After six weeks of ground school we finally got to the fun part of the course, the simulator. A total of 44 hours in the simulator before the skill test is alot compared to the minimum requirement from the CAA and gave us a solid foundation before we move over to flying the real thing with passengers.
In comparison, Kristian and I had 24 hours in the Jetstream simulator before we did the skill test.
I started flying 5 simulator passes with Marius, where the focus was to teach us how to fly the thing and get us to use all the correct call outs, checklists and procedures. We stared off flying maneuvers just like we did at flight school to get the feeling for the machine, and as we progressed through the course we had to battle against engine failures, fires and alot of other system failures.
This gave a solid foundation before the final 6 passes which we flew with a captain candidate which we got assigned. These passes were more focused towards more advanced appoaches and short runways, and decision making after faults occur and in emergencies. These usually happen at the most critical point in the simulator, so the flying has to be as precise as possible to avoid hitting one of the many mountains around Norway.
After the progress check Thursday, we were ready for the skill test on Friday. With early starts every day this week, it wasn´t too hard to get up at 5 to start the breif at 6. After going through what we were going to do in the simulator and answering some questions, technical and performance, we were ready for 4 hours in the box trying to impress the examiner. The flight was out of Torp with plenty of failures and misc approaches. We, including the examiner, were happy with our performance which means I now have a Dash-8 type rating on my licence (at least a temporary one until the CAA prints out my new one).
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The simulatoren in action
The instructor has a fancy control panel where he can control all parameters and add faults and failures
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