Practice Drills
Practice Drills are short, randomized pump-pressure problems you solve on the live panel. Each one rolls a fresh setup — different hose length, nozzle, elevation, or supply — so you build the core operator skill: given a hose lay, figure out the pressure the pump must push, then set it. After each attempt you get the worked math and the common mistakes to avoid.
The starter drills are available to everyone; randomized and multi-stage drills, and the stats dashboard, are part of Pro (see Account & Progress). Your local drill history is saved in your browser even as a guest.
The Practice hub
The Practice page shows a grid of drill templates. Each card lists the drill name, its difficulty, the situation, and your record on it (for example, "Solved 3 of 5" or "Not tried yet").
| Drill | Level | The situation |
|---|---|---|
| First Attack Line | Beginner | Room-and-contents fire; the officer calls for the crosslay to the front door. |
| The Big Line | Beginner | Heavy fire showing; the officer wants the 2½″ for reach and volume. |
| Uphill Stretch | Intermediate | The fire building sits up a grade — the line climbs the whole way. |
| Know Your Nozzle | Intermediate | Same crosslay, but which nozzle is on it tonight? Check the tip before setting the pump. |
| Through the Wye | Intermediate | Long courtyard stretch; the attack line works off a gated wye at the end of the lay. |
| Two Lines, One Pump | Advanced | A second crew stretches a backup line. One pump pressure has to serve both — gate the line that needs less. |
| Know Your Automatic | Intermediate | An automatic nozzle makes a good-looking stream almost no matter what, so the panel has to tell you the line is fed. |
| Stretched Short | Advanced | First-due line to the door — then the crew pushes deeper and more hose goes on. (Multi-stage: you re-adjust when hose is added.) |
| Weak Hydrant | Advanced | The only hydrant on the block is tired and the officer wants the big line — feed it without pulling the hydrant down past recovery. |
| Watch Your Water | Intermediate | No hydrant yet — you're on tank water. Get the line working, then know exactly how long that water lasts. |
How a drill works
- Roll a problem. The drill randomizes the setup — hose length, elevation, nozzle/line type, supply, and any appliances — so each attempt is different.
- Read your task. A prompt states it plainly, e.g. "Set the pump for a 175 ft attack line with a 150 GPM fog nozzle; the fire building is 15 ft uphill." Your job is to find and set the correct discharge pressure.
- Solve it on the panel. Engage the pump, open your supply and discharge, and throttle up until the line gauge sits in its target band. Hold it steady.
- Multi-stage drills (like Stretched Short) change on you mid-drill — an announcement tells you the crew is stretching more hose, and you must re-set the throttle for the longer lay and hold the new pressure.
The debrief — worked math
When you hold the pressure in band long enough, you get a result of Correct (✓) or Needs work (↻), plus the full math so you learn why:
- Friction loss for the hose and flow
- Appliance loss (gated wye, hydrant loss, etc., if any)
- Elevation loss or gain
- Nozzle pressure the tip needs to work
- Total required pump pressure = friction + appliances + elevation + nozzle
A short explanation compares what you set to what was required ("You're 12 PSI over the band — that's overflowing the nozzle"), plus a common-mistake tip and an optional bonus question (like minutes of tank water remaining) that's purely for learning and never changes your result.
You can attempt every drill as many times as you want.
Your stats and history
The Practice Stats dashboard (a Pro feature) tracks your record over time:
- Aggregate summary — overall accuracy, total drills attempted, how many you solved, and how many of the templates you've tried.
- Per-difficulty breakdown — your accuracy on each template, grouped Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced, with an accuracy bar.
- Accuracy trend — once you've practiced on two or more days, a chart of your accuracy per day so you can see yourself improving.
- Recent drills timeline — your latest attempts grouped by day, each showing the template, the outcome (✓ correct / ↻ needs work), and when it happened.
- Filter — narrow the timeline to a single template (the overall accuracy trend stays based on all attempts).
- Clear history — remove your attempt timeline with a confirmation step. Clearing the timeline does not change your aggregate accuracy stats.
Guest vs. signed in: as a guest, your history is stored on the current device (up to a few hundred recent attempts) and is labeled "Your record on this device." Signed in, your history is unlimited and synced across all your devices.
Practice drills use simplified training math for teaching. Use your department's approved formulas, hose coefficients, SOPs/SOGs, and apparatus guidance for real operations. See Safety & Disclaimer.