Word: cockpit
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Hensch tried the ropes, which were taut against the nine tons of cargo filling a ridiculously small part of the enormous interior. The two pilots went into the cockpit and started to warm up the engines. "They had a pretty good lunch in there today," said Baker to Hensch. "It was fish, but it was good." They had a little informal conversation with the control tower. (British pilots are still lost in wonder at the informality of U.S. communications. One British pilot walks around Berlin shaking his head and telling everybody he overheard a U.S. airman on the strip...
...passenger in such a plane (the Lockheed TF-80C is the only two-place fighter-type jet in the U.S.) is an oddly soothing sensation. The cockpit is remarkably quiet for a military airplane. Little engine noise gets into it; most of the roar and snarl is blown back with the wake. The air ducts grumble below the floor; a ventilator hisses. When the plane is up to speed, the airstream rushing over the canopy makes a moderate, roar. There is hardly any vibration. Experienced pilots say that the plane handles "like a kiddie-car." When it makes...
...tail surfaces. One pilot described what it felt like: "The radio static kept building in intensity until I couldn't keep the earphone close to my ears. I heard what sounded like the sharp burst of a German 88 millimeter. A sheet of flame enveloped the whole cockpit. Everything looked a bit fuzzy . . . the instruments jumped around so much that I couldn't tell for a moment what was going on. I just let the airplane buck through...
Last week at Caldwell, N.J., Curtiss-Wright and Pan American Airways demonstrated an elaborate training device, the biggest and best of its kind, which can simulate both "disaster conditions" and routine flights. It has no wings; it cannot fly or even move. But crewmen shut in its cockpit (a copy of the cockpit in Pan Am's new Boeing Clippers) experience nearly all the horrors that can overtake a pilot. They are at the mercy of an unseen instructor who can "simulate" violent weather and faithless machinery...
...electronic trickery he can make the controls and instruments in the cockpit behave as if a fuel line had clogged, or as if a deadly crust of ice were forming on the wings and tail surfaces. He can knock out the radio or devil it with static. He can kindle a fire in the baggage compartment or chill the passengers by knocking out the cabin heating system...