How hot is your cockpit?

[wmudriver]

swamp ass!

swamp ass sucks!

 

[BaronFR8Dog]

Typhoon,

I'll tell you what... I'll fly your new RJ and you can fly my 1975 Baron at 5pm after it's been baking on a 100 degree ramp all day.

Oh, bring a raincoat just in case. Yes, I said a raincoat.

 

[Typhoon1244]

Typhoon, I'll tell you what...I'll fly your new RJ and you can fly my 1975 Baron at 5pm after it's been baking on a 100 degree ramp all day. Oh, bring a raincoat just in case. Yes, I said a raincoat.

I instructed in Cherokees and Seminoles in Florida. I feel your pain, bruthuh.

But like I said, this is an airline pilot whining about air conditioning that's below par. Those of you without air conditioning are another story. "It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether!"

Birds chirp, dogs bark, cows moo, pilots bitch.

 

[Hovernut]

Was flying ship #7040 last week and was #20 something for takeoff at ATL after ramp got us out :20 late (I don't know how you ASA guys keep your sanity!) I don't know if it was a weak APU, or the packs were screwing up, but while waiting in line and swealtering in the cockpit, I checked the ECS page and saw that the cabin pack had dropped offline. Man, I bet it was a sweathouse back there...they never did cool off for a trip to ABE. Needless to say, we dropped off the front pack and brought the rear one back up; that is, until we transferred the bleeds after departure.

Our new APU policy doesn't help, too. Light it up 3 min prior to push, or 10 min if environmentally necessary, when we begin boarding 20 min prior. What ever happened to customer service? If we regularly had air carts...sure, kill the APU, but in summertime with people running to make their connections, I'd like for them to have a nice comfortable, cool cabin to take refuge in.

But, hey, it's still better than flying in a tin can in NM or FL! Like Typhoon said...it sucks to get spoiled!

 

[Prop Trash]

I've never been hot in the EMB-145. Even the first one off of the assembly line (S/N 004) delivered in 1997 still blows snow in the cockpit even when the OAT is close to 100 F. Oh...but I've paid my dues - two Houston summers on the BE-1900 and one summer on the ATR. It doesn't get any worse.

 

[LearLove]

Wrong

"The funny part?

The REASON we didn't have a gate was that Allegheny was delaying their departure until their FO arrived (for those who don't know, HPN routinely makes arrivals wait until a gate is vacated by "company", even if it's only "company" in the sense that you serve the same system).

WHERE was that FO?"

Wrong - Try again, the summer of 01 Allegheny did not fly into or out of HPN. We only started going back there within the last year or little over a year ago.

 

[LearLove]

"Our new APU policy doesn't help, too. Light it up 3 min prior to push, or 10 min if environmentally necessary, when we begin boarding 20 min prior."

Ouch. Does anyone comply with this?


Another thing is to get some old VFR sectionals for sunshades. They fold nice and work well in the Dash, fitting right into the window frame.

Now we need to lynch the dot head who decided to paint our aircraft dark blue.

 

[JetPilot500]

I wonder what OSHA would say about this problem?

I'm sure there are some rules regarding temperatures in the work environment. If it is a real problem, it may be worth looking into.

JetPilot500

(Oh god! I'm starting to sound like an ALPA member again! )

 

[NuGuy]

Hi JetPilot,

Nice try, but OSHA refuses to get involved with anything to do with aviation... The FAs various unions have been trying for years, and their attitude is "nope, its an FAA problem, we can't touch it."

Nice thinking, though...

Cheers,
Nu

 

[mattfish42]

Can you imagine what OSHA would have to say about the day-to-day work of the average GA mechanic?!
If they're content to leave aviation alone then we should leave OSHA alone. We don't need their brand of "help".

 

[Anaconda]

"Our new APU policy doesn't help, too. Light it up 3 min prior to push, or 10 min if environmentally necessary, when we begin boarding 20 min prior."

Ouch. Does anyone comply with this?

unfortunately, yes...

 

[Hovernut]

....still beats a 140F, 100% humid fire room in a tin can out in the Persian Gulf the 1st time around with Saddam. We supposedly had a 15 minute "stay time," but they pushed it out to the regular 5-hour watch as long as we stayed in the 110F outside air vent blast between hourly log readings!

 

[PacoPollo]

"Our new APU policy doesn't help, too. Light it up 3 min prior to push, or 10 min if environmentally necessary, when we begin boarding 20 min prior."

Ouch. Does anyone comply with this?


Sh*t dont give AMR Ideas!!!
I have to admit that it gets really hot with the APU mel'd AND
1 pack inop, no aircart. Dam* it was hottt..

 

[Deftone45075]

J31, and it's July, at 2 in the afternoon.

Need I say more.

 

[Ty Webb]

Like someone else posted, cold-soaking on the way down is the way to go. Of course, then everyone closes their eyeball vents, so you either have to have the FA's open 'em again, or have 'em make an announcement . . . . . something along the lines of, "as a courtesy to the next group of passengers, please reach up and open the vent above you".

When we are in the Bahamas, we usually have the FA's close all the windowshades, too, if we have to shut down the APU for any reason.

I always run the gasper fan during engine start- when I'm riding in the back, I don;t like to sit there without any air flow while they are starting the engines, and I am sure many pax notice this too. Even if the air flowing isn;t cool, it at least isn;t stifling, too.

I'm surprised that the DCI carriers would skimp on the APU- we LLC slobs try to minimize its use, too, but only when the OAT is below 80 degrees!

 

[LearLove]

Ditto on the gasper/recerc fan. I hate it when Capts turn that off to start the eng. There's no reason it needs to be off and nobody at my company can give me a reason why its on the checklist. The worst is when the Capt does the #2 eng start list even before push and the ground crew isn't ready to push so you sit there baking and the pax getting mad. Customer service at its best.

 

[metrodriver]

At a metro pax outfit I flew for someone once put a thermometer in the cockpit at the ramp in DFW on a 100 degree day. We had an a/c unit blowing air through the rear bulkhead, and a sunshade in front of the windshield. The thing read 159F ! We had to endure that day in-day out. One fo once suffered from heat exhaustion. And the packs on a metro are not very strong, so it stays very hot till you are through 10.000' , sweating bullets all the way up there. Since we flew some routes at only 5000' it would never get comfortable.

 

[Thedude]

Hey Metrodriver...sounds like we used to work for the same outfit in DFW. I still remember the day s of sitting in DRT waiting for customs to show up and baking in the Metro.

 

[Diesel]

If i ever find the idiot engineer who made those front windows in a ciation Ultra I want to beat the nuts out of him.

On the ground the freon air is just teasing you.

In flight at 450 who ever is in the sun is baking. In the shade is freezing and the pax are freezing to death.

The cockpit is allways 40 degrees hotter than the back even with the air valve turned full rear.

Then you get down low and all the windows fog up because they are plastic and your wondering where the heck your going.

Bouncing around in the NE the plane never gets cool it just gets cooler than the ground. ARgh

 

[JBcrjca]

I had the pleasure(?) of flying the SA-227 for a few months during summertime. You can't beat PSP, YUM, PHX, etc. in the summer with the Metros' great ACMs. Actually the 'packs' were pretty much worthless. The external air cart helped cool things off a tad before boarding, and once the pax were seated we'd put the air hose back in until time to close the door. Boarding at YUM, for instance, in 110F heat was miserable... door closed, no airflow until the engines were started. Even then it was a trickle of lukewarm air from the eyeball vents.

Enroute to PHX, we climbed the cabin as much as we could to get the hot air out. The cabin temp gauge never came off the peg the entire flight. Then repeat the process during a turn in PHX, still 110F. Next stop, FLG. Enroute in the mid-teens, cabin temp still pegged. I loved FLG though, because with its 7000+' elevation, it was absolutely refreshing to pop open the cabin door at the gate and feel the blast of 75F air with the smell of pine trees. I felt bad for the pax as they staggered off the airplane dripping sweat, but we did all we could for them. A few pax even accused us of having all the cool air up in the cockpit. If they only knew how much hotter it was up there compared to the cabin. And then of course we got to do a CAWI takeoff to get out of there...always an adventure.

These days when we get a plane with weak packs, I grumble a bit as I sweat...but then I think about how much worse it could be. In the CRJ in summer, it seems as though we still fold blankets during every turn. I guess the A/C works better than I thought.

Hey ArcticFlyer, any fond summertime memories of the mighty Metroliner?