LancairTalk

On Monday my friend Eric invited me to join him in the Boeing 767 full-motion simulator for an hour that won
in a charity auction. We were a bit behind our goal of arriving 15 minutes early but our host greeted us at the
entrance and gave us an introduction to the building and showed us around a bit on the way to the simulator.

These are the high end, full-motion, full 180-degree visuals simulators. Apparently the new ones for the 787 is going
to have more tha 180-degree visuals so you can even look backwards a bit. We got into the simulators, sat in the front seats
and saw that we were parked at KSEA gate N10. He gave us a quick briefing of the various displays- the PFD, MFD, auto-pilot controls
(hmmm, sounds familiar) and started our push-back. Steering was quite a bit different since you use a little turn-handle on your left
rather than foot-steering, but after a few lurches we managed to taxi all the way down to runway 16R. Flaps 5, throttles to about 60%, press
the N1 button for auto-throttle. We are pressed back in our seats a bit, the speed tape scrolls up pass 140kts, rotate slowly and then
all the way up to 15 degrees and we are air-born. Wow.

After a somewhat disorienting reset we are now suddenly on long final for 16R and flying a landing. We each flew a couple of landings
which were surprisingly easy. The auto-throttle takes care of most power settings, you just maintain glide slope, about a 2.5 degree nose-up
attitude, and listen to the call-outs from the radio altimeter. At about 100 feet you pull back the power a tiny bit, at 50 you flare-slightly
(just 2 degrees more up) and on touch-down you slowly lower the nose and pull up on the thrust-reversers which are these extra
knobs on the top of the throttle.

None of our landings were even close to botched so that answers the old question “could a couple of GA pilots safely get one of these
things on the ground in an emergency”. My first landing was a bit too soft- our instructor said that you are supposed to put the mains
down solidly to reduce ground-roll, avoid skidding, etc.

We then switched to SFO where Eric took off, and we did a few wacky manuvers that you could never do for real but in the simulator
its all just computer graphics. We flew under the Golden Gate Bridge and then did a series of barrel rolls. Finally we did a few more
landings and I convinced our instructor to give me an ILS at minimums which again went just fine (although spotting the approach lights at
DH was difficult and the transition to visual was a bit wobbly, but that is realistic too).

All in all, an amazing experience- I’d highly recommend it for anyone if you get the opportunity. My log book now
lists 1.0 hours of time and 3 landings in a 767-400. Our host at Boeing was great and
its a really amazing thing that they donate tons of these simulator experiences to various charities for fund-raising. I wish I had
better pictures but I only had my camera-phone and I had the settings wrong so I only got a little tiny image.

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This weekend was a perfect example of why I enjoy having an airplane. A few
weeks ago we bought an Aire Super Puma raft and
this weekend we put the raft into the Columbia and flew to Hood River to raft
the White Salmon river.
Hood River is only about 115NM from Seattle direct, but by the normal roads you
need to drive over 225 miles and it usually takes over 4 hours. The flight from
Boeing Field (KBFI) to Hood River (4S2) was only 40 minutes and that was at
fairly low power settings and with a detour to take a loop around Mt. St.
Helens.

The raft fits well in the airplane- the raft itself weighs 106 pounds and
with all of our gear we are at about 150 pounds. It is super easy to remove the
rear seats from a Columbia and with one seat gone there is plenty of room to put
the raft, paddles, and more in. The rear baggage door isn’t huge but the
passenger doors are really big so I’m pretty sure you could fit just about
anything in the airplane with both back seats out. I’m pretty sure we could fit
the raft in the baggage compartment and carry four passengers if they were small
and had much of the other gear on their laps, but with the raft 3 passengers is
the most realistic.

The scenery was just gorgeous and rafting the white salmon couldn’t be
better- the day was 85 degrees and beautiful. I’ve included a few extra shots
from passing Mt. St. Helens and from the ground at the Hood River airport. We
are looking forward to using the airplane for easy access to other NW rafting
like the Deschutes, Tieton, Merced, American, and the Salmon in Idaho.

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I now have my Evade install scheduled for next week at ViaJet. I was going to get this done
at the factory but they contacted me yesterday to ask me to switch to one of the other service
centers. I suspect they are busy repairing damage from the recent hail-storm that struck Bend last week.

I’m looking forward to finally getting this in place. While its now summer so icing is a less frequent issue,
it still gets to be freezing up high and the freezing level tends to be where the clouds and precipication hangs out.
Plus it will be nice to just have it taken care of.

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