Intro
For my Xmas present this year I bought myself a flight training session on a full-motion 747 simulator
This was a 1 hour session on Xmas Eve morning at the British Airways Flight Training centre near Heathrow.
For photos and vidoes please see my blog:
http://godatum.blogspot.co.uk/2013/1...ng-on-747.html
Getting There
Unfortunately as many of you might know there were severe storms in south England and all train services have been suspended. My planned journey to Feltham had o be scrapped and I quickly go on an X26 bus to Hatton Cross. A very unpleasant experience as the bus was packed and I had to stand for over an hour and a half. When I got to Hatton Cross it was a short 10 minutes walk to the BAFT centre.
Training Experience
Luckily I only arrived a little late and passed through reception to meet my training pilot for today, Fiona. I explained to her why I was interested in this and what I wanted to get out of today. The full-motion simulators are amazing and very expensive (over £10 million!).
Fiona gave a short safety briefing and we jumped right in. I began with something easy so i could get a feel for the controls as I am more used to the Airbus sidestick: a takeoff, circuit and landing at Heathrow.
This was then followed by a landing at Heathrow, the JFK Canarsie 13L approach, a JFK circuit and a low visibility approach.
Sitting in a full size 747 cockpit was an amazing experience. Funnily it was smaller then I imagined it to be! I was most surprised by how stiff the yoke and rudder pedals were. In flight it was very hard to keep the plane level as pushing back or forward on the yoke requires some strength even when trimmed, a lot different from my sidestick! And the brakes required a lot of force to push down, more so then I'm used to as I have mine quite loose. The 4 throttles were also quite a challenge as I have small hands!
Getting to fiddle around with the systems was great, especially the MCP and FMC. Fiona was surprised as I had a particular way I like to set up my cockpit
On the circuits I like to input fixes in the FMC so I can have a better situational awareness of where I am in relation to the airport.
We also talked a lot about BA operating procedures like when to turn on the APU, when lights and seatbelts are turned on and manual landings.
My first landing was quite hard and not on the centreline but I quickly improved once I got used to the controls. The Canarsie landing was hard as it was quite difficult to judge where the runway was.
Fiona did comment I have picked up a few bad habits like looking at my instruments too much and not enough outside. She commented a lot of cadets place too much emphasis on chasing the magenta line.
In conclusion I had an amazing experience and learnt a lot, I wish I could have spent the whole day there! In the end we spent over 2 hours in the sim.