![]() deflection," Feuerstein says citing a hypothetical example of using the m-cab to determine how the rudder on the vertical part of the tail might be controlled by the rudder pedals at the pilot's feet. The flight test team hones the plane's behavior, including developing the aerodynamic properties and flight control configurations. The purpose of the m-cab is to develop and refine the raw data from wind tunnels or computer models into something that behaves like a familiar aircraft. "So if this morning you want to fly a 737, we can go do research or engineering work in a 737, and while we go have lunch they can change key components and reload software and it can become a 777 or 747." "The cool thing about this tool though is that you can reconfigure it," Feuerstein says. And as its name implies, the m-cab can be used to simulate several different airplanes, even in the same day. The m-cab is the tool Boeing uses to make the model-specific e-cab simulators. This is where Feuerstein and his team spent their time before there was a 747-8 e-cab. The full motion sim is the multipurpose engineering cab, or m-cab. The seventh simulator is a full-motion model similar to what airlines use to train pilots. The e-cabs don't move, though several times during my flight, my brain was convinced otherwise. Six are e-cabs similar to the one we're in, including two for the 787. Inside that building is a fleet of seven simulators. The 747-8 team of engineers working with Feuerstein have been crowded around simulators in this nondescript building for more than two years already. On any given flight in the e-cab, there a dozen or more engineers packed into the room behind the cockpit or in a nearby conference room monitoring every aspect of the test. He speaks carefully, he is humble and quick to note it's the designers and engineers who are responsible for any new airplane. ![]() ![]() But talking to him, you get the feeling you're talking to more of an engineer rather than some Hollywood version of a test pilot. And like most test pilots today, he wears his engineering hat as easily as the pilot hat. Until the systematic use of simulation, much of what needed to be figured out when designing a new plane had to be figured out by actually flying the plane.įeuerstein graduated from the Navy's test-pilot school and has been a test pilot more than half the 35 years he's been flying. They could be as fundamental as wondering whether the pilot could control the aircraft. For much of aviation's history, the inaugural flight of an airplane included many unknowns. he's flown more than 100 aircraft).įlight testing hasn't always been as seemingly routine and uneventful as when the 787 Dreamliner took off for the first time last month and returned a few hours later to make a landing as smooth as any jet landing at the local airport. All those hours don't include the time he's spent flying the real 747 (or the 707, the 737, the 757 or. "Could be a thousand," Feuerstein adds as he thinks back on all the time spent developing and testing the plane's flight characteristics and systems. "We've flown the airplane many times by the time we fly first flight," Feuerstein says.īy the time Feuerstein and copilot Tom Imrich push the 747-8's throttles forward and take off from Paine Field north of Seattle, they will have spent hundreds of hours flying the plane's e-cab. But when Feuerstein pulls back on the yoke as Boeing's largest airliner ever rolls down the runway, it won't be the first time he's flown it. ![]()
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