asked to do a steam gauge sim for interview?

Derg said:
Exactly. And they're going to be around in one way or another for a while.
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There was a mechanic in DTW, that, no joke, we'd call the "DC-9 Whisperer". On the rare occasion that something couldn't get worked out, they'd call him. He'd walk up, do a kind of Vulcan mind-meld thingy with the airplane, and lull it into a state of operational fortitude, like a farm hand working to calm an agitated beast.

I was seriously impressed on more than one occasion.

Richman
 
Ahh the great ones.

Now when we've got a problem, it seems we have about six mechanics walk up.
 
Richman said:
Up until very recently, this is what you could have gotten:

View attachment 28036

Nothing quite like a DC-9. They can fly with no electrics and no hydraulics .Nothing even as complicated as DME hold. No APU? Pfffft. Just gettem' rolling down hill, pop the clutch, and off you go. Altitude capture? That is for lesser pilots.

Flying the DC-9-10 was VERY cool. Little hot rod. Lazy days, MSP to the Dakotas/Montana. Depart "fly heading 330, climb to FL 340, proceed direct when able, let me know when you want to start down". Junior agent working the outstation had like 40 years with the company and KNEW how to turn an airplane and "taxi out gates" made it a snap.

Fun times, and full of teh awesome, with the psycho-ward green paint, and a bait well full of de-ice fluid to top it off.

Richman
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Mechanically speaking, there's a lot to be said for not having a bunch of computers.
 
Derg said:
I could hand-fly it, but autopilot? Forget about it.
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I sat in the flight deck on the DC9 more than I ever care to remember. For a while I knew all the callouts. The autopilot, such that it is, isn't that complicated. It won't capture altitudes, and they seemed to fly around in heading all the time.

I enjoyed riding on it the first 50 times... :)
 
Copilot side wouldn't even capture heading. We used the big roll knob. Roll into a bank, roll out when you get to your desired heading. Same with altitude. Roll in the vertical speed, roll it out when you get to the desired altitude, fine-tune every five minutes or so. The USAir 9's were modern compared to the AirTran 9's (former Turkish Air and British Midland). They had the old green and black radar and some didn't even have HSI's but rather this odd instrument called a PDI - pictorial deviation indicator (like an HSI with no numbers).
 
Reminds me if the KC-135. The flight director on that thing needs to be directed to then direct you in some modes.
 
Like the care and feeding of motorcycles, there was a Zen to flying the DC-9.

A gentle caress of the turn knob, a little bit of muscle memory with the vert speed wheel, and some minor tweaking of the power (%70 N1 was the golden rule), and she'd reward you with a very nice flight with no fuss, muss or bother.

No frantic button pushing. No panicked moments switching runways. No pursing of the lips when there was a skill --> FMS disconnect. No "what's it doing?" of the Airbus (which gets upgraded to "look, it's doing that thing again" once you get more Airbus time).

The NWA DC-9s were quite nice. The troublesome systems were all replaced in the 1990s when the birds were rebuilt from the ground up. Electronic replacements for the battery charger, pressurization, radar & EGPWS, ADCs & altimeters made it a darn reliable ride with minimum fuss. The only quirk was there were MANY variations of engine intermixes, and so a little piston time helped in syncing the engines. With some of the more interesting engine mixes, you could fly in trim, or you could fly in sync, but rarely both at the same time.

Richman
 
ZapBrannigan said:
1.4 EPR worked for everything...
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Yup. Including powerbacks. "1.4, feet on the floor". We used to have to do those in the sim.

Ultimately, powerbacks are the perfect metaphor for most groups of pilots numbering more than 4. Lots of noise, lots of dust and crap getting blown around, onlookers with a WTF? look on their face, but ultimately, you wind up creeping to your goal at about 2 knots.

Richman
 
Richman said:
Yup. Including powerbacks. "1.4, feet on the floor". We used to have to do those in the sim.

Ultimately, powerbacks are the perfect metaphor for most groups of pilots numbering more than 4. Lots of noise, lots of dust and crap getting blown around, onlookers with a WTF? look on their face, but ultimately, you wind up creeping to your goal at about 2 knots.

Richman
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The 717s are certified for power back. Regrettably they don't let us do them.

1.4 seems like a huge amount of power to use though. Our "recommended" taxi power is 31% N2 which works out to about 1.03 EPR.
 
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