Serious question for regional pilots
 

This is a serious question for those who have entered the regional industry recently or for those Captains who are flying with those who are new.

I would like to know if there are certain areas that could have been better covered in your primary training or formal type training that could have better prepared you for line flying. It seems that I hear more and more that airline's are preparing you to fly your particular aircraft only as a new hire and leaving out information that's not required but would certainly be helpful.

Think book knowledge or simulator training. I am doing research on this right now and am interested in areas that need emphasis. ie. radar operation, jet aerodynamics, systems descriptions, etc.

Thanks for any input on this.

Right off the bat, I would say radar usage in the sim. I know how to turn it on, but I don't have any technique for how to use it to avoid thunderstorms, etc. Keep in mind, I've not flown the line yet.

I did take aerodynamics at Riddle, but I think a refresher for that would have been helpful, especially considering the level of experience that many newhires have being hired into their first jet.

Mental decent planning. We do have "advisory VNAV" and the 3 to 1 rule is talked about in our POM, but maybe some more practical use of it in the sim. I know time is critical and expensive. But the last thing I want is some captain resenting me because of the time I got hired with thinking Im going to kill him and the pax because I don't know what Im doing. But everyone says "you'll learn that on the line or IOE."

This may be an isolated incident, but I sure was trying to fly the CRJ sim with rudder...force of habit! I did all my training with a capt who has 17yrs with the company and 15-20k hours. Our instructor was a former 121 CRJ capt. So at times, it seemed like between them, they "knew" alot and certain things weren't readily apparent to me.

All you need to know about descent planning. 3X the altitude to lose = distance to start your descent plus a fudge factor (round up). Rate = 1/2 your ground speed. For example 440 knot GS you would do a 2200 fpm descent. That's all you need to know and it works every time like a charm. I don't even bother with the VNAV in the FMS.

For example you are at 22000 ft and you have to cross a point at 10000 ft. 12 X 3 = 36 + a 4 mile fudge factor if you want to be conservative means you start down 40 miles before the point. Rate is half your groundspeed. Don't make it any more complicated than that or worry about wasting sim time on such a simple concept that takes 2 minutes to learn.

I know...I've read about it in the book. I was just thinking of some of the things I hear people complaining about that all of us 300hr wonders (I was hired above the mins for XJ, but less than 1k hrs) don't know. It's all new to us and very often, we don't know what we don't know. I just think with the low time that alot of pilots are being hired with, alot of the things that we don't encounter in the Part 91 world she be explained or gone over perhaps in gorund school.

The problem is there's just not enough class/sim time to spoon feed every little thing you need to know. So a lot of it winds up being OJT training. But at least you acknowledge there's still a lot you don't know vs. a lot of 300 hr guys who think they know everything. Keep that attitude and you'll do fine.

Of course I don't. How could I? I always say one of the best ways to learn is from people who know more than you. Fortuantely, I have known quite a few people in the 121 world who have been in it for years before me. So much of what I've been through, I expected. I also have fairly decent quality in my hours, I think.

Radar wasn't gone over very well in my training either, but it seems like it will be easy to pick up once I start line flying. The sim doesn't even have working radar, so it's understandable why we didn't go over much.

I keep hearing everyone has problems with visual approaches. The first visual approach I did was on my sim checkride. Mine worked out perfect, but I guess for the most part people struggle with them for whatever reason.

The best way to learn radar is in day VMC ...when you see a cell 40 miles out, play with the radar and watch how it paints it...play with the Gain and Tilt, there's no way to teach it other than some rules of thumb...+5 tilt in the Climb and descent, 0 to -1 in cruise.

I'm no expert, but maybe this will help. Keep in mind that it isn't rocket science, but you do have to experiment a little.

Cruise Setting
Tilt the radar down until you pick up ground returns at a distance similar to your altitude. Note the angle. Raise radar 10 degrees. Finally lower the radar 1/2 the angle of the dish.

Example: Altitude FL250 with an 8 degree dish. Tilt radar down until ground returns at 25 miles. Tilt up 10 degrees. (lets say ground return setting was -3, you will tilt up to +7). Then you will tilt down 4 degrees (1/2 of 8 degree dish). (Example then is 7-4 for a final setting of +3).

Departure and Arrival
Technique only, tilt the radar to full up setting to look at what's going on in the middle and tops of the towering cumulus around you. (at minimum raise it up to the last TIP (from cuise example you are at tip after you raise the dish 10 degrees). I read a good article on weather radar management where the flight crew got hammered going into an airport with no significant returns on their screen because they had the radar set to cruise and the clouds around them were giving Red and Magenta returns at higher altitudes than the RADAR was looking.

Gain
I increase the gain at night or when imbedded CB's are expected to make the weather look worse than it really is. Pure technique but I'd rather avoid the yellow if I can because it is only 1dB away from being orange, and the orange returns are only 1dB away from being red.

Observe everything your CA's do. Add the techniques they have that you like into your bag of tricks. You may have to tailor your techniques to certain CA's from time to time (as I learned after my flight with our unit IP this week) but I bet you'll find that as long as you follow the base procedures and get your job done, that CA sitting next to you will be happy. Some will force thier techniques on you and you'll just have to deal with it.

Finally, the airplane will eventually tell you what it needs after you get a little time under your belt. I've noticed that moving from my previous King Air to my current mutant King Air. I was sinking hard in the flare and needs a little power on landing to touch down smooth and the plane needs a calf full of rudder in turns and during power changes. Again, that took Thirty or so hours many landings to catch on for me, but you'll figure it out.

Thanx Clue. Towards the end of my training and during my PC I got it figured out...enough to pass anyway. It was just the beginning that I was so far behind the airplane I couldn't think about what I was doing. Im much more confident now.

Years ago my first flight in Saab brought this quote from the Check Airman

"You look as nervous as a wh*** in church on Sunday, now relax":)

Speaking of radar, had a united mainline captain riding in the cockpit the other day. Our radar had somehow gone screwy so that the gain was full up and we couldn't change it. So we are coming into ORD and on the arrival there was this little shaft of rain right on the arrival and the radar paints it a great red color about 3 miles in front of us. So this captain, who had been sleeping most of the flight, looks up at the screen and sees this and freaks. He hits me on the shoulder and yells in my ear "Are you gonna go through that!?" Now I'd been watching it out the window for bout 10 minutes and knew it wasn't anything to worry about, you could see right through it. Maybe a mile across if that. I look back and am like "Yeah sure."
Well he kinda looks at me startled and I smile then he sits back and puts on his shoulder straps and tightens cranks down on the straps to tighten them up. And then holds onto our seats like we were gonna get rocked.
I about crapped myself. I wound up turning around it just so he didn't have a heart attack. If he'd just looked out the window would have seen it was nothing.

I don't think any training can fully prepare you for Line-flying. Whether you like it or not, much of what we do can only be learned effectively on the job. It works the same with anything you learn - I don't think I fully understood half of what I learned until I saw it used on the Line...

Thanks for the responses so far guys. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. I head out on a trip tomorrow so if I don't get the chance everyone have a Merry Christmas!

Guess it all depends on the aircraft you fly. All 121 aircraft are supposed to have a working radar so that is definitely an area to at least give some type of specific publication on the operation of that system. Generally if you are new to the 121 environment then you are going to be flying an RJ or a turboprop. I started out in an RJ and came straight over from an F-172. Yeah, they actually fly pretty different. I guess it is something that I should have picked up from aerodynamics but it was one of those things that I just kind forgot about. For example - something that should be brought up on landings is that in a propeller aircraft with an engine forward of the C.G. when you add power the initial tendency is for the aircraft to nose up. This is not so in an RJ with aft mounted engines. When you add power the nose pitches down and vise versa. Bringing that to someones attention could help with the stabilized approach phase. The other thing that took a while to really figure out was the use of the FMS. Of course you get the basics but I never got WHY I was doing the things I was doing. It was all rote learning and we never really got to the understanding stage of using the FMS. It would have been helpful to have some type of users manual for it or something.

Small aero correction. The thrust change pitching moment is related to the thrust line relative to the CG vertically. Forward or aft doesn't matter unless there is an extreme angle to the thrust line and it crosses the longitudinal axis on the same side as the engines. Then you'd get some funny behavior. If the thrust line is above the CG (as in a CRJ), an increase in power will result in a pitch down moment versus how a forward mounted single or wing mounted twin/jet works. The 170 actually compensates for thrust pitch changes with the FBW system. You don't have to change anything, it just adjusts the neutral point of the elevator for you.

Thanks for the correction. Honestly I didn't even think of it that way but it makes total sense. Just one of those things some of us have yet to think of but would be a great help when it comes to flying a jet. Especially ones that don't have the benefit of FBW. :D

Thanks for all the tips and tricks you guys that have been around are throwing out. This is a great thread for me. I'm just getting ready for sims and it seems to me this is all coming so fast. It is a hard transition from small G/A aircraft to a 121 jet enviroment. There are alot of people reading these posts and gathering in as much info as possible.

I agree that weather radar should be covered a bit more. We read an article in class from some famous airline captain who was supposed to be really good on radar, but to be honest, I understood about half of it. And we weren't tested on it, it was just a "for your information" type of thing.

all the radar knowledge I have, I got from sitting on the ground on rainy days with ground power hooked up to the Seneca, pointing at clouds (with no one around, of course). Unfortunately, I got the Seminole instead of the Seneca for my multi-engine course, so I missed the whole "practical radar" part.

The sim is a great controlled learning environment but it's not a substitute for the real world. No matter how much they try and cram in the syllabus you're just not going to be a seasoned pro after 8 sims. All the sim does is make you safe enough to fly the airplane under the supervision of a check airman. Your IOE will "fill in the blanks" and cover a lot of things they don't have time to cover in training like using the radar. For now my advice would be don't pester your sim instructor with questions about things that aren't in the syllabus, worry about passing your checkride and the rest will come later. You'll have plenty of time to play with the wx radar once you get online. ;)

Very sound advice, exwaterski...

Ya'll are worried way too much about things like Radar...trust me, you do not want to learn about that system in a Simulator environment - you want to be able to see and feel the stuff as you fly through what you've painted. Worry about one thing in training - passing the Checkride...IOE is for the learning part.

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 :rolleyes: 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.

I did take aerodynamics back in my Riddle days....years ago. So I have to admit its not all fresh, but I do remember some basic principles. And I have Aero for Navy dudes!! I used it as a reference when I was doing my CFI/II. I asked about high altitude aerodynamics in ground school, but we never really talked about it. It wasn't in the cirriculum.

Here's a pretty good guide (from Honeywell via SmartCockpit.com) http://www.smartcockpit.com/pdf/flightops/aircraft/0001

I once looked at ASA's high altitude and general aerodynamics module and it was pretty good. Of course I was told it was born out of an early RJ incident back in the late nineties.

Good luck. Let me know if you have any questions. PM if you want to. I served time in a training department and would be glad to answer whatever I could for you.

From what I gather, it seems that by making sure we simply follow whats in the POM, we shouldn't encounter any problems. For example, we are forbidden to climb in VS...we always use SPD mode. And the book states that we also shall never fly slower than 290KIAS above FL180 especially while climbing.

"Fly the Wing" is a really good reference book, too. It's intended audience is first-time jet pilots. Good reading with info on radar, high-altitude aerodynamics, etc. But, I'm sure you'll be fine.

Enjoy IOE, you'll feel like you're head is spinning at first, but then things slow down.

I'd like to get my hands on that book.

I guess you'll never stall the plane... but what if ATC says 250kt climb ? (actually, the limit for ATC on departure is a speed assignment of 230kts or greater for turbojet a/c).

Plus, SPD mode doesn't work muy bueno above 30-ish thousand feet (certainly far better in the 700 and 900 than 100/200, of course)

I'm guessing Pitch mode would cause a heart attack with somebody?

Im not sure what would happen in that situation (250kt climb). Though I have yet to talk to a controller and I know quite a few of them who would want a slower climb speed.

I have my book right in front of me (900 only). 250KIAS to 10K then 290KIAS transition to M.74. Alt climb 320KIAS at 10K transition to M.77.

CAUTION: When climbing at altitudes above 18K, the airspeed shall never be less than 290 KIAS or M.74. If at any time, the aircraft does not climb at a rate of at least 500FPM, stop climb and level off. I can't find the "no V/S" rule written anywhere but I know I remember being told.

I felt like LOFT was too brief in my training. I was comfortable with the airplane and the emergencies, etc., but still just didn't know how a normal day went until after IOE. During my LOFT, the instructor put us through ice, a minor abnormal, 100+ knot winds at 10,000 feet, and thunderstorms (with 0 previous training on how/when to use radar, so we didn't even have it on, plus there was no "understood" weather in our LOFT scenario.) Now, all this sounds so tame, but to someone brand new to this kind of flying, it was a lot to digest all at once.

I think my experience could have been better by throwing in one more LOFT session, with nothing extra, no ice, no tx, no maintenance abnormalities, just move the ship from a to b, making the pas, the ops calls, etc.

Then, do another one with some radar usage, some icing, etc..

Funny how the now everyday things like ice and weather seem so easy to manage, but as a rookie in training, it was pretty overwhelming.

My loft was night winter ops in snow and the FMS deferred. Not bad...a welcome break from all the stuff breaking all the time.