gave him the captain’s brief before takeoff. I told him to envision from the points of hovering, to accelerating, to climbing, to leveling off and what he would say, which sounded something like this: “OK, we’ll be doing an IFR Alpha 31 departure to Zakum Field. I want you to call out: airspeed alive, TDP (takeoff de- cision point) at 45 knots, Vy (best rate of climb speed) at 70 knots. “If an emergency occurs below 500
feet, no switches will be switched until mu- tually confirmed, except for an engine fire in which case I want you to pull the illu- minated T-handle for that engine and fire the fire bottle. “If we have an emergency above 500
feet, I will do the initial actions and I will call for follow-up actions as per the checklist. “I want you to call 1,000, 500, and 100
feet from assigned altitudes. “Please advise me plus or minus 10
knots from my assigned airspeed, plus or minus 10 degrees from my assigned head- ing, plus or minus 100 feet on my assigned
altitude. It you see anything you don’t like, or have a question about anything, please bring it up and we’ll discuss it. Any questions?” Then we would do an imaginary flight
that included takeoff and climb out. Dur- ing the climb, I would announce that we had an engine fire and talk them through the emergency. I had the new pilots ro- tate into the left seat as the imagined flight progressed. As they made their mock radio calls I would act as air traffic control, giving instructions and answer- ing back. We’d do a whole flight that way, requesting radar vectors for an ILS (instrument landing system) approach for runway 31 back at Abu Dhabi, while on single-engine. We would practice doing all the checks,
imagining that nothing could be seen of the runway environment at the decision height at 200 feet. Then we’d imagine do- ing a single-engine go-around, using the go-around button on the collective pitch lever, and climb for another approach do- ing radio calls, checks … everything. It
was just like flying in a sim, except we were doing it while sitting on the couch in my room. The results Philippe and I saw after that
session were astonishing. It was like the four new pilots had been struck by light- ning! They ‘got it.’ I was amazed. So was Philippe. From then on, we included couch training for all the new pilots. I found it funny that we got so much ac-
complished using a $5 hundred couch. Fourteen million dollars will buy one sim- ulator … or 28 thousand couches.
Randy Mains is an author of several books, a public speaker, and a CRM/AMRMconsultant who continues to work in the helicopter industry after a long career of
aviation adventure. He currently serves as Chief CRM/AMRM instructor for Oregon Aero. He may be contacted at
randym@oregonaero.com
rotorcraftpro.com 9
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