Tips & advice Indoc at DAY
 

Will be starting indoc soon with PSA any tips and advice for the training. I have the memory items pretty well memorized and working with the flows. Anything would help thanks

Yes!
Pay attention, ask lots of questions, study hard.

Oh, and rethink the Ace Aviator thing. Consider waiting till that’s been proven😉

Drive there and have your car with you. If you don’t it will be miserable. Study every single day.

Don’t worry about the flows until you have the limits and immediate action items down cold. One step at a time, I don’t know how you are but I’ve seen guys get overwhelmed trying to work too far ahead. Flows aren’t until like Week 3, so you’ve got time. Cooperate, graduate, and try to have some fun.

Make friends quickly. Determine who would make a good sim partner. Offer to meet with said person as often as possible to study together, practicing flows, discussing systems, etc.

Don’t set any fashion statements, and equally important... be on time.

I just finished on Sunday. I’m on IOE now. I absolutely LOVE it. With respect to training, I would have done a few things differently but most of it will be guided for you so don’t worry about it.

- you will be issued an iPad by the company; keep it up to date and with you always, it’s got most everything you need (POH, FOM, etc...)

- you’re going to need to know POH limits cold; all bold items are memory items and you need to know how to find non-bold items; you will receive a packet of info with flows before you get to Ohio, make flash cards and memorize the facts, don’t waste time waiting until you start to learn, you don’t have time to waste.

- think you’re going to be taking weekends off? Hahahahahaha! I would take no more than one night. No one at PSA will tell you what schedule to work, but let me tell you some facts: never put off until tomorrow what you can do today and NEVER trust a peaceful moment in a sim.

- memorize what Brian (the systems instructor) wants you to know in systems, but don’t get wrapped around the axle; Brian gives out quizzes during your first day or two with him, just memorize the questions and answers, there’s only ~125, and doing that will give you a solid base to grow your systems knowledge on. He knows the ships and he’s really good about answering questions; memorize his stuff and then read the associated sections, followed by asking him to fill any gaps.

Flows and call outs are huge. There’s not many of them, but you absolutely need to know them well enough to whip them out and use them in SIPS, sims, and out on the line. It is the language that we all speak, the commonality that allows perfect strangers to fly together seamlessly. Set up your paper tigers in your hotel room, learn where the buttons and switches are, and general cockpit layout. Do your flows with them, chair fly with them. Yes, you have to learn the captain flows too. Memorize all your limits and systems quickly so you can focus on call outs and flows. The limits and systems are important, but learning systems and limits is like learning words in a language; learning callouts and flows is like learning to speak with those words. It was easy and fun for me to memorize facts. It was torture to spaz out and vapor lock with the callouts and flows because I knew them but just needed more practice with them.

Example:

*sim instructor says “balked landing”*
- I’m supposed to say “toga, set max thrust, check spoilers” while I toga, firewall the thrust levers (the pilot monitoring will adjust), and make sure the spoilers are put away.
- instead, I say “set max spoilers, toga, ****!”; I’m so task saturated trying to fly while talking about what I’m doing that I no longer know what planet I’m on.

Lmfao, it only goes right after you memorize it and say it about 987 times. You’ll look back and not understand why you couldn’t just say “500’, bug zero, sink 800 ft., stable”, but the truth is, you just need to say it...a lot. Chair fly often.

- there are a lot of techniques taught and a lot of good instructors with buku knowledge to share, but as with anything...verify everything you hear with the literature provided to you on your iPad. The iPad is your bible now.

- I don’t care how far your drive is, bring your car

Good luck! It’s very doable, but you’ve got to want it.

Overall a pretty good summary...but I traveled probably every other weekend or so during indoc. For me, I had to get out of Dayton. If I remember correctly, I traveled 5 or 6 times throughout those 2 months. I jumpseated 3-4 times which was valuable to me, seeing things first hand, etc. Everyone studies in different ways, and I've always struggled studying in groups, so I did my own thing with my partner or by myself. IPTs went fine, sim went fine, got signed off for the checkride with the minimum number of sim slots and passed the first go around.

You're sharper than me I think. Maybe because I'm getting older- I'll be 46 on the 18th.

I walked into this feeling pretty confident. I had several thousand hours, 1300 multi turbine (albeit turboprops), an ATP, and while I'm not the smartest guy on the planet I'm a Mensa member and I used to teach organic chemistry at the university level. I've been flying for 25 years. I also went home one weekend, but I worked the whole time and while I also found the jumpseat experience invaluable if I could do it again I'd have stayed in Dayton. I used all for xft sessions and man did I work my ass off, lol. Totally worth it, but it didn't come easy.

I dunno. Everyone is different. I've seen fighter pilots come through here and struggle, some others who are younger seem to wrestle less. Ymmv.

One thing I forgot- there's a program on the ipad called Ethos. It's wonky and the database is out of date, but the freeplay FMS is super worth it to learn FMS programming and for use as a mini sip.

Good luck!

Know the bold limitations down pat as well as the IAI and the 6 not memory but memory items you have to know are in the QRH.

They say you have to know the Captains flows and you do want to know them. That will make or break your SIP. If you or your partner struggle on them its going to eat up valuable time that the IPTs are for. I personally learned the FO flows and PM flows first then did the captains and I think that helped out a lot.

Everyone says you only need to know the bold limitations and that is somewhat kind of true. I would say you need to know all of Chapter 3 except for the ozone stuff. Anything in that chapter is fair game for MOCK KV and KV but the bold have to be memorized verbatim.

Its a good training foot print but you have to work. They are more than willing to go above and beyond to answer questions and help but you have to put the work in because it really is like drinking from a fire hose.

Most importantly take some time off to decompress. It's needed to get through the training. I'm not saying take off full days etc. but don't overdue it as well. Don't get discouraged. Everyone gets overwhelmed during the training and its normal since you are getting so much information in such a short time period. Have questions speak up!

Good luck and have fun!

Just got in from an IOE day, all 900 flying save the last flight today which was a 700.

The job is just awesome. Great bunch of people, airplanes are nice, and it's an all around good vibe.

I would absolutely do this again if I could go back and time and choose to or not. Just remember- the training environment is temporary, the job is much longer. Totally worth it.

Generally speaking:

If it’s reasonably driveable, drive. You’ll make a lot of friends that way and not be slave to hire shuttles.

With regard to iPads, if you have to use the search function to find everything on an oral, they don’t like that. However, lots of bookmarks are great. Err on the side of knowing things rather than just knowing how to find them at first, but ultimately being able to have a bunch of stuff at your fingertips instantly is golden.

Any trip through Dayton Indoc or Upgrade without a field trip to the AF Museum should be considered an automatic fail.


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