To round out my spate of airplane reviews… I made a couple of noise measurements today in the Twin Commander on the way back from Portland, Maine. This is truly a pilot’s airplane. At 10,000′ and 200 knots, the front seats were 81-82 dBA and the rear seats, which are closer to the props, were at 85 dBA. The owner reports that the sound levels are considerably less at higher altitudes and were reduced in this airplane by “super soundproofing” when the interior was redone.
[I’m now up to about 10 hours of multi-engine turbine time and also picked up my Airline Transport Pilot certificate earlier in the week, doing a checkride in the Cirrus SR20. Goals for the next few months: ATP multi-engine, multi-engine instructor, helicopter instrument/ATP and helicopter instrument instructor.]
I thought that to get an instrument rating in a helicopter you had to have an autopilot in the helicopter. Did I misread something, or are you moving up in helos?
What training materials did you use to prepare for the ATP ? In the past I know you’ve had good things to say about the stuff from King Schools. Just curious.
Congrats on the ATP.
Regards,
–ken
Colin: An instrument rating is for a pilot, not a machine. You can get an instrument rating without ever going into the clouds, as long as you wear a view-limiting device and control an aircraft solely by reference to instruments. As far as hardware goes, you need a hood and some instruments. The most common instrument trainers are Robinson R22s and R44s with extra large panels holding the standard 6-pack (airspeed, attitude, altimeter, turn coordinator, gyro-stabilized compass, vertical speed). These machines are not legal to fly into the clouds for a host of reasons, but going into the clouds is not necessary.
Ken: I did watch the King videos. I wish that I could brag about my score but it was too low to mention publicly 🙁 I don’t blame John and Martha. The ATP knowledge test is really annoying. To solve a single problem you might have to multiply and add dozens of numbers… without a spreadsheet program. Why would you ever do this in real life? The King videos will ensure that you pass, which is all that the examiner cares about. If you want to get 95-100, as most folks can do easily on the preceding knowledge tests, you would probably have to work out all of the flight planning problems beforehand, which would take maybe 7 days of sunrise to sunset effort.