Originally Posted by
WHBM
Ah, nowhere as grand as the HB (never been there), it was somewhere around Burbank or Victory Bvds. A secondary little theater.
It was years later, on another Burbank runway 15 departure, that I got my first ride in a Convair 580, the one I mentioned months ago at the start of this thread, Sierra Pacific operating for American Eagle. The turboprops put in that aircraft had given it a great amount of power, so I'm sure we were way up high by the time we passed over the same point. Always fun when you're in an aircraft that does a climb like that - a classic was the last Dan-Air Comet 4 flight, the last Comet 4 commercial flight EVER, an enthusiasts round trip charter (well done Dan-Air) that took off from London Gatwick and was said to have got to 2,000 feet by the time it passed the end of the runway !
Pacific Express would execute the same type of climb with the BAC One-Eleven on departure from Santa Barbara (SBA) as this twinjet was not very quiet on takeoff. After the initial steep climb, the One-Eleven would level off and throttle back the engines a bit, all in the interest of noise abatement.
Takeoffs from Orange County (SNA) were interesting as well. I remember an Alaska Air B737-400 Capt. explaining to us how the noise abatement departure would be accomplished and that the engines would be dramatically throttled back very quickly after we were airborne in order to minimize the noise footprint over Newport Beach......"and this has all been approved by the FAA, folks"......