Ok that was just absolutely UNBELIEVABLE!
Ever since I was a little kid, and even through high school my dream was to become a pilot. For various reasons this never materialized for me, but I've always aspired to take flying lessons one day and make it a reality. Well last night Rick made my lifelong dream come true!
Just to put it in perspective, this is a $30M simulator which is 100% true to the original. Rick mentioned that if a part fails on a real plane, they could literally replace it with one from the simulator. It costs several thousand dollars an hour to run this beast and at one point Air Canada was offering aeroplan members 30 mins in the simulator for 100,000 aeroplan points. Well Rick managed to get me and Dave 4 hours in the cockpit!!
The experience was just unbelievable! Rick lead us through all the preflight checks and gave us some basics on flight aerodynamics. He then decided to take a chance and let me try the initial takeoff with Rick as First Officer. I needed some help keeping the plane lined up during takeoff, but lifted off nicely and we got a chance to tour around the city. At the end of my first turn, we used autopilot to guide us in and then just before landing he put it in manual so I could land it myself. The landing went pretty smooth although I was a little slow on applying the brakes after the reverse thrusters had slowed us down sufficiently.
It was then Dave's turn and after nearly killing us on takeoff, we buzzed the CN tower and he managed to execute a PERFECT landing. I dare say it was even better than Ricks landing
Of course Rick started to psyche us out by adding thunderstorms and turbulence but it didn't faze Dave!
Afterwards Rick allowed me to take off and land with Dave as First Officer and Rick sitting behind us. This was particularly nerve racking since he couldn't just take over if we screwed anything up. On my landing, he again guided us in with autopilot and then turned it off as we went into our glide slope. The landing went ok, except that I raised the nose a little too high after our main wheels touched down causing the plane to start taking off again. Luckily Rick was right behind me and helped bring the nose down for a slightly bumpy but successful landing!
Overall it was quite simply the experience of a lifetime and a dream come true for me. Rick, I just want to publicly send out a big THANK YOU for taking your personal time out to let us experience this.
Here are some pics from last night. Sorry about the quality, these are from the camera on my iPhone and it was dark in the cockpit. These first shots show the simulator from outside and shots of the various panels in the cockpit.
