Not sure if this should be in Civ Av or Trip reports, but here goes.

Found out about the Alteon Training Center down in Long Beach (a division of Boeing) via MidnightMike here on the forums and went down there for a tour.

http://www.alteontraining.com/cgi-bin/db/simdb/db.cgi?db=default&uid=default&summary_view=1&sb=2&so=ascend&model=*&location=Long+Beach&sb=3&view_records=Go%21

I was so impressed by the tour that I decided to go back down for an actual sim ride and chose the MD-11.

I arrived at Alteon at about 7:30 am in the morning and went in. My flight instructor came to see me and took me to the MD-11 briefing room, where there was a schematic of the MD-11 cockpit. He explained to me how everything worked and what we were going to be doing.

Then we walekd over to the simulator. The MD-11, which I decided to refer to as HB-IWC, was sitting on runway 24 R at LAX in the day time. We stepped in and the instructor got the simulator ready.

In the meantime, I got comfortable in the left seat. We then readed the aircraft for take off. Set the flaps to 16 degrees and then I experienced what was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

I advanced the throttles and heard the PW4000 engines spooling up. Slowly, the aircraft started to move forward down the runway. We began to gather speed and the first officer (instructor) called out 80 knots.

A few seconds later, the F/O called out V1, Rotate. I was so overcome by joy that I almost fainted, but I did manage to rotate the nose of the MD-11 up and we started to climb. The F/O raised the landing gear and we flew out over the ocean.

Raised the flaps and then climbed to 2,000 feet...I was doing all the flying by aligning the circle with the intersection of the two pink lines using the attitude indicator.

We eventually got up to 8,000 feet and then we started doing some turns. I was amazed by how smoothly and quickly the aircraft responded to my inputs. We then put the autopilot on and took some pictures.

Turned back towards LAX, intercepted the localizer and aligned the aircraft to runway 24 R. The aircraft received the glideslope and then the autopilot took us down to 200 feet above the runway.

At 200 feet, we disengaged the autopilot and I landed the aircraft on the runway. I had already armed the speed brakes so all we had to do was open the thrust reversers, which I didn't realize quite how difficult that was. You don't just pull those levers, you have to open the hole first...or something.

Anyway, then the instructor set the simulator back and we did the same thing, only thing is that this time we disengaged the autopilot at 400 feet.

This time, the plane started to get off center so I used the rudders to track it back to the runway's center line. The instructor was amazed by what a good job I did.

Same thing all over now this time came back to 2000 feet and let the autopilot off at 600 feet then landed.

And finally, disengaged it off at 800 feet and this time taxiied to the gate.

I had no idea how difficult it is to taxi an aircraft on the ground with that thing that controls the nose wheel. I didn't do a very good job of that.

All in all it was a phenomenal experience and I encourage anyone that has the chance to try out flying in a simulator (unless you're a pilot and can do the real thing). But for now, I have a special bond with the MD-11 and in fact have the photo of a Varig MD-11 cockpit (PP-VQI) as my desktop background.

Here are a few pictures....