Needs more love.

I took a look at the taxiway chart for SFO and it does seem odd to me that they would use this portion of taxiway Lima for parking an aircraft. I can only assume that runway 19L/01R was not in use. It would have made me very curious too.

I did enjoy that! I think it's kind of funny how the narrator glosses over just how serious things are about to get when you click off the autopilot. At this point in the approach, the plane is getting close to the ground and there is a very high probability that the poor guy trying to land this thing will start making minor over-corrections that will grow in amplitude as the descent continues.

Hey guys, I've really appreciated all the nice wishes regarding my medical situation and I thought I should give you an update. I'd rather not derail my own thread too much, so I'm going to post my status under a new thread: "W0X0F's Medical update."

Meanwhile, it looks like it will be at least a couple of months before I get back to the cockpit, so I've got plenty of time for more questions in this thread.

Yah just clicking off the auto pilot and hand flying the thing for a good chunk of time seems like a bad idea.

Could you get things pretty close to the threshold with an automated ILS approach? Seems like riding the glideslope until the last possible second would be better than a guy winging the yoke for the first time. Though I guess leaving autopilot sooner has the advantage of building some confidence with the controls...

So I was departing from Orlando a couple months ago and noticed a bunch of skid marks in the grass at the end of the runway. That many planes miss?

The 737 has to have auto-land capability, right? That's where I thought this thing was going. My plane (MD-88) can auto-land and I would certainly recommend it in this scenario.

You last point is interesting (building confidence) but I think the opposite is more likely. The plane will probably start diverging from its perfectly smooth decent, maybe just a little bit. But close to the ground it will be very noticeable and can't help but have a "confidence eroding" effect, imo.

Those tracks look kind of small. Perhaps these were left by a ground vehicle such as a truck on a FOD check, and the driver did an enthusiastic doughnut at the end of the run. Also, skid marks on a runway tend to be there for a long, long time. So these could have accumulated over several years, perhaps even a couple of decades.

^ I think he means the black on the grass. Isn't that the engines charring the grass when planes start their take off at that end of the runway?

Yes, I just re-read his original post and he did say "in the grass." I don't know if that's a common look at the end of the runway, but your guess sounds as good as anything I can come up with.

anna aero has a weekly beauty contest for the best water cannon salutes:

http://www.anna.aero/2015/06/10/arch...n-land-narita/

But it can go wrong (flight cancelled after foam gets in engine):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/tr...lane-FOAM.html

Rather than charring of the grass itself, maybe if could be carbon/soot from jet fuel deposited by thousands of aeroplanes starting up over time?

It looked like tire tracks in the moist ground perfectly lined up with the runway. If you open the pic and zoom in you will see it. I could buy maintenance vehicles that are mowing the grass except for being so perfectly lined up in that position. As for being small, might be smaller aircraft.

I think it's unrelated to the planes/runway. If you look at google earth you'll see similar black splotches around the airport.

I was just at the Orlando airport today. It's a bit of a **** show in terms of security but I like the layout. Especially now that I see what it looks like from above.

W0X0F, any airport layouts you're especially fond of? And do you find seeing them from above changes your perspective of the airport (or I guess of any structure)?

Tire tracks like that are fairly normal. I'm currently at Incheon Int'l in Korea and they drive pickup trucks out to fire these sound "bombs" to scare away birds etc. If it rains when they do this they leave marks.

I recently went to Mauritania for some work at a new airport and they had problems with camels entering the tarmac and runways. They'd hop in a pickup truck and drive like the car was stolen to scare them of, skidding and drifting.

Pic of camel going awol here. Digression/brag over.



But yeah, I see those tracks lots of places.

Somewhat related, dunno if you've seen it :

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34...t-try-1200028/

Re: the gizmodo thing, I tried finding info on Andrew Liszewski to see what he (doesn't) know about aviation, didn't find much.

As another pilot wrote in the https://www.quora.com/What-should-I-...land-the-plane thread, "the situation (of a passenger landing a commercial airliner has never happened in the history of aviation, but it's a fun "what if" scenario.

After watching the video, I have to wonder why with all the detail the pilot went into he DIDN'T mention :

- Finding out the runway ILS frequency from ATC and using it to guide the plane to the runway.

Even without autoland , I think your odds are better letting the plane "ILS-descend" right to the runway, than trying to manually fly it.

What do you think W0X ?

uh, you're kidding right? Have you read that entire thread? I'm the guy who went flying with Sparks to put this prop bet to the test. And full credit to him for succeeding; it was a remarkable achievement imo. But this is a far cry from landing a transport category plane with no prior experience.

Yeah, the omission of any ILS discussion was kind of surprising, and I think I agree with your last statement too.

W0X0F,
The "dunno if you've seen this" was not aimed at you Of course I know your invovlment in that thread (rather the poster of the "gizmodo link")

Of course there's a lot more (in every way) to a transp vs light ac.

But the "passenger-land-aircraft-scenario" might (under favorable weather etc conditions) be easier to pull off with an "automated" / ILS / autopilot etc, than a "no-automation manual controls" C172 / (or worse PITTS / Extra .. etc, doncha think ?

Yes, automation is the great equalizer and at least can be used to provide a stable approach, which greatly increases the odds of getting the plane down intact..

I had to fly into DCA the other day for the first time so I was checking out the A/FD and saw this note: "Be advised some aircrews mistake Rwy 15 for Rwy 19." That seems like it could be a fairly serious mistake. On top of the typical runway incursion issues you're turning an already short landing into an even shorter landing. And you're straight into the river if you overshoot.

Yeah, it would definitely be a huge mistake. Runway 15/33 is just a little over 5000' long. I've never landed on 15, but in the MD-88 I've probably landed on 33 a handful of times over the years, when the wind was howling out of the northwest (winds in excess of 30 knots).

As you come down the river on the River Visual approach to 19, you'll visually acquire 15 before seeing 19 and it's probably tempted some pilots to turn towards it. When I fly the River Visual, I just know to fly down the middle of the river until the 14th St bridge, at which point I'm about 600' agl (iirc), and then I make a somewhat aggressive turn to line up with the runway. It's almost a 40° heading change and you want to be established with wings level and on speed as soon as possible.

Normally, we would go around if everything wasn't perfectly stabilized at 500' agl, but DCA is one airport where, due to the demands of the approach, we might actually bust this guideline by 100' or more. As long as it's briefed ahead of time and the PM (Pilot Monitoring) is diligently calling deviations (e.g. "slightly high on the VASI, 10 knots fast") we will allow it to go a little lower.

Hey W0X0F, thought you might be interested in an event which is getting some press in Seattle.

Boeing’s original 727 makes one final flight

Also, this was posted in the comments, sounds like this guy (Tim Powell) has some of the same flight experience you have.

An AvGeek in the Left Seat – Flying the Boeing 727

This is the first thing in this entire thread that made me more afraid of flying.

But the river approach to DCA is so fun....

Sorry to take so long to respond to this. I really enjoyed those links. I spent half a year as a flight engineer (FE) on the 727, sometimes referred to as being a plumber, but I never flew in a control seat because I went from sitting sideways to being an FO on the MD-88.

The ground school for 727 FE was probably the most demanding of any I've had in my airline career. The 727 was a great plane, but it was still first generation and all of the systems required human interaction, most of which fell to the flight engineer. We had to know the systems cold and I remember starting each day of ground school by diagramming the entire electrical system, using blue and red pencils to distinguish between AC and DC components.

Like anything else, it became a fairly easy job once you became comfortable with the peculiarities of the electrical, hydraulic and pneumatic systems. Most of our work was done during preflight and pre-takeoff (starting engines and getting generators on-line). In flight, our main mission was keeping the fuel balanced among the three fuel tanks and making position reports. We used to joke that the flight engineer was just deadheading to his next preflight.

The first officer actually had the easiest job at the airline because the FE did the preflight of the plane (both inside and outside). The FO literally flipped two switches on before we pushed back: the pitot heat and the window heat. The summary of life as 727 FO was "Pitot heat, window heat, what's to eat?"

Coincidentally, a day after you posted these links I got an email from a friend of mine* who retired from United airlines in 2002 as the #1 pilot on their seniority list. Number ONE! He sent me a link to the same story and told me he had a lot of entries in his logbook of flights in that specific plane! In his email to me:

[*I met Bill Brum through my brother, who played golf with him at Springfield Country Club. I played many rounds of golf with Bill and he's one of the nicest guys I know. In fact, he came to visit me in the hospital twice and gave me a nice book about the history of the 747 (the last plane he flew).]