Hercules University article from CodeOn

[Jansen]

http://www.codeonemagazine.com/article.html?item_id=64

A few excerpts:

The 314th AW trains approximately 1,800 C-130E/H and C-130J aircrew members annually—about 450 daily—from the US and from nearly thirty-five countries around the world. Close to 1,600 Hercules maintainers from the US and from more than fifteen allied nations are also trained every year. Students arrive or depart The Rock, as the base is commonly known, almost every working day. Similar to a college architecture or computer science laboratory, the lights at Hercules University are on from dawn to dusk and late into the night.

“A student begins with a half-day of in-processing,” said Chuck Cash, the Lockheed Martin JMATS deputy program manager. “They get their school-issued laptop loaded with all the courseware, lessons, and anything else they will need. Then they take a tour of the building. When they come back from lunch, they start training.” The laptops are returned and reused when the students complete their training. Meanwhile, the ATS students across the courtyard receive a disk with everything they need for legacy Hercules training when they start. The students can keep the disk.

The introduction of sophisticated technology greatly helped reduce the cost of training. “The commercial airlines do very little actual flying training with new pilots. Their training is done in high fidelity simulators,” Mordente added. “It required a little bit of a mindset change, but once the Air Force saw that all qualification requirements and standards were still being met, resistance to simulator-focused training started going away.” As a result, a lot more training has now migrated to simulators.

“We have twenty-five early 1960s-vintage C-130Es for training now, and our maintainers do a great job of keeping them flying,” Lear observed. “But the E-models are scheduled for retirement by the end of 2011. We’ll then migrate to the C-130H2. We also have seven C-130Js and could use a couple more. We need them.”

See the original article for much more.

[bobdaley]

Interesting,

I remember 41 years ago that new CP's coming to Sewart got 5 5.0 hours flying to get Phase 1 qualified and only half that time did you fly the plane. 12.5 hours is not a lot of time for a 240 hour total pilot out of small jets to actually fly.

In the airlines on the other hand I think I only trained twice in 28 years on an airplane, once to get a HUD check out and three bounces in a 737-700. Everything else was done in the sim. But none of the airline hires had less than 2000 hours, and all starting in 1976 for my airline, all had type ratings in the airplane before being hired. A different thing.

I would be surprised if a new 130 CP could replace 12 1/2 hours flying with sim time and be well trained.

Bob

[Jansen]

You would be surprised. I've used the sim at my airport and it is pretty close to the Cessnas that I fly, but the Air Force uses much more advanced 360 degree full motion simulators with complete cockpits.

"The WST is where all the ground training comes together. These motion-based simulators, which look like large white boxes on stilts, feature highly detailed visual systems and fully operational cockpits. The training goes from simulating simple flights to replicating complicated, low-level combat missions in Afghanistan. Mission planning for a four-hour WST ride gets as detailed as planning for a flight. Everything is replicated—radio calls, weather, even the constant hum of propellers turning. It is as close to flying a mission as possible without ordering a box lunch."

This is a pic from the WST.