Thank you, I did in fact get the job and I’m excited to start my training.

I actually didn’t mind the prep work, and here’s why:

1. I had left a well-paying job as a government civilian working for the Navy after being a defense contractor for 5 years. Office life - the slow pace of change, unending busy work, and office politics - were taking its toll on my spirit. I wanted to return to being a pilot, but I hadn’t flown in 14 years and knew I needed to review things I hadn’t thought about for a long time. It helped me decide that yes, I did indeed want to return to flying.

2. I need to get my ATP and reviewing that material helped me prepare for that as well.

3. I wanted to show myself and the company that I was willing to put in the effort to have my ducks in a row. I didn’t want my lack of currency and recency to be more of an obstacle that it naturally is.

4. It reduced interview anxiety.

5. The interview validated the value of prep work in my particular case. I was asked technical questions that I would not have answered correctly without having done the prep. As an example, it had been a long while since I had thought about aerodynamics. I pulled out my old copy of Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators and revisited concepts I hadn’t thought much about since flight school in the mid 80s. After a 20 year flying career I am very comfortable with applied aerodynamics, and concepts like the region of reversed command, because they are crucial to flying off aircraft carriers. But to reread the theory of L/Dmax and swept wings and stalling airfoils was valuable review for me. Same thing with reviewing my NATOPS manual and the EA-6B systems. I spent a lot of time going “oh yeah” in my head as I recalled the 115vAC buses, fuel pumps, hydraulic systems, flight controls, turbojet engines and such.

6. I had never used Jeppesen charts or approach plates. That was my only weak area in the interview, mostly because they are laid out differently than the FAA pubs that NGA produces and DoD uses. I knew what information was important and what they conveyed, but finding the information on demand was a challenge.

7. I learned how the civilian and airline worlds think about takeoff and landing. In the Navy we have concepts called Min Go and Max Abort but we don’t use V1 and V2, for example, at least in election seat aircraft. And in my field takeoffs and landings I used to think about taking the long field arresting gear, using afterburners or not, and ejection scenarios that are no longer relevant. I’ve flown 1490 landings and exactly half of those, 745, are carrier arrested landings. That doesn’t include bolters and ship touch and goes, so my shipboard and field experience is different from doing parallel approaches into LAX or sporty takeoffs and landings at SAN.

8. Weather services and capabilities have changed a lot in the last 14 years. Same with cockpit systems, displays, and landing approach technology. Many of the approaches routinely flown now either weren’t invented when I stopped flying or use different equipment than I used. I’ve flown many ACLS, PAR, and TACAN approaches and some ASR and NDB approaches. But very little civilian ILS and none of the fancy RNAV/GPS stuff that exists today.

Long winded answer. But my prep work was and continues to be valuable as I move forward. I realized yesterday during my ATP prep with Sheppard Air software that I know very little about calculating weight and balance because I never had to do that. So I will apply extra effort to learn my known unknowns instead of relying on past experience. It’s all good for the Baron.