The new plane

Sorry its been a while since i have posted! Been very busy and intense to be honest. Not sure what i expected, but it was a lot more work in a short amount of time than i anticipated. I still have another month of ground courses, ranging from an FMS course, to emergency procedures and wet drills.

It's a big learning curve! I struggled getting my head around the electrical system, which is basically set up in 3 main areas, each with a system redundancy. We have the left and right main electrical bus, which is driven by the DC system of the plane, powered by the DC generators, which also doubles as the engine starter. We then have the left and right secondary buses, which are powered by the AC system, but supply DC power via 2 transformer rectifier units (TRU). Power to the secondary buses can be connected so that it powers the main bus, and vice versa. It essentially means we can lose 2 DC gens, 2 TRU's, or a combination of each, and still supply power to the entire DC system.

The DC system is also supplimented by the battery system, which feeds the left and right essential bus, the hot battery bus, and also supplies emergency power. The batteries are charged and kept charged via the main buses, which also feed power to the essential buses when the plane is operational, on the ground with external power, or the APU, or with the engines running. The hot battery bus has essential items such as fuel cut-offs in the event of a fire, and other critical items that need a direct power source. The essential bus feeds things like avionics, so in the event that all was lost, the batteries can still supply power to critical flight instruments. The avionics need AC power to operate, so there are 3 inverters to convert the DC power into AC.

The AC system is powered by 2 AC generators which supply 2 AC buses. One generator can supply enough power for both AC buses. As stated before, the AC gens feed the TRU's, which also supply the secondary buses on the DC system.

Well thats about all my brain can write about now. I have finished the engineering side of the groundschool, now i have performance this week, which should be interesting. Photos to come soon. Enjoy, again apologies for delayed posts, but i have to find time to study, let alone writing a blog. Thanks for reading