It is an unusual thing for most people to see someone using a sim. The fact of the matter is that even in the day of X-Box 360s and all of the hype around High Def TVs and games I still meet a considerable number of people who marvel at the fact that I can somehow contain not only a very realistic appearing 737-700 in my PowerBook G4 but that there is an entire world that it flies in sitting securely mounted on my hard drive. Just last week there was program on the Croatian Dalmatian Coast on the television. Within a few minutes I had selected Dubrovnik as a starting point and was flying a simulated Antonov-24 up the coast toward Split. The folks at work were amazed that I could point out the specific mountain where former Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, was killed when his T-43 (military variant of the 737-200) slammed into terrain while trying an NDB approach into Dubrovnik. It is just that sort of macabre commentary that suddenly interests the non-flying public in simulations.
So most people have a happy curiosity when they see my PowerBook doing its thing on the desk I keep at work. Being that I am productive and there are no visible joysticks near the computer my addiction to watching airplanes is tolerated and most people assume that the airplane on the screen is part of unique and unusual screen saver. That notion ends when I switch to the cockpit view and start fiddling with the FMS and twisting the HDG knob on the autopilot panel. Suddenly they are thrust into the world of pilots and instead of consternation the revelation of things most often hidden behind the locked doors in front of them at the end of the aisle is replaced by a fascinated curiosity about flying and airplanes.
“Is that really an airplane cockpit?”
“What does that do?”
“Why are you doing that?”
“What are those things on the screen there?”
“Is that the sunrise?”
All of these questions and many more have been asked of me in my flights of fancy and efforts at distraction through the long 12 hour shifts that I keep in my day job. My coworkers asked the same this morning as a brilliantly painted Southwest 737-7 taxied out onto the active runway at KSMF (Sacramento International). I fiddled and entered and referenced and dialed and switched and in due time I scrolled down and pushed the power levers forward. Entering ‘b’ to toggle the brakes my staff watched as the landing lights illuminated the runway ahead and they stayed transfixed until I rotated and the view was of the myriad of stars that populated the heavens above Sacramento this morning.
“Are those really the way the stars are?” asked on of my colleagues.
“Yep, sure are, in fact, I am doing this in real time to it is actually what the stars look like in Sacramento at 0430 Pacific time. How about that?”
“Wow. So where are you flying too?”
“Miami.”
“Why Miami?”
“Because I don’t know the identifier of Manchester New Hampshire readily and besides, Manchester is too much like here with the snow and all. I need sun to raise my spirits.” I replied as I switched off lights and reversed the flap schedule. The dialed the vertical speed in the climb to 3500 feet per minute and monitored the auto-throttles as they worked their way back and forth.
After settling into the confidence that everything was nominal and the airplane was going to do its thing I switched to an external view and position the view from the rear of the aircraft so I could catch the view of the sunrise.
I have had the most fortunate opportunities to see sunrises from the cockpits of many different airplanes all over the world. There is really nothing other than the sort of low speed low level flying common to Cub pilots that I enjoy more than see the darkness of night transition into the amazing colors of a new day from the perspective of the cockpit of an airplane winging its way east. Unlike any other venue the brilliance of the sun never offends me and I bask in its warmth as I watch the world wake up from a position that relatively very few people ever get to enjoy. It is that experience in and of itself that makes my many thousands of dollars spent on rating and training worth every penny. It is a sense of beauty and the feeling of being in control of a machine so much larger than myself that compels me to remain a pilot. If I were to be told that I could fly but once more and I could make but one flight of my discretion, it would be to fly a King Air 200 from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City, departing LAX to the West and turning to the East just prior to sunrise so that I could see the sun come up over the mountains and experience the joy of watching the ocean transition to land. It is something that is far easier to feel than describe.
The little 737 made its way eastward for about an hour before the first hint of the morning sun became visible. The contrail streaming from the rear of the aircraft caught the attention of my earthbound friends and they stood transfixed as the sun came up and started its journey through the heavens; another day in progress.
It might be exceptionally difficult for most people to see the attraction of the brief moments of poetic visual experience in the midst of hours of ‘housekeeping’ that an airplane cockpit requires to be flown well. Unlike my civilian job in which there are constant and unpredictable demands placed upon me, often so many that I have to ask my staff for a specific pause so that I can adjust my thoughts and catch up to the demands facing me, in an airplane there is a predictable flow as you watch the GPS, listen to the radio traffic and anticipate the calls that are common to the air traffic control system. I know for instance that between 60 and 100NM out I am going to listen to ATIS if I do not have access to onboard METARs. I also know that with some predictable certainty that about 3 times my altitude in thousands expressed in nautical miles from the field is when I can start expecting a clearance to descend in preparation for the approach. The ultimate in predictability are the departure and arrival procedures. A listen in advance gives me a clear picture of the waypoints to enter into the FMS and I can allow the airplane to get me clear to the FAF if I desire.
Such a world is very comforting when one spends the better part of their lives in a people business where the behavior of your customers in anything but predictable. That is why I can find relative peace in snow or storms when other passengers are at their wits end. Using the rule of 3s, being offline and acting as my own ATC I “cleared” myself out of FL340 and set the altitude pre-select to 3000 feet just by ‘guestimating’ what I would need for a GS intercept into KMIA. The little 737 nosed over and began to descend at 1500 feet per minute. I switched to the enroute chart view and whipped up a solution to allow for a semi-realistic GS intercept. In the cockpit I switched the autopilot from slaving off of the FMC to NAV1 and then hit the HDG switch and rolled the selector to allow fro an arrival to the north of the field with vectors over the barrier islands and back into KMIA for an easterly arrival onto runway 27.
One of the most perplexing things to the layperson, not to mention the VFR only pilot, is the approach plate. I call them plates because that is what I grew up with and having been to Iraq and being of middle age, I kind of figure that I have not only earned the right to wear shorts and T-shirts all year long (even in the snow of Ohio) but also the right to call an approach chart a “plate” if I so desire. I flipped through the pages and used the departure procedures in reverse. I figure that it is odd enough that I carry a wall sized IFR planning chart of the USA as well as approach plates in my briefcase, to carry TERPs as well would surely cause people to question my sanity. Mind you have of my work space is covered with this stuff as I work so instead of seeing patient charts, nurses often see things like the Runway 9 ILS plate for KMIA. They no longer question because I get the work done and I think they like me better when I get a dose of the ‘wing’ in during our long 12-hour shifts.
“So what is happening now?” one of my nurses asks as I select APP on the autopilot and wait for the intercept to occur.
“Well I am waiting for the airplane to find the radio beam to the runway and presently we’ll see a turn.” My medical student is partial to watching thunderstorms so I had changed weather to allow her to indulge in her morbid passion of watching airplanes get tossed violently about as flashes akin to low yield nuclear weapons danced around the screen. Suddenly the sky cleared as I selected unlimited visibility and cleared the skies of weather. My nurse marveled at the view from the 5 o’clock position behind the 737 and as I had predicted it began its left turn to intercept the localizer.
“Are you doing that?”
“Nope. It is the autopilot. In a second you will see the airplane begin to descend as well as it tracks the radio beam down to the runway.”
“I have flown to Miami, is that how they do it every time?”
“Not always,” I replied, “sometimes, especially when the weather is like what you see here, the pilot will fly the approach by hand, or even avoid the radio beam altogether.” I switched back to the cockpit view, referencing the glare shield panel to make certain that everything was set for the GS intercept. I illustrated the flight director and briefly switched off the autopilot and “hand-flew” to off-center the command bars, “Now watch as I line everything up again.”
“Wow, that is really cool.”
“Sure is. Now you understand why even faking the experience calms me down.” I set everything back up to track the localizer and dialed the speed control back to 150 knots, flaps 20 set and waited for the marker. We both watched was the runway lights grew larger and as the familiar beeping of the OM came in I selected gear down and flaps 30. Speed control to 135.
I switched back to the external view and the nurse watched as the gear dropped from its wells and locked down. You can tell that people really enjoy this because of their facial expressions. The fact is that they are marveling at finally seeing something that they have only heard so many times in the past. It is something that as pilots we take for granted, reassurance no less, the odd noises and sounds that jackscrews, worm gears and hydraulic pumps make. To not hear them when we should makes us very nervous indeed. To the person stuffed into 14D, knees to chest and trying to make heads or tails out of the world compressed down to 11 by 8 inches or whatever tiny dimensions are the reality of the passenger windows in a commercial airliner, the clunk of the gear dropping accompanied by the sound of the air slamming into gear doors and wheels is not always a ‘happy sound’. When they are walked through the process and see flaps deploying and wheels dropping it suddenly puts it all into perspective.
2 miles out, I selected landing lights, armed the spoilers, auto brakes to 2 and waited for the threshold. We sailed down and at 1 mile flaps full came in and I switched to external view and 9 o’clock for the aircraft. At the threshold the power came back to idle 40%, autopilot off, I rotated to level pitch and finally 3 degrees up by eyeball from the outside. As the wheels touched down the spoilers came up and the airplane. I set the reversers and rapidly slowed the airplane to a ground taxi speed.
“Welcome to Miami.” I grinned and having other business to attend too my nurse shuffled off to get to it. I charted some stuff on a record and pulled the next patient out of the bin. Looking over the chart, while simultaneously running the stream of thought in that other part of my brain, the one that continuously thinks of sky, wings and power. The one that is the second ‘core’ of my CPU and far from detracting from my concentration at work, actually focuses it by giving me something other than the mess of American health care to think about for a break during the long days; that stream was already running its next process.
JFK, DCA, SMF, CMH… …The sun was setting over virtual Miami on the physician’s desk of an otherwise non-descript emergency room in the American Midwest. KDAL was where the 737 longed to be. That is where its home is so down to the FMS to enter KDAL and up to the fuel to fill it up. I quickly departed KMIA and set the autopilot to drive us home. Three patients later I returned to see the view of the sun low and the Gulf of Mexico below. The air remained smooth at FL300 and the Baby Boeing made landfall between New Orleans and Biloxi. As my time neared and my relief was set to arrive I had cleared out the patients from the ED and I had a few moments to read AOPA pilot and monitor the descent into KDAL. DFW visible in the distance the 737 arrived home in the dark surrounded by the sea of lights that all pilots relish (did I ever mention that as a medical student, on long days when I couldn’t fly, I would drive by the local airport and just key the lights on with my hand held transceiver, just so I could see them and ‘think’ about flying?) “Ate up” doesn’t begin to describe how I am about aviation.
I packed up PowerBook, charts and stethoscope. Cleaned my desk for my colleague and upon his arrival it looked as generic as every other physicians. No passion, no color, no sea of lights below. Just the inevitable prospect of the herds of people impending, tired of shopping and needing to be “checked out” after thanksgiving. Thank goodness I live in an age where I have not only the books of Bach, St. Expiry and Gann but I also have the ability to actually manipulate the virtual machines at my desk. It is better than Prozac. I don’t know how my predecessors made it through the day.
Fly Safe.
FF
