Q400 PILOT
Written: 09 JUNE 2011

 

I've actually been released for a little while now. I finished the final release in May, and have flown two weeks on the Q400 on line since then. It's a wonderful aircraft to fly as it has alot more power compared to weight than I've been used to so far. The glass cockpit is a pleasure to work in, as the screens provide the information you need easily without your eyes and fingers having to jump around too much.

The course started with a week in the classroom in March where we went throught the different aircraft systems. Then I spent three days in the simulator in Stockholm in April, and then towards the end of April I flew the aircraft for landing practice. I started four days of instruction in May immediately followed by four days of supervision which ended in the final release.

 

 

 

 

In the simulator we had three days, where each day comprised of one hour of briefing, four hours in the simulator and one hour debreifing. The first simulator pass was basically spent getting to know the airplane before we moved on to emergency procedure traning the following two passes.

Then the time came for the landing practice, where I and Bjørn, who was with me in the simulator, got the airplane to ourself one afternoon at Easter to fly circuits at Torp with an instructor. We each got four landings. My mind went back to the good old days at flight school where I did a numerous amounts of landings in the pattern.

The first four days of instruction was mainly flown out of our Torp base. A lot of the flights went to and from Copenhagen and Trondheim and the flights was generally fairly long. During instruction the main focus was learing how to fly the aircraft on normal routes. The following four days of supervision was mostly the same type of flying, but during supervision the attention was shifted more to making sure I was doing all the procedures exactly by the book. The last day of supervision I was signed out and released to ordinary route flying.

 

 

 

 

BANGKOK, THAILAND

In March/April, Line and I went over to Thailand for one week to surprise Lines mother who celebrated her birthday there. The two of us had two nights in Bangkok first to explore the city since it was my first time there. Exciting city with alot of people, trafic, chaos, smells (most of them not very good) and impressions. After two nights in Bangkok we headed out towards the coast to the place Lines parents were staying before they headed off to Koh Samui. She was very surprised when we jumped out of the taxi infront of the restaurant where they ate lunch.

 

 

 

 

NEW YORK, USA

In May we went to New York with a couple of friends to enjoy the low prices and the cheap dollar. It looked a bit scary for a moment when the Islandic vulcano Grimsvotn decided to throw alot of ash up in the air in an attempt to close the airspace, but as our departure date came, the vulcano luckily had given up.