 his was the grand
finale of my trip. As if the simulator wasn't enough! Michael and I were
taken to the flightline and allowed to climb up in the cockpit and take
a look around. Too Cool!!!
This is Captain David L. Odem, Chief of the B-1 Flight Simulator at Dyess.
He's obviously been around these birds a long time. He answered
every one of our questions without even blinking, (even the really goofy ones).
Captain Odem showed me a neat little feature, a set of switches attached
to the front gear door, that allows the B-1 to scramble in a minimal amount
of time. When placed on alert, the crew would preset the aircraft's electronics
as needed for takeoff. The crew would run up to the aircraft and punch
the button, which would bring the access ladder down, turn on vital electronic
systems and most important, fire up the big turbofan engines.
You can get a good feel for the massive size of the B-1 in this photo of
the Captain, standing near the main landing gear. I believe he told me that
the radar altimeter in the cockpit reads out 12 feet while parked on the
tarmac. (the distance from the radar to the ground)
You can also see the doors open on all three weapons bays from this vantage
point. The doors, by the way, are only opened for a few seconds during
weapons drop, in order to prolong their relatively short life expectancy.
They apparently take a real beating while open in flight.
Here is the ventral crew ladder. The only way in and the better of the two
ways out (the ejection seats being the lesser of the two ways).
The inside.
This shot is taken from the top of the boarding ladder. The Weapons
Officers ejection seats are above on each side. Straight ahead, past the
toilet, up a another step or two is where all the flying goes on.
Here, the captain is standing on the walkway floor between the front and
rear cockpits. I am taking the picture, while seated in the Offensive Weapons
station. (By the way, I'm sitting in an active Aces II ejection seat with
plastic tie-wraps keeping me from accidentally doing a 0-0 exit from the
aircraft). After climbing down from my seat, I easily walked under the instrument
panel without ducking and stepped up in the pilots cockpit.
And here we are finally! The front cockpit where all the
flying is done. The B-1's instruments are very well
organized and easy to read, so you can actually spend
time looking out the windscreen
Note the maintenance tag taped to the panel indicating who has
the missing MFD.
Some points of interest are:
1. Electricians tie-wraps are used to keep the ejection handles
safe when not in use.
2. The fighter-style stick is Very indicative of how this big
bomber is designed to fly.
3. This is the control lever for the variable-sweep wings.
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