How ugly might it get?
10-19-2021 | 05:21 PM
#51
Gets Weekends Off
Joined: Apr 2015
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Here’s how it went. Regular start, starter indication on the advisory went out at 50 seconds. My hand goes off from the button to stop a starter. Sometime between my hand moving from the stop button and the other hand stopping the clock I get a caution. I forget the exact verbiage but it was something like air start valve open. I had never seen that in training. Saw hot/hung/no and starter remains on, advisory still on, starts.
As I had never done that I announced the caution and went to the qrh. I complete the qrh which has me hit the stop button and the caution extinguishes. The APD asks what is the clock at and I state 92 seconds.
Not sure that it matters. I had chosen to be PM for the first leg out. Everything went fine with that, kind of hard to mess that up. Only real thing that had happened on that was a hold and had to determine how much time we had available in holding before diverting.
As I had never done that I announced the caution and went to the qrh. I complete the qrh which has me hit the stop button and the caution extinguishes. The APD asks what is the clock at and I state 92 seconds.
Not sure that it matters. I had chosen to be PM for the first leg out. Everything went fine with that, kind of hard to mess that up. Only real thing that had happened on that was a hold and had to determine how much time we had available in holding before diverting.
10-19-2021 | 05:31 PM
#52
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Joined: Jun 2018
Posts: 500
Likes: 5
What I seem to understand and what you're missing is piping bleed air at potentially several hundred degrees into a starter on a multi million dollar jet engine that has a bolded limitation to avoid such activity past a certain point, be it time or turbine speed, aint gonna end well, either for your ride, and potentially the engine.
The caution msg you referred to above is actually referenced specifically in section 4 of the POH in the engine start section, where the related section starts with the following line: "It is imperative that starter cutout be observed at 50% N2," then proceeds to tell you exactly what to do to solve the problem prior to referencing the QRH / QRC should you see the NO STRTR CUTOUT or STRT VLV OPEN messages. It is a scenario that is usually covered in training while doing an external air start, but could also occur on an APU start. While perhaps what you say on your bust was maybe not exactly what you had seen in training, apparently the APD assumed enough transfer of information in other parts of your training had occurred that you would be able to respond well, not to mention the specific situation was referenced in the POH. I guess he was mistaken.
But hey, at least you have a cadence.
The caution msg you referred to above is actually referenced specifically in section 4 of the POH in the engine start section, where the related section starts with the following line: "It is imperative that starter cutout be observed at 50% N2," then proceeds to tell you exactly what to do to solve the problem prior to referencing the QRH / QRC should you see the NO STRTR CUTOUT or STRT VLV OPEN messages. It is a scenario that is usually covered in training while doing an external air start, but could also occur on an APU start. While perhaps what you say on your bust was maybe not exactly what you had seen in training, apparently the APD assumed enough transfer of information in other parts of your training had occurred that you would be able to respond well, not to mention the specific situation was referenced in the POH. I guess he was mistaken.
But hey, at least you have a cadence.
The bust is on me, never said it wasn’t. It was the first time I ever hooked anything or had to do a retrain after over 100 training flights through multiple syllabi. Still think the first strike is hogwash, and yeah, my cadence will keep me from pulling engines that shouldn’t be in the air. It has kept me from making mistakes during emergencies that I’ve had to deal with through a 15 year aviation career.
I’m in a much better place had I been allowed to recheck. That wasn’t an option, and frankly, I’m happy it wasn’t.
10-19-2021 | 05:31 PM
#53
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Joined: Mar 2018
Posts: 671
Likes: 102
Seems fishy that you would bust for exceeding the limitation by 2 seconds. I am guessing it had to do with you not recognizing a bad start. Wasn't there a pneumonic that they teach and a limitation? TEMS or something like that? It's been awhile, but don't you just remove the fuel and ignition and let it motor?
10-19-2021 | 05:52 PM
#54
Gets Weekends Off
Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 2,610
Likes: 15
I mean, it’s easy to go quote a POH when you’ve got it there. My overall point here is that training didn’t cover that. The APD knows what is covered in training. Any APD on any day can use little things to throw people off. When you look at the percentages of failures from one group to the rest of the testing population there are significant deviations. These differences do not occur in other companies.
I’m in a much better place had I been allowed to recheck. That wasn’t an option, and frankly, I’m happy it wasn’t.[/QUOTE]
There are zero courses in the civilian world that are going to cover 100% of the iterations of failure modes that you could see in an aircraft, and I guess its the APD's fault for assuming you had actually read the POH section 4 enough to respond to things that looked slightly different from what you saw in training.
And yes, you specifically isolated that bust from the other two you said were your fault:
My opinion, like I said, I own the other two strikes, completely my fault. That first one though was hogwash.
Enjoy your career.
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