Moving Beyond the pilot's Operating Manual

Yesterday, I spent a while letting an experience in the TBM from Austin to Omaha instruct a flight from Austin Bergstrom to Miami International passing through tropical storm Beta. Remember that old song, "so high you can't get over it, so low you can't get under it, so wide you can't get around it and your transponder is out. The TBM had iced up and has very sophisticated controls for icing, accessible to the mouse and display. The Boeing 747-8i has only "H." I began to look at how to manage fuel tanks for trim to even get there. Did I wish I was in a P3C Update 1? Four hours in the dirigible hangar at Moffett NAS next to NASA Ames says, yes, With one swap out in the Fast Fourier Transform.

After landing at Tempelhof in Berlin from Dublin the previous day to see the airport runway reported as -263 ft. I was ready for the difference between Atlantic sea level and Pacific sea level at the ends of the Panama canal. I had waited for an update before beginning from Ireland. Then in the Gulf of Mexico in a tropical low, I was barely sure I would get to Miami. My landing was one of those that needs a lot of skidding and just a bit of aligning and ends with a go around.

The AI is my way to marry a lot of close in digital combat in 1969 through 1978 and an extension to 1981 with loading a really big cargo plane to deploy the entire Army not just the Rapid Deployment Force and the Marine Expeditionary Battalions. After the missed approach is when I was ready to try just a landing at Balboa which I could not do by hand in FSX. With that needing a do over, I tried to set up the cross isthmus as night was falling after a flight from Miami to Balboa ran into the mountain. A Cub modification? (Cub Crafter) but the nearest Atlantic airport to the canal is in Honduras. Today is another day. I figured, I would need 130% fuel, calculating fuel mileage after flying halfway. Sunset was two hours ago.

Balboa to Goloson in a Diamond 40 NG and now 01:10:40 at 12:58 AM CDT gives a need for 5:44 time enroute on VOR's against a 6 hour endurance. After takeoff rolling around to the starboard (right) gave minimal clearance on the ridges to head NE at 11:00 CDT with the airplane at 1540 feet. I adjusted the tanks by (crossover) to 75% left and 54% right at 12:49 CDT to let the 64% totalizator play out the tendency to burn more out of the left. Real weathe real time is over the water now and clear approaching Boca Del Toro Intl.

2:25:38 TOT against a need for 5:44. Fuel balanced is 13% left and 13 % right with both low fuel lights on now. Heavy rain slowed me to 108KTAS engine just quit as Left tank go to 7% but restarted with a balancing act. I decided not to go with the Cessna "Stationaire" I had met on floats at Key West Seaplane to fly to the Dry Tortugas. Now what will I choose? Thanks for watching.

The Citation "Longitude" now looks better even after just 30 minutes in flight. It got off the ground with full fuel! It had good clearance on the ridge. Now even on Lo-IFR it's fuel consumption at 6000 feet seems to leave 23.6 % of fuel to approach and land. Now if only it can make the stop before the end of the runway after landing and avoiding any high or low obstacles. Remember, this is an instrumentation flight not a revenue or even test or ferry flight. The AI will then have gone beyond the flight manual and have experience with coping with two sea level barometer readings. I should arrive at 4:54 CDT or 17:54 local time.

The Longitude did not get onto the runway and on go around turned in toward the cliff instead of out to sea where this runway is parallel to the coast line instead of perpendicular like at Howard where the flight began! Now for a fun flight I began at Bogota which is a high runway and the 787-10 skimmed the trees on takeoff with 10,000 pounds in the rear baggage compartment and only the steerage passengers as if to mimic a NGO charter to Tahiti. Nine and one half hours later the landing at faaa was without drama until it had to turnaround on the runway to get back to the middle taxiway as a propjet had come onto the runway behind it. With spoilers and reverse thrust with brakes the runway length was no problem here and the open ends to the sea --- One more into the log book.

I have now had more than one instance where the aircraft landed OK and only taxied part way to the terminal or parking and then stopped and did not shut down. During my solos from the training base in Arizona, the monitor won't give me credit if the landing is not fully aligned with the runway at touch down. I don't know the crosswind capability of the Cessna 152 as a function of gross weight as I would expect to find in the POH. I once bid on a Cessna Citation X POH on Ebay and the bidding rose to well over $1500.00 and that is how I come to have a B36 flight manual even though it is a reproduction and has no performance appendix.

Today I chose Huron County Memorial as a departure and Alpena County Airport (both in Michigan where I grew up) and neither of my efforts finished even though the arrival airport runway is very wide. Maybe because I crossed another runway and it got confused is another answer. I tried taking it out of AI and controlling the airplane with my Freedom 2.4 and at first it just jumped but then the dynamic values began to "taxi" while the view remained fixed. I flew the whole flight over and took it out of AI at one point to get the barometric correct by "B" and at another to get the heading right by "D". The result stopped at the same place and this time I was able to take control of the airplane with my FREEDOM 2.4 with a reasonable control for a taxi into the parking area until --- no credit for this one.

Yesterday I gave the beautiful Bonanza with a flat panel a chance to improve on it's reversal of a flight from Lakeway to the old Camp Gary in San Marcos to make up for the inability of AOPA and EAA to have a meet this year.( I recently joined both of these organizations as well as C.A.P. and A.S.T.M.) The premise was a flight from Tampa International where Central Command Headquarters was nearby to Atlantic City International where F.A.A. headquarters is nearby. This was a bridge too far.

So, how about from Shaw AFB to Atlantic City to make up for not having General "Chuck" Horner's biography? The Bonanza got stuck just below 12,000 feet with a posted ceiling of 17,000 in the specifications section of MSFS2020. The ATC help kept prompting "Beechcraft Alpha Sierra Gulf X-ray please expedite your climb to FL1-7-0.) So, I got the Beech Baron to do the same IFR-Lo flight at 2-1-0 which it even out did it's specification a bit. Landing with "stall" repeated several times.

The night ended with a flight from Tullahoma to Fort Drum. The last I saw it after adding fuel to below what would have been 100% at Arnold Air Development Center, (where I have been to both places but never went in.) was "Cessna Contact Nassau Center) then passing RAJAY with triangle symbol beneath, then RUMBA with triangle and lastly HEROM, also with triangle and no plotted course showing. I did pass over some islands that looked like the Bahamas to me never having been there. log 03:00:48 with 5% fuel where C-5011A would call reserves in the Cessna Longitude where I was needing a good log entry.

KTHA to FL75 is not Tullahoma to Fort Drum, New York

I could not be defeated by not being able to get any configuration of the 747-8i off a runway at Kennedy, headed ultimately East with full fuel from the default runway choice and ending up out of fuel with the last contact with ATC being "contact Gander Center on .." With no payload except the pilots and their kit I got off from a specific runway with full fuel and by judicious moving of fuel to avoid running out in the active tank, I flew 3200 nautical miles to Brussels, Belgium and in the night overflew much of the city to land safely and taxi up to a jetway.

My notes say 6:10 CDT, turning right LINT 4.73 n-mi., approaching jetway. LVRO 2370E fuel 19%, TAS 5 kt. 186 ft., shutting down, whoop! whoop! 6:13 CDT black flight time 06:07:47. CDT is my local time, not either origin, enroute, or destination time zone. Based on the ground speeds and the TAS I observed, I had a 20 knot tail wind most of the way flying Hi-IFR.

Much better than the previous day where I was bucking an 80 knot head wind going South from LaGuardia to Tullahoma, Tennessee and then ending with a missed approach and trailing off into the Sunset.

After letting the Cessna Longitude fly from Wrightstown, New York to Bellevue, Illinois, I was ready to remember my ethical concerns with including the Navy band annual flight to Brazil in a requirement for the Air Force 2 "Congressional transport" version of the military DC-9, the VC-9A for the 89th SAM. I wanted to fly to Rio Janeiro from Andrews. Then with the Sunday TV programs, I knew it was Kiev and the Ukraine that was going to be my destination from Brussels. Now how do I avoid the namesake of the C-9A "Nightingale?" At least I don't have to try to test the relationship between the 777 and the BUK-M in the Crimea. "Cannons to right of them. Cannons to left of them. Rode the 600." Turkey has chosen the S-400 and after the blocking of the 4th Mechanized Infantry overflight earlier my flight plan has gotten complicated, during Iraqi Freedom, or hasn't it? Here is my point with the Longitude, "my Earth has no STEM, my watch has no hands, the minefield of misinformation dangles a karma beyond AIAA safety or SPIE monitoring. Dear hearts, let us proceed without fear of an HR above 134. The flight yesterday? Do add 85% fuel to your Longitude before proceeding. Bear no grudges of a ballistic nature when the code represents a negative reviewer of a baseball game.

Now that I have come to the end of my ability to let the AI "flyout" a data source I am concerned that all of us who accessed real weather have imbalanced the simulation by not looking equally at areas of flight tracks. Enough that all the real lightning now did not create noise equally in the navAids. Look, I am not Mr. What If but this smacks strongly of not being an advocate.

Il mio "Boeing Bias" non è dal lavorare per Boeing nella mia carriera, è dal documento "Boeing Enroute Winds", e il metodo di calcolo delle miglia nautiche dei sedili all'ora che ha reso gli aerei a reazione il metodo di trasporto dominante della mia vita. Recentemente, ho visto un metodo Boeing di calcolare qualcosa che chiamano indice dei costi CI che riflette i costi spot e il costo coperto del carburante. Questo viene quindi utilizzato per creare un profilo per l'arrampicata alla crociera in cui la velocità non è limitata al di sotto di 10.000 piedi. Ai miei tempi, la potenza in eccesso specifica è stata utilizzata per creare il tempo minimo per salire a un'altitudine specifica. Vorrei dirlo anche in tedesco e ,--- spagnolo? e italiano?

Meine "Boeing Bias" ist nicht von der Arbeit für Boeing in meiner Karriere, es ist aus dem "Boeing Enroute Winds" Dokument, und die Methode der Berechnung der Sitz seeseeden Meilen pro Stunde, die Jet-getriebene Flugzeuge die dominierende Transportmethode meines Lebens gemacht. Kürzlich habe ich eine Boeing-Methode zur Berechnung eines, wie sie cost index CI nennen, gesehen, das die Spotkosten und die abgesicherten Treibstoffkosten widerspiegelt. Dies wird dann verwendet, um ein Profil für den Aufstieg zu Kreuzfahrt zu erstellen, wo geschwindigkeit nicht begrenzt ist, wie unter 10.000 Fuß. Zu meiner Zeit wurde spezifische überschüssige Leistung verwendet, um minimale Zeit zu schaffen, um auf eine bestimmte Höhe zu klettern. Lassen Sie mich das auf Deutsch und Französisch,--- auch Spanisch? und Italienisch?

Mon « Boeing Bias » n’est pas de travailler pour Boeing dans ma carrière, c’est à partir du « Boeing Enroute Winds » document, et la méthode de calcul des sièges miles nautiques par heure qui a fait des avions à réaction le moyen de transport dominant de ma vie. Récemment, j’ai vu une méthode Boeing de calculer quelque chose qu’ils appellent l’indice de coût CI qui reflète les coûts au comptant et le coût couvert du carburant. Ceci est ensuite utilisé pour créer un profil pour l’escalade à la croisière où la vitesse n’est pas limitée comme en dessous de 10.000 pieds. À mon époque, une puissance excédentaire spécifique a été utilisée pour créer un minimum de temps pour monter à une altitude spécifique. Permettez-moi de mettre cela en allemand et Français,--- aussi espagnol? et italien?

My "Boeing Bias" is not from working for Boeing in my career, it's from the "Boeing Enroute Winds" document, and the method of calculating seat nautical miles per hour that made jet powered aircraft the dominant transportation method of my lifetime. Recently, I have seen a Boeing method of calculating something they call cost index CI which reflects the spot costs and hedged cost of fuel. This then is used to create a profile for climbing to cruise where speed is not limited as below 10,000 feet. In my day, specific excess power was used to create minimum time to climb to a specific altitude. Let me put that in German and French,--- also Spanish? and Italian?

Mi "Boeing Bias" no es de trabajar para Boeing en mi carrera, es del documento "Boeing Enroute Winds", y el método de calcular millas náuticas de asiento por hora que hizo de los aviones propulsados el método de transporte dominante de mi vida. Recientemente, he visto un método de Boeing para calcular algo que llaman CI de índice de costos que refleja los costos al contado y el costo cubierto del combustible. Esto se utiliza entonces para crear un perfil para subir al crucero donde la velocidad no está limitada como por debajo de 10,000 pies. En mi época, se utilizó un exceso de energía específico para crear un tiempo mínimo para subir a una altitud específica. Permítanme poner eso en alemán y francés,--- también español? e italiano?

I do need to acknowledge the Russian mathematicians who came to the Boston area and made the algorithms for hidden lines removal in 3D display. Otherwise we would still have those spiderwebs that were cool but not the spider webs that even appeared in the Wall Street journal in magazine dot printing but could not receive a single surface to be put into our simulators as real time photo real dynamic images.

I had University of Voronezh sourced editor assembly books to go with my INTEL sourced 200MX space flight capable machine code manuals my son got for me. Like the MIPS processors of the Apple of that day this was invulnerable to cosmic rays and other extreme manmade radiation hardened, such as electromagnetic pulse from atmospheric nuclear detonations. Kind of slow in todays world but at the time the chosen path.

Me, I simply determined the exact solar zenith of a day by setting up a long series of pencil verticals and looking for the most linear points in a line as the sun is almost at infinity. I also traced the sun on the face of a reflective building just built for when it did not move as I walked or ran by.

You do know that and airplane shadow on the ground is exactly the same size as the airplane in the sky not including the sun's angle? Then I would go running or walking at the exact time of the zenith which for my longitude was either 12:30pm or 1:30 PM depending on daylight saving time. No noon gun, here.

Мне нужно признать русских математиков, которые приехали в Бостон и сделали алгоритмы для удаления скрытых линий в 3D-дисплее. В противном случае мы бы еще те паутины, которые были прохладно, но не паутины, которые даже появились в журнале Уолл-стрит в журнале точка печати, но не может получить ни одной поверхности, которые будут введены в наши тренажеры, как в режиме реального времени фото реальных динамических изображений. У меня был Воронежский университет источников редактор сборки книг, чтобы пойти с моим INTEL источников 200MX космический полет способный машинный код руководства мой сын получил для меня. Как процессоры MIPS Apple того времени, это было неуязвимым для космических лучей и других экстремальных искусственных лучей, затвердевшего, таких как электромагнитный импульс от атмосферных ядерных детонаций. Вид медленно в современном мире, но в то время выбранный путь. Я, я просто определил точный солнечный зенит в день, установив длинный ряд карандаш вертикалей и ищет наиболее линейных точек в линии, как солнце почти на бесконечность. Я также проследил солнце на лице отражающего здания только что построили, когда он не двигаться, как я шел или пробежал мимо. Вы знаете, что и тень самолета на земле точно такого же размера, как самолет в небе, не включая угол солнца? Тогда я хотел бы ходить или ходить в точное время зенита, который для моей долготы было либо 12:30 вечера или 1:30 вечера в зависимости от летнего времени. Нет полдень пистолет, здесь.

I wanted to buy a Logitech PRO joystick to update my Freedom2.4 with four corners to the base instead of three. (moving from the triple redundancy of the DC-10 that failed in Sioux City to the quadruple redundancy by two sided pairs of the F-14 digital Central Air Data Computer?) but the offeror tried to impose his own concept of a warranty of implied worth sight unseen on me personally for any match with the new FS-2020 by kiting the cost to the Microsoft software's price of $130.00 from the agreed upon one at point of sale. The hardware has now been cancelled but the refund for early billing before shipping has not been refunded to the credit card account. The latest scam on my phone was a claim to be warning of a fraudulent access of my Social security account and--- when I did not immediately press 1--- a threat, that my IT would be disabled! Did the authoritative woman's voice mean AI? That's kind of spent right now trying to keep up with real world weather and winds. (Supplemental Information on triple redundancy-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...nes_Flight_232)

I did use the https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/techn...me/ar-BB18ccOZ to pick the useable commands for my Freedom 2.4 Cordless Joystick and assign them in Settings in the game while running to the buttons, and one slider. Accessible from the Options menu. It flys kind of wild in real winds right now but I have gotten to the Solo in Training in Sedona.

OK, I see the problem with using the AI pilot. If it cannot solve the airfield pair with the fuel load it doesn't follow a useable navigation which the Travel log will eventually report if you begin jumping ahead keeping time. Unfortunately, it doesn't know how to avoid "rising terrain" such as can be found on the final to 2-7-L at Travis (KSUU). I was getting really good at coming up with these kinds of missions in Central America after I had done some historic routes with expected aircraft solutions. More later on this. For a time the navaids seemed not to fit or reversed while the aircraft flew a nice altitude and airspeed profile, later even with good ATC communications.

Exceedingly cool! The Airbus A-320 taxiied in and parked with a stairs, a tractor and baggage train! The simulator logged over 4 hours for what is a 1:45 flight due to my early tentative moves. Now to have it do the thing for "real." I met the narrow body airbus as a engineer marketing comment that "the guys from Messerschmitt are here today in the tower. They have some designs for a narrow body Airbus." MBB was doing some licensing of helicopters to McDonnell.

So much for having the AI whipped into shape. I spent yesterday trying to fly from KLAX to KLAS in the A320. But enough about me. The AI with the default departure for LAX took me out into the Pacific and kept going. Hey! Las Vegas is to the Northeast! Roughly, let's see RWY 6, Let's try rwy 6. Yeah! It is going almost along the red course! (I am cheating a bit and using IFR-Low to avoid the mountains I know ring the LA basin (Valley of Smokes). Soon I am out and into the high desert (about 3000 feet ground level). Joshua Approach? Is that what the ATC just said? Joshua Tree is a bit toward Oceanside and San Diego to the South but the Course seems to be heading Northeast.

Now, just to get over those mountains that ring Las Vegas. Because I have about 500 hours of flight time in the MS-FS now it is telling me each time my transponder is out and I need to squawk a code and it will track me on radar. I can find the XPDR on the panel with my mouse and have the command in the list I made of the Settings but guess what? Yeah, it is out. That just means my handicap now is ATC wants to drop me for VFR landing in scattered clouds below from about half the standard 18000 feet meteorological altimeter setting for 29.92 in Hg. So I am here at 9050 feet.

What if I just let it go? Seven hours later as fuel exhaustion approaches and I have gone past Salt Lake City Center having the hope of Nellis Center past long ago and yes, Minneapolis Center and a whole lot of water before a bit of land and now looking forward a lot more water, the ATC call "Airbus ... contact Winnipeg Center ... on ...." Is that what the stepped on "Wi2osdn ndkj," was, and now I hit escape and save the .flt file to be able to see the LAT LONG. Sure I need to practice takeoffs and landing with my joystick which is somewhat like the one that replaced the B-58 yoke in the aircraft CCTS syllabus at Castle AFB in 1968 and needed to be somehow adapted into a new one for the FB-111.

But after the meeting at Nellis in 1966 my next trip was to Wright-Patterson where the gate gave me a card with all of my appointments and times and blanks for the contact to sign me in and out before giving me a pass for my portfolio. I had 15 minutes between each appointment to get to the next before someone would come looking for me. The first meeting was in a dugout. On the surface I saw a dump truck with three rear axles, a tandem and a single lift axle as well as the normal front axle. Then into the lobby and meet the contact and down an elevator to another lobby which looked out of the side of the hill through large picture windows. The contact handed us off , for I was with the Douglas Dayton rep, to a civilian older man. He was very pleased to see me. He led me down a corridor and we turned into a room with -- I don't remember-- and later at Shaw AFB, I really don't remember any of the officers I met or anything I said or heard.

No real problem as the civilian had a book. He offered to let me peruse it and to make any notes I wished which he would mail to me afterwards. The book was about Soviet PVO-Strany. Chapters described various GCI and EW radars as well as acquisition radars for AAA and SAM sites. Each radar had a NATO nickname which was classified. I can rattle some of them off and you can look them up now in Google or buy kits to build mockups in scale. TOKEN, TALL KING, SPOON REST, KNIFE REST, FAN SONG, --- and some pictures of the pads in a pattern that were now appearing as pre-laid out locations in North Viet Nam for mobile SAM's like SA-2. Some of the pads would have occupants, some days and most would not. All of this I put into the notes and sure enough after I got back from my trip which included a second stop at Shaw, AFB in Sumpter, South Carolina, the document control station at Long Beach informed me, my package from Dayton had arrived.

The trip to Sumpter included the Dayton rep and Stanley Hubbard and two other guys so that our flights in short segments met fog as night fell and Stan and I were the low status individuals bumped as standbys. When we got to the next stop on a later flight the airfiled was closed and we rented a car for a wild ride through the mountains from Charlotte to Raleigh and on to Sumpter. I guess we flew to Raleigh from Charlotte as standby, but the route to Sumpter was all night with fog and near zero visibility with one Yank as copilot and one RAF Wing Commander as principal driver. Sumpter is where the Douglas B-66's modified for Reconnaisance and Electronic Countermeasures were. I could see the silhouettes of their tails and fuselages on the ramp as we drove in the gate on Stan's exchange officer ID. He had decided we would spend the minor fragment of the night left in the BOQ as no motel reservations were left.



Но после встречи в Неллис в 1966 году моя следующая поездка была Райт-Паттерсон, где ворота дали мне карту со всеми моими назначениями и раз и пробелы для контакта, чтобы войти и выйти, прежде чем дать мне пропуск для моего портфеля. У меня было 15 минут между каждой встречей, чтобы добраться до следующего, прежде чем кто-то придет искать меня. Первая встреча была в землянке. На первый взгляд я увидел самосвал с тремя задними осями, тандемом и одной подъемной осью, а также обычной передней осью. Затем в вестибюль и встретить контакт и вниз на лифте в другой вестибюль, который выглянул из стороны холма через большие окна изображения. Контакт передал нам, потому что я был с представителем Дуглас Дейтон, гражданский пожилой человек. Он был очень рад меня видеть. Он повел меня по коридору, и мы превратились в комнату с - я не помню - и позже в Шоу АФБ, я действительно не помню ни одного из офицеров, кого я встретил или что-нибудь я сказал или услышал.


Нет реальной проблемы, так как у гражданского была книга. Он предложил, чтобы я ознать его и сделать какие-либо заметки я хотел, который он будет по почте мне потом. Книга была о советском ПВО-Страни. В главах описаны различные РЛС GCI и EW, а также радары приобретения для сайтов AAA и SAM. Каждый радар имел прозвище НАТО, которое было засекречено. Я могу греметь некоторые из них, и вы можете посмотреть их сейчас в Google или купить комплекты для создания макетов в масштабе. TOKEN, TALL KING, SPOON REST, KNIFE REST, FAN SONG, --- и некоторые фотографии колодок в шаблоне, которые в настоящее время появляются в качестве предварительно изложенных местах в Северном Вьетнаме для мобильных SAM, как SA-2. Некоторые из прокладок будет иметь пассажиров, несколько дней, и большинство не будет. Все это я положил в примечаниях и конечно же после того как я вернулся из моей поездки, которая включала вторую остановку в Шоу, AFB в Самптер, штат Северная Каролина, станция контроля документов в Лонг-Бич сообщил мне, мой пакет из Дейтона прибыл.


Поездка в Самптер включены Дейтон респ и Стэнли Хаббард и два других парней, так что наши рейсы в коротких сегментах встретил туман, как ночь упала, и Стэн, и я был низким статусом лиц наткнулся в качестве резервов. Когда мы добрались до следующей остановки на более позднем рейсе airfiled был закрыт, и мы арендовали автомобиль для дикой езды через горы от Шарлотты до Роли и дальше в Самптер. Я думаю, мы летели в Роли из Шарлотта в режиме ожидания, но маршрут в Самптер был всю ночь с туманом и почти нулевой видимости с одним янки, как второй пилот и один RAF крыла командира в качестве основного водителя. Самптер, где Дуглас B-66 изменены для разведки и электронных контрмер были. Я видел силуэты их хвостов и фюзеляжей на рампе, когда мы ехали в ворота на обмен офицера Стэна ID. Он решил, что мы проведем небольшой фрагмент ночи, оставленной в БОЗ, так как никакие бронирования мотеля не были оставлены.

My first flight on company money was actually to Saint Louis to meet the new St. Louis representative in Carrolton at the new Douglas Field Office. I was with my boss Robert E. Hull (as in hull insurance, a polite reference to what the services were calling Class A damage). The new rep was Norm Stevens, a retired USAF officer. I was also with John Correz from Douglas, Military Marketing, the specialist for DC-9 applications. This was the team of what would later be called "Road Warriors." Soon there would be just me as the others begged off to please their wives. In Long Beach, there was Ed Spraitz, a retired, C-124 Globemaster II pilot, who saw me as a nuisance. Fortunately, Donaldson, the VP of Engineering, liked me. (More on this later when we flew to St.Louis to decide the responsibilities on the Strike Fighter, and I won a bottle of wine on the flight back by predicting the mid-point of the flight) Donaldson was retiring and John Brizendine, the former DC-9 project manager, at the 1965 time of my first flight was moving up. But what kind of airplane was I on for that epic first contact with the 375th AMAW of MAC? (learned how to breakdown the acronyms, AMAW is AeroMedical Airlift Wing and MAC is Military Airlift Command both headquartered at Scott AFB in Illinois.)

The commercial DC-9 was just going into service as 1966 dawned with West Coast Airlines and Bonanza some of the very first. Trans World Airlines, which would have it's headquarters in St. Louis was a favored buyer and all my later flights did not have tickets bought, but rather were TWA ticket stock vouchered for flights as partial payments for DC-9s being built for them. For this first company paid trip I had a little notepad I bought especially and I dutifully noted cab fares and breakfast ---"Whoa!" Said my boss! "We put a standard per diem on our expense reports when we get back." If the hotel was beyond the discounted standard rate the secretary will get our management to authorize a "hotel hardship" rate as charged.

I had flown on a DC-6 and a Convair CV-340 in Texas and the military versions of those some Operation Deep Freeze Antarctic explorers C-118's and "Samaritan" special cargo hospital ship C-131's were what we had to beat on cost of ownership. I'm sure the LA to STL flight was not on a turboprop like the Western Airlines Lockheed L-188 "Electra's" I later flew to Sacramento with former Colonel Maury Rosner the B-45 navigator and Minuteman Wing commander from Minot North Dakota. But was it a DC-6 like the puddle jumper which was refueled overwing at each stop on the flights to Castle AFB? or later from Detroit to TriCity Bay City, Midland, Saginaw on a loop to Chicago for United airlines? It was definitely not a DC-7C or a L-1049G which I heard barking and banging as the loudest piston airliners on final flights to/from Washington National to Europe as the 1970's dawned.

If it had been a DC-8, I would definitely have noted a first flight in the premier company product of the era. My drop back that it was a TWA 720 cannot be verified on the Internet now. It wasn't yet time for the 727. I did fly on a hangar queen Convair 880 I saw the mechanics putting useable tires on and banging the nacelle doors closed on after what looked like a hailstorm victim was pulled out for maybe the last time. Landing in LA as the autopilot dropped out overwater and the "lateral JC with a whifferdill" signaled that stability was a bit of a step and it settled down to a typical bang as the landing gear dropped down and locked.

The mystery remains which I was happy to leave alone until I needed to specify if another type besides the DC-9 was my first jet flight, a DC-9-10 with derated Pratt & Whitney JT-8-D-5 engines of 12,000 lb. thrust each and a maximum gross weight of 90,000 lb. The ones I would be helping sell with analysis and proposal writing would be the stretched DC-9-30 that would be rolling off the production line for charters Overseas National Airways (ONA) or Trans International Airways (TIA) with gross weights of 108,000 lbs. and center line optional fuselage fuel tanks and cabin cargo doors after static testing had verified the soundness of the engineering in them. Even 98,000 lbs. of the early DC-9-30 was surpassed and leading edge slats and triple slotted flaps were insufficient for the C-9A offered for ATEWS. It might need inflight thrust reversers for survivability using it's buckets instead of louvers like the DC-8. These DC-9's like all unstretched DC-9-20's and stretched DC-9-30's had JT-8D-1's of 14,500 lb thrust like the Boeing 727 and the coming 737.

John Correz is making fun of Norm Stevens saying in a TWX, "The Air Force does not know about the DC-9. Send models and pictures." I had never seen either of these and policy was not to give models to individuals but only to offices to be left when the man moved on or retired. I was given a tie tack with a little gold plated DC-9 and told to not show it or someone would ask for it. No replacements would be made.

So---marketing was about options to the coming CX-X RFP (Request For Proposals). To show capability in PACAF, Ed Spraitz had John Corezz a "drift down curve", one engine out from a point and how far it could fly before it was at sea level. PACAF was Pacific Air Force. USAFE was something that even Charles Lindbergh could deploy to. United States Air Force Europe would come first but 2000 nautical miles from Travis (SUU) to Hickam in Hawaii with reserves to C-5011 rules was the coming hard point for the C-X-X. MAC 55-1? nope, AFR 60-1? nope and those had 10% reserves 10 % fuel density variations and different winds. C-5011A was 5%.

So you see, only engineering graphs, no photographs or nice wooden models with correct 375th AMAW livery passed through my hands or even appeared on Spraitz or Correz desks when I met with them. My contacts were Dr. Dreyer and John Roper his assistant in MAC Analytical. They had a contract with the University of Iowa to solve the "Travelling Salesman Problem." Later, Ken Boutwell of DoD Systems Analysis became a regular phone call of R.E. Hull to chat about this or that philosophical theory of optimization.

My work was always low balled and depended on regular MAC Monthly Maintenance Summaries from Scott as well as CAB-41 news from the beginning DC-9 commercial operations available from the CAB office on Connectcutt Avenue in the District of Columbia.

I also was given maps of the 375th Trunk lines which connected Scott with Travis, Maxwell, Kelly, Lowry and McGuire on a daily basis where there were regional hospitals that then spawned feeder routes to up to 400 different small airfields each years of which maybe 200 were common between years in the Viet Nam War years when 50,000 casualties per year- I had a box of routing cards for one year after the competition was over to create a centralized routing for the domestic option of 8 aircraft out of 25. Maybe I don't need to get the Airbus A320neo to fly all the trunk lines with AI. I've tried some of them.

As the War went on the installation of Litton LTN-51 inertial navigators on the C-141 allowed "over-the-pole" flights from Yokohama to Elmendorf and then on to Kelly in San Antonio, Texas to reduce the concentration on Scott and flow more casualties in to the facilities there that had held T-39 jets on "burn urgent" mission. I had an LTN-51 operating hand book on my desk soon. It was joined later by symposia proceedings from Inertial Guidance Test Symposia at Holloman, AFB I attended that became out run by GPS as satellite navigation showed that autopilots and gyro horizons were reliable and useful in newer applications.

I didn't want to distract from the other thread about real pilots but my recent experience of having a simulated aircraft struck by lightning in Central America has released something that fits the timeline of the first atomic bombs. A bright flash and a loud explosion in the neighborhood brought out all the local kids one day. Finding the center of the blast we kids found ourselves outside Albert Mayhew's house. He invited us in to view his chimney in his kitchen and his electric stove with the oven door blown off. It appears that something like St. Elmo's fire that mariners report at sea happened. The lightning came down the chimney surface and reappeared as ball lightning that rolled over the linoleum leaving a black track and hit the stove where it grounded out on the plug in the back blowing off the oven door. I saw another oven door blown off in a house my sister-in-law was gutting to renovate on Thanksgiving Day 1976. It was in the Idyllwild section of Lake Elsinore, California. Albert was the owner of the Bad Axe theater where we had seen the news reels of the Atomic explosions in the Pacific.

If you were a contemporary viewer of these blasts you probably don't know or remember SALT-I, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, alone before there was a second better known SALT-II in the days of Jerry Ford and drawn up in Vladivostok, USSR. A book I just purchased on "B-58 Hustler Units" has some pictures and text on how the B-58 was stripped of the ability to carry Strategic Cruise Missiles to remove it from the count that applied to the B-52. The open bomb bays had to be verified empty of contraband. What was the name of that Admiral who was put in charge of Nuclear non-proliferation that later caught China, Iran, Pakistan and North Korea, as well as India where the vented hole was judged to be not just nuclear but fusion? https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nsa/publi...p/nuclear.html

I am happy again with the AI. I have made flights to Kabul from Basra and Frankfurt am Main from Bagram. The mountains did not deter me. I could explore full payload and full fuel load although --- I then decided to challenge the Sierra Madre. First from a long flight over the jungle and then over the high plateau from SBGL, Rio Janeiro to Santiago as Arturo Merino Benitez International, SCEL. That done I did Estancia Nueva from Lubecka Airport, SAJO up the coast instead of down to SCEL. Just because you can jump to FINAL one day and not get a "You do not have enough fuel to jump to FINAL" does not mean you can always gross up to what can be flown off the departure runway and miss all the obstacles. It's a play of wind, mountain wave and ATC clearances with no XPDR operating for me.

I was missing one tag, the natural law view which changed neural network into more than an associative memory. My uncle a life insurance salesman had a neighbor who claimed to have invented an associative memory. It formed the basis for neither deductive nor inductive logic. Instead it sort of just played forward from one association to the next. In that way it needed no sensor inputs nor did it make reports of any kind. In that way it presaged the first IBM PC which had no keyboard and no display. I looked at a Hewlett-Packard PC version like that in 1993 and that is how I came to receive a Christmas gift of the PC of my choice in 1994. My gift did not include a spread sheet or a copy of a word processor which to me was a big long tunnel hooked to a keyboard that produced completed documents in multiple copies stapled and -- you know, a Wang. The printer I was allowed to include did not have a printer driver. I had been avoiding computers and even calculators since 1981. Then when self driving cars began to be announced, I especially avoided them. I avoid at all costs contests between brute force and common sense and science or mathematics.

Gyros had found a competitor in accelerometers. Ring Laser gyros completely eclipsed the reliability and accuracy of constant temperature inertial navigators. Radio navigation using satellites was far beyond beacons, VOR/DME and LORAN eventually becoming near ubiquitous as GPS. I now even have a few year old GPS mechanization on my Garmin Forerunner. My grandchildren "learned to fly" on my FIRE tablet using the onboard MIMS accelerometers almost 10 years ago.

So what am I doing even considering the AI on the new Microsoft Simulator? Ummm! I didn't know it was there. Why not just trim and autopilot setup like I used on FS-X? Give a nod to EAA and learn to fly a GA aircraft not a War bird as in Combat Simulator 3 that I avoided in 1994 for my first PC any way just to what?

Stories about ghost multiples fooling the AI that had exotic sensors and also about owners sitting in the back seat and hitting a divider at a fork in the road sent me further away not nearer. Even the 737 MAX AI was not intriguing. Now gravitation, there was something intriguing with how it varied over the earth and how something stretched might actually be capable of sensing differences at the two ends. Instead, now I have found an Airbus A-340 that climbed a blast wall when the 4 engines were operated at maximum in contradiction of certification for only one engine at maximum at a time and the airplane was parked facing the wall and unchocked. I had seen news that A-340 pilots tended to takeoff very flat and found "ouch!!" that reefing the Boeing 747-8i off the runway led to a tail strike. I knew about tail strikes but mostly on landing and specifically with the DC-9-50 flight test. John Lane an ex-Marine service acceptance pilot on the Skyhawk had discovered that tendency.

John Lane and an El Toro Marines Major Ezell at "Top Gun" did not like me. It was an instinctive thing that first appeared when I chose the weapon delivery system on the A-4M to exclude the A-7E and it's ILAAS system as inferior in SATS takeoff payload and unable to demonstrate sufficient deadliness to give it the nod. I was cautioned that "if a bomb ever fell on one of their guys they were coming for me." My brother-in-law was also a U.S. Marine after I drove him in my truck to Marine Recruit Center, San Diego after he had enlisted. One day because I did not want to buy life insurance from him after he said, "You should be made to suffer ordeal!" Perhaps he was thinking of SEAL training, I did spend some time on Juno Beach, Florida and my son became a PADI certified diver.

I like to see myself as real in terms of timing. What happened with my taxes in 1978 after I sold my only house I saw as an audit. I decided to fly close to home like the other EEA guys. I still faced my lack of flying hours in a small private aircraft. AI flights to San Marcos 25 miles down the road just did not pan out so--why not grab my untrusty Freedom 2.4 that MS-FS 2020 forced me to assign all the buttons and sliders on. Why not test the AI on the Japan flight with all the hoopla? All right--nothing to lose. The AI just flys straight off the runway and continues on ignoring the course as shown obviously on the 2D map.

The Freedom 2.4 with my new lessons from Arizona , on this sim, about choosing a fixed throttle and sighting a constant glare shield to horizon height held a lure I did not chase the airspeed. I learned that from the flying lesson as FS-X had faded for me. Really bumpy up there and the wind out of the gaps between islands was anything but divine. So I sometimes have to wake up the joystick as it seems to go asleep or is it the wireless dropping out? I got to see Mount Fuji on a cloudless day. Then as supper time came I had to (ESC) and let the sim pause to make salad and pour my drink of water mixed with about 1/3 fruit juice. It rejoined the flight just as I had left it after that and the time to the fish course being ready gave me a short passage over the spine going out to the sea on the shoulder of Fuji.

This morning I read about the passing of the chairman of Fanuc robotics who had pioneered some of the NC machines. He had placed his company on the shoulder of Fuji. No mention was made of GM-FANUC that had created a joint effort in a new building in Troy, Michigan. I once had walked over that way as part of my keeping it real. I got diverted by a new Lucas facility and turned in there to chat about some robots I had seen in a German VFW brochure. The receptionist suggested I talk to Kipp. He sent me to Tom Werner at Vickers and he after awhile sent me to Sperry where they had a very noisy printer.

After dinner I woke up the sim before first waking up my joystick and classically the failure mode of zero latency gave me a windscreen full of terrain and uncertain as to just which way was up. Now the latency as I watched the screen go to "you have damaged your landing gear." I did not realize that is what had happened until this morning as I was trying to establish a heart rate of 100, constant while jogging with variable strike for higher and more steps very short for lower. I had jumped first to the FINAL after a takeoff and on a second to APPROACH to get logged and watching it land in AI on the wrong runway off in the dirt to the left side. Next time I will wake up my joystick before pressing the screen button for FLY and restarting the sim from a pause. My keyboard pause button only switches from cockpit view to tail on outside view as if I used ALT on the main and END on the numeric pad.