The Same Guy But Another Story.....

[Guest Michael Coates]

Reminds me of Another War Story.

 

Before auto landings were approved we used to shoot Cat 3-A approaches down to 20 foot decision height, radio alt antenna on landing gear I think, on the DC-10 and you may or may not touch the ground on go around if you go.

 

We didn't have heads up display, which is really what we needed, so the co pilot flew the approach and if the Capt looking straight ahead saw the ground he would take over for touchdown and roll out.

 

The bad part was if you did touch the ground on go around you lost all flight guidance and just had a big ball in front of you.

 

Some guys refused to do CAT 3-A auto landings for real.

 

Never liked them much myself and I saw three different kinds of screw ups in good weather practices and fog operations.

 

1st one was a full coupled auto land 3-A attempted landing in good weather and the plane just drifted out in over the grass near touchdown point with no warning that we could see or hear.

 

Had to add power and hover back over to runway for touchdown.

 

Auto landings were new at this time and they later found that could not have aircraft holding near end of runway or it could affect the auto landings.

 

2nd one the Capt's ILS receiver failed with no flags showing, which was strange, and plane was going way left as he followed his flight director.

 

I think the Capt was hand flying approach in good LAX smog weather and I could see by my flight director / localizer and just looking down at the familiar ground could see we were drifting way left.

 

I checked back with maintance and they just replaced the Capt's ILS receiver and all checked out good.

 

3rd one was for real in fog at night.

 

Vis was so low on roll out we could not see or find a taxiway off runway to turn off.

 

We had just braked to a stop with system tracking centerline on rollout and we just could not see anything.

 

I had to go to ground control because tower freq was jammed with chatter and everybody talking at once to get tower to send guys behind us on approach around.

 

Real scary when a plane goes over you in the fog at night and you are still on the runway.

 

Stopped we could just see to the ground in the landing lights looking down to the side but nothing out the front.

 

The Capt then started creeping along trying to find a left turnoff when I spotted grass below me on the right side.

 

In the 10 the cockpit is so far ahead of the nosewheel we were able to turn back sharp right on the runway without the wheels leaving the runway.

 

We did this twice before finding a turn off and did not know where we had turned for sure.

 

We started creeping along a taxiway the fog and two 747s called in nose to nose on a taxiway, shut down and called for tug.

 

It was a long time before they decided which taxiway was blocked as this was before airport ground radar.

 

We could not see any taxiway signs.

 

Then we had to stop short when we came up within a few feet of a 747 APU tail exhaust pipe right in out windshield.

 

Next some crew called in they were nose tight against some big hanger door and not on a taxiway trying to get to their gate.

 

It must have taken us an hour to get to our gate.

 

We had a big overweight ground school instructor on the jump seat.

 

His stress level had been pushed off scale, he had yelled out a couple of times and he looked like he had had a heart attack and a stroke.

 

 

[Guest Darren Masters]

Reminds me of Tenerife :eek: