[AT] O.T. Being In Outter Space & Carrying the Schuttle

[Cecil Bearden]

A great story..    Thanks for sharing
Cecil


On 10/14/2020 9:53 AM, HERBERT METZ wrote:
> O.T.
> Received this email from a loval antique tractor enthusiast friend.
>
> Being in Outter Space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcI1e4KiDv0
> Carrying the Shuttle: A quick "trip report" from the pilot of the 747 
> that flew the shuttle back to Florida after the Hubble repair flight. 
> A humorous and interesting inside look at what it's like to fly two 
> aircraft at once.
> (I have decided to adopt one of "Triple Nickel's" phrases : "That was 
> too close for MY laundry!")
> Well, it's been 48 hours since I landed the 747 with the shuttle 
> Atlantis on top and I am still buzzing from the experience. I have to 
> say that my whole mind, body and soul went into the professional mode 
> just before engine start in Mississippi, and stayed there, where it 
> all needed to be, until well after the flight..in fact, I am not sure 
> if it is all back to normal as I type this email. The experience was 
> surreal. Seeing that "thing" on top of an already overly huge aircraft 
> boggles my mind. The whole mission from takeoff to engine shutdown was 
> unlike anything I had ever done. It was like a dream... someone else's 
> dream.
> We took off from Columbus AFB on their 12,000 foot runway, of which I 
> used 11,999  feet to get the wheels off the ground. We were at 3,500 
> feet left to go of the runway, throttles full power, nose wheels still 
> hugging the ground, copilot calling out decision speeds, the weight of 
> Atlantis now screaming through my fingers clinched tightly on the 
> controls, tires heating up to their near maximum temperature from the 
> speed and the weight, and not yet at rotation speed, the speed at 
> which I would be pulling on the controls to get the nose to rise. I 
> just could not wait, and I mean I COULD NOT WAIT, and started pulling 
> early. If I had waited until rotation speed, we would not have rotated 
> enough to get airborne by the end of the runway. So I pulled on the 
> controls early and started our rotation to the takeoff attitude. The 
> wheels finally lifted off as we passed over the stripe marking the end 
> of the runway and my next hurdle (physically) was a line of trees 
> 1,000 feet off the departure end of Runway 16. All I knew was we were 
> flying and so I directed the gear to be retracted and the flaps to be 
> moved from Flaps 20 to Flaps 10 as I pulled even harder on the 
> controls. I must say, those trees were beginning to look a lot like 
> those brushes in the drive through car washes so I pulled even harder 
> yet! I think I saw a bird just fold it's wings and fall out of a tree 
> as if to say "Oh just take me". Okay, we cleared the trees, duh, but 
> it was way too close for my laundry.As we started to actually climb, 
> at only 100 feet per minute, I smelled something that reminded me of 
> touring the Heineken Brewery in Europe ....I said "is that a skunk I 
> smell?" and the veterans of shuttle carrying looked at me and smiled 
> and said "Tires"! I said "TIRES???OURS???" They smiled and shook their 
> heads as if to call their Captain an amateur... okay, at that point I 
> was. The tires were so hot you could smell them in the cockpit. My 
> mind could not get over, from this point on, that this was something I 
> had never experienced.Where's your mom when you REALLY need her?
> The flight down to Florida was an eternity. We cruised at 250 knots 
> indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground speed at 15,000' The 
> miles didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by in a fighter 
> jet at MACH .94. We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000 pounds per 
> hour or 130 pounds per mile, or one gallon every length of the 
> fuselage. The vibration in the cockpit was mild, compared to down 
> below and to the rear of the fuselage where it reminded me of that 
> football game I had as a child where you turned it on and the players 
> vibrated around the board. I felt like if I had plastic clips on my 
> boots I could have vibrated to any spot in the fuselage I wanted to go 
> without moving my legs...and the noise was deafening. The 747 flies 
> with its nose 5 degrees up in the air to stay level, and when you 
> bank, it feels like the shuttle is trying to say "hey, let's roll 
> completely over on our back"...not a good thing I kept telling myself. 
> SO I limited my bank angle to 15 degrees and even though a 180 degree 
> course change took a full zip code to complete, it was the safe way to 
> turn this monster.
> Airliners and even a flight of two F-16s deviated from their flight 
> plans to catch a glimpse of us along the way. We dodged what was in 
> reality very few clouds and storms, despite what everyone thought, and 
> arrived in Florida with 51,000 pounds of fuel too much to land with. 
> We can't land heavier than 600,000 pounds total weight and so we had 
> to do something with that fuel. I had an idea...let's fly low and slow 
> and show this beast off to all the taxpayers in Florida lucky enough 
> to be outside on that Tuesday afternoon. So at Ormond Beach we let 
> down to 1,000 feet above the ground/water and flew just east of the 
> beach out over the water. Then, once we reached the NASA airspace of 
> the Kennedy Space Center, we cut over to the Banana/Indian Rivers and 
> flew down the middle of them to show the people of Titusville, Port 
> St.Johns and Melbourne just what a 747 with a shuttle on it looked 
> like. We stayed at 1,000 feet and since we were dragging our flaps at 
> "Flaps 5", our speed was down to around 190 to 210 knots. We could see 
> traffic stopping in the middle of roads to take a look. We heard later 
> that a Little League Baseball game stop to look and everyone cheered 
> as we became their 7th inning stretch. Oh say can you see...
> After reaching Vero Beach , we turned north to follow the coast line 
> back up to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF). There was not one 
> person laying on the beach...they were all standing and waving!" What 
> a sight" I thought...and figured they were thinking the same thing.All 
> this time I was bugging the engineers, all three of them, to 
> re-compute our fuel and tell me when it was time to land.They kept 
> saying "Not yet Triple, keep showing this thing off" which was not a 
> bad thing to be doing. However, all this time the thought that the 
> landing, the muscling of this 600,000 pound beast, was getting closer 
> and closer to my reality. I was pumped up! We got back to the SLF and 
> were still 10,000 pounds too heavy to land so I said I was going to do 
> a low approach over the SLF going the opposite direction of landing 
> traffic that day.So at 300 feet, we flew down the runway, rocking our 
> wings like a whale rolling on its side to say "hello" to the people 
> looking on! One turn out of traffic and back to the runway to 
> land...still 3,000 pounds over gross weight limit. But the engineers 
> agreed that if the landing were smooth, there would be no problem."Oh 
> thanks guys, a little extra pressure is just what I needed!" So we 
> landed at 603,000 pounds and very smoothly if I have to say so myself. 
> The landing was so totally controlled and on speed, that it was fun. 
> There were a few surprises that I dealt with, like the 747 falls like 
> a rock with the orbiter on it if you pull the throttles off at the 
> "normal" point in a landing and secondly, if you thought you could 
> hold the nose off the ground after the mains touch down, think 
> again...IT IS COMING DOWN!!! So I "flew it down" to the ground and 
> saved what I have seen in videos of a nose slap after landing. Bob's 
> video supports this!
> Then I turned on my phone after coming to a full stop only to find 50 
> bazillion emails and phone messages from all of you who were so super 
> to be watching and cheering us on! What a treat, I can't thank y'all 
> enough.For those who watched, you wondered why we sat there so long. 
> Well, the shuttle had very hazardous chemicals on board and we had to 
> be "sniffed" to determine if any had leaked or were leaking. They 
> checked for Monomethylhydrazine (N2H4 for Charlie Hudson) and nitrogen 
> tetroxide (N2O4). Even though we were "clean", it took way too long 
> for them to tow us in to the mate-demate area. Sorry for those who 
> stuck it out and even waited until we exited the jet.
> I am sure I will wake up in the middle of the night here soon, 
> screaming and standing straight up dripping wet with sweat from the 
> realization of what had happened. It was a thrill of a lifetime. Again 
> I want to thank everyone for your interest and support. It felt good 
> to bring Atlantis home in one piece after she had worked so hard 
> getting to the Hubble Space Telescope and back.
> And a video, in case you haven't seen the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft:
>
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