Checkride with Lamar

Posted on 22 Nov 2014 @ 10:35pm by Lieutenant Commander Dea Mialin & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius

1,378 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: Starbase 84 - Shuttlebay
Timeline: MD 05, 1215 hours

[ON]

After finishing off lunch Dea headed for the shuttle bay. One again she arrived early enough to greet Lamar, "Thank you for being here. Once you're done here you can enjoy shoreleave when it starts. As qualified pilot I don't expect your requal to take long." Making her way to the co-pilot's chair Dea took a seat, "The craft is yours."

Lamar had been waiting for about fifteen minutes in one of the starbases massive shuttlebay complexes. Hundreds of support craft lined the parking bays along the walls, and he had already checked in with the shuttlebay operations controller before Mialin arrived. Now, standing outside of his designated Type-9 shuttle, he spotted the Trill hybrid as she approached.

"Roger that, ma'am," he replied after she entered the craft through the aft hatch and sat down in the cockpit. He moved forward behind her and took a seat to her left at the helm, then began to start on his pre-flight sequence and power up the craft. "What's the flight plan for today?" he asked as he read through his checklist using a slim PADD.

Pulling up the designated course, "This is designed to test your skills in a variety of conditions. Varying speeds, obstacles, etc. Once the course has been completed will run through a few emergency scenarios."

"Roger," he replied while glancing at the projected course and waypoints that were now being displayed in the nav computer's display. "A quick hop around the block, huh?" He noticed the flight plan took them in a loose loop around the starbase with different maneuvering sections, and it seemed pretty standard to him. Another minute passed then finally the warrant officer finished the pre-flight checks and stowed his PADD away. "Ready when you are," he said to her, waiting for permission to contact shuttlebay ops for departure.

Dea directed her attention to Lamar with a smile, "Exactly what its supposed to be. Take us out and show me what you can do." She enjoyed challenging her pilots. Have fun with it."

It didn't take long for him to get clearance to depart from the bay, and once he'd launched the small craft through the atmospheric forcefield covering the massive exit door, he put them on a slow weaving turn in order to navigate through the interior of the starbase. He engaged in some standard precision flying for a bit in order to follow the proper traffic patterns and avoid colliding with one of the many other shuttles that were buzzing around, and finally he put them on a final turn out of one of the base's auxiliary launch door and into the starry black background of open space.

He proceeded to follow the flight plan as indicated on the nav console, making sure to observe proper speeds and perform the necessary maneuvers and heading adjustments. The slow-speed section of the course was soon complete, after which he throttled up the impulse engines and breezed through the high-velocity section of the circuit. Next up was the obstacle course for which he needed to slow down a bit to obtain the proper AOA while maneuvering, and he weaved the tiny shuttle in and out of makeshift holographic obstacles which appeared on his HUD.

"Alright, now what?" he asked after finishing the indicated course pattern. Mialin had mentioned something about emergency procedures and Lamar wasn't entirely sure what that required.

"When the shuttle signals there is trouble you'll have to find a way to solve it in flight or work around it for a safe landing." Dea flipped a few switches and taking one of the engines offline to simulate a malfunction that forced it to shut down.

Lamar wished she'd given him a heads up before cutting the port engine, because the craft suddenly yawed to left now that it was operating with imbalanced aft thrust. In real life, though, he supposed no such warning would always be given, and so he sucked it up and began to do his best to compensate. "Port engine is offline," he reported, "I'm throttling down the starboard engine to compensate and re-initializing the inertial dampers." His dark fingers flew across the small Ops console to his left while tapping a variety of different commands, and with a slight jolt, the dampers re-initialized and the G forces subsided. He brought the still-functioning right impulse engine down to about 50 percent thrust which helped stabilize the craft's trajectory, then manually activated and calibrated the maneuvering thrusters to provide the rest of the compensation. Finally, after what seemed like forever but was only about thirty seconds in real-time, he had the shuttle back on course and flying relatively straight.

"Nice job," Dea replied with a smile making a few notes. "For this next one we can't fully simulate it but you can take the appropriate actions. You detect a cabin pressure issue."

Cabin pressure issue. Lamar had dealt with one of those before during their shuttle race back on Earth earlier in the year, and he knew exactly what to do. He quickly simulated checking the shuttle's computer for any errors or master cautions, and after deciding that he couldn't find any, he rose up out of his seat and hustled to the back of the craft. A small commotion could be heard while he was out of view, and suddenly the soft thudding of heavy feet could be heard a minute later as he returned to the cockpit now fully decked out in a standard-issue EVA suit. He cumbersomely sat back down at the helm and looked over at Mialin through his helmet to see if she was satisfied.

Taking a few notes, "Go ahead and remove the suit now. You did a good job with that one. We can run through one more scenario of your choice or we can head back to the base. As expected you've passed everything I've thrown at you."

Put the suit on, take the suit off. Put it back on, take it back off. He'd had some strange luck with EVA suits ever since he joined Galileo, and had suited up close to a dozen times for various reasons. He actually didn't mind the bulky protective gear unlike some other Starfleet personnel, and he was content to stay in it for the duration of the flight if he hadn't been ordered out of it.

Returning to the aft cabin to remove the gear, he stowed it back away in the emergency locker before returning to the cockpit. His chief had given him the choice of RTBing or continuing on, and while he didn't mind staying in the cockpit longer, right now he preferred to finish up his check ride and just get it over with. "I'm going to head back to base," he replied. "Time to grab some lunch from the promenade."

He manipulated the flight controls and set a roundabout course back towards the starbase. It didn't take long before they received clearance to dock and passed through the base's large auxiliary entrance, and Lamar set the craft down on the landing pad then taxied it to parking before shutting down the engines and completing his post-flight check.

"That sounds like a good plan to me," Dea turned to face Lamar, "Well done today. Have a good shoreleave. Things will be busy when we return to duty." Overall she was more than pleased with his performance during the checkride.

"Thank you, ma'am." He was glad everything had gone as smoothly as it did, and hopefully he wouldn't have to do another one of them anytime soon. There was something about having his DH sitting right next to him, looking over his shoulder and evaluating him, that made the fun of flying more nerve-wracking than it should have been.

Dea got up from the co-pilots seat but paused before she turned to exit the craft, "I know its intimidating but I'm serious in my praise. You won't have to do this again for a while. Now go have some fun but stay out of trouble. See you when we return from leave."

[OFF]

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MWO Lamar Darius
Chief Support Craft Pilot
USS Galileo
[PNPC Saalm]

LCDR Dea Mialin
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

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