1morguy,
Hopefully, you're next post will be telling us that you're in ground school.
I flew the MD80 for a few months before furlough. The -80 is a fairly simple airplane systems-wise, in fact, some of the systems and design are kinda weird. The tail basically flies itself thats why when taxiing behind it sometimes it looks like the tail is split. There are other peculiarities (sp?) that I'm sure you'll find different. The first day of class ask why there are two mirrors on the glareshield...lol.
With that said, the -80 is a "fly by cable" airplane and flies fairly easily. During eng-out manuevers the centerline thrust makes this one of the easiest twin jets to fly on one engine.
With that said, and I hope those on the m.b. with a ton more experience than I will chime in, I'll list some of the things that are noteworthy.
These were the observations I made on the -80s I flew at TWA/American. If you'll excuse my run-on sentence, I'll list them:
Brakes are grabby, the APUs had a hard time cooling in the Summer, the wing is very small and climbing above 33,000 is usually reserved for near empty weights, the landing technique usually involves pushing the nose over as opposed to a conventional flare, the airplane cruises comfortably at Mach .75-.78, the airplane climbs well till approx 25,000 then after that its' climb perfomance slows down; if you're a tall person, wear a helmut when getting into the cockpit it's a low ceiling, prior to the wing heater blankets-the wings would make ice, and finally, the altitude selector's we used required the non-flying pilot to pull the altitude selector after dialing in the altitude...oddly enough sometimes the altitude did not capture.
I don't want to come across as being anti-MD80, it's not a bad plane. But if you know all the gotcha's beforehand it might help you breeze thru class.
Good Luck,
FF
10-15-2009
AIRLINE
