Irish Steve: quite interesting. Pardon the comparison to a totally different aviation subject, but thinking of stupid policies and desk pilots reminded me of something. It wast the stupidity of whichever generals in the US Pentagon Air Force Department never wanted to install standby artificial horizons in the C-130 Hercules, at least for many years. I'm told that they never installed them (is this true?). My father suffered TWO total electrical failures (in A and E models: the Colorado Springs squadron ALMOST lost a B model over Hawaii-the AC definitely had the skills, had extended the landing gear at high speed to limit the speed in the spiral, and they came out of the clouds in time...) in night IMC! Two flightcrews owed their lives, TWICE, to very professional and quite knowledgeable career Flight Engineers (and pilots) who knew how to reset multiple generators etc! The first thing the FE did was to shine his flashlight on the AC's horizon (ADI)...In the 70's, The Aircraft Commander's (my Dad's) horizon was at about a 15 degree bank when the gyros spun up after being re-powered. If my information is valid about the C-130 A throught H models, then what STUPID clowns in the Air Force allowed this cheap, chicken-s**t budget advantage to go forward for decades? Zantop lost a logair Lockheed Electra over Utah when an FE made an error on the electrical panel-the "grandfather clause" in civilian Part 121 regs also never required the Electra to have a standby.
Deperado: you have described the Airbus versus Boeing (or Douglas) much better than anyone I've ever read, or listened to! Now things seem to make sense, when I ask guys how high they hand-fly the "airplane": some give me a blank look and can't seem to remember. Those throttles must be challenging, with so little movement. Never mind the crosswinds. How could the design engineers take so much feedback away from the pilots? Maybe the 777 and Air Force C-17 pose similar new challenges for pilots? How about the F-16 and F-18? Maybe the Airbus stories will make sense one day. Whenever I transition to the Airbus in the future (I like the 60's technology too much to give it up, and lose lots of seniority in my seat now), I will remember your observations, however, quite honestly, I would rather not ever go back to an FMC aircraft
unless Somebody will let me fly, a little bit, in at least a small single-engine REAL plane as a hobby: and I'm not kidding about this. FMC-flying is not quite real flying, in my opinion. Real real flying might be in an old round-motor plane, but a classic F-27, 737 or DC-9 is much more real work and a challenge than any FMC Maschine. After another extortionate pay cut, I would never even consider renting a plane (have not in many years).
Chuks-one of our "Ninja (Turtle) Captains" (young guys who had "super-seniority":"the annointed") years ago on the 757 suddenly asked me to 'build' him a "Chinese glideslope" on the FMC, about 12 miles north of Orlando (MCO)-because the runway (18L?) had no glideslope, maybe no VASI or PAPI lights. Maybe we were already cleared for a visual approch. Maybe it was my first or second time to create this artificial glideslope using the runway elevation etc. To me, that seemed ludicrous but I tried to quickly "build" it. It is easy to be too high and fast on the 757 to be under the max speed for the final flap selection. Go-arounds are quite possible if pilots comply with the stable approach criteria.
The so-called "Chinese glideslope" was thought of as a good visual back-up, but we could have made a serious mistake as we were near the corporate airport in Orlando and one half of the c0ckp1t crew had his head down for a while, punching on buttons without a good reason (in my opinion).
Why not just slow the airplane down and use your eyeballs (over flat terrain) and when on final approach speed, check the IVSI sink rate + the recommended 1.05 EPR to estimate one's approach angle, possibly ask the other pilot how it looks when no VASI or PAPI is visible?
Just be very careful about aiming for the first section of runway with an airplane which has a long fuselage-a flat approach could easily allow the main gear to hit the runway edge or approach lights etc.
