[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.