In commenting on my 911 story, Dichroic mentioned her time in an Air Force A-10 simulator. I can’t match that, but I did spend a brief time in a DC-9 simulator.
A friend of mine who flew DC-9s was taking a check ride and invited me along. I got to sit in the right seat while my friend sat in the left and the examiner behind. While they were discussing some particular technical point, the examiner said to me, “Here, why don’t you do some flying for a while.”
He set the controls so that it appeared that the DC-9 was sitting at the beginning of runway 9 in Miami at night. I gingerly took the controls, pushed in the throttles and began hurtling the plane down the runway. At the proper rotation speed, I lifted the nosewheel; a minute later we were airborne.
I saw the runway lights drop away and was quite proud of how well I was doing. Then my friend looked up from a discussion with the examiner, gently pushed the control wheel forward and said laconically:
“We usually climb out at about 8 degrees, not 30. That tends to dump the passengers in the rear.”
I guess I wasn’t cut out to be an airline pilot.
Posted by Deck at August 29, 2006 08:51 PM