IFR Training : Simulator FNPT II

After a few months of absence for family reasons, I am back in training on the ground of Charleroi Airport. I took advantage of my bad luck in this beginning of 2013 to finish my time building with the aim to begin my IFR training as soon as possible.

Aim reach since I start the formation in september ! I'm not very use to the building of Charleroi and its instructors, being formed exclusively in Liège till now. I started the training with C-H, a young instructor graduated from the famous ENAC in 2010, who arrived a few weeks earlier to reinforce the IFR instructors team in Charleroi. He is very friendly, and the simulator promises to be rich on a humain and technical scale.

The IFR is known to be the toughest part of an airline training, thus I went to the first simulator session with a bit of apprehension. The training given by the school is very standard ; 35h on simulator FNPT II followed by 15hours on Cessna 182RG. Being kind of short on money, I really can't afford to make some extra hours on the simulator or the aircraft...

FNTPII

My 2 wingmen in action !

The first sessions are quiet easy to be honest. The two first hours are spent doing some piloting without external reference stuff, meaning we are flying IMC and relying on the instrument to guide us. The only reference for the pilot is the attitude indicator (ou new best friend !) backed up by the other instruments onboard. The goal is to show the student how important it is to trust those instruments. The ADI failure can be a real pain in the ass, because it can be slow or fast depending on the good willing of the instructor and be very disturbing at first. You have to rely on the other instruments and crosscheck their informations to understand what the aircraft is doing. For example a speed increasing and altitude going down mean that you're going down obviously. Add to that bank angle and stress, and you can hit the ground faster than you might think !

After those two hours, we learn how to intercept radials inbound and outbound from a VOR then for a NDB. The procedure requires a bit of patience but is not very complicated in the end. C-H teaches us how to do a standard instrument departure(SID), following a designated route to leave the airport and start the enroute phase...And it is already time to learn certainly the most difficult procedure ; the holding pattern.

The holding is the famous lifter for aircraft for the common world. It was designed to put the aircrafts in queu before the landing, today used to give time to the pilot to handle a failure or prepare the plane for landing. It has several 'stages' at different altitudes given either by the ATC or requested by the pilot. When the pilot is ready for the approach, he can leave the holding upon passing the station and start the approach.

Even if it looks harmless, the holding can be a real chinese puzzle for young pilots and even the older one. The secret is to visualize the position of the aircraft seen from the holding pattern. Indeed, there is 3 types of entry, depending on your position...

The second simulator consacred to the holding was a real ordeal for my wingman and myself ! C-H took the decision to stop the session after only 40minutes of  fly, knowing that I burned of good part of  my cerebral cortex in the first 10minutes of the session. Fortunately, his patience and perseverance allowed me to defeat those 'circles in the sky'. I had then a little bit less then 15h of simulator, being the approximate time of the mid simulator check. We were in the time limit and I passed the mid check.

The next phase of the training and the most intersting part ; the instrument approach procedures. Head down in the needles, we are leaving the hold to join the outbound leg, sector designed to put the aircraft in position to intercept the final axis course or inbound leg. Even if it isn't de most demanding part of the training on a 'things to do' point of view, it is certainly the most demanding on a concentration point of view ! After 40 to 50minutes of simulator, full of failures and sweating, the approach can quickly turn into a living nightmare. This is the time when the instructor is having fun, he wants to see where your breaking point is, to assess your capacity to handle failures and stressfull situations. However, this part was the most fun and it is with an unmatched delight that we discover the ramp light drawing on the screen a few feet above the minima. Flying is really an art now !

ILS Approach R25 EBCI

After a few more hours, we start to feel confortable (or almost!) with all those procedures. Time has come to practise everything with navigations. Handling of time, fuel, failures and of course weather forecast ! So, everything that we will have to do when flying the Cessna182. By that time, I have round 28-29hours of training on the FNPT, which is perfectly on the schedule. C-H saw that I was doing okay during the last session, so he asked me if I wanted to do a few more ndb approach (more complicated to realise because of the lack of precision of the ADF) for my last sim before the big one in front of the chief flight instructor. I said yes of course and finished the simulator training with 33hours and 30minutes of flight, juste enough for a final check of 1hour and a half !

NDB Approach LFMP