Week 9: Instruments

A week of lessons is over, and so is another topic; Instruments, which is split into two parts. Basic Instruments is associated with mostly mechanical instruments and how they operate in relation to pressure and temperature. So for example, an airspeed indicator is fed with both total pressure as well as static pressure (pressure of the ambient air) and therefore the differential pressure between them is used to determine speed. It's a clever, yet simple piece of kit..

Moving on from this (and the concept of gyroscopes, thank goodness!), we finished off the topic with Advanced Instruments from Thursday until Saturday, which was taught to us by two Airbus A320 pilots. This is more to do with the technical, computer sides of things and deals with components of modern aircraft such as the Autopilot System and Flight Management Computer (FMC). The FMC contains all the navigation and performance data which pilots need to navigate a flight a plan effectively whilst also determining the optimum speeds and altitude at which to fly. Despite having a very important and complex job, it's actually quite weak in terms of power compared with today's computers funnily enough! We also covered the automated, safety sides of things like the TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) which in a nutshell, alerts the pilots if you're flying a little bit close to another aircraft! 

The Control Display Unit (CDU), used to access the Flight Management Computer (FMC)

Advanced Instruments has definitely been the most interesting part of Ground School for me so far, and it's all relevant stuff which we'll be using on a daily basis in our careers. Although right now it's just a lot to take in and remember! We also had a brief simulator session on Saturday morning in the 737-700 to have a go at programming the systems and seeing how they actually work in reality. It was great fun, and certainly gave me a motivation boost (not that I needed one!). 

Credits go to my course mate Eren for the photos..  https://instagram.com/eren12/