Went with RodrV6 (Rod) friday night (lyndsay and myself) to his "office" it's the worlds largest cantilevered building. he's a Lead Tech for a large passenger airline (no it's not his fault your flight got canceled!) but after playing around in the $80 million+ airplanes and getting the tour of some SWEET inner workings/behind the scenes of the 727, MD88/MD90 and checking out some cool @$$ composite stuff that ALL the planes are made out of.. he was kinda enough to take us to his second job.. he's ALSO a Taxi instructor for the same airline. he let us spend a some time in a flight simulator. I got to Fly a MCDONALD/DOUGLAS MD-L1011. it holds like 300 people and is REALLY cumbersome and heavy but SUPER fun to fly. Lyndsay and i after a little instruction from Rod and after Rod pushed buttons for 10 minutes just to make the plane start (seemed long time cause there are SOO DAMN many.. and a certain order in which to do them)we flew around for a few minutes then he deceided to teach us how to land and take off a HUGE @$$ airplane.. it's really not all that difficult.. HOWEVER.. he had it set so our weather condtions were perfect.. clear, no wind.. i'm SURE in a crosswind with some rain/snow/whatever the pilots EARN the big bucks they make. but with only 40 minutes or so of instruction we were able to SAFELY land the monstrosity. it did take us a couple tries (never crashed the plane.. but Lyndsay did do a donut! (blew out a tire and couldn't manage the brakes properly) the simulators are worth about $20mil. and rent for $3000 an hour! they are able to simulate turbulance, hydraulic leaks, rain, (some can do snow) you name it this machine can simulate it happening. he even Crashed us through a local land mark sign!
That was KILLER Rod.. thanks a lot!!!
Have a nice time in Austria!
