Siiiiiiiiiimulators.
Well for the first time here at Nav school, I can say I've been busy. Due to Friday being a day off for the national day of mourning, our schedule got compressed this week and we've been doing a whole lot at once. On Monday afternoon we had our first sim prep, which consisted of going over three departures and arrivals that we would be flying "in the box" the next morning. Did I mention the 6:30am in your seats in the briefing room start time. So I went over to one of the guys' place around 5pm on Monday and started planning, and was pretty obsessive about having everything set up in a way that would make it easier for me to run all the comms on top of doing everything else, basically scripting stuff out and going over how the comm pattern would flow. I then went home at like 10pm but wasn't satisfied, so I inputted everything I had written into my computer and added color in a way that would make sense, such as different colors for communications inside and outside the plane to ATC. I finally hit the sack aroune 2am, and could feel it around 5am the next morning when I woke up. I think I was nervous though, because it was pretty easy to wake up, kind of when you know you have something important that day.
It was our first graded event for FN of around 15, and it really couldn't have gone much better than it did I think. I made the classic mistakes of trying to talk to ATC with my interphone still switched to pilot or vice versa, and blew through a checkpoint that was basically designed to be within a minute after takeoff when you're doing 80 other things at once, although on the actal departure plate (the sheet with the route drawn on it and a truckload of information to go with it) it looked much further away. Basically your classic errors of someone's first sim ever. We actually ended up doing two as the instructors demo'd the first one, but by the end of the second one I was feeling pretty comfortable in my position. That's a lot to say given I was sitting in front of a few hundred knobs and switches that I saw as foreign objects a couple weeks prior.
The reason I've been busy is we got out of the sim at noon or so yesterday, then after lunch immediately had a class prepping for our second sim which will basically be the same thing, running through departures and approaches, although these are more difficult. The bummer is today although our report time isn't til 11:45, we immediately go into a four hour CGM (Computer Ground Mission) planning session. During these you're basically handed a list of points and a weather sheet and draw up the entire chart and do the entire flight plan and fuel plan, in a timed session of 100 minutes. You don't have a lot of time to be making mistakes and having to start all over, so being efficient is the key. It's listed in a four hour block which probably includes being briefed on what the route will be like and then debriefing on how we did, with our gradesheets being added to immediately afterward. Our summary sheets in our grade folders will eventually show every grade we got in FN, and I'll explain a bit about how those work.
A 4 is an "Excellent" and means you basically did a great job, and were within tolerances even smaller than necessary. A 3 is a "good" or Sat, basically meaning you did what was required and were within the required tolerances on everything. A 2 is "limited proficiency" or Fair I believe, basically meaning you either dorked it up, or required outside help in the Sim, or were outside tolerances on your calculations. A 1 is apparently RARELY seen, and pretty much requires being totally unprepared and having no clue what you're doing. For the most part on the first Sim everyone got 2s and 3s, with 2s being what was required as this point, as it's expected that we'll need a lot of help to get us going and remind us what we're forgetting to do. Starting with later sims a 3 will be required to pass, and that will be the standard on everything until the end of nav school.
So yeah, after our four hour CGM this afternoon, we will then have a short break and immediately have to go over to the Sim for which the briefing will start at 1700 and we'll be in the box by 1800, and not get out until at least 2200. That means home around 11 or midnight or something probably, with my brain pretty nicely fried.
And in case you thought the rest of the week would be easy, the following morning we actually perform the CGM based on our flight plan, altering our route and trying to stay on course along the way and whatnot. That afternoon we have the planning session for our 2nd CGM, which is Friday morning. Friday afternoon we plan for our 3rd CGM and well, then I guess we have a couple days off for the weekend or something. :)
Would love to babble more but gotta get on over to the squadron for the festivities.
Sunday, June 13, 2004
Waiver Approved.
That's pretty much the news of the last few days, and one hell of a weight off my shoulders. Better yet it's good through May 2006, so that's a long time before I'll even have to hassle with it again. No worries about having to find another job, and no worries about getting rolled back. I should be with my class to stay barring unusual circumstances. This next week is going to be a good test for a lot of people, we have our first few sims as well as some computer ground missions, everything is getting a lot more in depth in a hurry. Tomorrow morning we have our checklist class in the mock up instrument room that lets you run through everything that you'll find on your panel for the sims and flights. Last Friday we had our most involved ground mission yet, for which we had to do the entire chart, flight plan, and fuel plan on our own at home before coming in to class. I was pretty close with the numbers and am very satisfied with how I've progressed thus far. Ecah time they add something new I catch on pretty quickly, and spend most of the repetition time making sure everything else is engrained in my brain. Sadly we still aren't really getting a feel of what day to day life as a nav will be like, because after this phase we learn about systems to replace most of the by hand procedures, and beyond nav school we won't be doing the majority of the radio and comm work we do here. I won't be complaining if it just keeps getting easier though.
So it's lookin like December drop and February graduation are much closer to being set in stone. But boy is that a long time away. In other random news we had our 4th monthiversary as we've dubbed them a few days ago and it's now just a little over a month until we see each other when she stops by here on the way to training. Then it'll be the weekend warrior strategy after that probably, we'll see how it goes. It certainly feels like it has been a while apart, and I guess it has.
That's pretty much the news of the last few days, and one hell of a weight off my shoulders. Better yet it's good through May 2006, so that's a long time before I'll even have to hassle with it again. No worries about having to find another job, and no worries about getting rolled back. I should be with my class to stay barring unusual circumstances. This next week is going to be a good test for a lot of people, we have our first few sims as well as some computer ground missions, everything is getting a lot more in depth in a hurry. Tomorrow morning we have our checklist class in the mock up instrument room that lets you run through everything that you'll find on your panel for the sims and flights. Last Friday we had our most involved ground mission yet, for which we had to do the entire chart, flight plan, and fuel plan on our own at home before coming in to class. I was pretty close with the numbers and am very satisfied with how I've progressed thus far. Ecah time they add something new I catch on pretty quickly, and spend most of the repetition time making sure everything else is engrained in my brain. Sadly we still aren't really getting a feel of what day to day life as a nav will be like, because after this phase we learn about systems to replace most of the by hand procedures, and beyond nav school we won't be doing the majority of the radio and comm work we do here. I won't be complaining if it just keeps getting easier though.
So it's lookin like December drop and February graduation are much closer to being set in stone. But boy is that a long time away. In other random news we had our 4th monthiversary as we've dubbed them a few days ago and it's now just a little over a month until we see each other when she stops by here on the way to training. Then it'll be the weekend warrior strategy after that probably, we'll see how it goes. It certainly feels like it has been a while apart, and I guess it has.
