Living the dream

I RL-flew from KLAX to KORD Friday on an American B-787, my second trip in the Dreamliner. I was sitting in the forward cabin. While the flight was boarding, I was admiring the plane’s avionics through the flight deck’s open door. I asked a flight attendant if I could have a closer look. Sure, she said and conducted me to the doorway, where she introduced me to the pilots—who invited me in. Standing behind them, I asked if I could take a picture. Sit down, they said. We’ll take your picture. So here I am, in the captain’s chair—at the gate. I told them I was an armchair-MSFS pilot. I asked them how soon they engaged the AP after takeoff and when the disengaged it before landing. They said that in VFR conditions, they would hand-fly the plane to 18,000 ft. although other pilots would engage the AP shortly after takeoff. When landing, they said, they would disengage it at 3,000 ft. But of course, they said, the plane could land itself.

On the B-787 flight deck, at the gate.

 

 

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Hi Steve, thanks for sharing! You’re making us all jealous though :)

 

Regards

Steve

Very cool man, very cool! I'm jealous! :pilot:

 

Souds like the pilots were top blokes, too.

Feeling genuine thrills on your behalf for having this experience! Totally awesome.

 

As I've started getting to know more RL pilots, there's definitely admiration by them of MSFS. The young CFI who flew me around the island of Kaua'i actually built his own computer just to fly MSFS, which he uses for various practice reasons.

 

There's an older CFI--retired airline pilot--who flew in to meet me in Northern Arizona last weekend for a flight instruction session. He flew in on his personally-owned Cessna 140, which was gorgeous. (I took a pic, see below). When I mentioned to him that a Cessna 140 just came online in MSFS and I had flown it, he was pretty happy (though I'm pretty sure he's not an MSFS user). He just couldn't believe that enough sim people loved the 140 enough to create a sim model of one.

 

So I took off in a B-787 (from KSJC) in MSFS yesterday, just to check out the sim's instrument panel. It looks just like the RL thing, of course. When I visited the actual flight deck, the pilots told me that nowadays the avionics in GA aircraft are much more sophisticated than the B-787's. Stands to reason, since the B-787 made its maiden flight 12 years ago, an eon in tech-time. I had no idea how to land the damn plane in the sim (let alone in RL), so I escaped out of the flight before I could get into any trouble. I think I'll ease into jets with the CJ4 before I try flying--and landing--a heavy. Toward that end, can anybody tell me how to map the spoilers--or air brakes, or whatever they're called--to my flight yoke?