Ram Air Flight Training

pilot4500

pilot4500

IT Architect/ Former Cirrus Charter Pilot
I posted this thread previously but it was deleted in the server crash yesterday.

A few weeks ago I posted in the member announcements forum that I would start training with Ram Air Freight on December 11. I have completed the first week of training and thought that I would write how it has been going.

Day 1: There were originally 5 people scheduled to be in my class. Two people called and canceled and one guy no showed so that left us with a class of two. I started by meeting my other classmate and then meeting Jerome the Chief Pilot. We went over all of the paperwork that we were supposed to complete prior to arriving there. After that Jerome gave us a tour of the facility and introduced us to all of the important people that work there.

We then went back to the classroom and went over how to fill out the load manifests that we do for each flight, and then did some weight and balance problems. After that we watched an absolutely riveting anti drug video. We had our lunch break after that and then went to the drug testing facility to do the pee test.

In the afternoon we went over the aircraft systems on the Piper Lance, did an extensive preflight on the airplane and that was pretty much it for the first day.

Day 2: The day started at 0800 hours and we did a ground school session on ATC procedures, local procedures at RDU, and GPS procedures for the Garmin 430 and the Apollo GX-50. If you have never used a GX 50 before, it does take a lot of getting used to. It is not nearly as user friendly as the Garmin 430.

After that I met with my flight instructor and we went out and got familiar with the Lance. We did stalls, steep turns, takeoffs and landings at Sanford airport, and then came back and did a GPS approach into RDU to a full stop. The Lance is a nice airplane to fly. I have about 100 hours flying the Arrow and that made for an easy transition.

In the afternoon I did an observation flight with another line pilot. I flew the airplane on two of the empty legs, and it really helped to see how things are done on the line.

Day 3: This day was pretty grueling. We started by going over the procedures for transporting Hazardous Materials (Hazmat). It is not something that you do too often at Ram Air, but once in a while you might be asked transport hazmat. That concluded with an open book test. I got a 93% on it, and they want you have at least 70% to pass.

After that it was another training flight. We did several instrument approaches at Roxboro airport. This included GPS, VOR, ILS approaches. We also did holding procedures and missed approach procedures with the GPS. We did more stalls and then came back to RDU and did a GPS approach.

We took a lunch break and then came back and went over FAR 135 rules, the general operating manual, Ops Specs, Minimum Equipment Lists, and other company rules. Not the most exciting stuff in the world, but no doubt very important.

Day 4: We started with ground school and covered Emergency procedures and Meteorology. I was scheduled to do another training flight after that, but I came down with a pretty bad cold that day. I decided that illness and fatigue were a bad combination and told my instructor that I was too sick to fly. He was very understanding and we rescheduled for the next day.

After that I went back to the hotel to take care of my cold. I took some medicine, lots of vitamin C, slept for 12 hours and felt much better the next day.

Day 5: Ground school was finished the previous day so I met with a different flight instructor. We went up and did emergency procedures, stalls, lots of instrument approaches and finished up with the ILS 23R in RDU. Sleeping 12 hours the night before did wonders for me because I did the best ILS approach of my life coming into RDU.

After that I had lunch and did another observation flight with a line pilot. Fridays are always long days at Ram Air. They do mostly bank runs and the banks have lots of mail and proof bags that need to be flown on Fridays. We left RDU at 1530 and didn’t return until 2345 that night.

I had the weekend off and used the time to study. I have another training flight do on Monday, and then the part 135 checkride on Tuesday. I will keep everyone informed about how things go.

I hope that this information will help anyone that is considering coming to work for Ram Air. It is a great place to work, and they do offer a quick upgrade into the multi if you are willing to move to wherever a multi run opens up. The people are laid back and friendly, and aircraft maintenance is good.

It should be a great place to work.
 
I took my part 135 checkride today. And despite a few minor mistakes here and there, everything went well and I passed. I did my checkride with Jerome, the Chief Pilot. We started off by going over part 135 regs. He asked me questions about whether or not I would be able to takeoff with a given set of weather conditions, whether or not I would need an alternate, or if I was legal to shoot an approach with a given set of weather conditions. Pretty streight forward. We also covered crew rest requirements, Minimum Equipment Lists, and systems on the Piper Lance. That all went pretty well.

After that we did our flight. We took off from RDU and went to Sanford airport (TTA). We did a GPS approach there followed by the published missed and hold, then a localizer only approach followed by some VFR maneuvers. We did stalls, steep turns, and simulated engine failures. After that we came back to RDU and did the ILS 5L partial panel to a full stop.

There were a few minor mistakes that I made setting up the GPS, and the partial panel approach could have been a bit more stablized but it was still within PTS standards. It was a very fair checkride.

Tomorrow I will do my first run to RIC, ORF, PHF, JQF, and then back to RDU. My first run as a freight dawg! It should be interesting. I will do that run for the rest of the week and then next week I will be getting transferred to JQF. Concord will be my new base.
 
Well done! My first instructor was hired by Ram Air. He had 20 hours of multi time coming in and was upgraded within 2 weeks. Good luck.
 
Congrats!

How about a blog of that first run or of the first week? :) I'd be interested to know how it is and your impressions of your first week as a freight dawg.
 
Thanks for all the well wishes guys. I will post a blog about my first week as soon as I have time. :)
 
Congrats!! I would also like to hear how the first weeks goes for you. Please keep us informed and good luck in concord.
 
Jonesberuitchamp said:
What are you doing about living acomodatiosn with all these quick moves?
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Right now I am staying in a hotel near RDU airport. Ram Air is paying for the hotel the rest of this week. Next week I will be in Concord. Ram Air has a room with a bed and a shower in their airplane hangar there. I can stay there free of charge until I find someplace else. I will stay there until I find a house or an apartment to rent near Concord.
 
What fortuitous timing............I was just talking with my roommate about whether or not Package Express (who were bought out by you guys) had the OpSpec for GPS approaches. Do you guys have that OpSpec?
 
if you havent gotten a place to stay yet i know of two place around that area. my last apartment in charlotte, woodfield gardens, was a one bedroom 620 sqare foot with a ten month lease for 360 a month. not the best of areas but a heck of a lot better than where i grew up (roseville michigan) and not that expensive. it would be about a fifteen to twenty minute commute to JQF however.

A friend of mine lives at davis lake just a few miles from the airport and they pay about 1100 a month for a three bedroom. right off albelmarle road which runs right up to the airport. Its alot better place to live with a nice pool. They might even have a room opening up pretty soon, there are three girls all flight attendents right now. PM me and i could find out details. thats all i know of if its any help.
 
pilot4500 said:
Tomorrow I will do my first run to RIC, ORF, PHF, JQF, and then back to RDU.
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Watch out for those "white tops" (AWAC RJ's) going in and out of the hanger over on the cargo ramp @ ORF!! That area is pretty congested.

Congrats on passing!
 
Were you "REX250" today? Saw in FlightAware that a Saratoga departed RDU to RIC at 12:45 and arrived at 1:45.

Then REX251 to PHF.

Then REX252 to ORF.

Then REX253 to JQF.

Then REX254 to RDU.

Was that you?
 
BrianNC said:
Were you "REX250" today? Saw in FlightAware that a Saratoga departed RDU to RIC at 12:45 and arrived at 1:45.

Then REX251 to PHF.

Then REX252 to ORF.

Then REX253 to JQF.

Then REX254 to RDU.

Was that you?
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That was me. And the times and flight numbers you mentioned were right on. I was flying a T-tail Piper Lance though, not a Saratoga.
 
pilot4500 said:
That was me. And the times and flight numbers you mentioned were right on. I was flying a T-tail Piper Lance though, not a Saratoga.
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They has it listed as a Saratoga.

OK, I know it's Christmas weekend but we know you're off. :)

So how about an update? What was the week like? And what was it like flying in all that weather Friday? :)
 
Here is my synopsis of how my first week of being a line pilot at Ram Air went. The first day was stressful being that everything was new to me. I was scheduled to do run 250, which is the RDU RIC PHF ORF JQF RDU run. At Ram Air we have a book of “flight essentials.” This tells you where to go, the flight planned route, and very importantly, where to taxi after you land.

The plane that I was flying was a T-tail Lance. It was one of the very few planes in the fleet that did not have a GPS, no DME either, and not even an ADF. Not a big deal. I learned how to fly instruments with only the most basic equipment. The training at Ram Air focused heavily on GPS procedures though. It really should have included some old school non-GPS instrument flying as well.

Ram Air uses “canned” flight plans, which means that same flight plan is filed every day. One thing to be careful of though is that all flight plans are filed with an equipment code of /G, when in fact it should have been /U for my airplane (no GPS, no DME, transponder with Mode C). I should have called flight service before launching and changed my equipment code. ATC kept clearing me direct from one airport to another, and I could only go VOR to VOR or be given radar vectors. The controllers were very understanding and pretty much vectored me where I needed to go. The first day was pretty uneventful.

One thing the flight essential said about the run to Norfolk (ORF) is to park on the UPS ramp after landing to meet the bank courier, load up and then go to JQF. This seemed strange to me. I’ve been around enough UPS ramps to know that they don’t like little planes parking on their ramp unless it is to load or unload UPS cargo. I spoke to one of the Ram Air pilots who had done this run before, and he told me to park between the hangars at the FBO, not on the UPS ramp. This made more sense to me. The bank courier met me there and I was off to JQF and then RDU. I am glad that I found out where to park before I left. It probably saved me from getting chased off the UPS ramp by security. They really need to update their info in the flight essential.

I did the same run the second day with the same airplane it was pretty uneventful as well. I really started to enjoy it. Friday is where things really started to get interesting. I was scheduled to be on standby from 1600 to 2300 in RDU. About half an hour into my standby shift dispatch told me to ride down to JQF with a Baron pilot and sit standby there. That was the only place where they had an available single engine airplane. The ride down to Concord was uneventful despite the heavy rain showers and 400-foot ceilings. I sat standby there for about two hours and then got a call from flight ops. They wanted to know if I was in Wilmington (ILM). Of course I said no. They said that I was supposed to be doing run 275, which is a UPS run. You fly empty from JQF to ILM, pick up UPS cargo, fly to Greensboro (GSO) to unload, and then fly empty back to RDU. It is a pretty simple run.

The only problem was that nobody told me that I was supposed to fly it. Communication at its finest. I ran out and preflighted the plane. It was a Cherokee Six, which is quite a bit slower than the Lance. As I looked through the maintenance log, I saw that the plane had been squawked a day earlier because the engine failed after landing. That got my attention. The airplane had been fixed but it still had me a bit concerned.

As I looked at the equipment in the plane, I realized that I got another plane with no GPS, no DME, no ADF, and it had an engine failure the day before. And I was about to take this plane into solid IMC. Somebody there in flight ops must really love me. *sarcasm*

After doing the runup I had another problem. The left magneto dropped 300 rpm and sounded really rough. I tried to power up and clean off the spark plugs, but that did not work. I thought carefully about my go or no go decision. I was about to launch into 300 foot ceilings in pouring rain at night with a minimally equipped airplane, a rough running mag, a recent history of an engine failure, and hardly anytime to figure out where I was going after takeoff. As an old flight instructor of mine would have told me, I had already written ¾ of the NTSB accident report. I taxied back and squawked the airplane. That was probably the first smart decision I had made that day.

I called flight operations to let them know. Needless to say they were not happy at all about it. I am pretty sure that I got myself on the flight ops sh*t list. For those of you expecting UPS packages from Wilmington, NC, they will probably be coming in late. Sorry about that but I have to put safety first.

Starting next week I will be based on Concord and I will be on standby for the week. I will be living in the airplane hangar until I find a place to live. They do have a bed and a shower there so it should not be too bad.

I am not trying to put down Ram Air. I am just being honest. I think overall it is not a bad company to work for. It is not the kind of place where I would want to work forever. I should be able to upgrade to the multi in a few months, fulfill my six-month contract and then hopefully move on. The best thing about this company is the quick upgrade to the multi. The pay isn’t bad either. About $26,000 per year.

I will continue to keep y’all posted about my adventures here at Ram Air.
 
PILOT4500.....thank you sir, for the breakdown of your training and first week on the road with Ram Air. It was good reading about what you went through and I commend you for your decision to reject the flight considering weather, equipment, and rough running mag--A+ on your Aeronautical Decision Making and it is a good example to us up-and-comers. Keep up the great work and keep up posted on your job from time to time.


Pac Man
 
pilot4500 said:
The plane that I was flying was a T-tail Lance. It was one of the very few planes in the fleet that did not have a GPS, no DME either, and not even an ADF. Not a big deal. I learned how to fly instruments with only the most basic equipment. The training at Ram Air focused heavily on GPS procedures though. It really should have included some old school non-GPS instrument flying as well.
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Interesting hearing how Ram Air works and trains... I'm thinking of applying there in a few months. Just one question for you regarding the lack of GPS, etc. Does the company encourage, discourage, not care, or don't-ask don't-tell, about the use of handheld GPS units to aid in situational awareness when flying minimally equipped planes like you described?

~Z
 
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