Spooling Up For A Type Rating
By: John Fiscus
Your Vision Jet’s delivery is on the near horizon! In a few short months you’ll begin your journey into becoming a jet pilot but there’s no need to wait. You can start working towards your Vision type rating right now.
Preflight Study
Start on the ground
Pre Training Materials
You can expect a few things from Cirrus prior to starting your ground training. They have an online training program and they’ll send you some study materials too. Here are a few tips for getting the most out of them:
Start now
The video courseware was created to be bite-sized with most modules being between 5 and 10 minutes. There’s no reason you couldn’t do a couple modules every other day or so. And if you get through them? Circle back and have a look at the modules that were information-dense.
Sharpen your pencil
Get yourself a journal and get going with the note taking while you watch the videos. Be prepared to pause, rewind, and think about what you’ve just been presented with. Write them in the journal and you’ll have something to reflect on. It is also incredibly helpful with retention to write notes. The act of writing itself plugs things into the brain. Bring your journal with you to the type training; you’ll have plenty of paper left and you’ll be taking a *lot* of notes in class.
Study intentionally
When going through the video or reading materials, sequester yourself away from busy environments. I recommend not working in the family room where people can easily interrupt you or in a place with a TV show on. If you don’t hear each word and look at each diagram, you could miss something important.
Ask questions
You’re likely to have a lot of questions as you progress through the videos and that’s good! If you don’t have any questions, you may well have not been watching too closely. Write those questions down and work with your sales manager to get in contact with a Vision Instructor Pilot. Often a quick email or phone call can clear up a lot.
Flight Training
Fly an SR or even an SF!
Flight Training
The Vision Jet is an awesome IFR platform, capable of more than any personal jet flying today. You’ll learn all about those systems during your type training, but do yourself a favor: get as good as you can with your flying now, before you go to school, so you aren’t spending your time just working on skills.
Learn the logic
Your Perspective equipped SR is an excellent platform for honing your skills. While the buttons may be different, the method behind the avionics is the same. From the activating Vectors to Final to the TOGA button, your SR and SF share a lot of logic. If you spend time with an experienced CSIP to dig deep and understand what these systems are doing for you, you’ll find yourself just training a little muscle memory when you’re in the jet. That’s easy enough and allows for more time spent on more involved jet tasks.
Flight (Director) Following
Many pilots know they have a flight director and most have told me they understand it well, but one of the most common questions I get in the sim is, “Why is the Flight Director doing that?” The good news is the logic of the FD follows exactly what the autopilot logic is. The caveat is you have to tell the FD about everything you’re doing – and this skill is usually the one I see a lot of struggle with. Practice it in your SR to make perfect in the SF!
Pass a check ride
Remember your Instrument rating check ride? What are the odds you could do that check ride again (and pass!) today? Don’t feel bad if the answer was “probably not.” Most pilots would say that, especially when it comes to things like circling to land, missed approaches, and hand flying a non-precision approach. You’ll be doing all those things and more for the check ride in the jet, so beefing up your understanding on those procedures in the SR will help a lot! You’ll also be doing some Private Pilot check ride maneuvers in the jet: slow fight, steep turns, and stalls are all in your near future.
Fly a jet
There are now a few places where a person could fly a Vision Jet. What better way to get spooled up for your type training than to spend a few days with a Vision Instructor Pilot in the real thing? Once all the videos are watched and the SR flying has done what it can, nothing beats this kind of experience to bring it together. Make sure you’re flying with an instructor who has helped people through the type rating training before – they’ll know what to expect and train you accordingly.