Cannot Fly 5 Hours With Manual Throttle?

[GeeBee]

Don't do it! You may become fatigued!

 

[N201MKTurbo]

Wow, being able to fly a plane doesn’t seem to be a requirement for the job these days.

[MikeOH]

What a revelation!  No wonder I'm tired after a long flight...I don't have an autothrottle

[Pinecone]

I recall talking to a friend of mine who flew KC-135s.  He was complaining about having to bring a plane back from Aviano Italy to KS without a functioning autopilot.

I asked him if they had an augmented crew, which they did, so 4 pilots.

I pointed out that the A-10 I flew did not have an autopilot at all, and we did 12 hours over the Atlantic to ferry planes.

[N201MKTurbo]

56 minutes ago, Pinecone said:

I recall talking to a friend of mine who flew KC-135s.  He was complaining about having to bring a plane back from Aviano Italy to KS without a functioning autopilot.

I asked him if they had an augmented crew, which they did, so 4 pilots.

I pointed out that the A-10 I flew did not have an autopilot at all, and we did 12 hours over the Atlantic to ferry planes.

How many refuelings did that take?

[Will.iam]

15 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

How many refuelings did that take?

More than you care to count as you keep them topped off in case they can not connect again or boom breaks and they have to divert to a runway and not splash down in the ocean. More fun to listen to music on the second radio or ask trivia questions. 

[Will.iam]

1 hour ago, Pinecone said:

I recall talking to a friend of mine who flew KC-135s.  He was complaining about having to bring a plane back from Aviano Italy to KS without a functioning autopilot.

I asked him if they had an augmented crew, which they did, so 4 pilots.

I pointed out that the A-10 I flew did not have an autopilot at all, and we did 12 hours over the Atlantic to ferry planes.

It’s a pain but his bad for not asking for a block altitude and let it wonder a bit. Especially when the boom operator or pax keeps walking to the back. 

[Ragsf15e]

1 hour ago, N201MKTurbo said:

How many refuelings did that take?

Im sure it’s more when flying an A10, but it took 6 or 7 times on the boom to get an F15E from Idaho to Lajes, Portugal.  We took off around midnight so we’d be landing in daylight or just to make sure our circadian rhythms were 100% destroyed.  I never figured out which.  6 fighters to each pair of tankers.  Fly with them through the night cycling all 6 through about every hour.  Use up all their gas, then two or three more tankers taking off from the east coast join up and the first two land while the fighters start sucking down the new gas.  When the sun comes up you’re overjoyed because 7 or 8 planes all together in the dark (and invariably the tankers head straight for the thick clouds) is really not fun.  Unfortunately, when the sunrise happens as you head East, you can’t see a GD thing.  I remember refueling with a blinding ball of light that had tiny wingtips protruding out the side of it barely visible in my peripheral.  Not fun.  After that, its all trivia and snacks and comfortable daytime formation for another 4 hours while you keep it topped off in case the tanker breaks and you have to divert to iceland or something.  Then you land, unfold your body, drink a couple of gallons of beer at the club/bowling alley, roll your commander down the lanes, pass out and do the second half of the trip (to the middle east) in ~36 hours.  And that’s only for 6 of the 20 or so jets in each squadron.  It’s a serious logistical nightmare especially considering how many planes break along they way and have to get rescued by maintenance and then join another crossing.

[cliffy]

We never had auto-throttles in the 727s I flew  I guess I didn't realize I really needed them

I had a new copilot in the 757 once from JFK to LAS We had all the A/Ps INOP'd by MEL (back before RVSM)

I flew the first 45 mins and gave it to him. He flew 30 mins and gave it back to me saying he was not going to fly it 

again in this condition.

I asked him what he was going to do if he was CAPT and he got another MEL'd A/P airplane?

He said he'd refuse to fly it.   We got rid of him on IOE. 

I flew the rest of the way back home. 

We had Prima Donnas back then also. 

[Ibra]

Pilots these days 

[BlueSky247]

VOR? Is that a new band?

[MikeOH]

39 minutes ago, BlueSky247 said:

VOR? Is that a new band?

Yeah, people got tired of listening to the now defunct AN Range band

[cliffy]

Yes But I actually flew one approach on the old AN Range system! :-)   In a Cessna 140 to boot- With a hood on!

They also got tired of listening to 'GANDER GANDER POSITION REPORT GANDER GANDER"  all night long before SECAL

Keeping the head clamps on and hearing the HF hash all night long got tiring

But it was always interesting at night WAY out over the water  FAR beyond land based transmitters to look down at the transponder and see it being interrogated  by SOMEONE down there on the water :-)   Did you ever get the feeling you was being watched?  :-)

[MikeOH]

What's always amazed me is that the ILS, as good as a GPS LPV, and still around for the foreseeable future, was tested in 1929, and became available in 1932!

[cliffy]

NO the GPS LPV is as good as the ILS ever was !   :-)

Even a CAT I ILS (200 & 1/2) can be hand flown to 50 feet (CAT III mins) easily with practice-  just in case. 

We all do remember that CAT III ILSs are actually electronically different than CAT Is   Correct? 

[MikeOH]

Yuup!  I think it was the early '60s before CATIII/autoland was available.

[EricJ]

31 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

What's always amazed me is that the ILS, as good as a GPS LPV, and still around for the foreseeable future, was tested in 1929, and became available in 1932!

From a radio perspective they're fairly primitive, same with marker beacons and the AN airways.   A VOR is a more interesting beast, and one of the interesting things there is that the implementations of the transmitters evolved over time from mechanically-modulated to a few interesting generations of advancing electronic implementation, and they all stayed 100% compatible along the way.   It's still not a bad way to do things to accomplish that task, likewise with an ILS.

[MikeOH]

7 minutes ago, EricJ said:

From a radio perspective they're fairly primitive, same with marker beacons and the AN airways.   A VOR is a more interesting beast, and one of the interesting things there is that the implementations of the transmitters evolved over time from mechanically-modulated to a few interesting generations of advancing electronic implementation, and they all stayed 100% compatible along the way.   It's still not a bad way to do things to accomplish that task, likewise with an ILS.

Yes, the VOR system is much more sophisticated technically representing electronic technology advances in the two decades after the ILS.

What is so impressive to me is that the ILS was developed in the nascent age of radio with pencil, paper and slide rules and is such an elegant, well crafted, and simple design, that it remains to this day "not a bad way to do things to accomplish that task".  When compared to the decades of developmental effort, hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars (in today's money), and countless man hours using the most sophisticated computers available to develop and implement GPS it is all that much more of an astonishing achievement.

[Pinecone]

17 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

How many refuelings did that take?

In the A-10, it was 12 refuelings from Portsmouth NH to England.  That was without external tanks.

To shorten the distance/time, there is one point where they would refuel, then as soon as they burned 1500 pounds, they would refuel again for about 4 times.  If the airplane did not take fuel, it was turn left and head to Iceland.

A-10 would not take fuel from air refueling until you were down 1500 pounds.   Total internal fuel was 10,600 pounds.

[Ibra]

7 hours ago, MikeOH said:

What's always amazed me is that the ILS, as good as a GPS LPV, and still around for the foreseeable future, was tested in 1929, and became available in 1932!

ILS CAT1 will match LPV all the way down to 50ft  past 50ft, the LPV (and even LNAV+V with GPS) works vertically down to 0ft and laterally all the way to the other end of the runway

In ILS CAT1, my HSI shows “NO GS” and “NO LOC flag” as I cross the piano bars 

I have flown FD/AP coupled to WAAS GPS guidance (in ALT/NAV) at few feet from runway in CAVOK, I was impressive by the quality of signal: it’s smooth as silk with zero glitches as you cross the threshold, the touchdown zone all the way to the other end. I am now tempted to make an illegal auto-land 

My understanding only ILS CAT3 (Auto-Land) will have such requirement signal continuity after passing threshold? 
 

Edited October 28, 2024 by Ibra

[MikeOH]

5 minutes ago, Ibra said:

ILS CAT1 will match LPV all the way down to 50ft  past 50ft, the LPV (and even LNAV+V with GPS) works vertically down to 0ft and laterally all the way to the other end of the runway

I have flown FD/AP coupled to WAAS GPS guidance (in ALT/NAV) at few feet from runway in CAVOK, I was impressive by the quality of signal: it’s smooth as silk with zero glitches as you cross the threshold, the touchdown zone all the way to the other end. I am now tempted to make an illegal auto-land 

My understanding only ILS CAT3 (Auto-Land) will have such requirement for lateral signal continuity after passing threshold 

Well, golly gee.  I'm so glad to know that nearly 100 years and hundreds of millions of dollars later a multi-satellite system is marginally better.

[GeeBee]

I remember before RVSM flying a 5 leg day in a 737 with no A/P and no A/T. These guys are girly-men.

 

[Ibra]

3 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

Well, golly gee.  I'm so gad to know that nearly 100 years and hundreds of millions of dollars later a multi-satellite system is marginally better.

Glad it’s not charged to users!

I was expecting guidance to be blocked by Garmin or Avidyne after M/DA or MAPt (“your demo version has expired, please drop coin, here” )

The specs for CDI sensitivity on WAAS GPS is damn precise and smooth, I wonder how CDI sensitivity on ILS CAT1 or ILS CAT3 (AutoLand) would looks like? 

 

 

[bradp]

Wasn’t there another factor in this … like probe heat and anti ice capability was somehow affected? 

[GeeBee]

10 hours ago, bradp said:

Wasn’t there another factor in this … like probe heat and anti ice capability was somehow affected? 

Yes, the failure of the TAT probe caused the A/T disconnect (because the A/T computer can no longer calculate engine limits) however, the only requirement in the case of TAT failure is to avoid icing conditions. If you listen the dispatcher amends his release to "no ice" and tells the crew they are good to go "no ice". based upon forecast conditions along the route. Flown that kind of release a thousand times. Not a big deal. As to engine limits, all that is needed is to refer to manual and manually set the EPR bugs to reflect the limits.