Endorsement on the 707 in 1959

[regle]

707 early days

After passing the Sabena oral examination and undergoing the very thorough dual training with one of the most well liked people in Sabena, Bobby Laumans , which consisted of 13 hours of dual and included stalls under all configurations, 3 and 2 engined flying and landings, Jammed stabiliser landings, Emergency descent, "tuck under" (don't ask me what I did to recover from that. Suggestions welcomed ! !) ,3 engined take offs , recovery from the dreaded "Dutch Roll", so called from the attitudes of the Dutch ice speed skaters bent low and alternately swinging their arms from side to side (Luckily the "yaw damper" and the added ventral fin had made the 707 much safer by now) and officially having the 707 on my licence I had a short period as Co-Captain flying as First Officer to the more experienced Captains. If it taught me anything it made me more lenient to my future First Officers as I found out anew what a heart breaking , tedious and in those days, non flying, situations as the process of letting the F/O do half the takeoffs and landings was unheard of in Sabena. It was later that the Company rightly insisted that this should happen much to the dismay of some of the older pre-war Captains who were still around. I flew my first flight as a full Captain in my own right on April 28th. 1964. It was to Montreal then on Mexico where you had four days of rest and Acapulco to enjoy then back via Montreal to Brussels. Having two Captains on board was supposed to allow you to do the obvious, nowadays, vast duty time ("prestation" as the Belgians always called it.).
I found an enormous difference between the 707 and all the other aircraft that I had flown. The difference mainly consisted of having, at your fingertips, more power than you actually needed. The rate of climb was phenomenal and especially when you were lightly loaded, needed a lot of getting used to as you could quite easily overshoot your required altitude. The acceleration on takeoff was much slower but it increased all the time so that you had to retard the throttles whereas your piston engine was always limited and acceleration actually decreased from the very quick start. The very slight but important lag in reaction to your throttle adjustments was another factor to remember but the most important one was the distance that you were in the cockpit, ahead of the landing wheels and because of this the much greater height that the nose, on landing, was ahead of them. In the early days there were numerous cases of 707's landing short of the runway as the pilot had closed the throttles as he came over the threshold forgetting that his wheels were still in the next county. Landings had to be made much more positive due to the 707's unwillingness to stay on the ground , the theory was that the "cushioning " effect" caused by the compression of the air trapped between the wings and the ground as the 707 descended was trapped longer than usual due to the design and gave it the lack of positive contact that was most notable on wet runways.
I suppose that all this seems very strange to a generation that has been weaned on jets and has little or no experience of prop jobs but I was 44 when I first flew a modern jet and had logged 14,500 hours all on piston engined aircraft and did not ever even dream that I would fly another 10,600 on this magnificent "new" invention of the vastly under recognised Group Captain Whittle. It was , for me, the dawn of a new and very exciting era. Regle