Originally Posted by
Tinpusher007
Great advice, and that is my plan. The reason I said what I said was that you always hear about these captains that complain about having to babysit, and all this talk about low time newhires who don't know what they are doing. I don't want to be thrown into that group, so I want to know as much as I can going in and "assist the PIC in his duties."
A good attitude will go a long way...sounds like you have that.
I think somebody may have already mentioned high-altitude aerodynamics...this gets seriously glossed over at regionals. If I had to guess why, I'd say because there are few to zero people in the training Depts. who understand the math. The military does not gloss over this, and neither do most majors as far as I know. It is something which can bite you in the butt if you don't understand it and/or don't respect it. There have been numerous high altitude stalls by RJ pilots in the last few years, all of which were caused by ignorance and/or laziness (not to mention flagship..multiple stall protection events in various phases of flight, culminating in death). BTW, major airlines don't stall many airliners
Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators covers it adequately. If you're not a big math person, maybe get some help from someone who is if it doesn't make sense to you.
Also be very respectful of ice contamination, ESPECIALLY on hard-wing CRJ 100/200. There have been multiple fatal crashes of Challengers (the biz-jet version of the CRJ), and one fatal airline crash in China due to pre-takeoff contamination. There are a few cowboy CA's out there who still think they can "eyeball" it or have flown with ice in the past and therefore think they can do it again. Ice properties are variable depending on conditions...it's very hard to predict how it will behave. A clean airplane is only the ice condition where the effects are 100% certain.