Many thanks to these two friendly gentlemen for letting me test my new camera in their “office”! Sorry for the high JPEG image compression -- I found this resolution/size to be the best compromise regarding picture quality and download time.

Not a PFD instrument failure -- just the result of too fast a camera shutter speed. Coincidentally, however, it reveals that the PFD screen is being drawn “object by object” (like a LASER show) rather than the entire screen “row by row” like on a TV or computer monitor. Round objects have, therefore, no “stairway” pixel effects.

Present position: South of Himalaya, abeam Mount Everest. Lots of turbulences in the upper airspace. Down again to FL290 for an hour. By the way, the difference between the Captain’s and the F/O’s altimeter is smaller than 50 feet, which is within normal tolerances.

Now the inner fuel tanks are just a few hundred kilogramms lighter than the outer tanks. The Tank-To-Engine message will appear on the EICAS in a few minutes.

It’s getting hotter in the morning sun over India. The pilot is turning the Flight Deck Temp Selector down a bit. The target and actual cabin temps can be monitored on the ECS display on the lower EICAS (hidden by the throttles in this picture).
The fuel panel isn’t in Tank-To-Engine configuration, yet.

Now it is. The fuel panel in Tank-To-Engine configuration.

The fuel synoptic on the lower EICAS indicates Tank-To-Engine configuration is set.
This 744 is fitted with the newer EICAS software version which displays also gross weight and SAT on the upper EICAS screen.

The standby altimeter disagrees with the Captain’s altimeter by 70 feet, which is well within normal tolerances. Present position: south of Bangla Desh and still at FL290 (as one can see on the PFD speed indicator the red high/low speed buffet tapes are far on the safe side as the aircraft is -- with ca. 50 tonnes of fuel -- pretty light now).

The pilot entered a “predicted ETA fix” on the FMC FIX INFO page as a reminder for the upcoming crew change (i.e. for the wake up call at 07:15 UTC). See the green “donut” on the ND after DOPID.

The center CDU ...and a peek on the Qantas specific ACARS software. Displayed here on the screen is an ACARS message with some (traffic) info on two Qantas flights (in BA co-operation) and the respective gate identifiers and local time.

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© 2000 Hardy Heinlin