Unreal,
Hopefully you're learnng new things all the time. I got playing with some avionics simulator software last night, and found about half a dozen things with a particular avionics package I didn't know about...includng some surprisingly basic things. I've been flying this particular nav unit for nearly three months, almost exclusively in IMC all the time, approaches all the time...and I just found this out. I'm guessing tomorrow I'll find something else out.
No matter what you do, if you're determined to keep learning something, you will. Knowledge, like skills in this business, is perishable. If you're not learning, you're "unlearning."
When I first started spraying, I thought I had the tiger by the tail. I was in a turn one day, and my boss was on my case on the radio, telling me to tighten up the turn. If you haven't seen an ag turn, it's a steep turn with a reversal at 75'or so, often lower, and often tight enough that you an milk it in and out of the buffet as you turn. I was pulling as tight as I dared, and he was trying to get me to pull it tighter. I didn't think it could be done. I was holding a steep bank, pulling and I could feel the airplane barking and buffeting...I thought if I pulled harder I'd be a stall-spin accident.
I looked up through my overhead eyebrow indows to see the belly of my bosses airplane passing me inside the turn. Just a few feet from my canopy, he was showing me it could be done, and I knew he was carrying more chemical than me, and therefore heavier. But how?
Back on the ground he asked me what I was doing to make a turn, and told me to explain a turn to him. I felt a little insulted...after all, do you ask someone how they make a turn in a car, or on a bicycle? He said humor him. So I did. When I finished, he asked why I wasn't holding top rudder. I didn't want to spin out of the turn when I stalled, of course. Try it next time.
So I did. I held a steep bank and some top rudder, lettng the fuselage take over with some lift as I sliced back through the turn, and I immediately felt the drag go away. I'd been using bottom rudder, horsing the airplane around. Suddenly I could feel the change, and the airplane quit buffeting like it did before. I could pull it around tighter before reaching that point, and I was a lot more comfortable in the turns.
Now I was eighteen at time. I'd spent six months training to fly ag airplanes, and I thought I had a handle on things. I'd been reading books on flying since junior high school, been active at the airport working and flying and bummng rides for five years before that...and here I was relearning the most basic parts of flying, as though I'd just started.
That theme has continued through my career thus far...each time I learn something, I realize how much it is I don't know, and often have to ask myself how much that I "know" I know incorrectly. For every thing I learn, I realize there were two things I didn't know...and this goes on and on. No matter what you do, you'll forever be learning new things. This applies regardless of the assignment, so long as you are open to learning them. For those who aren't, no job will be more than a job, and such will never gain experience. Only hours. For those who are open, every job will be a school, and every flight an opportunity.
Sounds like you have a great opportunity.
