A goal reached - complex endorsement finished

After too many months working on the complex endorsement I finally finished it today. The primary delay was 2-fold - 1) I had to get 5 hours dual minimum for insurance reasons, and 2) weather and schedules kept me from flying very much at all.

But I have finally gotten it and plan to take the wife up for a quick ride in the local area sometime soon.

Overall, getting used to flying a complex airplane was not too hard. After about 3 hours of training I started to feel comfortable. It took those first hours to get used to the proper way to make power changes and to get a good idea of when the lower/raise the gear. The biggest change is the increased importance of checklists. Granted, they are important in the simplest airplane, but their value takes new heights when you have more systems to manage (and potentially forget about). I still need work on checklist discipline but have improved greatly over the last couple months.

I’ve read about people doing even their initial primary training in a complex airplane. Based on my experience going through this recent training, I am glad I didn’t try to do the same thing. It was interesting enough with 200+ hours already under my belt. With zero it might get to the frustrating level pretty quickly.

I enjoy flying partly because of the technical skills required, i.e. when to flip which switch, and this endorsement lets me fly airplanes with even more of that going on.

I just hope it is a good long, long while (read: never) before I prove the adage “There are pilots who HAVE landed with the gear up and those that WILL”.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Updating data on the Garmin Perspective system

Image
After changing from the Avidyne system to the Cirrus Perspective (G1000) system, I had to relearn an important part of owning an airplane: how to update all the data the systems use. There's even more data in the Perspective, including AOPA directory data and more charts. In this walkthrough, I make use of the Jeppesen app for Apple OS X: JDM .  It has worked well for me, though I did need to call Jeppesen when I first set this up to get my subscriptions fixed up.  They gave great customer support when I did. The process starts (optionally) by hooking up a ground power unit (GPU).  In the case of the Cirrus, you can certainly do this without it, but I tend to hook it up just to be sure.  The systems draw about 8-10amps while updating, but you won't generally have the power on for long.  One tip I've read: power up the GPU before plugging it into the plane, at least for the one I bought.  That saves the plane from seeing any power spikes that might have occurred when t
Read more

G1000 transistion training - emergencies - final flight

Image
For the final flight in my G1000 transition course we focused on failure scenarios. Not the "engine goes POOF" kind but the avionics kind. Normal situation This picture shows what the 2 Garmin screens show in a normal (non failure) situation. You can see we have 2 screens - the left PFD focusing on flight performance (airspeed, heading, attitude, altitude) and the right screen (MFD) focusing on engine data, mapping, checklists, and everything else. Failed PFD screen In this scenario the screen that is right in front of you (the PFD) has failed. This basically means the screen has gone dark. We simulate that by dimming the screen down to 0% brightness. After darkening the PFD we shot a GPS approach into Rock Hill. When this failure has occured you shift the G1000 into Reversionary mode. That means the info that is normally split across 2 screens is now merged into 1. It actually duplicates the same data on both screens, but since the PFD screen is no longer functioning
Read more

A-10C Standby Compass - Sun Shade

Image
 One of the final items to add to this instrument build (besides the text covers for the lower LEDs) was the sun shade for the AR LED box.  I made this out of thin aluminum sheets , cutting it from a template using some metal sheers .    My template was created by tracing some of the actual artwork from the DCS sim, and then scaling it to the proper size. It turned out ok, not perfect but pretty good.  Primed and painted it and then installed it using 2 of the 4 holes that were already on the LED box 3D print.  I used some heat inserts in those holes to give the screws something to bite, but the holes are really too big for my inserts so had to use some glue to help out.  
Read more