Originally Posted by
Senior Skipper
A lot of this sounds like what some foreign authorities have their ATP candidates focus on. Sometimes I get the feeling that *some* of those guys would be better at building an ILS than actually flying one.
Quite true. This type of stuff is JOB specific. All of this stuff that is now forefront in my everyday flying has NOTHING to do with what 99% of the professionals out there have to deal with on a regular basis. I'm part of the apparatus that hopefully makes it all transparent to the guys/gals who are having to fly these approaches in the weather, at night, with any numbers of possible distractions and hope that they can rest assured that at least those parts of the NAS are operating up to specs.
Point taken though. As professionals, we should have a solid foundation of knowledge about the stuff we use every day
I struggle with systems. Always have and I still don't have a mechanical bone in my body it seems!
I tried to remedy that by getting heavily involved in the maintenance functions that I could as a young officer in a squadron, getting my Post/Maintenance Check Flight qualification as soon as possible and utilizing it while listening to the smarter system/maint. guys (obviously to include the maintainers themselves) and not being afraid to ask questions - A LOT of questions. But unless it comes up during some other conversation for example - I'm probably not going to delve into those inners workings of the inverter to use the example we are building on here in these posts.
Re. the military time, I didn't realize you sometimes did so little flying, but it is what it is. I think the saying is that you're an officer first, and a pilot second?
Yes. Sometimes those hours don't tell the whole story either. Even at 1500 - that is a lot of less than 1.0s in that logbooks with a 1.1-1.3 probably being average. A single flight taking an hour to brief and up to many hours to debrief. Then it is off the the full time job.
I agree with you that 2500/500 may be a bit steep. Not because it would hinder the military folks, or because you can have "too much" experience. Instead, I think if we're going to take somebody from a light piston to a CRJ, the extra thousand hours spent at 100kt isn't going to make a 250kt downwind in ORD any easier.
Though I have said that my background probably made for the worst possible entry into my new flying job, I do bring certain aspects to the environment. That experience comes from many different sources. Combine that with willingness to be trained and an ability to listen and learn - and most, but not all, can be successful with an appropriate amount of time and effort put into training a future (insert your type of pilot here).
USMCFLYR