Interesting, someone mentions:
I tried to use “tenth of minute” format with CIVA I’m getting awfully off designated waypoints. In contrast, “seconds” format actually works perfect for me. Don’t know why and how CIVA code works, but that is the way it is.
So definitely worth testing, the manual insists on using the tenth of minutes, I’ll have a look later on. I wonder if it is someone putting in value’s bigger then 5 that might be causing the waypoints to be off.
Every chart I’ve used had waypoints marked in fractions of a minute. Using seconds would require converting each point. Seems open to error.
Indeed it is, but that’s how these old systems worked.
My start was on a DC-10 using Delco Carousels. And honestly I don’t remember which format it used. I do know that we never converted so maybe the plotting charts were in DMS back then.
I take it you had some sort of dispatch office back then that would do the work back then if needed? Honestly it’s a time before my time which I find fascinating but do know absolutely nothing about short of the bits and bobs we come in contact with through sims.
What was it like to fly the DC-10? Did you do a lot of updating of the CIVA during a flight?
Had to be an interesting time. The DC-10, 747, L1011 era was a cool period of aviation…even if @smokinhole caught the tail end of that era. Sometimes I think I was born thirty years too late.
[Eric grabs as many beers out of the fridge as his two arms can carry and brings them to the Mudspike Table where friends are waiting. This is going to take awhile…]
…or it would if I said all I want to say about it. But I have bored enough of you in the past about my 200 all-too-short hours in the DC-10. Believe it or not, what follows is the short version.
People who have flown both the 747 and the DC-10 mostly concur that the -10 was the better flying machine (as in better handling, not better airplane). Before flying it, the largest plane I had flown at that point was the King Air 350 and the only jet had been the Citation II. In training in Denver we learned the airplane the old way with a depth of systems knowledge that was so ingrained that I can still see the hydraulic schematic 25 years later. My sim partner was Dick* Capp, an original Continental DC-10 Captain who flew them out of LA in the ‘70’s when they had piano bar in the back. “Proud bird with a golden tail”. After the strike he never went back. That makes him a hero to me. (I later royally screwed the guy on a fully loaded takeoff out of AMS and damn near killed us all. I told that story elsewhere and won’t bore you with it here.) Before our first sim period he sat me down in the paper trainer and asked if I had ever flown a real jet. No. Had I ever flown a full-motion simulator. No. Well, he said, this would be an eye opener and my expectations for myself should be kept low. I recall that I didn’t take that very well but he really wasn’t kidding. Before or since I have never had an flying machine kick my butt they way the DC-10 did. Up to that point I had often heard the expression, “fly by attitude”. I thought it was referring to maturity or mindset. No, it really meant that one must fly a large jet with precise attitude settings in mind for various speeds and configurations. It was very fast. Loaded, the dash 30 was incapable of flying the standard max speed of 250 knots below FL100 clean. We either had to get permission to fly 265+ or climb out with leading edge slats deployed. In the sim I was incapable of flying the thing. I couldn’t even do steep turns. I even lost control completely doing Dutch Rolls. Dick, of course, flew it like it was on rails.
After that first flight, I thought my career was over. But Dick told me I did fine. What? He added, we should do the paper trainer thing again prior to the sim session the following night. In the trainer, he taught me how to fly by attitude and how to make good use of the IVSI. The airplane was never a problem after that. You flew the 10 with your finger tips. You never fisted the yoke. And you never two-handed the yoke. It was needlessly responsive but in the most beautiful way. I guess the fighter types on the Douglas flight test team demanded it. My first flight in the real thing was with a bunch of other pilots, all getting our three landings at Sacramento. We were rushed for some reason so I wasn’t able to see it from the outside. Up to this point I still had never seen a DC-10 up close. My first two landings sucked. The instructor said that I was focusing on the target (the touchdown zone). He added that this same bad habit killed his wingman on a rocket attack in a F-105 in Vietnam. (This told to me while I was on downwind). The story was frightening enough that my last landing was beautiful. The first time I saw the plane from the outside was on my first leg of IOE flying from LA to Maui. My check-captain, JJ Kennedy, was former Braniff captain and a rancher from Texas. He took me downstairs for the pre-flight (normally done by the flight engineer). I was floored by how massive she was. How do you preflight something so complicated?
“If it ain’t leanin’, leakin’ or smokin’ and it flew itself in, it’ll fly itself out!”
Pilots for real airlines are given at least two days of ground school just to cover overwater procedures, plotting and position reports. LeisureAir gave us none of that. So poor JJ had to teach me everything while the passengers were boarding. It was stupefyingly complicated. The Carrousels were programmed maybe a bit like the INS in the Ka50, Gazelle and Mirage. The unit itself was pretty easy to use. But it could only store 10 waypoints. Our dash 10s had two INS’s and they would begin to disagree pretty quickly once you got over water. The dash 30s would “triple mix” the three gyro platforms and were better. We did update them every leg on the final coast out check. This would involve flying over a cardinal latitude or an intersection while still within range of a ground based navaid. The actual coordinates of the point would be entered and the airplane would be flown to that point using the navaid (VOR/DME) that defined the point. I don’t recall how the update was stored. We may also have been able to fly with the INS and just store the error when over the point but I don’t recall how that was done.
The joke on the 727 was, “What is the Nonessential Bus?” (Presumably referring to the electrical system). Answer: “The bus that brings the copilot to the airport!” The same was true for the 10. The FO did nothing but fly. Other than navigation and plotting, there was nothing, really, the FO could do. I could not see the engineer’s panel and I had access to none of the systems. If I wanted to get a fuel figure for the Master Flight Plan, I had to call “Fuel?” to the engineer. If any sort of non-normal came up, the FO gets the airplane and the Captain and flight engineer run the checklists and sort out the problem. It was by far the best job in aviation.
And it was a great time to be alive! Flight attendants and co-pilots were typically young. Captains and Flight Engineers were typically old. So…well you do the math. I was 25 and in completely over my head in every respect.
Yes, believe it or not, this was the short version. [I’ll go grab some more beer!]
*Dear @discobot, “dee, eye, see, kay” is a name. Granted it isn’t such a common name anymore but this is a poor reason to bleep out the name of my hero, Dick Capp.
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
Wow, what a great story! Not boring at all.
Really just one comment/request:
MORE
Haha…post of the year for me so far…! What great insight of both the era and the plane…and how you coped with it. I’m fascinated that the first time you really saw it was on IOE. LOL. I’ll bet that Captain was like “great…another guy that is supposed to help me out, but will actually make me work 150% as hard…” Such is true for all newbs.
Very interesting to read how sensitive it was. I’ll be the FedEx guys really enjoy flying them without the need to worry too much about pax and crew comfort…I’m sure they are really good at it.
Great story - wish I could have a beer while reading it, but unfortunately I’m four hours away from going on call again. Meet me at the bar at 7AM tomorrow morning…haha…
Fantastic ramblings! Keep it up! 
So, what about that AMS story? Never heard it before!
Over-zealous swearbox thing - updated. You can say dick as much as you like now.
I agree with everybody else. @smokinhole, we need more stories. Maybe a “So There I Was” thread?
I grabbed this from the other forum. It was a 2014 response to a thread about retiring the DC-10. I believe I was correct in the post above about my first flight. Memories are fallible as we all know. Oh, but I WAS wrong about AMS in the post above. As you will see, it was BRU @TheAlmightySnark, your city has had its share of falling planes but she was safe under me. …
In 1994 I was hired (gifted is a better word) into the right seat of a DC-10. My first trip (I think) was from San Francisco to Maui with Captain Dick Capp as my check airman. Dick was a Continental striker with the perfect old school Captain persona. I have never flown with a better man since. I have also never flown, and will never fly, a better airliner than the DC-10. By comparison, everything else is a truck. I flew both the dash 10 and dash 30 and loved them both but the dash 10 was especially light–best flown with three fingers on each corner of the yoke. A few weeks after that first flight with Dick we were again together, this time taking off out of Brussels with 350 football fans on board on their way to World Cup '94. The plane was an old beat up -30, EI-DLA. It had a very sorted history and I came close to giving her a suitable end. The -30’s had a center gear and a capacity for about 100,000 pounds more fuel. We were near max gross at 563,000 pounds (IIRC) and this was my first time in type. I had my speed bugs all mis-set but didn’t realize it until the roll had started. I should have asked for a reject but instead tried to fake it. I called V1 early but then realized my error and said “NO! That’s wrong!” and I could see Dick’s jaw set. I felt like an impostor in the right seat of this great plane with this great man to whom I was now proving to be a huge disappointment. A few seconds later I called V1 at the proper speed and many more seconds later we rotated. The climb was a slow struggle. At Flaps up speed I somehow missed the gate and retracted the slats as well. (Not an easy thing to do but I managed it). We immediately went into stick shaker and Dick calmly established a decent to keep some air flowing past those huge wings. At 230 knots there was not nearly enough to keep us off the rooftops of Zaventem. The PFE (professional flight engineer)–a non-pilot–was screaming “What’s happening!”. Fortunately for us (and Zaventem) Douglas designed the plane with auto slats. As they deployed I had already reset the slat handle. I waited in horror for Dick’s wrath. All he said was “shut up!” to the flight engineer. Once proper control was regained, I was about to say something like “God, I’m sorry…” but he cut me off with “we will discuss this at cruise. For now forget about it and do your job.” This was like my dad saying “just wait till we get home!” after I’d committed whatever crimes an eight year old can manage. Thirty minutes later we were at FL280 and the autopilot was on. Dick looked over at me. ‘Here it comes’, I thought, ‘25 years old and my career is over’. But instead he said, calmly but firmly, “look, these things happen. If you want to survive as a pilot you will need to demand that one error must never be allowed snowball into another. Mistakes are part of flying. We must mitigate them and move on”. He then turned to the flight engineer, explained what had happened and apologized. We flew together all over Europe and the pacific that summer and he never mentioned it again. In fact he treated me always with complete confidence and respect. That airplane belonged to a generation of pilots who deserved it. I don’t put myself in that category which makes me even more grateful to have had my year in the Douglas. I hope you all will forgive the long story. I was about to write a one-line–“sorry to see her go…” but then the memory came in a flood.
For real, you have a wonderful writing style, keep the stories rolling as long as you are not bored. I think I speak for Mudspike as a whole to say that we completely enjoy it!
I’ve always had a bit of a love affair with the DC-10. The tri-engine layout just has something in it that no other type has, and the ten wore it best of it’s generation to me. I’ve even got a set of flight manuals for flying the DC-10 from a real airliner that I got via via years ago. One day I hope to fly a full fidelity -10 in X-plane.
The closest I have come to a DC-10 is taking apart 3 MD-11 engines years ago. Final farewell of those too so they’d never fly again.
Perhaps we should have a story thread at some point where we can move ‘random’ posts like this? @BeachAV8R you know best in this regard
Thanks! We all have our stories, whether we fly, fix or dispatch. I love this stuff…obviously.
If you want a great read about a different generation of pilots and mechanics you can hardly do better than this…
It is really just a shorter plagiarisation of a book called The Long Way Home about a Pan Am Clipper that was forced by the war to fly west around the world to return to New York. None of us measure up to that generation. It’s been a sliding downward scale from those guys to Dick Capp to button pushers like me 
