my mental clarity. For some reason I’m still dropping weight (loss of all those carbs?) but I suppose that’s to be expected with all the mental activity burning up my cells. I’m also running in the middle of the night on the hotel’s treadmill for 35-45 minutes. By next week my goal is to be on that sucker for an hour each day. It’s a good time to bond with my flashcards, and it is creating a great sense of balance, trying to keep from sliding off the end of the treadmill while holding and reading hundreds of little color coded cards! And then in the evenings, after I’ve awakened and eaten a healthy breakfast at 4pm, I take the flash cards outside for the requisite amount of sunshine, walking around the airport for 30-60 minutes. I’ve never had this much rigor with my schedule, though it’s not quite one I wish to keep once training comes to an end!

The days and nights seem to fly by in some respect, and at other moments it seems like it’s never going to end. But the reality of it is that in just over a week I’ll get to check one more thing off my To Accomplish In This Lifetime List – airline pilot.

Simulator #2 -- Precision and Non-Presision Approaches, Stalls, Steep Turns

6:29 AM - Thursday, Oct. 13, 2005
Simulator #2 -- Precision and Non-Presision Approaches, Stalls, Steep Turns
Okay, this is how I’m choosing to see it. The sim, big mean box that it is, is a lot like a big, mean prize fighter. We’re in its home ring, in its hometown, and it’s winning. Big time. We’re not only black and blue, but Steve and I are bleeding. Puddles.

But we’re not the types to give up. We wouldn’t be here if we were prone to walking away when the going got tough. So, we’ll train and train and train and train. And then, on or before October 26th, we’ll deliver one cruel blow. The sim will fall at our feet, and we will have silver wings pinned on our shirts in celebration.

Until that happens, it’s all Steve and I can do to A) not cry, B) not wish we weren’t alive, C) not question our status as pilots, and D) not wonder what the hell we were thinking.

The problems are not new to me at all. Unfortunately I thought it would be different this time. Steve and I have been studying hard, practicing everything we need to know. But we’ve not been taxing our brains enough while we study. It’s not enough to know all the checklists and flows and emergency action items and flight profiles solid, cold and down pat. Sitting there, in the quiet of our hotel rooms or the peace of the paper cockpit mock-up, it’s all well and good to have them memorized and to be able to spit them out on command. But when we power up that sim, fly it around in weather, deal with Air Traffic Control, manage lights and bells and whistles, and rectify emergencies, we can’t seem to remember our own names! That happened last night, and it happened again tonight. We definitely improved on certain aspects of the flight, but we still have a long way to go.

So, to nip it in the bud we’re going to have to study and practice over and over with only part of our brains engaged in the “flying”, and the other part will have to learn to deal with the rest of the environment. Enter The Tennis Ball. From now on when we learn flight profiles and cement the checklist flows, we’ll be doing it while tossing a ball back and forth to each other.

And in 2.5 weeks that sim will wish it had never met us….

Cockpit Procedures Training Session in the Simulator

5:57 AM - Saturday, Oct. 08, 2005
Cockpit Procedures Training Session in the Simulator

It’s coming up on 0600 and I’m unable to wind down. Tonight’s sim session went pretty darn well, considering that it was only our second time in “the box”. Our instructor, Keith, is very complementary and reminds us frequently (especially when things get bumpy and we’re hard on ourselves) that we’re still ahead of the curve and doing better than average. Which is good, since I don’t ever expect average from myself! (Dang it’s hard to be a beginner sometimes!)

In the last few weeks I’ve thought to myself how interesting it’s been to notice that my self-assessments and my self-confidence are in a very, very different place than they were last time I went though intensive flight training. When I was in Orlando getting my Citation type rating I was so far behind the curve and everything was completely foreign to me that I never felt comfortable with anything I learned those 15 days. And for the first few months of my new job at Dominion in the actual jet I felt like a fraud. But this training has so far been a very different experience. Part of my hesitation with deciding to apply to airlines was that I didn’t think I could really hack it in such a structured environment. Not that flying private jets isn’t structured, but it’s a different culture than the airline. And I’d heard plenty of stories about airline training and how rigorous it is, how they don’t tolerate even one word wrong in the verbatim repeating of emergency memory items, and how if you screw up more than once in training you’re gone. I didn’t really think that my free-flowing, barrier-averse temperament would do well in an environment like that.

But what I’m noticing is that my 18 months in the business jet has really given me a solid foundation upon which I am building my CRJ airline pilot skills. Not only am I learning a lot more than I anticipated because my study habits were formed a few years back, but I’m also enjoying myself and this process. Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t enjoy dragging my buns out of bed early 6 mornings a week for the last month-plus to sit in a classroom all day and listen to rules and regulations being blabbed at us. And I didn’t enjoy the stress of having to take exams on massive amounts of material I’d barely digested each night. But I did have a solid enough background to let me have a perspective on the whole situation, to see the big picture. And my good scores on the written exams were confidence-builders!

Now that I’m in the sim I’m fortunate to be able to breathe much easier than I did the first time around a couple of years back. I can see the forest for the trees! That ability has made these last 6 weeks much more enjoyable than odious. And now that I’m on the vampire sim session, which is more in tune with my own body clock than the early mornings were, I’m noticing how much is really getting in my head. My synapses are actually growing closer together at a quickened pace! (And there are no doubt billions more now than there ever were; it’s amazing I can even hold my head upright).

Tonight on a break between flights (we each fly for 2 hours in the right seat as pilot flying, then switch to the left and act as pilot monitoring) Steve expressed concern to me that he’s dragging me down, holding me back. Granted, he’s much less experienced, not used to thinking the speed of a jet and is used to doing everything and monitoring the entire situation all the time as a former flight instructor. That kept him alive to see another day! He has had no 2-pilot experience until now. But here in this sophisticated jet it’s complete sensory overload and it’s all he can do in some moments to keep the thing upright. I, on the other hand, have the luxury of about 600 hours of jet time under my belt, which makes this much easier for me to pick up. I’m able to notice more things at once, and able to fly well and do other tasks. Not that I’m doing stellar by any means, but I do fret less and make fewer mistakes. Just because of the experience I’ve had in the past. So I told Steve not to worry at all, that rather than hindering my learning he’s actually enhancing it – his lack of experience has me keeping a sharper eye on him, which divides my brain between flying and monitoring and is making me a better pilot. I have the luxury of being able to do a good job flying and also helping him with his tasks from time to time. But in perhaps more importantly right now it’s serving to boost my confidence in myself as a pilot, as a beginner and as a future captain.

Two months ago there was no way I could even envision myself as a captain of an airliner. But all that’s beginning to change. I’m doing well enough with this training to believe that when my seniority number will hold an upgrade to the left seat that I’ll be ready. And I’ll make a damn fine captain someday!

Simulator #1 -- Welcome to What Feels Like The Space Shuttle....

5:18 AM - Thursday, Oct. 06, 2005
Simulator #1 -- Welcome to What Feels Like The Space Shuttle....
All of the studying and cramming, test taking and memorizing has culminated in our ability to finally get into the simulator. We had a 3-hour pre-briefing from 9pm to midnight and then got a feel for the plane (identical to the sim) from midnight to 0400. We finished up with a 30-minute debrief of the things we did well individually and as a crew, and the things we need to work on before tomorrow.

If you’ve never been around a full-motion Level D simulator, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like. Rumor has it the CRJ sims cost upwards of $20 million each. Should I win the megaball lottery it’s one of the first things I’ll buy! It’s about 2.5 stories tall and looks like a big bulbous pod on top of 8 hydraulic legs. Remember those giant “walking” robot-like things in the early “Star Wars” movies? The sims at Flight Safety (training company) are similar. They’re bolted to the concrete and have such accurate movements that both the students and the instructors must wear 5-point harnesses. When I was learning to fly the Citation, my first jet, I actually crashed so hard that my 60-some year old instructor fell out of his chair! They simulate such real flight that the FAA doesn’t care that our first flight in the actual physical airplane is one with 50 passengers in back! There is very little that can happen in the real world that the instructor can’t make happen in the sim. Icing, turbulence, windshear, icy runways, gusty cross-winds, single and multiple systems failures, lost communications, computer glitches, you name it.

The idea in the sims here at ASA is to train hard and test easier. As I said, every possible failure can be programmed into the sim, and a crash (not that I’d know!) actually hurts! Some crews mess up and get the “red screen of death”, but so far Steve and I have been spared that sight. But rather than let us get a feel for the plane and how it flies in our first night in “the box”, we were given system failure after system failure right after take off. Keith, our instructor, did allow us to keep both of our engines, but that’s the last flight for which that’ll be the case!

We got through the failures well, and are learning to do the proper things with the switches at the right times. It’s one thing to sit in the still and quiet of my hotel room, staring at a paper mock-up of the flight deck, and “push” the correct buttons in the correct order for each phase of flight. And it’s quite another to do it when there are noises and buzzers, lights and whistles going off. And to try to maintain control of the plane, while talking to air traffic control and trying to stay on course or fly an approach into an airport in bad weather. I can almost feel the new pathways being seared across my gray matter -- it’s definitely sensory overload!

Our instructor said we did very well tonight – well enough to get some extra time to fly around without the autopilot on. We practiced some straight and level flight, turns, climbs, descents, and experimenting with pitch and power, and how it feels when 30 degrees of flaps go out as opposed to 45. Or what happens with the lift when the spoilers are deployed. Just like every other airplane ever built it flies the same way aerodynamically. If you point the nose too high you’ll slow down and eventually stall the airflow over the wings (and in the case of the CRJ you’ll die). If you point the nose down too far, you’ll speed up beyond the limitations of the structure and potentially rip off your wings. But the CRJ was built by those kind Canadians in order to be flown by a crew of trained idiots, really. It’s such an automated, dummy-proof airplane that with enough training and practice anyone could learn to fly it. Not that it’s easy at all, but it’s logic makes sense and it handles well. It’s so automated and so redundant that it’s a pleasure to fly and it’s easy to learn to trust.

Thankfully Steve and I have the benefit of my previous jet experience, and my previous type rating training in the Citation. I learned how to study effectively and we’ve spent a lot of hours together on the ground learning this stuff. It’s hard to believe that we’ll only have 8 sim sessions before our checkride (which is in 3 weeks!), but they have a 90-some percent pass rate. Amazing, really. Mind-boggling.

It’s still a bit hard to adjust to the vampire hours. We’ve been so used to getting up at the crack of dawn for the last 6 weeks that it’s tough to sleep enough during the day to be awake until the sun nearly rises again! But the room has dark curtains and Em the cat is thrilled to spend as much time curled up with her momma, no matter what time of the day it is! And Ambien is a beautiful thing….

So, each night we will continue to have the kitchen sink thrown at us, over and over, making us faster and more accurate. The learning is manageable in content (barely), but we worry about the amount of stuff that’s got to get into our brains and stay there. It’s the staying there that’s the tricky part lately! It’s like the more stuff that goes in, the more stuff that falls out. I swear I wake up with entire paragraphs and colorful schematics lying on my pillow….

Welcome to my ASA training experience!

6:05 PM - Friday, Sept. 30, 2005
Welcome to my ASA training experience!
Week Five
ASA New Hire Training
September 30, 2005

Thanks to another new hire First Officer at a sister regional airline and her post on the Professional 99s (women pilots) listserve, I learned about this cute little way to let you all in on my airline training experience. It's free and easy and if you're interested check out www.diaryland.com.

Since 5 weeks of new hire training at Atlantic Southeast Airlines have already passed, I'm starting this journal a bit late. But most of the other stuff was boring to read about and a lot of you already heard about the rare exciting parts over the phone or in emails. The rest of it is just filler that took up about 93% of each of my days... ;)

So today we completed all most all of our classroom training. The first two weeks were Basic Indoc -- company procedures, rules, regulations. What's expected. What's forbidden. Essentially how to look and act like a pilot at ASA. The next two weeks were packed full of buttons and levers, gears and switches, lights and bells. And hydraulics and generators, TRUs and BTMSs, EICAS and CRTs, doors and wheels…. If it’s a part of the CRJ-200, chances are I know about it. I know where it is, what it does, what else it’s connected to, which way it moves, what it lights up, what disconnects it and how to stow it. In theory. There are 85 knobs/buttons/switches on the overhead panel alone. The center console is about 3 times larger than the overhead! Thankfully most of the information we look at in flight appears on 6 giant cathode ray tube screens. Kind of like TV!
The Flight Control Panel (autopilot) and adjacent Bad Things Warning Lights Panel have 33 things to push. Crazy!

Soon we’ll have to find a way to integrate all flows with all the checklists with all the buttons with all the profiles. Should be interesting….

Week two of ground school

7:12 PM - Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2005
Week two of ground school
Week Two
ASA New Hire Ground School
September 5-10, 2005

Finally, the two long weeks of “Basic Indoc” are behind us, quite successfully. Our exam was yesterday (Saturday) morning at 0800, and I was thrilled to score a 98%. I was worried about it due to my lack of studying, but more about that later.

Basic Indoc at ASA included all the Standard Operating Procedures (SP’s), which was a HUGE binder full of company policies and procedures. Then they handed us another huge binder called the Flight Operations Manual (FOM/Ops Specs). That’s got all the in-flight policies and procedures. And then we have the Airplane Systems Manual, which is even larger. And all the manuals we got for CRM (Crew Resource Management). And the Union – ASA contract, which is a little book in and of itself. And then 3 binders of Jeppesen approach plates and en route charts for all the airports we fly into and all the possible alternatives. That’s a lot of plates as we currently serve nearly the entire US, some of Canada, some of Mexico, the Bahamas, and Turks & Caicos. Not only are there a lot of newly dead trees in my possession, but most of them have to be carried with me for every flight! Crazy!

So my two weeks of Basic Indoc were mostly interesting and manageable. Our 2 primary instructors were a kick. Walt is a retired Air Force pilot and current ASA captain on the same aircraft I’ve been assigned (the CRJ-200, 50-passenger regional jet). He really cares about our education here and he’s passionate about almost everything he taught us. Except weather. Poor guy – it nearly killed him to go through the weather presentation. It’s a review of all the stuff we were taught earlier in our careers, about fronts and fog, turbulence, windshear, the Coriolis force, weather patterns throughout the world, etc. He’d tried to get another instructor to come in that day, but no such luck. So he stalled for as long as he possibly could, and then started the slides. And there he stood, at the front of the room, staring at the first slide, which broke down the layers of the atmosphere into its 4 main sections. And then about 30 seconds of silence. After which he started to talk about the U-2 and how it flies above the first few layers. Which then led (thankfully!) to more war stories and other non-weather diversions. Eventually some smart-ass in the class suggested he just click through the presentation much more rapidly and put us all out of our misery! So we adjourned for lunch and somehow never managed to finish that weather presentation!

Dale, our other instructor, was retired military as well, and he’s quite jaded and cynical. He recently turned 60 and was forced to retire by that stupid FAA regulation mandating that our most experienced pilots stop flying. Both guys are very macho and right-winged, and they’re both Federal Flight Deck Officers (pilots authorized to carry loaded weapons while flying). We talked a lot about that program, and I have changed my mind from thinking it’s insane to have loaded guns in the cockpit to believing that it’s a good idea. After hearing them speak about their 9 days of training I’m convinced that in the right hands loaded guns could perchance prevent another September 11th-like attack. As soon as I have the opportunity (a week off and a spare $300) I’m planning to fly out to New Mexico and fund my own training to become an FFDO as well.

Our 2 days of CRM class were very interesting. Our instructors were two young captains who are very interested in the study of human factors and error mitigation in aviation. The concept of the latest generation is that as long as there are humans flying airliners, there will be mistakes made on the flight deck. (The safest flight is the one that never leaves the ground!) But the good news is that with all the technology flying has never been safer. And most airlines the world over are teaching their pilots about the common causes of accidents (fatigue, loss of situational awareness, etc.) and how to best avoid them. We watched a lot of videos and re-enactments of large airline disasters. Then we discussed them in detail, applying the main CRM concepts we’d learned earlier in class. The class was dynamic and interesting, and I learned quite about how to reduce the possibility for error when I fly.

So the reason that I was worried I’d not pass my end-of-course exam was because my good buddy Carlos invited me to occupy the jumpseat of a flight up to Islip/Long Island the night before the test. They were scheduled to leave before I would be out of class, so I didn’t bother studying hard the night before that instead. I figured I’d not make the flight and would have all of Friday night to prepare for the test. And then their flight was delayed, which had me racing over to the terminal directly from class, and trying to hop aboard before they closed the door. After some paperwork errors and a few phone calls from gate agents and the captain, we got authorization (I haven’t been in the system quite long enough to have been “electronically verifiable” yet). Captain Russ is a great, great guy and he told me not to worry as they’d not leave without me. Somehow they’d find a way to get me in that jumpseat. And despite the best efforts of the gate agent to ensure they didn’t -- they did!

We took off from Atlanta for a 2-hour flight up to NY. The guys showed me tons of stuff and we all had a really good time. I’ve visualized that day, sitting in Carlos’s jumpseat at ASA, pretty much since I started flying. He was almost as excited as I was! Russ has been with ASA for about 15 years, and has been the captain of nearly every aircraft in the fleet. He’s a fun, kind and patient guy, and a very good instructor. Among other things that shall remain unmentioned (to protect the guilty), they let me work the radios for much of the flight. Since I’d been flying jets with Dominion I’d heard the “Candler” call sign of ASA flights and used to answer them back in my mind. So the first time I acknowledged an altitude change as “Candler 178” I smiled big as both guys clapped. I’m becoming a real airline pilot! My last thought as I left the aircraft back home in ATL was that at no point in the flight did I feel overwhelmed or not understand what was happening or about to happen next. My 18 months flying the Citations in the Northeast Corridor have given me a very solid foundation and I’m sure that the coming months’ training will be a bit less traumatic than I’d originally anticipated. But on the shuttle bus back to the hotel at midnight the night before the exam it occurred to me that I’d had a distinct lapse in judgment. I’d chosen to ride the jumpseat rather than put in those much-needed hours with the books. It might have been my first flight with ASA, and if I didn’t pass that test it would also be my last!

Needless to say, it was a long night and an early morning on the day of the exam! But thankfully it all worked out and I passed it with flying colors. Now if only the next 2 weeks’ systems modules go as smoothly….

On the "home" front, little Em-the-cat is doing well. She still wakes me up most mornings between 0430 and 0530, but I've just taken to shoving her off the bed, which seems to shut her up. Eventually she decides to crawl back under the covers and go to sleep, but not before I lie there awake until it's time to get up! To help stave off her boredom I've been "suiting her up" in her little pink harness and leash and taking her outside in the hotel’s grass for an hour or so while I study. She loves to lay in the sunshine and watch the world go by. Unfortunately she's getting fatter by the day -- that's what happens when we don't get enough exercise (I speak from experience on this one!).

Yesterday after the exam we were given our sim partner pairings and simulator schedules. My partner is a nice fellow by the name of Steve, who's a year older than I am. He hails from the Boston area and speaks like Matt Damon. He's been flight instructing for the last few years and has no large aircraft experience. But he's got a good work ethic and isn't afraid of long nights and long days. Which is good, since the two of us were assigned the "Vampire Sim Schedule". We report to the Flight Safety sim bay for 3 hours of pre-flight briefing at 9pm. And then we crawl into the full-motion simulator at midnight for a total of 4 hours. And then we have a post flight briefing from 0400 to 0500. Just in time for breakfast! Thankfully my previous life as a bat will serve me well. And Steve's not too worried about it either. Should be fun at the very least -- I wonder if my skin will become pasty and white after a few weeks of that?!

Thank you to those who’ve sent cards and care packages. I’ve now got plenty of good, healthy (and not-so-healthy) snacks here in the room. At least for a few more weeks. That’s allowed me to concentrate on studying rather than foraging out in the Real World for food. I appreciate the well-wishes and words of encouragement. I am having a great time here, and though I miss Jeanne and Junior a lot, I’m also very happy to be one of the newest members of ASA’s pilot ranks. Seniority Number 1748 out of a total of 1759 – yikes! It’s a great company and we’re all hopeful that with the SkyWest buyout we’ll be in much better hands with a brighter future than we had with Delta. They seem like a really classy company. We still have a contract to fly with Big D through 2020, and hopefully they’ll get a bunch more pilots behind us so I can get off reserve and start holding a decent schedule. But first things first, no?