Surprisingly, the pax weren't that worked up. We stayed mostly positive G throughout the rolls. They didn't really know how far upset we got, but felt the rate of roll more than anything.

 

Somebody missed a crossing restriction.

 

From what I've read, that happens all too often.



atp

 

Most of the time, I'm too busy handling (or trying to) whatever is happening to be nervous or scared. It's always after the fact when I think about it and realize what happened that I will sometimes get a little nervous.

Perhaps the scariest "review" of what happened was in Oct '01 when I was getting ready to go into Afghanistan. We were flying NVG low-level in Oman over various desert terrain getting ready for a big mission. At a couple hundred feet, I didn't recognize a sink I'd allowed to develop until our loadmaster just said, "Hey! Hey!" and the other pilot put pressure on the yoke...I rolled out and recovered around 70 feet. That one got to me pretty quickly.

 

It usually happens because of an over reliance on automation. VNAV is great, but backing it up with a mental calc is a must.

 

I remember departing the old Hong Kong Kai Tak airport on runway 13 in a 747-200 freighter. We were relatively heavy and the temp was just over 100 F. The lower cargo trim air "heaters " were in yellow "too hot shutoff" because of ambient heat, and verified by the local mechanics....When we began the takeoff the #2 engine ran a bit differently than the other 3, but nothing out of parameters. Right as we hit V1, but still about 10 or so Knots below Vr the cockpit filled with smoke, and it was thick enough that you could barely see the instruments , that is you could see them but not read numbers or print on them.....Well we had to sit there and chug up to Vr first since we were past V1 and that seemed like forever......The Captain called out "Smoke in the cockpit" and so we goggled up and O2 masks about while rotating or so it seemed, got up to cleanup alt....I was a Second Officer at the time..There wasn't really a QRM proceedure for that scenario at that time but we closed the bleed on engine #2 and turned on 1 AC Pack, and then I was tasked with putting on the ols SCBA breathing gear (before pbe's were invented) and looking for the source of the smoke in lower E&E and the main deck cargo....On the main deck the smoke was so thick that you could only see about 2 pallet positions back when I began my circuit around the cargo...The power of adrenaline is note worthy, in that I had about 30 lbs of breathing gear on my back and a huge extinguisher 40lbs and still made it around the whole main deck before the airplane got to 5000ft....in that time the smoke cleared quite a bit and we could see it was "blue tint" which meant it was of engine bleed source... The #2 engine went on oil watch, with the bleed wire closed and we decided to take a couple of days off. The idea of doing an IGS to 13 at Kai Tak with a cockpit full of smoke and a main deck fire is scary at best good it was bleed, but we had a lot of possible sources to worry about in a very short time...That was my scariest day even as I tell it it is hard to do it justice.

 

That's what I've started doing with FSX. True, it's a far cry from the real mccoy, but I've started "flying" the airplane as oppose to using the AP so much.


atp

 

Every time I turn off the A/P I scare the bejeesus out of the guy next to me...

 

Similar situation in a B747-100 taking off out of EWR. Right after rotate as I turned on the first Pack, smoke started filling up the cockpit. After donning the mask and goggles, and trying to fly the departure with a heavy -100 that does not want to fly in the first place, the smoke quickly dissipated>

 

Yes, when on a takeoff with the packs off one would tend to think that bleed smoke would be precluded from entering the cockpit, but the trim air valves open on takeoff on freighters and 747-2a's and 747-2b's........so beware of trim air.