From Cockpits to Flightdecks

Since my new book, “The Lucky One,” is out and my last two books are all about flying airplanes, this month I’d like to talk about the heart of all that, which is the control room, the cockpit. I thought I would take you into some of the airplanes I have flown to see what it looks like inside them.

To be a pilot it is required to know what every control, gauge, switch and circuit breaker does. That is part of the fun of learning to fly. As the airplanes get bigger and faster, there are more engines, more systems and more controls and gauges.

The office of a Cessna 140

Small airplanes are pretty bare bones, my Cessna 140 was made in 1946 which would make it seventy-six years old today and there are many of them still flying. There is so little to learn and remember, it is a breeze for a new pilot. No fuel pumps, the gas in the wings is gravity fed to the motor. Manual flaps, no hydraulics and very little electric systems.

Instructing in the Piper Tomahawk, it was very close to my 140 except that there were more flight instruments which prepared students for flying modern airplanes. The Tomahawk had big windows and being a low-wing aircraft, it had great visibility.

Piper PA-38 Tomahawk

Moving up to more complex airplanes like the Bonanza with electric flaps and retractable landing gear and a constant speed propeller, there is more yet to learn. Using a checklist is important to make sure nothing is forgotten, especially on takeoff and landing.

The cockpit of a V-35 Beechcraft Bonanza with its odd throw-over control yoke which I told about in Better Lucky Than Good.

Flying a twin-engine airplane requires a lot more than having twice as many engine instruments. There are hydraulics and feathering propellers and almost all twins have retractable landing gear.

The most important thing to learn with multi-engine airplanes is how to control them if one or more engines quit running. But this is about cockpits, so I won’t go into that here.

By the way, do you know why they’re called cockpits? It’s because with the old biplanes, the fuel valve known as a “Petcock” (petroleum valve) was in the “Pit” in the fuselage where the pilot sat.

I’ve flown a lot of twin engine airplanes but the most famous one was Bob Hoover’s Shrike Commander, which I talked about in Better Lucky Than Good.

Bob Hoover’s Shrike, now in the Smithsonian Museum

My second flying job was for the Department of Forestry in the O-2A, formerly belonging to the U.S. Air Force. Having one engine in the front and one in the back, it was easy to fly on one engine, but it had other issues. I talk about it a lot in The Lucky One.

Cessna O-2A

One of my favorite stories in my new book was about getting to fly the venerable old Douglas DC-3. With its 1930’s technology, it was like flying a piece of history, and amazingly they are still being operated today in some parts of the world. It probably has the best aviation record ever for longevity. I am proud not only to have flown it, but to have a type rating as well. If you ever get to fly one, my advice, keep an eye on those old fuel gauges!

DC-3

Working for a living in the Embraer EMB-110 Banderainte, was great experience. It is an unpressurized workhorse with no autopilot doing the short hops in and out of the big airports. Carrying eighteen passengers and two crew members, the Pratt and Whitney PT-6 turbine engines were very dependable. An eight hour days worth of flying usually produced at least eight landings, maybe more depending on the schedule being flown.

Commercial operations in two pilot aircraft almost always have the co-pilot flying every other leg. Not only does it give them on the job training and experience, it also gives the captain a break from the strain of driving all day, or night.

Commuter flying can be a grueling job with harder work and much lower pay than the big airlines, but you can’t beat it for experience.

The Banderainte

A dream come true for me was getting to fly the sleek, sexy, hotrot Learjet. Like the airplane, the cockpit is small, with everything packed in tightly, including the pilots. With jets comes a new aspect of systems called pressurization, which is very important when you get into the higher altitudes, flying seven to eight miles high.

We flew cargo, mostly canceled checks. Not business executives or movie stars. It has a reputation as being difficult to fly, even dangerous, so the only people we had to worry about scaring were ourselves.

Today the Learjet is outclassed by the big business jets almost the size of airliners. In fact some companies even use Boeing 737’s and 757’s as Bizjets. But the Lear still has a certain classiness and many people will call any small jet a Learjet. It took the world by storm in the sixties and is still being flown today.

As I told in The Lucky One, I thought I would be content to fly the Learjet the rest of my career, but I ended up, almost on a dare, applying with a real airline, the rest is history and will be told about in my last book of the Lucky Man series. That will be out sometime in 2024.

Learjet 35A

 Next month I will take you into some of the cockpits and flight decks of the airplanes I flew for American Airlines. They get bigger and more complex and unlike the lack of training in some of my prior jobs, it takes a month to get trained on a new jet.

See y’all then!