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!"

True, nice and interesting read, Lou.


Mark, if it's just about the proper cruise thrust setting, you may use the F2 and F3 keys to actually adjust the throttle in fine 1% steps.
I'm using this technique although my throttle is a good one, but setting up e. g. 78% for M0.80 would be too difficult there. So just go full throttle on hardware and then use the keys. Later, on descent and approach, hardware gets used again, same at takeoff. So the cruise phase is my only key-phase.

I guess the real thing doesn't have that problem.  

Lou, reading your exploits reminds me I need to fly the 707 again. I have been logging a lot of hours in the 757 but it's time for some OE 707 time, tks!

Btw, I guess you missed a question I asked a while back, with all your Boeing time, how did you manage to skip the 737?

JayG, TWA never had 737's and when AA bought TWA in 2001, all the TWA pilots were sent to the STL ghetto and all the TWA pilot stations were closed. I flew out of JFK for 35 years and I could drive to the airport in a few hours. Now, to get to STL was 1,000 mile drive or a 2 leg airline commute.    I was frozen on the 767/757 because that's where I was when they took over.....and now you have the rest of the story!  

This week is the 20th Anniversary of the big eruption of Pinatubo

Pinatubo, you are famous.... but you knew that!  


Mount Pinatubo is part of a chain of composite volcanoes along the Luzon arc on the west coast of the island (area map). The arc of volcanoes is due to the subduction of the Manila trench to the west. The volcano experienced major eruptions approximately 500, 3000, and 5500 years ago.

The events of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption began in July 1990, when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake occurred 100 kilometers (62 miles) northeast of the Pinatubo region, determined to be a result of the reawakening of Mount Pinatubo.

In mid-March 1991, villagers around Mount Pinatubo began feeling earthquakes and vulcanologists began to study the mountain. (Approximately 30,000 people lived on the flanks of the volcano prior to the disaster.) On April 2, small explosions from vents dusted local villages with ash. The first evacuations of 5,000 people were ordered later that month.

Earthquakes and explosions continued. On June 5, a Level 3 alert was issued for two weeks due to the possibility of a major eruption. The extrusion of a lava dome on June 7 led to the issuance of a Level 5 alert on June 9, indicating an eruption in progress. An evacuation area 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) away from the volcano was established and 25,000 people were evacuated.

The following day (June 10), Clark Air Base, a U.S. military installation near the volcano, was evacuated. The 18,000 personnel and their families were transported to Subic Bay Naval Station and most were returned to the United States. On June 12, the danger radius was extended to 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the volcano resulting in the total evacuation of 58,000 people.



Lou

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I spent a lot of time in Angeles City (near where Clarke Air Force Base was located), at the base of Mount Pinatubo, back in 1989-90. I was last there in March/April 1990, just before it all began. I had some interesting experiences there. Like this one: One time I had to dive onto the ground and scamper to safety in an alley because some crazy Filipino was angry at the U.S. and was firing shots up and down the street (not very far from the Clarke AFB entrance). Scary! I was eventually help off te street and into a club owned by an Aussie. he opened the door and dragged me and my two friends inside.  Anyway, I got to know a guy from Angeles City who went on to become one of my Godfathers at my wedding and I have never heard from since the Pinatubo eruption. I'm still trying to find out whether he survived or not. A lot of people died and Angeles City was buried beneath the "Lahar".

JayG wrote on Jul 7^th, 2011 at 8:34pm:

The one you are thinking of is British Airways Flight 9 off the coast of  Jakarta, Indonesia. Mount Galunggung.

Mark

Ya Mark, that was the one. I imagine there was an underware change as well as engine and glass changes after that flight  

CoolP, I hardley ever read 'reviews' on planes but the other day I took a look at the Avsim 707 review, and congrats on the 'kudos' he mentioned about you.  

BTW, it aint just mother nature that throws a curve ball at ya! Heres a story about another engine failure, all the way to the ground....

Back in the 70's I was flying charters out of Maine, and we had a trip to Boston to pick up passengers. There were only 2, so we took the Beech Seirra. Normally it would be a single pilot trip, but it was marginal IFR in Boston, (CAVU in Maine)so we elected to add another pilot.

It was a Sunday in January and the first part of the flight, right up to the initial approach was perfect. The weather at KBOS was snow showers and variable winds 20kts gusting to around 30.

Approach cleared us to RWY 14 and as we were on base, they switched us to 4L, due to a major wind shift and the fact that all commercial traffic was landing on 4L and 4R.

We were by now in a snow shower with limited visibility and below pattern altitude for 14. Since we had to re-position for 4L, that meant we were low, so as we set up for base to 4L, I added power to hold our altitude, and at that point, things got dicey.

Nothing happened, nada, no power change. We were over the bay, low, with a 20kt xwind, with reduced visibility, and the engine at idle. I told the other pilot we had a problem and to see if if could get power back, since at this point I had my hands full trying to make the runway.

If you have ever flown into KBOS, you noticed you approached over the water for those runways, which generally is very COLD in January! There is a seawall right at the end on 4L and to this day I dont know how we cleared it, but I can tell you we did, and we stopped before the numbers on 4L. I called ground, told them we have a struck throttle and didnt want to taxi in traffic and needed a tow. Of course since we were sitting smack in the center of 4L, all traffic behind us were NOT very happy.

What I never told ATC was, the 'sticky' throttle was sitting between the seats, cable and all! The 32 strand, stainless steel cable, had completely broken at the engine. The fickle finger of fate decided we didnt need a swim that day, it was one of the few times I ever smoked in the cockpit!