Flight Test #1 The Texas Takeoff!! YEEHAAAA!!

Disneyland, Disneyworld, Six Flags: they are all great amusements parks and have some heart pounding rides. The test flights that I have been on put them all to shame; this is one such ride!!

It was a late spring afternoon and we had completed some major Avionics upgrades and regular maintenance items on our customers Lockheed JetStar.

This was the actual JetStar I flew in. Thanks to Airliners.net for all the pictures

The owners pilots jumped onboard with our Avionics Manager, myself and their Chief mechanic. They fired up all 4 engines and we rolled away from the hangar down to the compass swing area where I had to sight the aircraft in for proper compass heading (this is a mandatory item that must be completed after any major modification).  With the compass swing complete, I jumped back into the jet and we got our clearance from CYVR for our test flight.  As we taxied to position I was looking out the right side cabin windows and off in the distance was a Canadian Airlines Boeing 767 turning onto final and setting up for his landing approach on OUR runway.

We continued our roll onto the runway and turned and got ready to launch our plane into the wild blue yonder. That is when an odd thing happened. Instead of continuing our roll down the runway and lifting off, the chief pilot turned then slowed and stopped on the runway and applied the parking brake. I looked forward out the cockpit windows and there was a small commuter plane already taking off, but he was airborne and turning right, so why were we stopped again? There was still that 767 on final and approaching at a closing rate of around 225 knots (260 mph roughly) wasn’t there? At best I could calculate that the 767  would be on top of us in approximately 45 seconds, but there we were stopped on runway 08R!!

With the parking brake still engaged the captain told us to sit back in the chairs and “hold on”!!  He pushed all four throttles forward to max power (in aviation we can this fire-walling) and the JetStar sat there shuddering under the strain of four Garrett 731-3 engines pushing 3500 lbs of thrust each.

The cockpit layout, the throttles are the 4 levers on the center pedestal

With what seemed like a true eternity we sat there, the big ole’ Biz jet trembling to hold still. Then I could see from my leather wrapped seat the captain standing on the brake pedals and releasing the park brake, we still didn’t move. The captain and the copilot were pressing hard on the brake pedals holding this mammoth jet back from jumping straight in the air. I was still wondering where the hell that 767 was in proximity to us.  That is when I thought I heard the captain counting? Had he been counting down from 10? The next instant hit me hard. My head slammed back into the beautifully re-cushioned head rest hard enough that my next view was that of the reading lights above me.

Awesome biz seats in the JetStar!! Very comfy!!

I quickly regained my senses enough to look out the cabin window to my right and the ground was already whizzing by and the clacking of the tires crossing the expansion joints on the runway surface was steadily increasing in frequency. I couldn’t see the airspeed indicators in the cockpit from my seat but the cabin display was reading 95 knots (110 mph ) already and I think only 5 seconds had gone by. Only a few more seconds ticked by and the jet departed terra firma, the landing gear stretching out as to make one last grasp towards the ground the tires making their final thump. Airborne and not at routine climbing rate either!! I guess the pilots got their NASA certification before we left cause our rate of climb on the vertical speed indicator was 5,000 ft/min which was max on those indicators. Which for this old bird was extremely fast.  The Altimeter wound it way through 9,000 ft and I could see the Captain push back on the control column and we slowed are climb to allow for more speed. I unbuckled my seat belt and walked up hill to the cockpit to see what our Avionics Manager was doing in the jump seat. He was programming the new Flight Management System (FMS) we had installed and integrated into the Autopilot and navigation systems. We made a series of step climbs to our final altitude of 25,000 ft and as we leveled out the mechanic and I did our cabin inspections while our Avionics manager gave an inflight briefing of the FMS system to the pilots.  I wasn’t really paying attention to the direction but I would look out the cabin windows from time to time and see if I could guess where we were according the mountains and water now far below me. I knew we were over Vancouver Island as I could see Victoria through the broken clouds we were now above.

As the pilots cut the throttles back to cruise speed the high pitch drone of the 4 engines quiteted enough to make the cabin a bit more pleasant and I could actually talk to the mechanic without raising my voice too much. I looked out the left side cabin window and could see Port Angeles Washington in the distance behind me and the edge of Washington state was just appearing ahead of me. That is when the mechanic asked me if I could hear the hissing sound. Hmm hissing at 25,000 ft was not a good noise but not always bad. Sometimes the Galley sink valve doesn’t close and the air rushes out the drain. That wasn’t it. The right hand emergency exit door seal was leaking and it was getting louder. We had just turned to tell the crew about the leak when the seal failed “POP”, the squealing became so intense like 10,000 nails on a chalkboard! My head erupted with the worst headache I has ever felt. The cabin was pressurized for 6000 ft but when I made my way up front I could see that it had jumped to 9500 ft and was increasing slowly still. The outflow valves which regulate the air in the cabin must have slammed shut in order to preserve what little cabin pressure there was left in this leather and ultra suede death tube.  The pilots were on it like the professional crew that they were and pushed the nose of the airplane over and we began to descend over Vancouver Island heading back to Vancouver and CYVR. I couldn’t see anything out the cockpit window or cabin window as passed through a large cloud bank during our emergency descent. The next thing that struck me as odd was the pilots and copilot attitude indicator (that is the indicator from the cockpit picture above directly over the control columns). They were nose down and a hard right  turn.

Typical attitude indicator

This is what our indicator looked like - nose down hard right turn.

The most unnerving part was I couldn’t feel the turn! You know when you are in your car and you turn a direction your body feels the centrifugal force and you are pulled opposite the direction of the turn you are in? I COULDN’T FEEL THE TURN OR DESCENT!! Was my head in so much agony because of the sudden change in cabin pressure that I was losing my sense of gravity? It wasn’t until we broke through the clouds and I could see the ground actually matched the attitude indicator, I realized then that my body was actually working properly and my equilibrium was still intact. The pilots had made the smoothest emergency descending turns ever!! I really couldn’t feel a thing. My head was still pounding and I looked back at the altitude indicator and it read 12,000 ft and we had crossed over Parksville BC already so I knew we were getting a straight in approach and we would be back on the ground in 10 minutes so this anxiety of my first ever decompression at altitude would be over soon. I sat back in the my cabin seat next to the emergency door seal that had “let go” and the squealing that had once been unbearable was now just a slight hiss and lessening as we descended lower to home. The headache was still in full force but bearable. As we crossed over the fence and touched down on the runway, where only 30 minutes earlier we blasted off from, I did have a sigh of relief. Then a small panic as a couple firetrucks’ and emergency vehicles had come out to greet us on our arrival. They must have been bored at the firehall, because the captain did not request a Mayday, he only informed the tower we lost cabin pressure and were returning to the airport. As we taxied back to the Hangar with our entourage of safety vehicles following behind like little ducklings it was nice to roll to a stop and open the cabin door, lower the airstairs and place my feet firmly back on the mother earth. I wasn’t in a life threatening situation on this test flight, although I should have brought a change of underwear just because. The cabin had never reached a low-level oxygen situation as the cabin masks did not deploy. This was something I know  proficiently as I had tested the system the day before. Two tears later one of my golf idols, Payne Stewart and the Learjet he was flying in would suffer this cabin depressurization and sadly all would perish.

I still love flying and going on test flights, though now I give the younger technicians opportunity to have something to remember. A year later I would go on a roller coaster ride at 15000 ft. But that is another blog!!

AvionicsMan

Ya I know I had hair!! And I guess I was 10 ft tall too!!

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