KC-10 Driver ✈️ 👨✈️ B-737 Wrangler
@MCCCANM • 47,740 subscribers
USAF KC-10 (Retired ‘24) Lt Col Instructor/Evaluator & Airline 737 Captain. Views my own; think critically, verify sources & keep your seatbelt fastened. No DMs
Shorts
Videos
Testing one of the best safety features of an airplane, the “Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System” (EGPWS, pronounced E Gyp-Wiz). It’s part of every preflight check. Sound on! It’s a warning system. While the jet has separate warnings for things wrong internally, EGPWS is concerned about what’s outside the jet, not what’s inside. It’s primarily concerned w/ terrain & obstacles…EGPWS can “see” outside when pilots can’t. It doesn’t actually see anything, though. There are no cameras or lasers. EGPWS does use the jet’s radar, but not for detecting terrain. (We’ll talk more about radar in a minute, but it’s not useful for orienting yourself to terrain in the vertical. It has a “map” mode that you can use to “paint” things like cities, lakes & shorelines, but it only knows how strong the reflection is & how far away, not how high. We almost never use it in map mode, anyway) EGPWS uses the jets navigation systems – like GPS, Inertial Reference, Altimeters, airspeed, etc. – to plot a position in a virtual world. This world is contained in a database on the jet; it’s constantly plotting your position & then estimating where you’ll be in the next few minutes if the trend continues. The virtual world database knows where the mountains are. When you get close to airports in the database (not all airports are in it), it knows where the buildings & antennas are, too, out to a certain radius. Past that radius, it stops caring about the manmade objects. Anyway, it can tell if you will hit something on your current trend & will issue various warnings. It can give you up to 60 seconds of warning. It starts out slow, like saying “CAUTION, TERRAIN”, but if you don’t fix it, it gets serious…“TERRAIN, TERRAIN, PULL UP!”. You’re 20-30 seconds from impact. It’s not a miracle worker, though. It can wait to give you a warning that you can’t fix. Imagine flying toward a 10,000’ high cliff at 1,000’. A 60 second warning will not be enough time to climb 9,000’ & clear it. Or, it sees a mountain to your right, but your current path is clear. It doesn’t know you’ll do a 90° right turn once abeam the mountain. Now you’ll get some late warnings. EGPWS has various other functions. If you get on the approach but haven’t configured to land, it will say “TOO LOW, FLAPS” (or GEAR). If you start getting below the glidepath, it will say “GLIDESLOPE”. Start descending right after takeoff? “DON’T SINK”…and if you do keep sinking, it switches to “PULL UP!” Now, EGPWS doesn’t use the onboard Doppler radar for any of these functions, but it does use it to detect windshear. EGPWS doesn’t care if you turn on the radar or not, it turns it on itself when you push the throttles up for takeoff or when you descend below a certain altitude on approach. It takes about 12 seconds for the radar to build a picture from that point, but once it does, it can “see” windshear. The Doppler detects this by bouncing radar off of particulates & reading how they are moving at different altitudes. The particulates can be dust or just humidity…the radar can’t read air molecules by themselves. So, it’s still possible to get windshear the radar doesn’t see on very dry, clean days. EGPWS hates windshear. If it detects it, EGPWS replaces your screen w/ the radar – even if not turned on by you – & starts with a gentle warning to “MONITOR RADAR DISPLAY”. If you get closer to it, you get “WINDSHEAR AHEAD” (on takeoff – abort if you still can) or “GO AROUND, WINDSHEAR AHEAD!” (on landing). EGPWS is great, but can’t actually move the jet. It’s not connected to the controls in any way. Some fighters do have that capability, but not airliners. The pilots have to fix it. OK, that’s a brief summary of EGPWS. As usual, I’m dramatically simplifying things for a non-techie audience…there is much more to it & different models of jets have slight differences in how this all works. The 737 MAX has some improvements, w/ different voices & even panic, but I don’t have one to record, sorry!
KC-10 Driver ✈️ 👨✈️ B-737 Wrangler36,432 views • 9 days ago
More thoughts on landings: I went to the Reserves & got re-qualified as a KC-10 instructor after a couple years away from the jet. The DO (Director of Operations) assigned me to fly w/ the Wing Commander, who flew jets occasionally now & had only a weird “Senior Staff” Qual in the KC-10. Long story. Anyway, the DO gave me a warning. He phrased it in a nice way, but told me they only allowed certain instructors to fly w/ the Wing Commander. It piqued my curiosity, but I didn’t go on high alert or anything. So, we’re on the last landing of the sortie, really late at night. Things look fine, he’s doing fine, and I’m happy we’re almost done. Somehow in the last 100’, this guy manages to put the jet down almost in the lights leading up to the runway. I’ve never seen anything like it & couldn’t explain it. It was like the universe paused, reset our height above the ground, then resumed play. We touched down on the main gear maybe 50’ from the runway threshold. I didn’t have time to react. I realized we were safe & stopping, so didn’t say anything. I didn’t debrief him, either…he wasn’t going to listen to me anyway. I tried to figure out how that happened. I honestly never did. I didn’t see any yoke movements or power adjustments that would account for it, nor was there any weather that would do it. We were on speed & glidepath. I still don’t really know. Anyway, I talked to the DO the next day. He wasn’t surprised, and reiterated that was why they only let him fly with a handful of instructors. I flew with him again, and it was vanilla, but I watched like a Hawk. That lesson sticks with me. Fast forward to years later, and I haven’t actually flown the KC-10 in a long time. I’m not current & so my qualification has lapsed. I hear my son on a video game group chat telling others something along the lines of “yeah, when my dad retires I get to wave the jet in to parking”. Shit. The kids are expecting that. I was just going to go away quietly…I had a lot going on in those years. A lot. I didn’t have the bandwidth for the KC-10, but now there is an expectation & I can’t let them down. So, the squadron goes to extraordinary lengths & draws up a whole requalification plan for me, which has to be signed at multiple levels. In reality, it’s just to do one last flight, and not even do much flying. The squadron was extremely gracious in this regard. My instructor, a good friend of mine, offers me the last landing. I’ve strapped into the seat for this one…I’d been napping in the back while the other pilots took turns practicing touch & gos for their currency. I considered it, but the jet – which I had thousands of hours on – felt huge now & I was uncomfortable. I declined & put my hands in my lap. He landed & slowed it down. I took over to taxi it in for my kids, and then we had the whole show of throwing water on me, champagne & pictures. And that was it. That was my last landing in a military jet.
KC-10 Driver ✈️ 👨✈️ B-737 Wrangler69,832 views • 2 months ago
My good KC-10 friend stays w/ me when he comes to town for reserve duty. Lives in Idaho. He’s been blessed by having connections to big aviation families forever, keeps tempting me to visit. This is his latest lure, a Grumman Goose, in June of ‘22. I may take the bait. Sexy!
KC-10 Driver ✈️ 👨✈️ B-737 Wrangler286,079 views • 1 year ago
They sent her with some friends so she wouldn’t be lonely…🥲
KC-10 Driver ✈️ 👨✈️ B-737 Wrangler255,343 views • 1 year ago
Quite a few pilots & passengers heading West tonight got an unusual sight: a mystery glowing blob. A SpaceX rocket. It had launched East from FL…causing some confusion. The rocket had come all the way around the earth & was burning the engines…then it “staged” & left a bloom.
KC-10 Driver ✈️ 👨✈️ B-737 Wrangler38,866 views • 6 months ago
No more content to load