First Day

[MAS]

With regards to:

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
I think someone else mentioned that most the Pan Am people get hired by AirNet. They said it like it was a bad thing, but I was reading a couple of articles on AirNet and it seemed a pretty cool place to work. They say within 8 months you could be flying right seat in a Learjet and the left seat about a year after that.


If two persons are "most of the Pan Am people" then Pan Am has decreased significantly in size since I worked there! Two persons went to Airnet that I can think of, do you know how long it takes to even get a command there? To fly regularly on the Baron? Maybe you should check those facts!!

 

[dakovich]

i wouldn't turn um down.

 

[Guest]

DAK!!!!!!!!!!

Any tips on getting through instrument timely and without cost overage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????????///

 

[dakovich]

i just studied like mad. i would have been under in terms of cost if not for my instruction problem. any of the good instructors will teach you the way its done, they'll drill the procedure into your head, and they'll make you feel confident. its all about procedure, and if you follow that you'll be wayyyy ahead of the airplane. know your equipment, and especially know the GPS like you built it. you have to be proficient on the stack set ups, like what freq.'s should go where, putting them in before you need them, and basically setting up for the approach long before you have to do it. if you know the different types of approaches, how they work, what components make them work, and you always stay situationally aware you'll do fine. always know where you are, just as you would any other time. and by that you shouldn't bank on just the GPS, be able to use other navaids. when it comes to shooting the approach, make sure when you do the approach breif that you're not just blurting out info for the instructors sake. read it, say it, understand it. if you have questions, ask you instructor or anyone else you can. everyone will try to help you. another thing i learned is, think of odd situations that you might get into while flying instrument that you would have little or no clue how to deal with and discuss it with your instructor. thats another way to be ahead of the game. just relax and it'll be ok. i was talking with one of the DE's and he said one of the biggest things that students bust on is the non-precision approach. he said students tend to rocket down at 700 feet/min right to minimums and really push busting the mins. be calm, level off a 100 ft. early and milk the last of the altitude off. and get in the habit of talking out loud..."1000' for 280', slightly left of course, correcting"...let the instructor/examiner know you understand the situation and how to deal with it. he also told me that by talking out loud you not only let him/her know you know whats going on, but you're making yourself more aware of the situation. you don't need to rocket right to mins, its ok to go a little fast, and talk yourself through things. oh, and study...its the only way to know the book stuff. hope that helps, if you get stuck or need any thing just ask and i'll see what i can do for you. theres plently of help on this site, not to mention at school so keep asking questions...its the only way to get an answer

 

[MAS]

What's wrong with doing a planned descend during final letdown?

 

[guido161st]

I know of about 20 guys that hired by Airnet

 

[dakovich]

ok, started the route program the other day and have three flights under my belt. i think i did a 5, 4, and 3 hour flight so far. went to Savana (sp?), Key West, and a quick shot to Tampa today. its been great, except for getting up at 5am everymorning...but thats all part of the game.

so basically how the route program goes is: 2 person crews flying the brand new piper seminoles around the southern states. 6am-7am you show up, plan on where you want to go and file an IFR flight plan to wherever it is you're going. usually more than one flight crew flying so you bunch up and try and end up in the same place so you can all go get some food or whatever. so, you file and then dispatch the aircraft, along with that each seminole has its own fuel card that you also dispatch. next you preflight, get your clearence, and depart. you fly just like you'll learn in the CRM section at Panam, same flows, same policies and things. next phase is just getting to wherever it is you're going. once you're there you can hang at the destination airport FBO, use the FREE crew car and go out and see the town or eat or whatever. its fun to hang out for an hour or so. Tampa today said the crew car was out, but we walked outside and it was there. we were at the Ratheon FBO with corporate jets all around, so i guess them saying it was out was the nice way to say our planes weren't large enough to demand usage of their crew car. but they did have some awesmoe orange juice and warm cookies. you get all kinds of free stuff at the FBO's, water finger food, hot dogs...early flights revolve around what they have for breakfast as you can see. anyway, so once you're done at the place you went to for today you file for the return trip. we wait to file a return trip because you never know if you might want to take a different route home or what. maybe you want to knock out some more time, or see someplace or whatever. so, you file, fly, land and thats your day. you can fly as much or as little as you want, within reason of course. if you want to take an additional flight after your first you just ask and they have no problems with that. so, we do that for a total of 80 hours and after we finish or are close to finishing you start your commercial training. pretty fun stuff, just cruising around the south and building hours. its great, when its my turn to fly, right from takeoff i trim the plane out, set the power and fly by trim and rudder as much as possible. i avoid using the stick as much as possible, just trim, ruddder, and power. so i just relax and watch my guages, make sure everything is running right and that no one is trying to run into us.

 

[Eagle]

How is that working? is that one of the deals where one loggs safety pilot while the other guy is under the hood?


As for the Crew car. I think it has more to do with the Corp/biz guys topping off and paying 4-8,000$ in fuel bills. and the crews being stranded there waiting, vs a transitent acft with students...

Keep in mind the FBOs are trying to make money.. if they stiff a crew that dropped in a cpl of thousand pounds of gas.. they (the jet) may go next door next time.

Of course, the crew care may in fact been signed out, we grab the car ASAP, and may not leave for 30 or so min,,,

 

[dakovich]

yup, we're doing the safety pilot thing that has been dicused as bieng as a little shady area in the FARS. and yes, its obvious they wouldn't give the crew car to us when a Citation X just pulled up that might want it instead. i was being sarcastic, but they could've at least lent us the pink stretch golf cart..j/k

 

[Snow]

Hey dak,

The lady said on the phone that you bid for routes or somthing and then fly to a schdule, like you would with an airline? She said sometimes you even stay over night at an airport or somthing.

She also said you fly like 70hrs PIC and 10hrs SIC, how does that work? 40hrs each makes more since... I dunno that really confused me if everyone flys 70hrs PIC then SOMEONE has to fly 70hrs SIC.. that doesnt add up.. anyhow..

oh and I guess with the hood, you take if off for take off and landing?

oh.. two other questions... does everyone who graduates get to be an instructor? if not, is there some kinda requirement? like 90% on your checkride or somthing?

2nd, I was curious, when flying with ATC, do you use "Pan Am 34" etc or just use the aircraft reg number?

cheers,

 

[dakovich]

i don't know what they were telling you with that whole 70 hours PIC 10 hours SCI. we log 80 hours of PIC time, but you only pay for about 40-50 of those hours. the rest you are logging PIC as a safety pilot. it gets all weird with the FARs on how that works, i'm not too keen on the idea but its legal and most schools work that way. either way, you only pay for about 40-50 hours. as for routing, we just get there early and pick somewhere cool to go and file just like you would any other IFR flight. when you do CRM you are given actually airline style flights to fly in the AST HAWK, so amybe thats what she was talking about. the route is really just an extension of the CRM in practice, but in the real plane and without instruction.

as for who get sto be an instructor...i'm not sure what the percentage is for that. i think you just have to prove yourself through your training and you'll have no problems. but honestly, i don't know the policy on that.

for the ATC question, we only use the PanAM callsigns around the local area...basically Fort Pierce, Vero, and closer airports really. IFR and distance VFR flights are all read by tail number.

 

[Snow]

Hey Dak, what's been happening with your training? haven't heard from you in a while.

 

[dakovich]

i finally got a day off!!! ok, been pretty busy lately because i'm trying to cram to get myself into the next ACE class and also trying to get some time off right before it starts. so, i finished up my route flying on last thursday....route and time building are some of the best times you'll have here. get to just take the planes out and go places and act like you're a real pilot n stuff. its a good time, you get to go all over the place and explore different cities while your plane is being fueled up. we even tried putting in every Hooters we could find into the GPS as waypoints so we would know where to go next time. it was fun stuff.

after completeing my route thursday i went right into 2 flights a day for my commercial starting last friday. i was already in my commercial ground school during the last week of route flying so i killed two birds with that. took the final monday and had a multi refresher on tuesday. so, i ended finishing up 95% of my commerical flights by last night. friday to wednesday went from lesson 1 to lesson 10 out of a total of 11 lessons with 12 being stage check. so i'm pretty happy with that. just been doing the commercial manuevers, lazy eights, channdels(sp?), 180 degree power off landing, etc...and also got all the cross country and night requirments done. do have to do a couple more night landings solo though, but thats easy.

so, besides all that i joined up with the school softball team and have been doing that at nights for a little while. we have a good time, usually get spanked but we never get shut out...at least we're consistent. we look good though, pretty much the only team made up of career oriented players (pilots), Fort Pierce seems to have an abundace of thugs and dudes with mullet haircuts. gotta love mullets. anyway

so i've been cruising along, been racking up hours like crazy and well on course to get into the next ACE class on Oct. 14. oh, news in we have like 30 Chinese students comming in for training. guess they(Air China or something) signed a deal similar to KLM to have intial training done here at our campus. i'll let ya know what develops on that one.

 

[dakovich]

just about finished with my commercial single stuff. just waiting on the FAA check, and then i'll start into the Commercial multi program. multi is only like 2 flights and a stage so it should go pretty quick. in the next week Panam is having their Airline Partnership meeting at our campus, and we get to have a question answer session with some of the regionals. i'll try and post on any interesting things that happen. oh, and we also have 3 instructors up for interviews for a regional in the next couple weeks. i hope they do well, they're all great pilots and really good people. i believe all of them are ACE grads so how they perform at these interviews might be a window into how the regionals view the ACE program as a whole. the big test of ACE though is if and when they get hired (i've got faith in them), and how they perform in the training for whatever aircraft they are assigned. could be an interesting ongoing test of our ACE grads and program itself. i think they'll all do great. well, wish them luck.

 

[Guest]

That is great! Which regionals are they interviewing with?

 

[dakovich]

i don't know how happy those involved would be if i gave any more details than i already have. i just don't want to upset them, not trying to avoid the question. lest just say its one of those regionals the school has ties with and they fly CRJ's and ERJ's.

 

[dakovich]

all done with commercial, except the check ride and the multi engine add on. my check is in the afternoon on wednesday so i'd better get some rest...oh, wait, it is wednesday! agghhh. sorry to all that read this continuing thread, i've been kind of preoccupied with school and outside things that have taken my attention away from posting in any real depth. i'm planning on taking a long break right after my multi engine Commercial add on, so i'll plan on writing about whats been happening around here lately when i get home. oh, i'll also have some word on how the Airline Comittee (sp? its late) went...bunch of regional partners are in town this week speaking to the students and working with the adminsitration. maybe i'll try and give some insite also as to all the questions of pro's / con's of Panam and what the feeling around campus has been like lately. seems like the threads have been a little active lately with the big question of "why or why not to go to Panam." i'll try and get to those topics and give my take on things. in any case, wish me luck...got the big commercial ride in the morning.

 

[dakovich]

i had my commercial single engine this past week and made it through ok on the first try...knock on wood. i can't say i'm a big fan of the Arrow though, wait, yes i can, i am NOT a fan of the Piper Arrow. its an O.K. aircraft (considering its one of only 3 i've ever flown), but its a dog in terms of perfomance. if it had another 50 horse it might start working pretty good, but with the perfomance killing temps. down here and the vapor lock starting problems due to the heat, these things really kinda suck. i had fun with the manuevers though. the commerical single sylabus is pretty fun, you get to go ahead and perfect your skills as a pilot and explore the performance and characteristics of each aircraft. you get to do all the yank and bank stuff and you learn to really grab hold of the plane and put it into different attitudes with prescision and smoothness with each input of the control serfaces. i really liked it, it makes you 10 times more confident in the aircraft and after you get your ticket it dawns on you that "Holy •! someone can actually pay me to fly a plane now!!!! " (with exception of course).

so, it was only like a total of 12 lessons. 11 and a stage check, i think i took one review flight because i was having trouble with the soft field landings and power off 180's. that was a quicky though. it was tough doing patter work because i got stuck following a KLM guy also doing touch-n-go's, for some reason they are taught to do these hugely distant paterns(we say they are practicing Airbus patterns, caution wake turbulance), thing is if these guys lose an engine the chances of making it back to the runway are close to nil. anyway, so i would do a tight pattern to stay close to the runway (for safety as well as technique) and it was really tough to try and get a short approach for power off 180's because of the airbus pattern being flown by the lead aircraft. every time he would turn base he must have looked out his left window and seen an Arrow coming right at him on downwind (plenty of spacing) every time, but he never really go the idea. silly KLM. anywa, my FAA check went pretty well, but i thought i did worse than i did. i was being stubborn and wanting to set up for each manuever before i did them and the examiner just kept telling me to go right into one after another. i was a little uncomfortable, but i just finally listened to what he wanted, gave up worrying about it and flew the plane how he wanted me to. it actually made me more confident in my manuevers to do what he said. i wasn't sitting there before a manuever thingking it through i was just going by memory real quick and popping um off one after another. had to make real quick adjustments between each thing to stay PTS and it felt cool to just whip through and to trust my flying. i ended up learning a lot on the check ride.

as for multi commercial: finished my 2 lessons yesterday and the day before, and had my stage today. i did good on the stage check and got set up for the FAA check sometime early this week. the multi add-on is a real quick sylabus, so you have to dig up all the multi knowledge again and make sure you're still sharp. i found myself forgeting the little pieces of information that examiners love to test on, so it took a bit of restudy of all that. oh, and i don't ever want to stop flying the seminole (at least while i'm here), i love that plane. i just thik its a great little twin, and i can't wait to step up to fly some bigger twins when i get the chance. you gotta love the performance jump from the Archer and Arrow to the Seminole. its addicting.

well, as soon as i get through my check ride i'm back off to Buffalo for a few weeks. thank God, cause Florida sucks ass. its a great place to visit, but there is just something wrong down here. i can't exactly say what it is, but something just isn't right.

 

[arizonaflyer]

good job dak.. keep it up!!

 

[250blue]

Hey Dak,
Did you get any information from the "Regional Airline Forum" Pan Am had a couple of weeks back. If so, please update and let us know if they have changed minimums, gave a hiring outlook, etc.