How about two flights. First one heavy takeoff on a 30° day with a couple of knots tailwind and max thrust. The only sound as the thrust came up was the air conditioning airflow increase. A long, long takeoff roll and rotation with the end of the runway in close view and mains leaving the ground with 1,000' left. Careful not to strike the tail, 10° max until clear of the runway then 15°.
Airborne with only the sound of the wind in the cockpit and the trim wheel spinning rapidly mixed in with slow speed trim as the aircraft hangs in the air with your noise abatement thrust. It must be quiet for the folks below because it is so quiet inside. In the big turn through 180° of heading change while retracting flaps trying to maintain the right pitch attitude for a positive rate of climb while not exceeding the maximum flap extension speed for that selection of flaps/slats(taking forever to retract) but staying above the minimum allowable speed. Finally clean and able to accelerate.
No flows because the F/E does it all for you. Checklist, company calls, weather, logbook. Rate of climb through 20,000' is only 500 fpm, how are you ever going to get to 290, but you do. It is noisy inside now. A nice relaxing cruise and then descent for landing at max landing weight on a 6,000 foot runway.
Oops, are you too high, in fact very high. No problem, your little friend is the handle beside you extending 10 big panels to 45° and after all, if you really need to, the gear comes down at 270. So what if you were 340 knots at 20 miles...or less.
But now the flaps are coming out. The big trim wheels clicking away as you slow down. Those sleek swept wings are going to almost come apart as the flaps are selected, creating almost a full half circle of camber in order to change the mach .84 cruise speed to as slow as 110 knots on final at light weights.
Flaps 2° seems to take forever with only 4 of 14 LED's on each wing extending and you wanting more drag now. Flaps 5° takes just as long with all Kruegers and slats now extended. The rest of the flaps extend quickly and fortunately you can go down and slow down at the same time. It all seems to come together at 1,000 feet as you bring the power up and hold your pitch attitude and speed with frequent minor adjustments of thrust for the turbulence. Didn't someone say that more modern planes adjust thrust automatically? Roll response for turbulence is spritely on final with four ailerons and spoilers.
In the flare now with power off, controlling for a bit of a crosswind with what now seems to be a more trucklike response. Just a slight check and then push forward to plant it at the thousand foot markers. The elevator still very effective if the nose is coming down too fast, you grab the spoilers and three reverse to modulate near max. And reverse thrust actually does something for you beside make noise on this aircraft. The F/E is holding the thrust levers closed and ready to keep your hand from pulling too much reverse.
Taxiing into the 90° turn to the gate with the aircraft's long body and mains way back there, the nose is brought well past the lead in line in order for the mains to line up. Then the flight deck swings back to the centre of the lead in line. You look at the wing tip to make sure it is clear but can barely see it. Later, walking by the engines reveals no shortage of oil drips. The lower rudder half blown over by the wind but the upper half aligned with the tail because a B pump is on. And why does that B pump make such an annoying noise.
Then a short flight empty on a cold day, it climbs like a rocket on rotation and departure with the VSI pegged. Things are happening fast but the F/E tosses the bug card up and has the ATIS and company calls done. Just a quick brief and you are on the way down and before you know it, on vectors and slowing down as you hand fly at slower and slower speeds. 160 knots now, clean with a nose high attitude of 6 or 7 degrees, maybe more as you turn onto final. It still seems odd to be so nose high in order to maintain level flight. Then you configure on the glide with the gear coming down by the marker with its loud air noise.
A long runway so a touch of extra thrust to try and grease it on to show off, then KaBang. Oh well, you've seen worse.
Last edited by JammedStab; 30th September 2009 at 13:39.