Btw I’m about 170 hours in so far (8 months). The next 6 months are going to be very busy with travel so I’ll probably come close to 300 in the first year.

I’m ok at flying it but still not where I was in the KA. Flying a jet is harder! Stuff comes at you at a faster pace. I flew the DSNEE 3 to the ILS at SNA the other day and I was fairly busy for most of the flight. I had a pax in the right seat with lots of questions so if I wasn’t doing something, I was answering his excited questions.

How much faster are you flying an arrival in the CJ compared to the KA?

Does your avionics suite hit the altitudes automatically with VNAV leaving you only the power levers to adjust?

Passengers in the right seat are easily one of the biggest distractions which is why I never had any for the longest time. Now when I find myself making mistakes it has usually been because I was chatting away with a right seat pax.

John,

You might try briefing your passengers on a sterile cockpit below 10,000. To keep from ruffling feathers you can tell them it's an FAA regulation.

I know what you mean by things happening faster. I was flying commuters in 402's and Navajos, then transitioned to a Lear 24. After my first dual flight (no sim) my instructor told me that had we crashed I wouldn't have been hurt because I was so far behind the airplane. It takes a bit for a 160 knot brain to catch up to a 450 knot airplane.

Good idea Paul.

400-409 kts vs 270. I try to keep it right on the barber pole on the way down without letting the beeper go off, if I'm busy I come back a little so I don't have to watch it so closely. The warning doesn't start until you hit .726 but then it won't stop until you get back under .72. Mountain wave makes this more challenging.

Mark also helped me with a great ipad mount. It is a suction cup on an articulated arm and I have it in the bottom left corner of the front windscreen. I also bought the same big back-up battery he uses so I don't have to worry about running out of juice. The Garmin 750 talks to the Ipad and keeps the route updated so that's kinda cool. It seems like I saw it show me my position on an STAR one time but I don't see this very often - maybe most STARs are not geo location capable?

I've learned some pretty simple rules to follow. For instance, a 1000 FPM descent (up high) requires an 8-10% power reduction - a 2500FPM is 20%. I always dial in the "expect to cross" altitude in the Vnav or I'll create something (for instance, I'll use one of the IAF altitudes 10 miles out), unless I'm told differently, I'll give ATC 1000FPM until I have to go down at 2500FPM to make my crossing - this keeps ATC happy, doesn't point the airplane down too much (PAX are comfortable), gives me plenty of room if I need to go down faster and keeps me high as long as possible. I got most of this from my mentor pilot but interested to hear how others do it.

I see what you did there. It’s coming.

If I'm not on a suitable STAR I will load an ATK Offset of 10nm and 3000 AGL from the destination into the flight plan. That gives me a good "TOD" descent plan until I can pickup the ATIS and load an approach. Regarding the Ipad, I prefer set Foreflight to "Direct" to destination that way I always have the heading and distance to the airport; situational awareness. I've been burned a few times while on a SID only to find myself too high and/or too fast. It also provides a quick reference for making UNICOM calls starting 20nm out.

Regarding Ipad mounts, I bought the AboveTek on Amazon and have been very happy with it.

It sounds like your developing some good ROT's (Rules Of Thumb) ; every airplane has them.

"Mark helped me with a great Ipad mount."

I'm certainly not criticizing John, so please don't take it that way, but I just don't get the Ipad thing. You are flying the latest jet complete with glass panel, and an advanced autopilot with VNAV, and you need an Ipad? I flew a 4-engine .92 Mach jet, with steam gauges, no FMS, simple GPS with no moving map and a basic autopilot without VNAV and no Ipad and never felt that I needed one.

Confession: I have 3 moving map GPS tablets in my 182.

It sounds like your developing some good ROT's (Rules Of Thumb) ; every airplane has them.

"Mark helped me with a great Ipad mount."

I'm certainly not criticizing John, so please don't take it that way, but I just don't get the Ipad thing. You are flying the latest jet complete with glass panel, and an advanced autopilot with VNAV, and you need an Ipad? I flew a 4-engine .92 Mach jet, with steam gauges, no FMS, simple GPS with no moving map and a basic autopilot without VNAV and no Ipad and never felt that I needed one.

Paul, there were not many descend via’s back in the day. But when you happened to find one flying a jet like you did made it a busy arrival.

The old Civet2 Arrival into Lax comes to mind. You were busy working the AP and maintaining speed control to comply with restrictions on the arrival. After a while it became easy because you learned the traps. By comparison to what they have now the Civet 2 was a simple one!

Now there are descend and climb vias everywhere and flying like John does means many of them are a first look for him. Doesn’t sound like he flies the same route over and over, even if he did there are lots of these things at every airport.

He also is using a Garmin 750 which does not have VNAV so he is using the same technique as you. Working that AP hard,cranking in each altitude and speed.

In a true FMC airplanes you enter the STAR check the constraints and watch the AP fly it.

It is simple until ATC interferes, then you need to know how to use the FMC.

The way you were doing it was much more difficult but Johns technique is also difficult and remember the biggest part of the equation.

He is alone!

Why the iPad? So he does not have to carry 40lbs of charts!

"Working the auto pilot hard"

I was able to reduce the work load by not using the auto pilot on approach. You sure made a good point about the 40 pound flight bag; my back would probably be in better shape if I hadn't carried that thing around. Flying "non-sched" we often flew places we hadn't been to before. Probably the biggest advantage over GA was that we flew the same type about a thousand hours a year; 16 years for me in type. Pretty familiar with the plane.

That enough time to get familiar!

Did you use the FD?

My parents used to walk to school in raging blizzards. Below zero temperatures. Had no cell phones or internet and no remote control TV. Heck they only got three channels. Made them what they are according to them.

John also doesn’t have a dispatcher that does all the flight planning, weight and balance, fuel ordering, performance calcs etc. all that stuff he had to do manually. So he, like everyone else in the modern era, use iPads. Once planned and filed he can push that data to his panel instruments thereby reducing time and, more importantly, errors.

Fact is Paul, your dispatcher is his iPad.

Oh yeah and the forty pounds of charts.

Now if you did all the stuff you indicate that you have done AND did it without a multi person crew and no distpatcher?

The dispatcher doesn't fly the airplane, but I can see the Ipad as an aid to flight planning, and with all of the flight planning programs available, GA pilots don't need a dispatcher for weather and NOTAMS and even weight and balance or fuel planning. I can certainly see an Ipad replacing a 40 pound flight bag. But I'm skeptical about the need to have one on the yoke in a modern glass panel airplane, even though "everyone else in the modern era does."

Because of the record keeping requirements of 121, at least when I was doing it, each flight generated a stack of paperwork about a half inch thick, some of it to be filled out and signed, and returned to the company which the FAA could audit at any time. GA is largely exempt from that.

"No cell phones, or internet, or remote control TV...."

Sure, that's all true, but now we have made such advances in cockpit technology, and a dependence on it, that we have taken too much of the thinking out of the cockpit and have pilots losing airplanes due to such over-reliance on the technology that they are lost without it. The industry has finally come around to realizing that.

The two man crew is more about back up and redundancy than it is that the airplane can't be flown by one.

I, and thousands of other pilots flew a lot of Part 91 turbo jet where I might as well have been single pilot, or sometimes even better off, with no dispatcher, no computerized flight planning or weight and balance, or fuel planning, and could launch on short notice. Is it better today because of the technology? Maybe.

Steve,

I used the flight director every time in actual weather approaches, but would turn it off once in while in visual conditions just to keep my scan up. When I first used a flight director I thought what more could you ask for, but now with glass panels, I know.

No doubt that when you descend via a STAR with a dozen waypoints with crossing altitudes and speeds, while single pilot, using VNAV with AP becomes essential. Managing power, picking up ATIS, finalizing landing calcs, loading the approach, calling the FBO 10 minutes out (just kidding), can make you feel like a two-headed pilot. It’s become the norm for Class B and C airports, but it works great with the right equipment.