On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:23:05 -0400, Tom Francis - SWSports
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:29:37 GMT, (Richard
Casady) wrote:

On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:54:01 -0400, Tom Francis - SWSports
wrote:

It's all fly-by-wire and computer controlled. The pilots just sit
there and do much of nothing but look around and talk. The pilot
explained that if they had to, they could literally program the plane
to take off, reach altitude, cruise and land without having a single
hand on the controls at any time.

In the early days of aviation, two guys would be sitting side by side
at the front of the plane, and one would ask the other: " where are
we?" Later, when radio use became universal, there would be a call,
and one would ask ' Was that for us? '.Now the question is: ' What's
it doing now?.

ROTFL!!!

I recently flew in a WWII era DC-3. With radio direction finder.

Now who the hell even knows how to use a RDF these days. :)

In '75 or so I flew out of Glenview NAS with my reserve unit for a
couple weeks in Pensacola. Never asked what kind of plane it was,
but it had two engines, props, and could carry maybe 50 people.
Maybe an Ajax, Acme, or A1-ok brand.
As we're climbing to cruise altitude, an airman from the cockpit keeps
coming over to my seat and looking at the wing, then does the same to
the other side.
The third time he does that I say, "What are you doing?"
He, says, "Checking the wings. When we go to altitude, sometimes
pieces fly off."
Okay.
After about an 90 minutes in the air, I figure we must be over
Tennessee.
Just a guess.
Same crewman comes and asks my seatmate to come up front.
My seatmate was a guy named Blanchard, a second class radarman.
So he goes up to cockpit but comes back real quick.
I ask, "What's wrong?"
"They were having trouble with the radar," he says.
I'm a little puzzled, since he didn't have time to fix anything.
"What kind of trouble?"
He hesitated, a look of concern on his face, and says,
"They didn't know how to turn it on."
I didn't ask any more questions, and just tried to get some sleep.
Oddly enough, I did. Good to be young. Or sleepy.
Me and my mates had a real good time on that trip.
Talking about those newspaper headlines you used to see pretty often.
"Reserve Plane Crashes - No Survivors"
The night before we flew back, we're in a beer hall where everybody is
pretty hammered, and somebody - might have been me - points at a guy
staggering from the bar to the jukebox and says,
"Hey! That's our pilot!"
I actually considered taking the Greyhound back to Chicago, but didn't
want to miss any work.
Worst part was landing back at Glenview in a severe thunderstorm.
Corkscrewing down, wings flapping like hell.
But he got us home.
That's when I decided I wouldn't fly no more, and except for one time
in '95, I haven't.

--Vic