Originally Posted by
oldmako
Second trip off IOE flying from DEN to OAK. BIGGG C Captain asks me if I've done a Flap 15 Improved departure yet. NOPE. He winks at the Engineer and up come the numbers. It was hot as hell.
Pretty sure that the mains cleared the localizer antenna by no more than 100 feet at the wrong end of a 10,000 foot runway. Vertical speed was abysmal but man, we were hauling ass. At least, that's how I remember it. I probably have most of it wrong except the last part.
On IOE...the Captain used to ask ATC for Direct to XYX when it was 500 miles away.
ATC - "Uh, sure....proceed direct".
Him...."OK, thanks. Got a heading for us? It's not coming in yet"
Departing ORD on 32L from T10. At V1, there was barely enough runway left to yell "Oh Shi_!".
LGA to 4. Turning off prior to 31 or whatever that runway is. Or the Expressway Visual to 31 and turning off before 4/22.
I could go on, but I won't.
Good times.
I've enjoyed reading your comments about and looking at your pictures of the 727. I flew the plane for Brand X for 20 years, I used to say 17 of them climbing (my son works at TK so I lurk here sometimes). I retired 15 years ago flying the 777 but the 72 owns my heart. I loved the mission plane performed so well. My favorite flying was up in Montana doing DME arc approaches into Helena and visual approaches into Butte. She's a grand old lady now but certainly was never mistaken for a FLUF.
We used to play a lot of tricks on the FAs. My favorite was to pull the CB for the flush motor in the fwd lav. Then we would trip the flush handle and wait. When the time was right we'd push the breaker back in and the motor would flush. They either freaked out screaming or they would ding us and want a write up. Most screamed.