Full motion simulator

On Tuesday I was due to fly down to Palomar to take up the offer of a tour of the simulator facility there. Unfortunately the weather was awful with low cloud all along the hills, but as it was too good an offer to pass up, I decided to drive instead. The simulator was amazing – the owner there gave me a full tour of the facility showing me the 4 simulators (2 fixed, 2 full motion), as well as all their classrooms and technical facilities, before letting me loose on the simulator itself. It is an FAA and Cessna certified Citation CJ3 simulator, and is so accurate, you can even feel the rumble of the nose wheel going over the runway centre-line lights! I took off from Memphis with a 600ft cloud base and climbed like a rocket to 5000 feet (it only took about 90 seconds compared with about 7-10 minutes in my C172, and the last 1000feet were done with the engines at idle). 

Once at altitude I kept the nose up to slow and induce a stall, ignoring the stick shaker (a pre-warning of approaching stall) and fighting the downforce until the nose dropped, at which point I put in full power and pushed the stick forward – which felt my stomach in my mouth, like the drop of a rollercoaster! We did a circuit of the airfield before joining for an ILS (instrument landing system) approach where the cloud base was just 200ft with heavy snow. After letting the autopilot fly the approach to minimum descent altitude, I disengaged it to land myself, with only a gentle bump – an amazing experience.

In the evening, I headed over to the Staples Center to watch the Lakers take on (and beat) the New York Knicks.