Thursday, October 31, 2013

Day Job

In my case maybe the title should be "Night Job". I've had a run of "Initial" clients and Initials get the left over time slots. That normally means working the back side of the clock. No complaints. it is what it is, besides most of my life has been spent working different hours and days from what most folks think of as working hours.

Damn that was a tasty looking rabbit I chased down the trail, happens often...What I set down to post about was how easy the newer airplanes are to fly. As an example: The company I work for will sometimes donate an hour of Simulator time to charities for their fund raisers. Last Saturday the winner of the latest donation and his son showed up to claim his prize. Neither had ever flown in an airplane other that a few rides in steerage on an air carrier. I showed them how to adjust their seat, where the controls were and what they did and how to marry the aircraft symbol with the Flight Director. I explained the Auto-Throttles and gave a short explanation of what would happen on takeoff and what they needed to do.

We lined up, he pushed the Auto-Throttle engage button and away we went. We made a low pass over NYC, around the Statute of Liberty and back to KJFK for a landing. The son did about the same flight profile. Other than pushing a few mode select buttons I never touched the aircraft and they flew on both autopilot and by hand. If someone had been in the back they would have noticed nothing other than maybe a little more aircraft movement than normal while they were hand flying.

The newer aircraft are that easy to fly if everything is working,  It's a big change from my early days in a J-3 with no instruments or radios or even from my first LearJet 23.

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