[previous by date]
[previous with aircraft operation]
[next by date]
[next with aircraft operation]
Frankfurt Airport, Sunday, 1997-11-02 09:00 local (Z+1)
One hour to go before they start boarding Lufthansa flight 400 from Frankfurt to JFK. Tower's travel department has screwed up again. They're supposed to move us in business class when we commercial, but they waited until the last minute—perhaps purposely—and all business and first class seats were taken, so we're stuck back in coach on a full airplane. At least being small has the advantage that I don't suffer as much in the small seats as a larger person.
A couple of interesting things from my standpoint. We landed at Taszar, Hungary at an old Warsaw Pact—the Soviet Union's now defunct version of NATO—fighter base. It's now completely given over to U.S. forces under NATO supporting NATO's Bosnia operation.
The runway was typical Russian, square concrete pads about eight feet on a side, the same construction as the Khabarovsk runway in Siberia that I mentioned a couple of messages back. However, this runway is not nearly so rough. Our guys have brought in concrete “sanders” and beveled off the ridges of the concrete pads. It makes a pretty good runway, still bumpy but not nearly as hard on the airplanes as the Khabarovsk runway.
While we were there, a “Predator” landed. The Predator is a pilotless, remotely controlled observation aircraft. It's controlled by a couple of guys sitting at a console on the ground through satellite communications. It has TV cameras aboard—apparently a number of them—that send via satellite. Anyway, according to the soldiers we talked to there, this one had been up all night over Bosnia watching things with infrared and other, god-knows-what technology. Apparently the aircraft is made of non-metallic materials, is very quiet, and considered non-detectable by ordinary means. It's a strange looking aircraft, a canard with an additional, inverted V tail. It looks just big enough to carry one man if that man were to lay down and insert himself in its fuselage, but of course the fuselage is jam-packed I am sure with electronic equipment.
I mentioned a few messages back that I had been enjoying an incredible run of smooth landings, two months worth in fact—August and September. I didn't fly any legs in October. But the leg yesterday into Taszar was mine, and my string of “smoothies” was broken. It wasn't a bad landing, but it wasn't a smoothie. I, of course, have ample excuses: hadn't landed a 747 in over a month, short runway (8000'), and flying with the captain who is considered the worst to fly with of any in the company. Oh, well, the string had to end some time.
Oh, yes, another excuse: the landing was off of a PAR (Precision Approach Radar) approach. I hadn't flown one of those in years. However, every six months I get to do one in the simulator. It's a type of approach that is favored by the military because they can come into any field, set up a few trucks, and they have a precision instrument approach. Anyway, in a PAR approach, the controller is talking to you constantly after you start the final approach. If for more than a couple of seconds you do not hear his/her voice, you know communications have been broken, and you break off the approach. What they're telling you, constantly, is whether you're right or left and high or low on the approach and giving you heading changes of, typically, one degree to align yourself. How good the approach is depends on how good the controller is and how good the pilot is. This controller was top-flight. In foggy weather he brought us right in to a perfect position for landing—so I guess maybe the PAR approach really wasn't an excuse for not getting a smoothie.
The controller also tells you to increase or decrease your rate by so many feet per minute to keep you on the desired glide path. This you do by adjusting the power while keeping the airspeed constant. If no change is required to course or descent rate, the controller uses the phraseology "on course" and "on glidepath" respectively.
A couple of items left over from Tel Aviv. You can't easily buy a pizza there that has meat in it. Pizza's have cheese, a dairy product, and you can't mix dairy products and beef and be kosher, and sausage and pepperoni are of course out as well. At Pizza Hut they said if you order from Domino's, they'll put meat on them. Amazing how much you want something when somebody tells you that you can't have it. There's a lesson there!
Also I picked up a small souvenir there. The engineer found it on the ramp while he was doing his pre-flight check. It's an shell casing that has been fired, but it's plastic. We think it's an Uzi rubber bullet casing. The Israeli Army uses them against the Palestinians a lot.
Hopefully before the day is gone, I'll be home, or at least will have reached PDX and reach home in the wee hours of Monday. I'll send this when I get there.
Take care, everyone...Terry
Surprise...I am now sitting in the United terminal at JFK. Instead of releasing me to go home, crew scheduling has assigned me a freighter trip out of Anchorage to Hong Kong. So, United to Seattle, Delta to Anchorage. If this happens as scheduled, I will have been on duty for 45 hours and 40 minutes by the time I reach Hong Kong. Actually, I will get about four hours in a hotel in Anchorage, but will still be considered on duty since that's not a legal rest. I hope the freighter is late. I'd rather have a good night's sleep than the extra money that goes with extended duty. I think I'm getting too old for this!!
[previous by date]
[previous with aircraft operation]