Monday, June 13, 2011

There and back twice

Back home after the aforementioned 2 trips to Europe. Second trip I got to fly on a Lufthansa A380 from San Francisco to Frankfurt. Impressions? Very nice! My key take aways:

  • Much quieter than a 747. You can hear conversations of others around you (not always a good thing)
  • Lufthansa has a cool feature where you can select one of 3 camera angles to watch on the plane in action: one in the belly looking straight down, one in the nose looking forward and one in the tail plane looking down over the aircraft. Not sure if all 380s have this but it was fun to watch what was going on (although the day I flew it was mainly cloudy the whole way over). With the tail plane view you could easily see the spoilers deploy on landing. Cool
  •  The "nice view" moving map is enhanced and much better than anything I've seen so far. In one shot, you get to see a simulated view of the cockpit and the view out the windows:

  • I was sitting right over the wing in economy. On the ground you couldn't really see the wing tip. In the air, the wing lifts up and you can see it. On landing it droops down again
  • In general a much greater sense of space in the cabin than I've experienced in 747s
Back to what this blog is all about...

Since I was in Amsterdam, what trip would be complete without a run out to Aviation Megastore? I picked up a tiller handle from Open Cockpits:
It's solidly constructed, has a nice feel to it and is self centering. Also snagged a couple of brightness boosters for my master and fire warning switches:
Saves me messing around trying to fit an LED into the bulb holder... Also picked up a copy of Aerosoft's Frankfurt airport scenery add on. And why not? I seem to be spending a lot of time at "Fra Port". As the wife says, on the way to heaven you'll need to change planes in Frankfurt, get parked at a remote stand and take a ride on one of their buses. 

No build report although I did tweak some configuration settings per this guide:
Happy to report increased frame rate and a smoother flying experience. More later, post side board build...