What Makes a Snowbaroo

Chapter Ten - PodunkWorks

Wil and Orv were up first in the sim. Ben decided to reverse his decision and let me process the shock for a second. Or really, three hours, while the brothers flew from LaGuardia to Atlanta.

Ben normally played air traffic control, speaking to the brothers behind the black curtain that divided the simulator cockpit from the bare-bones garage, over a radio handset. This time, however, Alex got to do the honors. It was like that wizard from Oz whenever Ben spoke as if he were air traffic control, so it was comforting to hear Alex's voice this time. I was hoping one of the brothers would be our air traffic control, but it was honestly impossible to tell them apart by voice, so I'd be wondering the whole time whether it was Wil or Orv. Or both.

I'd been reviewing some material in my textbook, trying to concentrate on the words. Most would probably have assumed I was trying to get googly-eyed at Alex, but it was actually the TV monitor show the simulator flight deck feed that had me interested. Not because it was a TV – I'm not that desperately bored – but because I was curious about how the brothers were handling their virtual A320. You could hear them over the radio, of course. And who were we kidding; you could hear everything going on in the cockpit too, because that curtain that divided it from us wasn't much in the way of soundproofing. Luckily, the brothers were a lot more pro sounding than I probably was with Alex. Alex would say something I never had heard of before, and I would be like, "Alex...what's that?"

I honestly spent more time looking up things in my book than flying the aircraft, but I didn't blame Alex, Ben, or the brothers for not wanting to let me fly the "Bus" by hand, when I couldn't even start the thing without consulting the manual. Starting a car was easy, even when Isaac had begrudgingly showed me how to hotwire one to get me off his case. I never used it, but it was interesting to watch. With the Darebus, it took tons of steps just to get one engine started. We technically had three; one under each wing and then one in the very back, tucked into the tail area. It was basically where that weird thing that looked like the tip of a flat paintbrush was, if you look into photos of planes. This one was special, because it was tiny, burned crazy amounts of gas, expelled enough exhaust and heat into the air to get the use of the thing banned in Italy and other places, and it generated no useable thrust whatsoever. They said the name of it, APU, stood for "Auxiliary Power Unit," but I remembered it as the "Absolutely Preposterous Upstart." It's like that one person who shows up at the party, eats all the snacks, warms up the room with non-stop chatter, and then leaves without helping to clean up. At least it generated enough power and cool air to run some computers and the air conditioning.

After the APU got started – and there were tons of buttons and checks even before that fuel glutton got running – we had to work quick to get all these separate valves and stuff open, then we'd get the first engine on. More radio calls, some programming of the ancient brick that was the MCDU, or Multipurpose Control and Display Unit, and we were probably set to go. Then you just sat and waited for one of those squat little "tugs" to push you back. And once that happened, you started the other engine and taxied out. For pilots who were actually trusted to take control of the plane, which ironically hadn't happened for me since I flew those Cessna Sky-Chickens, they could apparently feel some sort of power as we crawled along the taxiway.

"Woah! This baby has some serious power!" That was Alex's reaction after the simulator we were using got updated by our benefactor, from the old Darebus A320 and A330 to the new Darebus A320neo and A330neo.

Apparently, the "neo" line stood for "New Engine Option," but should have been, "Needless Engine Option." The old version was, according to Wil, the equivalent of a Honda Civic. Now, they all said it made the aircraft feel like a Dodge Hellcat. It still taxied slower than an Impasta going to the grocery store, so I didn't see the big deal. We didn't fly the neo all the time though, because Snowbaroo didn't manufacture that one. They were doing the old one, which was powered by General Electric CFM engines. Given that my parents' GE appliances couldn't even last ten years without major babying, I really hoped that these engines would hold up on us. Those drills Ben had us do with engine failures were pretty intense.