Tim Connors
Florida based airline pilot Tim Connors is a freelance contributor to
Airline Pilot Central. Tim has ghost-written numerous aviation
articles, and his work is published on several familiar media
outlets. In a previous career, Tim worked as an internationally
recognized chef and in addition to flying he and his wife now operate a
traveling cooking school which provides an exclusive culinary
experience for his clients.
| Ground School 101 - Part One |
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Page 2 of 2 The finale of indoc and GOM are usually a test. You are required to demonstrate that you haven’t memory dumped all of the information that has been ladled into your cranium. These are usually done on a Friday with the idea of getting a few days off to get some studying for the next bout of mental battery. Once done, it is on to systems, where you become something akin to a medical examiner of airplanes, digging deep into engines and air conditioning, gently fondling the delicate electric paths that the AC and DC busses use to power your turbine driven ride. It will be a long 1-3 weeks there, with loads of information. The stress of systems can be greatly eased by taking the spare 1 minute and 37 seconds you have in a day, after 4 hours of sleep, 9 hours of class, 6 hours of study, 3 hours of deep, reflective prayer for help and 1 hour, 48 minutes and 23 seconds of copious coffee drinking, and studying the limitations and memory items that will be covered there. Systems class is where the “drinking water from a fire hose” more than likely came from. Temperatures and limitations are machine gunned at you, along with various pressures and speeds. What if’s?, where’s? and how’s? are lobbed like grenades, everyone scattering at the sheer terror of answering the question wrong and earning smug looks from other students whose hands seem paralyzed at the exact instant a question is asked. The intimate parts of the airplane are ruthlessly dissected. You become the molecule of air that is jammed into the engine, compressed, torched, expanded, driven into an anti ice tube or air conditioning unit and finally inhaled gently by the passengers sitting behind you in the cabin. You are the bus tie contactor, stoically watching for transients and fluctuations, jealously guarding the bus and keeping her safe. The gear, the flaps, the exquisite LCD displays and the computers feeding them those pretty colored symbols, those are all you. The information is crammed deep into your head, the numbers and limits blurred as if de-ice fluid was hitting them on sheets of paper. This is what will get you to a point of comfort when flying the plane during an emergency. You are learning the architecture of the plane so that when a problem arises, your knowledge of its systems will help get you to an expeditious resolution. The United States Navy SeALs have a saying on Coronado, where most of their early training is done: “The only easy day was yesterday”. That could easily apply to systems. Next week, it’s into the simulator.          |
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