Full-motion Simulator Flight

Today, I took a friend up on his amazing offer to fly the Boeing 747-400 Level D simulator.

The day started quite early. I was out of bed and in the shower before 5:00. We were on the road by 5:50. First I had to get to Melbourne airport to meet another friend who was also invited. We arrived at the airport at 6:45 and waited for our friends to arrive. At 6:55, I started to get nervous, so I gave him a call. He called his wife, who then called me back, and we talked ourselves into meeting by the main gate to the GA ramp. I jumped in her mini van and headed for the hangar. Susan and Andrew waited outside the gate.

My friend recalculated the weight and balance one more time, then added five gallons of 100LL to each wing tank. Everyone climbed in and we were off to [undisclosed location]. I sat in the back and followed our progress on the secional chart. After [undisclosed amount of time], we arrived at the airport to meet our generous friend.

While the ladies dealt with refueling the plane, the guys jumped in my friend's car and headed for [undisclosed location]. I was surprised by the amount of security, but then again, in this climate, I guess I wasn't really all that surprised. We entered the building and walked to the simulator room. There were two simulators (that I'm aware of). One was an older 747-200, and the other was a new 747-400 simulator. We were scheduled to fly the 747-400.

Our friend gave us a tour of the simulator and it's mechanical systems while technicians finished up some testing. We had some time to kill, so we went back to the office area and grabbed something to drink. While waiting, the ladies called from a cab. They had planned to go to [undisclosed location], but the cab driver wanted too much money, so they decided to join us.

A few minutes later, we joined up and headed back to the simulator room. I climbed in the left seat and my friend climbed in the right seat. We had a quick briefing on the throttle controls, flaps, landing gear, and glass panels. The system was configured and I was sitting on runway 28R at San Francisco International Airport. I applied half throttle, then engaged the auto-throttle. The plane lurched forward and accelerated much more quickly than I imagined. At rotation speed, I pulled back the yoke to move the dot to the pink line (the flight computer draws pink lines on the primary display and the pilot follows the lines). My co-pilot raised the gear as we climbed out. Within a minute, we were turning crosswind over downtown San Francisco. I continued to turn to downwind and leveled off at 3,000 feet. We were flying along at 190 knots with 10 degrees of flaps. The wrap-around scenery was very nice, but not quite photo-realistic. Even so, the feeling of flight was so realistic that I truely expected to be able to see the wings and engines when looking back out the side window.

Back to work; it was now time to land this big mama. I started my right turn to base and began my descent. Turning base to final, the nose dropped markedly, and then we entered a steep roll to the left. I countered with right aileron, but all I could see out the windshield were the waves on the San Francisco Bay. I figured we had 30 seconds to live.... And then everything froze. Due to the full motion capabilities of the simulator, I felt like I was actually hanging from my seatbelt. Too bad real planes don't have the PAUSE feature. The technician said, "That wasn't supposed to happen."

The simulator was reset with us sitting about three miles out on final at 1,000 feet. I tried my best to keep the dot on the lines, but I was overcontrolling the plane. We ended up high, so once again, the simulator was reset. This time, I concentrated on very light control pressure and not chasing the line. The altitude callouts started at 500 feet and continued: 300 feet, 100 feet, 50, 40, 30. At 50 feet, I pulled up sharply to a nose-above-the-horizon attitude and let her settle onto the runway. Boom, chirp chirp, we were on the ground. I slowly let the nose down while the reverse thrusters came online. We slowed to 30 knots and took a high speed taxiway off the runway. Phew!

We switched seats and my friend took the controls. His first approach was pretty good, but he didn't pull up sharply enough at 50 feet. As a result, I'm pretty sure we left a huge hole in the runway. The simulator gave us a hefty jolt that made us feel like we were really there.

Then we both sat back and watched the simulator fly a Category II approach with 300 feet RVR (runway visual range) visibility. As I sat there, I watched how gently the controls moved. So that's how it's supposed to be done. I felt the ground before I saw the ground. As the nose slowly dropped and the nose wheel made contact, I finally saw the centerline lights - one or two - in front of the nose. Remember, the cockpit of a 747 is 30 feet off the ground.

We both flew approaches with 500 feet overcast sky and one mile visibility. Since I was focused on the dot and pink line, the sky conditions made no difference. At 100 feet, it's eyes out, stay on centerline, and prepare for the 50 foot callout to pull the nose up and slow the descent rate.

My friend wanted to see one more simulation. He wanted to experience a three engine departure. The simulator was reset and he applied the throttles. Everything was going smoothly until we lost the outboard engine on the left side. The plane lurched to the left and was quickly heading for the grass. My friend stomped the right rudder to keep it on the runway and pulled up at rotation speed. The plane easily climbs out on three engines, but the pilot workload is pretty intense. He let me take the controls and again, the plane lurched to the left before I could correct it with right rudder. I was pretty amazed at how powerful the rudder is. It seemed to have as much response and yaw rate as any of the small planes I've flown.

At that point, we ran out of time and had to leave the simulator. I left with a feeling of awe. First, that such a behemoth airplane can actually get off the ground and fly, and second, that a computer and some hydraulics can simulate the experience so precisely. I was surprised during the flight that I could feel slight turbulence as we flew around the pattern. But what really surprises me is the lack of sensation of speed. Our approaches were around 160 knots - nearly 100 knots faster than I fly in the Piper Cadet - yet it did not feel like we were moving any faster than the Cadet. It is all just a matter of perspective. With 200 feet wide and 10,000 feet long runways, the visual feel is very similar to approaching a much smaller runway at much slower speeds.

And one last thing I saw first hand is the power of networking. I would never have had this opportunity had I not met this person and started talking about flying and flight simulators. It really is all about who you know.