Also posted under 707...

Yesterday I decided to take a short trip in the 707. This is a leg I have flown too many time for real, but I wanted to give the old gal a little workout. I took off from KSTL on RW 30L and turned right to a north heading. I used airways to fly up to KORD. I climbed to FL230 and cruised at 300 KTS. It's a nice short trip which in real life is pretty busy and just about the time you get to altitude ATC starts you down. Now I don't do any of the talking to ATC stuff that you all seem to do. I did enough of that to last a lifetime, but I do know the normal routing so I pretty much stay on what ATC would normally do with a flight  such as mine. When switched from Chicago center to approach is when things get busy. The Chicago approach controllers are the best in the world when it comes to moving tin. In order to be able to operate in this busy place you need to pay very close attention to instructions and keep the radio chatter to a minimum.

Usually the first contact with KORD approach goes something like this... O'Hair, this it TWA 123, Charlie, 230'. (Charlie is the current ATIS name) His response is... TWA 123, direct O'Hair, 10,000'. There are no STARS into this busy airport yet it works so nice if you just pay attention.  So I placed 113.9 in the VOR and turned direct to the station and started descent. Simple! If he wants a special speed, he will tell you, otherwise plane on 250 at 10,000. As I approached from the south west, at around 12 DME from O'Hair I turned my self on a downwind for runway 27L. Now I know I talked about descent profiles in other threads, but remember that is just a plan, and plans do change. As I approached the airport I was high on a standard profile. FL230 should have required a T/D of almost 70 miles out, but I know I cannot fly direct to KORD, I'll need to fly a downwind or get vectored around a bit. So when I first changed from center to approach I was about 45 miles from O'Hair. That would be a bit high for direct to the airport, but when you factor in the vectoring, I have a lot of room to get down. So now I'm heading 090 degrees at 10,000' abeam the airport. ATC clears me to 5,000'. I'm already at 250 KTS, so I just pull the thrust back and push the nose over. You can count on going at least to a mile or so past the marker on any approach and usually 5 miles past to make a smooth intercept. So I'm abeam the airport, leaving 10,000' and I have at least 25 miles to run to the runway since I have to fly 10 miles more to the east, then turn base, then turn final.

I did this flight to play with the autopilot since there have been some folks that don't seem to like the way it works. I did the entire flight from 5,000 feet on the climb out of St. Louis to 100 feet at the threshold on the autopilot. It worked just like it did in the real 707. It's not the sharpest of autopilots, but if you don't rush it, the thing does a pretty good job. I used HEADING select to steer the plane for the flight and stayed in heading select until intercept of the LOC. I used the pitch wheel on the autopilot to control up and down and of course altitude hold for the level part. (Hint - if you want to find the power setting to maintain a speed use the numbers in the Mach readout. The number to the right in the indicator is very sensitive to any change in speed and is useful for small power corrections to maintain speed. As you see the numbers roll up in speed, you can squeak off just a tiny bit of thrust and see what the numbers do. And of course the reverse is true.)  As I vectored myself around for the intercept of the LOC to RW 27L I got just a bit close to the LOC and when I selected VOR/LOC in the autopilot I was about to slide through the LOC. Hey, stuff happens, so I elected to let the autopilot try to intercept and see what it would do. It made a few oscillations across the LOC and back, but after a few turns it locked onto the LOC. So on the approach progress display I now have LOC G/S. I am at 3,000 feet with ALT HOLD set. I have slowed to 180 KTS with the gear up & flaps 14. As the glide slope comes alive I go gear down, flaps 20. The speed bleeds slowly to around 160 KTS. With the glide slope one dot to go, I select 40 flaps and adjust power to keep around 160 KTS. As I pass the outer marker I go full flaps and slow to 145 KTS. The ALT HOLD tripped off at glide slope intercept and the autopilot is tracking the LOC and G/S pretty well. The key to a good autopilot approach is to keep speed changes to a minimum and do them slowly so the plane can handle the changes. The plane did do a little "wing walking" or small left and right banks of one or two degrees, but it settled down by 1,000 feet above the ground. Very small power changes were made to keep on speed. FSX put in a little bump or two during the descent, but the autopilot did just fine. At 100 feet to go I hit the disconnect and landed. The key to landing the 707 is to do a good quick scan as you get below 500 feet, and keep the scan going right down to the ground. If you are stable in speed all the way so far nothing should change unless there is some windshear. As you descend below 100 feet you should begin to look all the way down to the far end of the runway so as to get a better prospective of rate of closure with the runway. Just before you start the flare glance at the rate of descent. If it's more than 600 or 700 feet per minute you will need to flare a bit more than normal and don't be too quick closing the throttles. But if you see 500 FPM just start a smooth flare and move the throttles toward close. In the flare keep the plane as close to the center line as you can. Use smooth rudder input to align the nose with the runway. "Nice Landing Captain!"