Finally starting to understand this aircraft. And starting to feel much more comfortable. We've had a couple of great flights dealing with all sorts of emergencies.
Think of the worst things that could ever happen to you on a flight and then add some extra stuff, and that's what you have when we take off in that simulator.
Jet aircraft like the one I'm going to be flying are certified to take off on ONE engine with the other totally inoperative after you've reached a certain speed on the take off roll. For example, as we roll down the runway if we were to have an engine malfunction or some sort of major catastrophe we would abort the takeoff up to a certain speed (around 170 km/hr usually). After that, no matter what, we take off (usually around 190-210 km/hr) and deal with the problem in the air. The aircraft can get up to a safe altitude and we can then run through the appropriate checklist to secure the aircraft and get things ready to come around and land again at the airport. It would be unsafe to try and abort a take off past that safety speed as it would likely result in an over run off the end of the runway at a high rate of speed.
So this is the kind of stuff that gets lots of attention in the simulator. Failing various systems at the most crucial periods of flight. Today we also practiced emergency descents going the full nine yards and getting the oxygen masks on and dive bombing down at a very alarming rate! Glad to see it is affective.
Here are some pics of the simulator units. In our area of the building there are 4 sims all next to each other. They run all hours of the day. I tried to get a picture showing the graphics inside but it was very dark, so it's pretty blurry, but if you look hard you can kind of see the runway off to the left.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Things are coming together
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2 comments:
Glad to see you haven't thrown in the old towel after spending sometime in the old sweatbox there Matt. My question to you is where the hell is the overhead panel, it kinda freaks me out to look at that cockpit and no see any switches or anything above the windows. Oh well time for me to go pack, off to the PEG for three weeks...WWWWEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
It's a fairly simplified cockpit, yup no overhead switches. We've got a bunch of extra stuff beside us, but the majority of all the controls are on the dash and the center pedestal.
As for the grass, haha, well, yes... kinda. The sim was repositioning itself when I took that picture and we just happened to be on the grass at that time. :)
The graphics are pretty amazing, especially at night when you can see traffic on the roads with headlights and tail lights. The lights of the buildings and at airport environment itself are so life like that at night you could totally be mistaken for the real deal. It's quite surprising.
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