Courses beginning in March 2022!

‍

Already a pilot?

Looking for a Multi-Engine or Multi-Instrument Rating?

Diamond Air Charter is also offering flight instruction toward your Multi-Engine Rating and Group One Instrument Rating in our DA62 Aircraft. Your instructors are highly qualified and experienced airline pilots. The program itself has been developed using airline/military training models.

Whether the endorsement is multi-engine or multi-engine IFR, the initial phase is the multi-engine training. This involves learning the DA62 and multi-engine flight.

Ground School > Procedures Trainer > Simulator > Aircraft

‍

The focus of the instrument training is the Garmin 1000NXi.  This popular avionics package is found on many entry level aircraft.  The principles of operation of the Garmin 1000NXi are applicable to other Garmin avionics suites such as the Garmin 430/530, GTN 650/750 and others found in entry level commercial aircraft.

One unique characteristic of the Garmin 1000 is the airline-like flight mode annunciator – learning how to effectively use this feature properly from the beginning with experienced airline pilots will make your life a lot easier and safer, whether you are flying privately or commercially.

‍

If you want "cheap and quick" training

this is not for you

‍

Instrument flying is the bread and butter of commercial pilots and is a skill that should be taught properly the first time.  Moreover, whether you are a private pilot or commercial pilot, instrument flying can be both enjoyable and lethal - many accidents have occurred during IMC conditions while performing instrument approaches and departures.  The time and money investment in a high quality, professional training experience with modern aircraft and avionics and experienced aviators pays dividends.

Facilities

The heart of IFR training is the avionics. Diamond Air Charter uses the Garmin G1000 NXi throughout its training including the procedures trainer, simulator and aircraft.

Procedures Trainer:

  • Simulator time and aircraft time are expensive.  To maximize the value of those resources a procedures trainer can be used to learn the use of the avionics as well as the aircraft operation before stepping into the simulator or aircraft.
  • DAC has purchased a desktop training device (Aviatek G1000 Desktop Trainer) that focuses exclusively on the Garmin 1000 NXi. This device is used with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.  While no flight credits can be gained with this device,  learning how to use the avionics in this environment saves time and money when progressing to more advanced training.

Simulator:

  • DAC has entered into an agreement with the Edmonton Flying Club to use their Precision Flight Controls Simulator. This simulator can be configured to the Garmin 1000, similar to what is used in the aircraft.  Flight time credit with this device can be used towards your endorsement.

Aircraft:

  • DAC uses a state-of-the-art, new Diamond DA62 aircraft.  It’s little brother, the DA42, is a popular multi-engine, IFR training aircraft.  The DA62 offers a number of features that make it attractive for this training:
  • Safety: The Diamond aircraft fleet has the best safety record of all general aviation aircraft. Period.
  • An aircraft without overly complex systems
  • Large wingspan - making it a very stable IFR platform
  • Garmin G1000NXi avionics
  • Single lever throttle control allowing one to focus on flying the aircraft not managing the engines.
  • Roomy flightdeck
  • Lots of room for observer in the rear seat
  • Bluetooth connectivity to the observer to follow along
  • Fast transit times - allowing approaches and departures to more airports
  • Real engine shutdowns are easily demonstrated
  • Datalogging flights for post flight debriefing
  • Diamond Air Charter uses advanced technology to enrichen the training experience to produce a better trained and safer multi-engine/instrument rated pilot. Some of these innovations are:
  • Aviatek Procedures Trainer (as described earlier)
  • ICARUS - This device allows the instructor to simulate obscured visibility providing a more realistic training experience. This is what would be experienced in real world instrument flying.
  • The Garmin G1000 NXi data logs a variety of parameters during the course of a flight; this data can then be used to debrief flights to understand how future performance can be improved.  The following demonstrates this capability on a recent flight from High River, Alberta (CEN4) to our base, CFB6:  C-FPWP 20 December 2021.

Location

DAC is based at the Edmonton/Josephburg Airport (CFB6), five minutes from Fort Saskatchewan and twenty-five minutes from Edmonton.

Josephburg offers several unique advantages:

Instructor

The primary instructor is Ed McDonald.  Ed began his instructional experience many years ago with the RCAF as a CT-114 Tutor Jet instructor, achieving an A2 instructional category with almost 800 hours of military jet instructional experience and over 300 hours of simulator instructing experience.

Since then, Ed completed a 32-year airline career retiring as a Boeing 787 Captain with endorsements on the Boeing 737-200, Boeing 767, Boeing 777 and Airbus A340/300.

Ed formed JetPro (parent company of DAC) and has been actively involved in instrument flight procedure design across Canada as a qualified procedure designer.

All of these unique experiences provide a unique set of skills in flight instruction, airline and aircraft operations and instrument procedure creation.

The Program

The multi-engine training is structured for a single student whereas the multi-IFR program is structured for two students simultaneously.  The multi-engine program only is approximately nine hours of flying whereas the multi-IFR program is approximately thirteen hours of flying and twenty hours of simulator flying (plus ground briefings).  The time, both flying/simulator hours and elapsed from start to finish, will vary between students.

  • In the simulator you would work as a crew; in the aircraft you would alternate between flying and observing.
  • Double the experience for the same cost
  • Two students at time allowing for continuous training and reduced time frame and hours (dollars) to complete the training

Diamond Air Charter training program is unique in may ways. This includes:

  • Detailed explanation of the construction of instrument flight procedures from qualified and experienced procedure designers.  To many, instrument flight procedures are a black art with a mystery of how they are created.  This mystery is revealed in the ground school portion of the program where the instrument flight procedure design is explained in conjunction with the lessons about the instrument procedures themselves and the charting.
  • The Diamond 62 (and Diamond 42 as well) both have an airline-like Flight Mode Annunciator (FMA).  This is one of the most critical displays on the instrument panel and a source of many errors both in training and on the flight line.  With an airline like training program, bad habits will be avoided through the proper training and use of the FMA.
  • Aircraft upsets and the subsequent loss of control of the aircraft is one of the major sources of aircraft accidents today.  While not part of the formal instrument rating requirement set forth by Transport Canada, upset maneuver training is part of this program both on the ground and in the air.  Included in this is a complimentary one-hour aerobatic flight in a Nanchang CJ-6A aircraft.

For more information and pricing, email: 

MultiIFR@diamondaircharter.ca

Copyright 2021. All Rights Reserved.