The Future for a Career Pilot

Like most when I decided to become a pilot I had dreams of flying a 747 internationally, working 10 days a month, and making hundreds of thousands of dollars. In reality those days are long gone. Now is the time of spending $40 - $50 thousand dollars on flight training(and that doesn't include tuition for a four year degree) and making only $20 - $30 thousand a year for your first few years. This harsh reality has made many consider a different route. What are most people considering? Cargo, corporate, instructing, and also a completely different job with no flying. All of these are good options, however there is another one, UAV's that people should think about. Lets take a look at all of these.

Cargo
A good option, there is usually a little more job security in cargo jobs. Depending on your company you sometimes have the option of being home every night. However there are some drawbacks. First, your usually flying at night. A lot of cargo operations are single pilot night flights. Secondly, unless your with a major company(FEDEX, UPS) the pay usually isn't as good as a commercial pilot.

Corporate
A very attractive option to a lot of pilots. Flying jets to exotic places with exotic people on board. Usually decent pay. The drawbacks of being a corporate pilot is that you usually are on demand. If a business meeting comes up and a client needs to get to New York tonight, you have to go.

Instructing
Not as attractive as the others for most but at least you are still in an airplane. Won't make as much money as other jobs but should be able to do alright. Get the opportunity as I mentioned in my last post to teach multiple types of pilots. You always have the chance to work for yourself.

UAV's
I think this is a very attractive option for most pilots. And the one I really wanted to talk about. At a recent conference at UND they discussed UAV's and their future. They said that because of the lack of pilots now the starting pay is going to be around $70-$80 thousand a year. You will be home almost every night as you won't be actually going where the plane goes.

Now you may be asking yourself "don't I need to be in the military to fly UAV's?" Well the answer is yes and no. Yes because right now the majority of UAV's are military. However, I talked to some people at Northrop/Grumman and he told me that they will be hiring UAV instructors, civilian pilots, to instruct military pilots and also test fly the new craft.

To me this is an awesome opportunity. If you were to have a job like this you could be home every night with your family, make enough money to own an airplane, possibly instruct in it to make a little extra cash.

Of course there are negatives to every job. What it is with UAV's I don't know yet, I don't know if they've been around long enough for us to know.

Hello, My Name is Bob

As an instructor you don't get much opportunity to actually fly the aircraft. Lately all the flying that I've been doing is a small tap on the yoke or tapping on the rudder pedals to remind my student to keep it coordinated. So when I got the opportunity to work with an instrument instructor student I jumped all over it.

There are two nice things that made me jump all over this. The first is that the student is already an instructor, so he obviously knows how to fly. The second, and most appealing, is that as the instructor I am acting as the student which lets me sit in the left seat.

So this is where Bob comes in. Since he should be teaching me throughout the flight I can't just fly the airplane like I would normally. I need to role play as a student. So prior to the flight I let the student know that I will either be acting like a beginning instrument pilot, or a pilot who is about halfway through his training. So the beginning instrument pilots name is Bob.

For the first half of the flight I let the instructor fly(under the hood) and instruct at the same time. If he can fly the airplane, stay within standards, and instruct then they will be able to instruct when they are just sitting in the right seat and the student is flying.

For the second half I took over the flight controls and had the student, still under the hood, instruct me. Man was I happy to be flying the aircraft. And let me tell you I definitely was not in standards. I was doing my best to try and make the instructor work extra hard. How? Constantly missing altitudes, omitting instruments, missing radio calls and asking as many questions as possible.

This experience really was a blast for me, it showed me a couple of things. First, I love actually flying the aircraft. Secondly how much fun it can be to be an instructor. Everyday, or every flight, is a different experience. That day I flew with an Air China private pilot student, Air China Instrument student, and an Instrument-Instructor student. Each required a different teaching style and keeps you at the top of your game.

busy busy busy

So it's been awhile since I've posted anything and I felt like I needed to update my page. It's not like I haven't been thinking of ideas, it's just the lack of time. With finals coming up and flying I'm completely packed right now.

So I've decided to give a teaser of sorts of the stories that I've been thinking about (and planning on) writing. So these are the next three to come, in no particular order:

The Future for a Career Pilot
Hello, My Name is Bob
Vertical development

I swear when I get some free time I will start getting these down. One last teaser, figure out which story goes along with this picture...

Actual Instrument

This comes as an extension to my last post and something that has always kind of bugged me with the requirements for a private pilot. On the last XC flight I did we ended up landing at our 2nd airport, filed and picked up an IFR clearance back to GFK because of a low layer of clouds that was coming in. Taking off we entered the clouds at around 1,000' agl and were in the clouds for approximately 2,000' before breaking out on top. We flew the entire flight above the clouds and re-entered them shooting an ILS approach into GFK, which the student flew.

Now I usually have the student do instrument work on the third leg but it's usually under the hood. This turned out better than I could have wanted. Sure, while your under the hood you aren't supposed to be able to see anything else but there are subtle hints as to how you are doing. Peaking out the sides, having the hood a little too high so you can see out the front, or even the shadows on your legs and control panel as you maneuver. The difference with being in the actual conditions is now that you have none of these to rely on and actually have to trust your instruments.

So why does this topic come up? Well the requirements for a private pilot to get his rating include 3 hours of flight by reference to the instruments, actual or simulated. Sure this is good, but considering the amount of deaths that occur because private pilots get into clouds and loose directional control is it enough?

Looking back through my logbook, after all of my flights getting my private, instrument, commercial, multi, instructor, and instrument instructor ratings guess how much actual instrument time I had. 5 hours! 5 hours! Now take a private student who might only have 3 simulated hours of instrument time, put them in an airplane by themselves and in the clouds is this enough training? Possibly, if they just did there 3 hours recently, but what about the private pilot who hasn't flown instruments for the past 2 years? Now what?

I know it isn't always possible but I believe it would help if there was a requirement for actual instrument time during your private training. If not your private training the for sure during your instrument training.

Hopefully my next post will be about some of the exciting future options for pilots!

Cross Country Flight

First off I would like to thank scheets for being the first to comment on my blog. It really means a lot and motivates me to know people are reading what I'm writing about. So nothing to exciting to write about tonight so I figured I would talk about how I like to do my first XC flight with a private pilot student. Having done quite a few of these I've kind of got it down to a science and have a way that flows really well.

First off the XC flight consists of three legs. For the one I will talk about the last XC flight I did departing Grand Forks(ND) to Warroad(MN) to Hallock(MN) and back to GFK. Each leg on this particular flight was relatively the same length with the longest being the first leg which works out very well, allowing me to really get a lot of teaching in during the first leg.

So for any VFR pilot there are multiple ways to navigate, pilotage, dead reckoning, VOR's, GPS, or NDB. I've found that it works best to start off the cross country using pilotage. Pilotage is basically drawing your course line on the VFR sectional and the picking out prominent landmarks along that route. So departing Grand Forks we start out by first getting on your course heading and trying to find our first checkpoint, usually within 5-10 miles from the departure airport. After we find this point you fly over, to the left, or to the right of that landmark according to where your course line is. After that you work on flying your magnetic heading and start looking for your next landmark. If you can see your landmarks easily pilotage is the easiest form of flying, all you have to do is fly to your next point.

This leg is the perfect time to get your student using the E6-B to figure out groundspeeds between checkpoints, estimated times to your next checkpoints, estimated time in route to your destination and estimated time of arrival at your destination.

The second leg is where I like to bring in the concept of dead reckoning, using whatever means necessary to navigate between point A and point B. In our airplanes I like to teach this using the CDI needle and GPS distances to figure out when your over your checkpoints. This is a perfect opportunity to give your student some experience navigating using the CDI needle and GPS. Again another great opportunity for the student to use the E6-B to figure out all of the above mentioned items.

The third leg is where I really like to tie in dead reckoning with a real world situation. I also usually use this leg as an opportunity to get some simulated, or in the case of this flight, some actual instrument flying experience. So after we take off I will have the student put on the hood as soon as we are established on your course. Now I usually say something like "Okay, well now that we can't see outside how the heck are we going to know when we reach our checkpoints?" Hopefully they remember what they just did on their last leg and will use the CDI needle to keep us on course and the GPS(or DME) to figure out when they are over their points.

This is just one way of millions to accomplish a XC flight and one that I've found works, and flows, really well for me. Thanks again to scheets and I hope you all enjoy what my experiences. I've got a few more story ideas to write about and more and more come to me(usually while I'm in the air!)