CAJUNLAWYER
Member
A FANTASTIC READ. THE PILOT of the 747 HAS a SENSE of HUMOR!!!
A quick "trip report" from Triple Nickel, the pilot of the 747 that flew
the shuttle back to Florida after the Hubble repair flight - a humorous and
interesting inside look at what it's like to fly two aircraft at once.
(I have decided to adopt one of "Triple Nickel's" phrases:
"That was too close for MY laundry!")
Well, it's been 48 hours since I landed the 747 with the shuttle Atlantis
on top and I am still buzzing from the experience. I have to say that my
whole mind, body and soul went into the professional mode just before
engine start in Mississippi, and stayed there, where it all needed to be,
until well after the flight...in fact, I am not sure if it is all back to
normal as I type this email. The experience was surreal. Seeing that
"thing" on top of an already overly huge aircraft boggles my mind. The
whole mission from takeoff to engine shutdown was unlike anything I had ever
done. It was like a dream...someone else's dream.
We took off from Columbus AFB on their 12,000 foot runway, of which I used
11,999 1/2 feet to get the wheels off the ground. We were at 3,500 feet
left to go of the runway, throttles full power, nose wheels still hugging
the ground, copilot calling out decision speeds, the weight of Atlantis now
screaming through my fingers clinched tightly on the controls, tires heating
up to their near maximum temperature from the speed and the weight, and not
yet at rotation speed, the speed at which I would be pulling on the controls
to get the nose to rise. I just could not wait, and I mean I COULD NOT
WAIT, and started pulling early. If I had waited until rotation speed, we
would not have rotated enough to get airborne by the end of the runway.. So
I pulled on the controls early and started our rotation to the takeoff
attitude. The wheels finally lifted off as we passed over the stripe
marking the end of the runway and my next hurdle (physically) was a line of
trees 1,000 feet off the departure end of Runway 16.
All I knew was we were flying and so I directed the gear to be retracted
and the flaps to be moved from Flaps 20 to Flaps 10 as I pulled even harder
on the controls. I must say, those trees were beginning to look a lot like
those brushes in the drive through car washes so I pulled even harder yet!
I think I saw a bird just fold its wings and fall out of a tree as if to
say, "Oh, just take me."
Okay, we cleared the trees, duh, but it was way too close for my laundry.
As we started to actually climb, at only 100 feet per minute, I smelled
something that reminded me of touring the Heineken Brewery in Europe . I
said, "Is that a skunk I smell?" - the veterans of shuttle carrying looked
at me, smiled, and said, "Tires"! I said, "TIRES? OURS?" They smiled and
shook their heads as if to call their Captain an amateur. Okay, at that
point I was. The tires were so hot you could smell them in the cockpit. My
mind could not get over, from this point on, that this was something I had
never experienced. Where's your mom when you REALLY need her?
The flight down to Florida was an eternity. We cruised at 250 knots
indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground speed at 15,000'. The miles
didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by in a fighter jet at MACH
..94. We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000 pounds per hour or 130 pounds
per mile, or one gallon every length of the fuselage. The vibration in the
cockpit was mild, compared to down below and to the rear of the fuselage
where it reminded me of that football game I had as a child where you turned
it on and the players vibrated around the board. I felt like if I had
plastic clips on my boots I could have vibrated to any spot in the
fuselage I wanted to go without moving my legs...and the noise was
deafening. The 747 flies with its nose 5 degrees up in the air to stay
level, and when you bank, it feels like the shuttle is trying to say, "Hey,
let's roll completely over on our back" - not a good thing I kept telling
myself. So I limited my bank angle to 15 degrees and even though a 180
degree course change took a full zip code to complete, it was the safe way
to turn this monster.
Airliners and even a flight of two F-16s deviated from their flight plans
to catch a glimpse of us along the way. We dodged what was in reality very
few clouds and storms, despite what everyone thought, and arrived in
Florida with 51,000 pounds of fuel too much to land with. We can't land
heavier than 600,000 pounds total weight and so we had to do something with
that fuel. I had an idea.....let's fly low and slow and show this beast off
to all the taxpayers in Florida lucky enough to be outside on that Tuesday
afternoon.
So at Ormond Beach, we let down to 1,000 feet above the ground/water and
flew just east of the beach out over the water. Then, once we reached the
NASA airspace of the Kennedy Space Center, we cut over to the Banana/Indian
Rivers and flew down the middle of them to show the people of Titusville,
Port St.Johns and Melbourne just what a 747 with a shuttle on it looked
like. We stayed at 1,000 feet and since we were dragging our flaps at
"Flaps 5", our speed was down to around 190 to 210 knots. We could see
traffic stopping in the middle of roads to take a look. We heard later that
a Little League Baseball game stopped to look and everyone cheered as we
became their 7th inning stretch. Oh, say can you see....
After reaching Vero Beach, we turned north to follow the coast line back
up to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF). There was not one person laying on
the beach... they were all standing and waving! "What a sight" I
thought.....and figured they were thinking the same thing. All this time I
was bugging the engineers, all three of them, to re-compute our fuel and
tell me when it was time to land. They kept saying, "Not yet Triple, keep
showing this thing off," which was not a bad thing to be doing.
However, all this time the thought that the landing, the muscling of this
600,000 pound beast, was getting closer and closer to my reality. I was
pumped up! We got back to the SLF and were still 10,000 pounds too heavy to
land. So I said I was going to do a low approach over the SLF going the
opposite direction of landing traffic that day. So at 300 feet, we flew down
the runway, rocking our wings like a whale rolling on its side to say
"hello" to the people looking on! One turn out of traffic and back to the
runway to land.....still 3,000 pounds over gross weight limit. But the
engineers agreed that if the landing were smooth, there would be no problem.
"Oh, thanks guys, a little extra pressure is just what I needed!"
Well, we landed at 603,000 pounds and very smoothly if I have to say so
myself. The landing was so totally controlled and on speed that it was fun.
There were a few surprises that I dealt with, like - with the orbiter on
it - the 747 falls like a rock if you pull the throttles off at the "normal"
point in a landing and secondly, if you thought you could hold the nose off
the ground after the mains touch down, think again - IT IS COMING DOWN!!!
So I "flew it down" to the ground and saved what I have seen in videos of a
nose slap after landing.
Then I turned on my phone after coming to a full stop only to find 50
bazillion emails and phone messages from all of you who were so super to be
watching and cheering us on! What a treat, I can't thank y'all enough. For
those who watched, you wondered why we sat there so long. Well, the shuttle
had very hazardous chemicals on board and we had to be "sniffed" to
determine if any had leaked or were leaking. They checked for
Monomethylhydrazine (N2H4 for Charlie Hudson) and nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4).
Even though we were "clean", it took way too long for them to tow us in to
the mate-demate area. Sorry for those who stuck it out and even waited
until we exited the jet.
I'm sure I'll wake up in the middle of the night here soon, screaming and
standing straight up dripping wet with sweat from the realization of what
happened. It was a thrill of a lifetime. Again, I want to thank everyone for
your interest and support. It felt good to bring Atlantis home in one piece
after she had worked so hard getting to the Hubble Space Telescope and back.
Triple Nickel, NASA Pilot
A quick "trip report" from Triple Nickel, the pilot of the 747 that flew
the shuttle back to Florida after the Hubble repair flight - a humorous and
interesting inside look at what it's like to fly two aircraft at once.
(I have decided to adopt one of "Triple Nickel's" phrases:
"That was too close for MY laundry!")
Well, it's been 48 hours since I landed the 747 with the shuttle Atlantis
on top and I am still buzzing from the experience. I have to say that my
whole mind, body and soul went into the professional mode just before
engine start in Mississippi, and stayed there, where it all needed to be,
until well after the flight...in fact, I am not sure if it is all back to
normal as I type this email. The experience was surreal. Seeing that
"thing" on top of an already overly huge aircraft boggles my mind. The
whole mission from takeoff to engine shutdown was unlike anything I had ever
done. It was like a dream...someone else's dream.
We took off from Columbus AFB on their 12,000 foot runway, of which I used
11,999 1/2 feet to get the wheels off the ground. We were at 3,500 feet
left to go of the runway, throttles full power, nose wheels still hugging
the ground, copilot calling out decision speeds, the weight of Atlantis now
screaming through my fingers clinched tightly on the controls, tires heating
up to their near maximum temperature from the speed and the weight, and not
yet at rotation speed, the speed at which I would be pulling on the controls
to get the nose to rise. I just could not wait, and I mean I COULD NOT
WAIT, and started pulling early. If I had waited until rotation speed, we
would not have rotated enough to get airborne by the end of the runway.. So
I pulled on the controls early and started our rotation to the takeoff
attitude. The wheels finally lifted off as we passed over the stripe
marking the end of the runway and my next hurdle (physically) was a line of
trees 1,000 feet off the departure end of Runway 16.
All I knew was we were flying and so I directed the gear to be retracted
and the flaps to be moved from Flaps 20 to Flaps 10 as I pulled even harder
on the controls. I must say, those trees were beginning to look a lot like
those brushes in the drive through car washes so I pulled even harder yet!
I think I saw a bird just fold its wings and fall out of a tree as if to
say, "Oh, just take me."
Okay, we cleared the trees, duh, but it was way too close for my laundry.
As we started to actually climb, at only 100 feet per minute, I smelled
something that reminded me of touring the Heineken Brewery in Europe . I
said, "Is that a skunk I smell?" - the veterans of shuttle carrying looked
at me, smiled, and said, "Tires"! I said, "TIRES? OURS?" They smiled and
shook their heads as if to call their Captain an amateur. Okay, at that
point I was. The tires were so hot you could smell them in the cockpit. My
mind could not get over, from this point on, that this was something I had
never experienced. Where's your mom when you REALLY need her?
The flight down to Florida was an eternity. We cruised at 250 knots
indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground speed at 15,000'. The miles
didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by in a fighter jet at MACH
..94. We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000 pounds per hour or 130 pounds
per mile, or one gallon every length of the fuselage. The vibration in the
cockpit was mild, compared to down below and to the rear of the fuselage
where it reminded me of that football game I had as a child where you turned
it on and the players vibrated around the board. I felt like if I had
plastic clips on my boots I could have vibrated to any spot in the
fuselage I wanted to go without moving my legs...and the noise was
deafening. The 747 flies with its nose 5 degrees up in the air to stay
level, and when you bank, it feels like the shuttle is trying to say, "Hey,
let's roll completely over on our back" - not a good thing I kept telling
myself. So I limited my bank angle to 15 degrees and even though a 180
degree course change took a full zip code to complete, it was the safe way
to turn this monster.
Airliners and even a flight of two F-16s deviated from their flight plans
to catch a glimpse of us along the way. We dodged what was in reality very
few clouds and storms, despite what everyone thought, and arrived in
Florida with 51,000 pounds of fuel too much to land with. We can't land
heavier than 600,000 pounds total weight and so we had to do something with
that fuel. I had an idea.....let's fly low and slow and show this beast off
to all the taxpayers in Florida lucky enough to be outside on that Tuesday
afternoon.
So at Ormond Beach, we let down to 1,000 feet above the ground/water and
flew just east of the beach out over the water. Then, once we reached the
NASA airspace of the Kennedy Space Center, we cut over to the Banana/Indian
Rivers and flew down the middle of them to show the people of Titusville,
Port St.Johns and Melbourne just what a 747 with a shuttle on it looked
like. We stayed at 1,000 feet and since we were dragging our flaps at
"Flaps 5", our speed was down to around 190 to 210 knots. We could see
traffic stopping in the middle of roads to take a look. We heard later that
a Little League Baseball game stopped to look and everyone cheered as we
became their 7th inning stretch. Oh, say can you see....
After reaching Vero Beach, we turned north to follow the coast line back
up to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF). There was not one person laying on
the beach... they were all standing and waving! "What a sight" I
thought.....and figured they were thinking the same thing. All this time I
was bugging the engineers, all three of them, to re-compute our fuel and
tell me when it was time to land. They kept saying, "Not yet Triple, keep
showing this thing off," which was not a bad thing to be doing.
However, all this time the thought that the landing, the muscling of this
600,000 pound beast, was getting closer and closer to my reality. I was
pumped up! We got back to the SLF and were still 10,000 pounds too heavy to
land. So I said I was going to do a low approach over the SLF going the
opposite direction of landing traffic that day. So at 300 feet, we flew down
the runway, rocking our wings like a whale rolling on its side to say
"hello" to the people looking on! One turn out of traffic and back to the
runway to land.....still 3,000 pounds over gross weight limit. But the
engineers agreed that if the landing were smooth, there would be no problem.
"Oh, thanks guys, a little extra pressure is just what I needed!"
Well, we landed at 603,000 pounds and very smoothly if I have to say so
myself. The landing was so totally controlled and on speed that it was fun.
There were a few surprises that I dealt with, like - with the orbiter on
it - the 747 falls like a rock if you pull the throttles off at the "normal"
point in a landing and secondly, if you thought you could hold the nose off
the ground after the mains touch down, think again - IT IS COMING DOWN!!!
So I "flew it down" to the ground and saved what I have seen in videos of a
nose slap after landing.
Then I turned on my phone after coming to a full stop only to find 50
bazillion emails and phone messages from all of you who were so super to be
watching and cheering us on! What a treat, I can't thank y'all enough. For
those who watched, you wondered why we sat there so long. Well, the shuttle
had very hazardous chemicals on board and we had to be "sniffed" to
determine if any had leaked or were leaking. They checked for
Monomethylhydrazine (N2H4 for Charlie Hudson) and nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4).
Even though we were "clean", it took way too long for them to tow us in to
the mate-demate area. Sorry for those who stuck it out and even waited
until we exited the jet.
I'm sure I'll wake up in the middle of the night here soon, screaming and
standing straight up dripping wet with sweat from the realization of what
happened. It was a thrill of a lifetime. Again, I want to thank everyone for
your interest and support. It felt good to bring Atlantis home in one piece
after she had worked so hard getting to the Hubble Space Telescope and back.
Triple Nickel, NASA Pilot
