Ben Weston from Airline2Sim contacted us earlier letting us know of the 777 Cadet and Cadet+ Training Program release information. It’s posted in a massive topic on the Avsim forums, but I have done my best to summarise here.
After nearly a year of production, a former United Airlines Captain will take you from rookie 777 Cadet to becoming one of the most skilled virtual pilots around. Through 23 different episodes, you will learn everything from low-speed protections to how the BLEED, HYD and ELEC keep you flying! If you’re interested in NATS tracks, ETOPS and other considerations, you will have to wait just a bit longer, until -hopefully- February for Cadet+, to be able to have that in-depth knowledge. During Cadet+, we’ll be taking on an Ultra Long Haul flight from Dubai to Newark, which will cover everything else when flying the twin-engine beast.
Why the extra wait for Cadet+? The 23 episodes are already so detailed for a majority of flights that it would only increase cost and development for those who don’t need it. Besides in the mean time you have all of this to cover:
- Meet Myron, your trainer for the course and a look at his long and fascinating career taking in everything from the USAF Super Sabre to the Airbus A320.
- Setting up the PMDG 777 inside your sim, setting viewpoints and a look at what which sceneries and utilities we used to make the course.
- Loading and performance calculations, flight planning and weather.
- Exterior Walk-around.
- Detailed flight deck tour.
- Training Flights around Hawaii, perfecting the takeoff and approaches, speed control and getting configured to make an approach.
- Demonstration of high and low speed protections, including over bank protections and the role of the PFC (primary flight computers)
- Full line flight from Honolulu to Kahului – full flight setup, SID departure and short runway ILS arrival, dodging volcanoes.
- Return line flight back to Honolulu to a LOC DME approach, using VNAV and LOC modes. There’s a big 777 gotcha with this mode, as you’ll see.
- Lengthy STAR approach to the RNAV approach into San Diego, with steep glideslope and a shortish runway leading to depth perception challenges late in the approach.
- STAR into San Francisco with both speed and alt constraints (the 777 VNAV struggles with this one) to a night visual QUIET BRIDGE approach to KSFO Runway 28R. Lots and lots of traps here, we’ll show you how to get it down.
- CATIIIB Auto-land at Munich in a pea-soup morning fog. Never has LAND3, FLARE and ROLLOUT been so important. Landing is easy, finding the gate not so much!
- Go Around from low level at Munich in CATIII conditions. This is often cocked up in the real aircraft as it’s not practiced much. We show you how to ‘TOGA, flaps 20’!
- NADP1 Departure from Doha with low visibility. The often overlooked Takeoff Ref Page 2 is needed here to get your climb profile in order for this short hop to Kuwait.
- NAPD2 Heavy Departure from Hong Kong. We’re off to Chicago with a long night ahead and the departure is heavy, terrain limited, performance limited and there’s a thunderstorm on the SID track. Oh and within a few minutes of departing you have to fly in metres. I was VERY glad to have Myron talking me through this one, it got pretty tense.
- Max Weight Rejected Takeoff from Doha. We’re off back home to JFK and an engine fails just before V1. See why stopping a heavy 777 from almost 200 mph can be expensive…
- Circle To Land KIAD. When the wind blows the wrong way, the ILS runways at Dulles aren’t much help and you have to do something you almost never have to do in a 777 – a circle to land. We’ve got you covered. When someone who’s done it plenty of times shows you how, it’s almost easy…
As before mentioned, the Cadet Program will be released on December 30th 2016 for $39.99. As the HD videos are approximately 25GB in size EACH, it will take around 24 hours per episode to be uploaded and transcoded. As a result, you may need to wait a week or two for the complete 23 season package to be watchable, but with so much footage, you’ll have plenty to watch and practice in the mean time.
Ben has described the package as the most “expansive and most in-depth” training program yet. With so many secrets to learn, procedures to practice – it will be a long time until you can really call yourself a master of the 777.
