You aren't missing anything. New airbus and Boeings are just button
pushing jobs. You hunch over all day fighting with prehistoric
Command Line Interface FMS units that are more ****ed up than Hogan's
Goat. You'll be lucky to look out the window or hand fly the thing
for fifteen minutes on a two hour flight. That's why I bid the old
fossiled DC-10. A real man's machine. I never used the fricking
autopilots till over 30,000 ft or level off. Most of today's airline
pilots can just barely fly without "otto" doing the autoland cuz they
never dare to **** off the "highest level of automation at all times"
nazi check pilot department (at least at my MO-FO-CO.) No Bill, my
money's on you as the best pilot in this newsgroup.

Keep the dirty side down,

pac "hand job" plyer

Ah, thanks Pac. I was a better pilot when I was younger. I'm falling
apart with age. Getting older is ****ed up. I actually think I was a
great pilot when I got my ATP about 20 years ago. My brain didn't
know if I was in IMC or VFR...it was all the same. But, I've lost a
lot of those skills since I just don't do it much anymore.

I had a ball this weekend though. I ferried helicopters all over
hell. I was down in this canyon on Sunday looking at a river in the
middle of Arizona about 50 miles SE of Kingman. It looked like there
were no people on Earth, anywhere, and I was zooming up this river
between canyon walls about 500 feet high when I saw a few cows. I
brought her into a hover and scared the **** out of the cows. When
they started running I chased them and harassed them all over the
place. I was pulling up and doing hammer heads in a Robie and
cranking back down on the terrified cows as they tried to run for
cover. ****. It was a ball. I lost myself for a few moments as my
brain and body simply took command of the machine as if it were a suit
of clothes I was wearing. Now I know how those dudes in Australia
feel who live in that R-22 all day long herding cattle. You begin to
wear the machine.

Nothing like it. Sometimes in the RV-6 I felt that way while cranking
down a canyon over there in Utah or Arizona along a river...just
yanking and banking.

On Friday night I was flying an R-44 and got back to the barn at 9:30.
I took it slow and did the approach like an old man but I still had
some depth perception problems as I dropped into the pad in a hover.
The pad isn't lighted and all I had was that twinky little landing
light on the front of that $350,000 machine. I had to just feel my
way down until I could see the rocks, then do the touchdown. When I
was a kid, I could have seen that pad in pitch black dark with no
landing light. In fact I'd have never even turned the ****ing thing
on because I'd have considered that chicken****. If you can't land in
the dark you shouldn't be flying at night has been my view for many
years. Nowadays, I use the landing light all the time so I don't even
get close to pranging the machine. I guess I could still do it
without the light, but it would be a stretch and I wouldn't be all the
happy about it. ****ing old age. I hate it.

Sometimes when I'm alone and I get a vibration in the machine and
there are no other lives involved, I don't even get puckered. I just
figure **** it...there's a lot of ugly ways to go out in this life,
like laying in a hospital bed with cancer on morphine or something.
If I can buy the farm in a flying machine while I'm still healthy
enough to be able to fly the *******, then "What the ****-Over"

BWB