The Most Jawdropping Resume This Week

Apparently the time when I build up the most blogging manifold pressure is when we're interviewing and training. Because here I am again, with a story I can't not share. It's the worst resume format I have ever seen. 

The resume content itself is, I suppose, not that bad. It conforms to a new trend I am seeing where a pilot with no experience cites their flight training as if it were employment. I received a different resume where a pilot who listed "198.6h" of flight experience (you need 200h even hold a commercial aeroplane licence in Canada) laid claim to "three years of flight training experience."  Yup, it took the guy three years to get his licence, so he listed that in the same words as would someone who had spent three years training other people to fly.  I've seen a candidate's own flight training listed on his resume with little point form duties and responsibilities, like checked NOTAMs and calculated weight and balance.

Pilots, your prospective employer understands the flight training syllabus. Tell us where you learned to fly if you like, but one line will do. We've either heard of it and have an opinion, or haven't and either don't care or can google. (I did that for one candidate and the year he said he got his commercial licence was earlier than the year the school listed him on their site as a PPL alumni. It was fishy. I didn't call that guy). So there was some of that, and perhaps half as much actual flight time as I was asking for, and no operational multi-engine experience, but everyone has to start somewhere.

But what was it that led me back to this resume to stare at it in horror again and again? Was it the font? It wasn't Comic Sans. It was a condensed serif font with a lot of ligatures, not the best for clarity of reading, but I've seen worse. Hmm, sudden thought, it might not be a bad idea to use the font the company uses on the readable parts of their own website. It might make them feel like you're one of them. Or perhaps they have a terrible website, or the flight department hates the website that marketing made. I would not have given a second thought to this candidate's suboptimal font choice had it not been for the standout thing.

Ok, the resume wasn't in concrete poetry, with the text shaped into an airplane or something. I've never seen that. And the actual content formatting was pretty standard, with the flight time summary correctly at the top, and headings for qualifications and work experience and so on. It ran to two pages, which is unnecessary for someone who has only held one aviation job, and the two pages were separate documents.  Usually the two documents attached to the e-mail from an applicant are resume plus cover letter, but whatever. And then as I moved the two pages side by side on my screen I saw that they were jpegs. He sent his resume as two jpegs.  But there's more. The jpegs were named not "resume1" and "resume2."  That would be the ordinary level of poor file naming. Put your own name in the file name, and make it the same name you have on your resume. 

I get that you don't use the entire name your parents gave you every day, and that you may go by a nickname or a name that is easier for English-speakers to spell and pronounce than your passport name. I appreciate that if you have an name that is uncommon in Canada, or was when your prospective employer was learning about the world, that is a move you may feel obliged to make for social and business ease. Just put the same form of name on all your documents and on your e-mail so we can match them up.

When you send anyone a file or e-mail, think about the types of files they receive. If you're e-mailing a company that only installs air conditioners, a subject line of Air Conditioner is kind of useless. How about Request AC Quote for 1000 sq ft home.  A great pilot e-mail subject for a job application is Pilot 2000 TT 1000 ME PIC.  Especially if that meets the requirements of the position. If the chief pilot was going to delete your e-mail unread because the subject line was CPL 204TT, do you think making her open the e-mail and look at your resume to see that you are straight out of flight school will make you more appealing? It does not.

Also don't wait to the end of the resume to put your hours, the way I'm putting the weirdest thing about this resume at the end of this rant. Here it is: the names of the files were similar to Screenshot_20221227-12765_Chrome.jpg. The guy typed in his resume details, made it all nice the way he wanted with his favourite font, then took a screenshot of each page and saved them as jpegs. And sent them to me. I think you'd have had to write your resume on a taco to top that.

I did not follow up.

We all have to learn. I believe the first resume I ever handed in was handwritten on purple notepaper while I was on the bus on the way to the interview.  And I got the job. Those were different times. And it was a non-aviation job that involved wearing a funny hat. I wore it with panache.

How to Get Your Pilot Resume in the Wrong Pile

My company is hiring. Not a lot of aviation companies are right now. I'm seeing a lot of resumes. Far too many to honestly evaluate every individual one.  I understand better than I used to the value of having  a friend walk your resume in.  But I recommend you apply through the regular channel as well. Somewhere in my office there is a pile of walked-in resumes that I'm not looking at, because I'm working from home, and back when I accepted them, the choice of pilots was not so great.

Now, faced with an inbox full of resumes, I am almost looking for a reason to throw yours aside. Here, let me help you find a job, and some other chief pilot not have to look at your terrible application. Here are some reasons I have hit the delete key:

• not even close to the published job requirements

You're just annoying when you do this. I sometimes want to hit reply and ask the candidate why he is wasting my time. Don't apply blindly to every job.  If there's a job you really want when you have enough time, write that chief pilot a letter when they aren't hiring and tell them that's your ambition, that you don't yet have their requirements, but you're working on it.  If they give you advice, thank them, take it, and write back again later to thank them for how the advice worked out.  I've got a job that way, lacking the required time.

• misspell the name of the company you're applying to

This one is most amusing when coupled with resume claims about your attention to detail. If you really have attention to detail you'll find out how that company likes its name capitalized, and whether they routinely use the Co. or the Inc. If the name is difficult and you copy paste it into to your cover letter, ensure the font and typeface match, so it doesn't look like a Reader's Digest Sweepstakes mailout from the 1980s.

• don't include your types flown with your jobs on the resume

Listing all the types you've flown at the top of the resume doesn't do it for me. It's not a minus, but I assume it's a full on listing of everything you have in your logbook, not the aircraft you have worked as a pilot on for six months or more. I don't really care about that one time you ferried a Twin Comanche from Swift Current to Moose Jaw or when your friend gave you some stick time in his Yak-52. Okay, the Yak-52 is pretty cool and I might ask you about it at the interview, but you're unlikely to get the interview if I'm not seeing a progression of aircraft types flown commercially at various companies. Yes, I probably know what aircraft many of those companies operate, but don't make me guess which ones you were flying when.

• list yourself as 'pilot' on two crew aircraft

I'm left wondering, are you saying 'pilot' the way a first officer does in the bar to try to sound more impressive to a pick-up target, or are you saying it the way a news reporter does, referring to the captain, because they think the first officer is not actually a pilot?  Either way it doesn't speak to CRM or a desire to communicate clearly. If you upgraded during your tenure, list yourself as captain, and if you were simultaneously captain on one type and FO on another, list both positions. If you flew a type normally operated two-crew, note that you were single-pilot.

• make me hunt for your hours flown

If you're hiding them, they're probably insufficient. If you don't put them on at all why are we here?

•  include the decimals in your hours

That was adorable when you soloed at 10.3 hours but stops once you're looking for a job.

• fail to follow the instructions given in the job ad

If I hire you. I will be giving you instructions.  Consider the application to be a short test of whether you are willing and able to follow instructions. 

• phone me, phone my colleagues, or physically visit the office

Someone did the last, repeatedly, during a pandemic. 

• omit contact information

It's unfair, perhaps, but while I don't want you to contact me by any means than that specified in the job ad, I want to be able to contact you.  Put your current phone number, a respectable-looking e-mail address you monitor, and at least a city, on your resume and cover letter. Tip: if there is an address in the same area as the employer where you can receive mail, list it on your resume and cover letter. We started our search with candidates with local ties. I probably bypassed local folks because their telephone area codes reflected the province or territory where they last worked and not where they are today.

• use the same cover letter for all employers

I understand there are employers who don't care about cover letters, but I expect the candidate to do some of the work for me there. Rather than me combing through the resume looking for the bits relevant to me, the competent applicant highlights the aspects of their resume that are most relevant to the job, showing how they match each job requirement. The really savvy applicant matches the tone of the letter to that of the ad, brings in more information that shows they know the company, and persuades me they want this job especially.  A cover letter applying for a job that doesn't match mine tells me the applicant doesn't want the job I'm hiring for.

• waste any time applying

The first resume into my inbox got an interview. The person did also meet all the criteria, with a fantastic cover letter, so it's possible they would have got the interview anyway. But after three days I had so many applications that I took down the ad and a day or so later started filtering subsequent applications into a Late folder that I'm not sure I've ever opened. This is totally unfair, as I did not put an application deadline on the ad, but I can only look at so many resumes. While many of the points above are somewhat mocking, this one is just a reality of today's pilot job market. 

Not all employers are going to agree with all of these, so if you hire pilots and like what I hate, feel free to say so in the comments. I started off this post blowing off steam, but there are so many really good candidates out there, I don't want them to blow a chance with a poor first impression.

Good luck out there. I might follow up with some strategies I saw on winning resumes and cover letter, or what made us think yes and no during interviews.

Great Cover Letter -- Too Bad You're Lying

I have three jobs right now, all of which are very awesome, and all of which involve learning new things and writing reports, so blogging is not something I especially need do right now. I regret this a little bit, because I'm very fond of you all, and you have helped carry me through lean times when I didn't feel as appreciated in my real life as I do now. Sometimes I want to tell everyone, including strangers on the Internet, about how much fun I'm having, but there's not a lot I can talk about. Also, just as the more successful a stand up comic becomes, the more her jokes pertain to hotels and airlines, the further along in her career a pilot gets, the more her story pertains to paperwork and management. Sometimes I want to tell specific people things, but those aren't always appropriate, either. This person, though, I think I'll talk about to you, because it's not appropriate to talk to them.

Once upon a time, when a person applied for a job, she put together a resume of skills and experience and then took it to a place to get it copied however many times she thought she could afford stamps for. Then she wrote a cover letter for each potential employer, highlighting for them the aspects of her resume that were most appropriate to the particular company. Cover letter went on top of the resume, then they were folded together and placed in the envelope. the envelope would be the first thing the employer saw, so of course a person would address it neatly, make sure she had the correct name and address, and I used to look for special stamp issues with airplanes on them and use those. I figured that chief pilots would be attracted to stamps with airplanes on, the way I was. By the time I was looking for my second job, it had become normal to just fax the resume and cover letter. I mention this, because nowadays resumes are typically e-mailed to potential employers, but the wisdom applicants receive from their parents or mentors may not include the fact that there is now another layer of presentation: the e-mail message itself.

Step one of e-mailing your resume to a potential employer is not sending it from the e-mail address you made up when you were in grade eight. SuperStud69@hotmail.com does not say great things about you. You would not believe how many e-mail addresses I see in that vein. But let's say you have a sober, mature e-mail address. You need to write something in your e-mail. I will never open an attachment to a blank e-mail, not from a friend, relative or a stranger. If there's nothing in the e-mail that indicates the person knows who I am I delete it, no regrets. I do open pretty much all e-mails from job hunting pilots. I've been there. But adding "2000h TT," or "Current [type] PPC," or whatever you know your prospective employer needs will help you get looked at. The content of the e-mail determines whether I go to the next step. Think of what is written in the body of the e-mail as you convincing me I should open the attachment and look at your resume. Don't make it the equivalent of "you won't believe how many hours this pilot has." I don't see anything wrong with copying the body of your cover letter right across to the e-mail body. That's the letter you took time crafting.

Here's what was on one recently:

Dear Sir/Madam [...] I have learned about this company online, and have familiarized myself with the aircraft fleet.

Right there, right there in the first paragraph, the candidate has lied to me. My information on our company's website make it clear that "madam" and not "sir" would be appropriate. What did they learn about the company online? The complete lack of reference to what our fleet is composed of strongly suggests that the candidate did no such thing. Why does it matter? If I were to hire this person, they would have to sign a form before each flight stating that they have familiarized themselves with NOTAM and weather for the route of flight and verified that the aircraft is in weight and balance limits. They expect me to turn the page and believe the numbers they have written down for their experience, when they have already lied to me today?

Am I, who got hired for her first job with a resume bearing a spelling error, playing this game too harshly? Maybe. Maybe it's petty. I looked at the resume, and the person had some really relevant experience (which had they actually researched the company they would have been smart to put at the beginning of the cover letter, or even in the subject line). The total time was really low. If the cover letter had showed they cared, I might have opened a dialogue with them, passed the resume over to another company that we hire from. But I didn't. I worried a tiny bit that they would see this and then go back and actually look at the websites of all the companies they sent the generic cover letter to, to find out which ones had a female in my role, so they could out me. But given they weren't willing to do that much research towards getting an actual job, they probably won't do it for a minor act of vengeance. Plus that's not a very distinctive opening line. There's probably a flight college power point slide somewhere that a whole class copied it off of.

Dear Candidate

Dear Job Applicant,

The chief pilot saw something on your resume that indicated you might have a skill that she valued, over and above your possibly adequate piloting time. She sent you a quick e-mail asking for more information about that item on your resume. You blew it.

Communication is another skill that she values highly. She understands that not everyone is a novelist. She overlooks clumsy grammar and trite cover letters, because she's been there trying to write something that is going to impress some management droid she knew nothing about. But when she asks you two direct simple questions and your reply answers only one of the two, and that vaguely, your resume quietly goes away. It doesn't get forwarded to a colleague who has a much cooler job than the one you applied for. If that's the quality of response you give while job hunting, the chief pilot does not want to think about how you will communicate with your dispatcher or maintenance staff. She will not inflict you on them.

Spelling is nice. Grammar is useful. Vocabulary is entertaining. Communication is everything.

love and kisses, but no interview,

Aviatrix

Fighting for Others

I have a pilot friend visiting from another province, looking for work herself. It's no conflict of interest, because we have different experience and different goals, so it's been a source of inspiration to see her share my frustrating experiences and the same psychological difficulty to do the simplest things like walk into someone's place of business and hand over a resume. Preparing for her visit renewed my efforts, and possibly paid off in the opportunities that are opening up for me now. I hope it's not too frustrating for her to see me getting a chance when she is at a tough stage of the hunt.

As I strategize and arrange networking opportunities for her with people who I think can give her advice or help get her resume in the right hands, it occurs to me that I am somehow willing to work harder to help her find employment than I am for myself. I've been more creative in my thinking and more willing to call people to ask for help when it's not for me. I don't even think of myself as a particularly nice or generous person, maybe a six or a seven on a scale of one to ten running from most selfish to most generous. I hate it when people mess with my stuff, but there's something in me that leaps to defend against injustice, and leaves me almost unable to not help, if something is within my power. How to harness this energy for my own success? Heck, if I could just harness it to get my own laundry done I'd be ahead.

I'd Rather My Life Be About Flying, Too

A few days ago, a reader posted a comment that I was expecting. Truthfully I was expecting more resembling this comment, and sooner.

OK, I think this diversion was fun. I also think it has gone on long enough and we ought to get back to flying or something close. Don't ya 'spoze... If we don't (or won't) want to write about flying anymore, let's reclassify and get off the aviation lists. Frankly, I DO think you still give a twit about flying and you are just hiding it because you are a bit frustrated - and I can appreciate that. Maybe it is time to take a slightly lesser flying job, keep those hours building and do what you are supposed to do. Some folks on their way up the ladder believe that ANY flying is better than no flying. Where do you stand?

I answered briefly (or at least as briefly as I get) in a comment, but decided to take some more room here to answer more thoroughly, point by point. As I learned as an instructor, most of the time when someone asks a question there are others wondering the same thing. I appreciate your attention and your comments, and enjoy hearing from different people as I happen to veer into your areas of expertise. This blog, as it has always said up there at the top, is about the adventures of an aviatrix: me. I am doing my level best to make them once again aviation-related adventures, but I can only write so many posts about PDFs of resumes. I like to be a reliable blogger, but in my case reliability is in the regularity my posts, or at least reliable information on when I'll blog next, as opposed to reliably blogging on a given topic. Despite my diversions, I think I produce as many aviation-themed posts in any given year as any other non-aggregator in the blogosphere. Remember in that vein that a non-aviation post is not depriving you of an aviation one, just giving you something to see before the next time I have an aviation-related one ready.

I'm a little surprised to have given the impression that I was unwilling to write about flying, or that I didn't care about flying. I didn't think much more than a week went by without me saying something about my desire to be flying, my impatience to hear back from a company I had interviewed with, or at least comparing what I was doing to some aspect of flying. I'm definitely not trying to hide it. Getting off aviation lists wouldn't really be something I could do of my own accord. Most blog directories, well the good ones, at least, classify blogs themselves and I wouldn't even know where to look to find what lists I'm on or how to get off them.

The "time to take a slightly lesser flying job" question is an interesting one. I wonder if he has ever tried to take a slightly lesser flying job. What is a "lesser" flying job? For less money? The job for which I attended groundschool would have paid half as much as my previous one, and for close to twice as much work. A slower or smaller airplane? Not out of the question. Every type of commercial operation is different, and the management want pilots who have direct, recent experience in the narrow area they are hiring for, yet who do not have so much experience that they could easily get a different job. I apply for but don't get called to interview for near-entry level jobs, even ones I really want, because my resume is clearly not one of an entry level pilot, and the employers want someone who needs the job as a rung on the ladder, and who will take some time to be eligible for a different one. Cynically, such a pilot is easier for them to abuse, and practically they feel they have a better chance of amortizing their investment. I'm already eligible for almost any job advertised without specific type-rating demands, but as the specific type of time any given employer might be asking for falls further into the past, my competitiveness as a candidate declines. And yes, that's very frustrating, and it's something that sent me to go back to school and prove that I could go and learn things like I was still twenty.

I have absolutely no interest in time-building. It's one of the strengths of my resume, that any employer can look at it and see that I'm not applying because I'm looking to build time. My time is built. I'm not sure what "do what you were supposed to do" means in the question. If I was supposed to fly airplanes and write only about aviation, then you not I are the one doing the supposing. I'm a whole person and I do lots of stuff, little of which I consider to be something I'm not supposed to do.

Any flying is most definitely not better than no flying. If you are flying unsafe aircraft, with undocumented dangerous goods, with abusive management or customers, or otherwise operating in an environment hazardous to the physical or mental health of yourself or others, you're making a poor decision. I will fly for any operation I consider to be safe and respectful. Regular readers have seen me accept a contract to fly an airplane I could lift without starting the engine, and jump in a simulator for an airplane that could probably lift my house. I'll follow any SOPs I consider safe, legal and moral, but I won't stay long where I'm not respected.

It so happens that the school from which I embezzled the most recent phase of my education ended its winter term. The students all applauded the professors on the last day of classes, something that seems superior to what happened when I went to school. I think we all walked out grumbling about the exam schedule. I cancelled the Netflix subscription without watching anything else I deemed worth reporting on. Except that I watched all the Red Dwarf episodes, including a few series that weren't out the first time I watched them. I discovered that you can be inspired and roll your eyes at the same time, with the line, "Even the word "hopeless" has hope in it." Netflix Canada has a very poor selection. I'm holding back on trying another movie delivery option because whether DVDs-by-mail will work depends on whether the job I am destined to get is in Nowhere, Nunavut or Downtown Distribution City.

And all this blogging isn't a complete waste of time, as I now have e-mail from a couple of blog readers with real job tips: jobs that are available to a Canadian, and related to my experience. One of the companies experiences an unfortunate setback actually during our rapid-fire e-mail conversation but the other one seems promising, as the employer e-mailed me back.

Update: I removed the reader's posting name from this blog entry because, while I wasn't intending it as a name and shame, he took some heat from the blogosphere and sent me a sincere apology. So we're good now.

Mix, Match and Vote

As my fellow citizens all know, Canadians go to the polls today to elect new members of parliament. In every constituency, called a riding, voters select on their ballot one candidate, and the candidate who receives the most votes, even if it isn't a majority, become the elected representative for that riding. The party represented by the majority of elected candidates will most probably then be asked by the Governor-General to form a government, and that party's leader will become the next (or remain the current) Prime Minister of Canada.

Foreigners can test their knowledge of Canadian politics and Canadians can try to guess the punchline of the cartoon below.

I'd explain the inverted punchline for non-Canadians, but it's spelled out under the cartoon here. Americans probably think it's wacky, but I remind you that we think the same of your primaries.

Instead I'll throw in a linguistics tidbit and tell you the origin of the Canadian word riding. Old Norse influence in what is now northern England produced the word þriðing, which sounds like 'thriving' except with the v replaced with the th sound from this, and which means "third part." Yorkshire, for example was divided into three, the North, South and East. Say North Thrithing a few times and it quickly loses the second consecutive th sound and from there it morphed into something that folk etymologies often dream up a scenario with candidates canvassing potential voters on horseback. I wish. It would be a lot more entertaining than the autodialled calls I keep getting.

I've heard from the Liberals twice, the NDP once and the Conservatives, Greens and others not at all. Make that the Liberals three times. They literally called again while I was finishing that sentence. Also I saw the the Bloc Quebecois campaign bus yesterday on the tarmac, collecting BQ candidates from what was presumably their campaign aircraft, but I didn't have my camera with me. Too bad, it is definitely the coolest campaign aircraft of all the parties, and I can't find a picture of it online. Here is what it looks like. A Convair 580 turboprop still mostly in Nolinor colours. It was facing me head on, so I didn't see if it had BQ decals, too. They made the news last week doing a go around for sudden wind gusts in Gaspé. Love those massive propellers.

Both the Conservative and NDP campaigns are flying Airbus 319s chartered from Air Canada. It's a good thing for them that the Leafs didn't make the playoffs, because I think one of the airplanes might have gone to the hockey team if they had.

Can you guess by the decals on the Airbuses which party is more popular than its leader and which leader is more popular than his party?

The Liberals have leased an American-made Boeing 737-400 from Enerjet in Calgary. They had to scramble for an airplane last election because Air Canada couldn't spare any more A319s, so this year they booked in advance. This may be a picture from a previous campaign, because the FlightAware site records nothing since a Frobisher Bay-Kelowna flight two years ago, but I think they have the same type this year.

The Green leader Elizabeth May took a train last year, but this year I guess she's buying airline tickets. Or maybe riding a horse.

Engine Startrekinsey Sequence

I'm not sure if this is a cohesive description of the engine start sequence or an unpublished chapter of Joyce's Ulysses in which we follow Aviatrix's stream of consciousness as she slides into aircraft manual-induced, chocolate-deprived madness. Either way, come for the engines, stay for the Star Trek references and sexual innuendo.

When I start my car, I put my foot on the brake, the key in the ignition, turn and hold the key until the engine sounds just right, then release the key and the engine continues. That's a little bit complex. You have to get a feel for when to release the key. When I first learned to drive there was another complication, in that I had to put my foot on the gas as well and give it just enough gas to start. But many of you start old manual transmission cars every day without even thinking about the process. And some of you start up an electric car by, I understand, pushing a button. I think they just push a button to start the starship Enterprise too, so this is clearly the way of the future.

Push button airplanes exist, and starting mine does begin with pressing a button, but it's a little more complicated than that, and I have to know and understand the whole sequence, including the stuff that does happen automatically. I'm sure I'll be quizzed on this all during the test, and if I'm going to feel helpless someday when I can't get the engine started, I'd best know exactly what is failing to happen.

Before Start

I need to be sure that the inlet and exhaust are free of debris, that the first stage compressor has no visible damage, that the P2T2 probe is clear, the propeller is on the blade angle locks, and that it moves freely. I should check the oil, make sure the speed levers and power levers move freely and are set in the low and just ahead of ground idle positions, respectively. If I'm using a GPU I should make sure it's supplying 24 V and 1000 A, and if I'm using batteries I should check that they have a good charge.

0 - 10% RPM

After the prestart checks are complete, I press and hold the start button. As a result:

• the #1 start control relay closes
• the starter relay closes
• the oil vent valve opens
• the anti-ice lockout valve closes
• the starter engages to rotate the engine

And let's see what that all means.

The #1 start control relay "is used to control the starter relay and the oil vent valve during ground starts, and the propeller unfeather pump during air starts." It "also opens the voltage regulator 'B' to starter-generator 'A' lead to prevent field feedback during starts." The first part I get: The #1 start control relay is the electrical string you pull on to get the next two things on the list to happen. If the second part of the description mentioned some kind of particle or anti-matter, I would swear that was from one of the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Wesley saved the ship again. I can surmise that for some reason the starter-generator has an 'A' lead, that the voltage regulator has a 'B' lead, and that these two are normally connected, but that that connection can lead to undesirable feedback during starts. I can further surmise that the voltage regulator is there to regulate generator output, but seeing as the generator isn't put on line until after it has finished being a starter, that there's no need for it to be connected during start.

The starter relay "energizes the starter generator, during ground starts only." That makes sense, because during air starts the starter is not needed: rotation of the engine from the propeller is sufficient.

The oil vent valve is a clever little kludge to prevent the starter having to work against cold sluggish oil pressure as it rotates the engine. It opens up the oil system to allow it to ingest air during ground starts.

The fuel anti-ice lockout valve closes off the line through which the fuel system cycles cold fuel to a heat exchanger with the oil to prevent ice crystals forming in the fuel. At start the oil isn't warm anyway, so the valve is closed to keep the fuel pressure high.

So that's two things that happen when the start button is pressed, two more that happen because of one of those (or three if we count the A-B lead thing) and one one that happens because of the second wave. And that's all before anything even catches on fire.

10 - 55% RPM

When engine RPM reaches 10% the fire is supposed to start. Specifically:

• the 10% speed switch closes
• the #2 start control relay closes
• the series/parallel relay connects the batteries in series, if selected
• the SPR valve is energized
• the fuel solenoid valve opens
• the 'primaries only' fuel solenoid opens
• ignition turns on

And I know what most of that means.

The speed switches contain reverse tachyon tribarium warp core interfaces a DC regulating system, a signal conditioning amplifier, timing pulse generators and voltage discriminating circuits (it only allows straight voltages to go through, and the ones with suntans don't get to use the good wires). The speed switches contain STUFF, okay, including three relays. The 10% relay (which the voltage discriminating circuits probably think is an overestimate, or maybe a lifestyle choice) is normally open, the 55% relay is normally closed and the 90% relay is normally open. They receive electrical signals from the "tach gen" which for the purpose of my own amusement I will imagine stands for tachyon generator. Each relay changes its respective state when engine rotation reaches the corresponding speed. The 90% one isn't important to engine starting, but I didn't want to leave it out, as it's probably already getting enough hassle from the voltage discriminating circuits. Best I can tell from the ten pages of starter circuit diagrams, when the 10% speed switch closes, it energizes the #2 start control relay, and the #2 start control relay does the four other things on the list: ignition on, batteries to series, SPR energized and fuel solenoid on.

Hey who thinks I should be allowed chocolate now?

The series-parallel switch sounds like something Scotty would do at the last minute to keep the Enterprise from falling into a black hole.

"It's no use Captain. We haven't got enough juice to get the warp engines online."

"You've got to get them online Scotty, or we're all dead!"

"Well I suppose if I cross connected the dilithium crystals from the other nacelle, it could possibly give enough of a boost to get the warp core online. It's never been done before, laddie."

And then he does it, and it works and the he publishes a paper on the subject, and the manufacturer comes out with a bulletin saying never to do it because it voids the warrantee. It's just like that. In fact it's hard to believe that some desperate pilot didn't invent it while stranded on a reserve somewhere, except that this isn't a bush plane. The manufacturer has set it up so you can flick a switch and the batteries, usually connected in parallel, one to each starter-generator, automatically go into series when the power is needed most. My company, however, says that the power is not needed most at 10% but rather at about 18-28% where there are bad vibrations (seriously, that's the reason), so what I'm supposed to do is start the engine with the series-parallel switch in parallel, but if the engine rpm is at or above 18% and not increasing steadily by 1% per second through 25%, I should flick the switch into series then. I was so impressed by this in groundschool I immediately asked why I wouldn't do it every time. It's because it's very hard on the batteries and if you drain both of them together, you only have one shot, so you have to hit it with your best shot. Also if you do it at night you need to have a flashlight handy, because it will dim the lights and you won;t be able to see the engine instruments.

The SPR valve is another thing they didn't get quite right, according to company procedures. It sounds all cool and modern with the TLA and all, and it stands for Start Pressure Regulator which brings to mind the idea that it might be some sort of computer. Nope. It's the primer. Yeah, the primer. I have to prime this puppy. Primer is available between ten and fifty-five percent rpm, but I should prime it between zero and ten percent, then not prime it between ten and twenty-five, then go back to priming until 55% when the 55% speed switch opens and de-energizes it. The SPR bypasses the fuel control unit and fuel flow transmitter, going straight to the primary fuel nozzles.

The fuel solenoid valve is the thing that lets the fuel into the engine so the igniters have something to ignite. I'm sure that makes them very happy. You can close these valves mechanically with an emergency stop control, but then you can't open them again. Ever. Okay probably not ever. I assume maintenance can fix you up again. The primaries only solenoid allows fuel through only the primary starter nozzles, not the full manifold.

The igniters are not something that I have a lot of information on, but the ignition exciters supply "a nominal high voltage of 18,000' volts to the igniters" so the exciters seem to be serving as fluffers to the igniters. The igniters are some kind of high tech spark plug that lights the fuel. I know they are different than glow plugs, because I flew an airplane once on which some models had glow plugs and some models had igniters and this was apparently different enough that I was supposed to care. (Can you tell I didn't?) I pretended to at the time, and phasers on kill, I swear I will pretend to care about this, too. The igniters light my fire. Can't start a fire without a spark. What is wrong with me? I almost never quote song lyrics. Because I don't know any.

A light comes on when the igniters are working, and the EGT should rise, indicating that something is actually on fire in there, and that the hot exhaust is coming out the right end. When it happens, the pilot can release the start button. If it doesn't happen within ten seconds of reaching 10% rpm, or before reaching 20% rpm, the pilot should shut down the engine. She does this by pressing the stop button, pulling the stop and feather control and then continuing to motor the engine for ten seconds with the starter test switch.

55% RPM

When the 55% switch (which the book calls a 50% switch, but the book is for an older model of engine, so I have to assume that changed) opens, everything that the #1 and #2 start control relays did gets undone, except for the opening of the fuel solenoid:

• the starter relay closes
• the starter turns off
• the anti-ice lockout valve opens
• the oil vent valve closes
• the series/parallel relay goes back to parallel, if it was used
• the ignition turns off
• SPR becomes unavailable
• primaries only fuel solenoid closes

Whew, that feels good. It was actually worth it. It took too long, though. I spent a couple of hours on that, between course notes, two manuals and the engine supplement. And stalking around hoping chocolate would spontaneously appear.

Is there some kind of vitamin, found only in chocolate, from which deprivation makes it difficult to study without degenerating into lame Star Trek references, old song lyrics and crude jokes?

I'm also getting antsy, waiting for my training to be scheduled. I have a job offer already, but until I actually go online as a pilot, I don't really have a job. They scheduled the first two while I was there, and I know the second one had a PPC ride today. But it could have been delayed by aircraft or training pilot availability. That happens. Or they decided they hated me and are just going to ignore me. It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you. I e-mailed the chief pilot with a question about where I should send my paperwork, kind of the way I ask ATC for an altimeter setting when I haven't talked to them in a while.