Nancy and I completed our annual recurrency with Walt Adair at TSI this past week. Nancy now has well over 300 hours in our TBM and I am over 500 hours. Insurance requires an annual recurrency course. Ideally they would recommend alternating years when the course would be simulation based and aircraft based. But we have made so many mods to our aircraft avionics, it would be of low value for us to do a simulator course in the TBM. So we have been scheduling a 3-day recurrency course with Walt, whom we really enjoy and like.
(We should consider doing a simulator course to get a type rating in a new plane though. Perhaps after the next time I retire. 🙂 )
Our course with TSI is customized for us by Walt. On the first day we covered a number of ground school topics including icing, electrical systems, landing gear systems, and environmental. We also started a quiz reviewing systems which we handed in later. We also did a thorough walk around/ pre-flight to make sure we are properly assessing our plane. One key topic is reviewing recent accidents to help with an training trends in TBMs. I posted the one that was the most concerning. It really wasn’t TBM focused, but the TBM got overwhelmed by icing. See the that blog post here: link
Then each of us took two long flights (between 2.5 and 3.0 hours) as such:
Flight 1 – IFR Refresher and Instrument Proficiency Check
- 5 approaches including LOC BC, GPS, ILS
- holds
- navigating
- Airports for me included KSMX, KSBA, KOXR, and KCMA. Nancy also did ILS approaches to Vandenburg AFB.
We used this to gain more familiarization with the G600 and new autopilot director built-in to the G600. The main challenge is getting the altitude select properly armed. Nancy rode in the back on my flight and got some Seeq work done while she was flying.
Flight 2 – Flight Review and Airwork
- Slow Flight
- Steep Turns
- Stall Sequences
- Torque Roll Demonstration
- Aircraft Demonstration
- Cut the Power at 10,000 feet and glide to Santa Barbara
- Pattern Work
- No Flap Landings and Take-Offs
- Cross-Wind Landings
- Hand flying GPS/RNAV 26 into Camarillo with no flaps.
It was great to spend time with Walt, review the systems, hear the latest, and get some advice on how to improve our techniques and get some out of our comfort zone refresher.
We are liking the new gear better and better.
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