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/

Mocks and Module One Exams

First of all, sorry for the lack of activity on here recently. Unfortunately during the period of revision for exams frankly there isn't much to talk about, apart from how little time I've spent away from my desk! Nevertheless, I thought I'd give a quick update on what's been going on in the last couple of weeks.

Following on from my last module one lessons, we had about a week or so to revise (and most importantly remember!) everything before sitting our first set of mock exams. CTC Aviation require that we sit these mock exams before the real thing, which is a good idea because it's shows the progress that you're making and also highlights any weak areas which you then have time to work on before you sit the real exam.

Thankfully I passed all the mocks and then what followed was the SLOWEST 2 weeks of my life; getting ready for the real CAA exams. The days felt longer and my wall of notes just kept growing..

Before I arrived, I'd set myself a target of 90% average as a minimum for my exams, and I'm happy to say that I got a 94% average across my module 1 exams, meaning that the hard work and late nights have paid off! I'm now looking forward to a weekend off at home for the first time, before module 2 starts on Monday! It's also exciting to think that we are a third of the way through ground school, so flight training in Phoenix is slowing starting to creep up on us!