This afternoon was really quite nifty. I got a call from our FlightSafety representative, offering to have us attend the local FlightSafety training center to try out their Gulfstream IV SP simulator. Kitsch and I were downtown when I got the call, and we dropped everything and drove straight to the facility at a great rate of speed.

The complex is freakin' huge here, far larger than the one in Toledo where I got my 550 type rating. The guy said they trained about 8,000 Gulfstream pilots here last year.

They have a swimming pool where you can practice emergency egress training, which is fancy talk for getting the hell out of the airplane if you end up ditching it into water. Gulfstream IV aircraft are large, long-haul business jets, so a fair amount of their time could conceivably be spent over various oceans.



There are full cabin mockups for training flight attendants also. They have sims here that they can pump smoke into to simulate electrical fires, and pilots can wear oxygen masks that they pump nitrogen into to simulate hypoxia.

They have a lady who comes in once a week to give haircuts to any pilots who need them. Sorry the pic is blurry.




Anyway, Kitsch and I hopped into the G-IV sim and took her for a ride around the patch for about an hour. It's going to take me a lot longer to stop grinning like a fool.

Here's a blurry pic of me getting set up for an ILS approach.



A pic of me without the flash. Boring pic, but I thought it was funny that I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops while flying a 30 million dollar business jet simulator.



Our instructor/tour guide was great, he knew the plane inside and out, and he was enthusiastic about his job.

FlightSafety, you totally made my day.