Flying a Boeing 747-400 simulator
Once in a while you do something silly and this was one of my unusual highlights: spending several hours undisturbed in a Boeing 747-400 full flight simulator at Lufthansa, Frankfurt. My late good friend Jörg Löhnig happened to be in the maintenance engineering crew of the Lufthansa sim base, so we went out on quiet nights to make good use of the sometimes idle equipment. These things tend to be used pretty much 24/24, 7/7, but open slots do happen.
You see me here recovering from a full hit of a cloud of volcanic ash. Engine #2 is dead, all pitot tubes are clogged up (look at the KIAS standby indicator), the air data computer is going berzerk in panic, all automation has gone offline and I am by myself getting the fully loaded 744 back to Singapore for an overweight emergency landing. Which was my best ever... adrenaline really helps!
We had to pull several circuit breakers to make the electronics shut up as most of it was thinking we were crashing, due to the zero air speed indication. Stick shakers are irritating when you try to fly a for the rest perfectly good airplane!
The 747-400 of course needs two pilots for normal operations, but you can fly the Queen all by yourself. I don't claim I am a pilot, but I know a bit of the airplane. Compare it to knowing how to drive a Formula-1 car. All but safe, but you can get it around the circuit. As a boy I wanted to become a flight engineer, not a pilot, so the plane itself I am pretty good at. Being a pilot, though, is only 1% plane systems knowledge.
But yes, I still wait for that moment when the flight attendant asks whether there is a pilot aboard, as all crew members have had the fish...
Jeroen
who also has made up his mind on accepting a backseat ride in an F16 even while this means two weeks in bed
Comments
Wonderful
Congrats Jeroen!
I too am looking forward to several hours in a Level D 747 simulator.............it will be a retirement gift from my wife, and one that I hope to be able to collect on within the year. I hope you will have time to share more details- I cannot imagine your delight (or mine on that fateful day, for that matter)- but I must confess, I too never eat fish aboard an aircraft- for EXACTLY the same reason ;)!
Carl Avari-Cooper
Thanks!
Thanks for the comments.
There are only few things that I can add to the topic.
First: don't overestimate the effect of full motion. It is the last 10% of the experience, and you only really notice it during taxi and in turbulence. For the rest your eyes and ears provide enough input for your brain to be fooled.
Second: don't spend more than 5 minutes playing with the automatics. They work, and they work like your simulator at home if you have a good one. No point in spending hours in a multi-million Level-D simulator pushing buttons that you know when to push! After the first takeoff, get it stable, and grab the yoke. Leave the autothrottle on if you want. And experience the feeling of having her in your both hands. That is so much different than any cheap sim at home can do for you.
Third: trim, trim, trim, and then trim some more. Every time you change speed or attitude for longer than 5 seconds, trim, trim, trim. The Queen kicks your ass if you don't, and she has a pretty heavy foot.
Last: spend at least 20-30 minutes flying standard racetrack circuits with touch-and-goes (PS1 Billund scenario+video). If you survive that, you have learned a great deal about handling the 747-400. All the rest is just icing on the cake.
Jeroen