After finalizing an almost complete Boeing 737 Flight Simulator, I thought about going one step forward and trying to simulate emergency situations. Smoke in the Cockpit is one of them, and not a funny one (See for instance the fatal Swissair SR111 Accident, where a fire with the flight entertainment system generated heavy smoke and fire in the cockpit, led to many system failures and eventually rendered the plane uncontrollable)
I already had three original EROS oxygen masks, so next thing was to make them operational. The first idea was to buy an air compressor and distribute compressed air among the three masks. However, air compressors distributing breathing air (instead of e.g. supplying paint brush equipment) needs to be free of oil and would not simply fit inside the cockpit itself. A friend of mine pointed out to a much simpler solution: how about using a common diving air bottle with compressed air inside?
That solution actually worked, thanks to the friendly crew of the Tauchsport Käser AG (TSK) in Bern, which by coincidence sits quite close to my home. I now have a regular diving air bottle filled with regular air at 200 bar pressure, a first stage distributor, which regulates the pressure to 4.5 bar and three customized air pipes supplying the three EROS oxygen masks. The diving bottle fits well in the first officer corner of the cockpit and can be easily recharged at the TSK diving shop. The two original EROS smoke goggles also come in handy, of course. The air in the bottle should last for around 30 minutes if three people use their mask in regular (non-emergency) mode.
From left to right: Diving air bottle and pressure regulator, EROS oxygen mask, EROS smoke goggles
After fixing one last air leak at the oxygen mask container, a few minutes breathing through the mask demonstrated, that the setup works as expected. Now, let’s do the emergency situation simulation …
WAIT: Where is the smoke?`Here …
This is the little handheld smoke machine Lensgo Smoke B, actually intended for movie sets or smoky caipirinhas, but it is well able to fill a Boeing 737 cockpit in a few minutes.
So my 10 year old son and I did a full Smoke in the Cockpit test yesterday and it was a hit. After a regular take off from Zurich Runway 28 and SID VEBIT4W I climbed to FL150 while my young copilot tested the five point safety harness and made sure his oxygen mask did fit his head. After around 2 minutes at FL150 I have started the smoke machine, we both put on the oxygen masks and smoke goggles and I tried to follow the “smoke in the cockpit” non-normal procedure checklist in Chapter 8.8 of the Quick Reference Handbook. It became clear that the fire was not controllable and not in the cockpit itself. I initiated a rapid descent to around 7000 feet and programmed the ILS RWY 14 into the FMS. The situation became quite uncomfortable altough the air we breathed was clean. I also realized that I could not speak to my copilot due to the mask. Connecting all the microphones, headsets and cockpit speakers through the audio control panels is actually my next project, watch out.
The landing was uneventful, although we were a bit fast (170 kts and flaps 15), since I decided to take a shortcut to get the smoky bird down to earth as quickly as possible. Evacuation was started as soon as the aircraft halted on the runway. Was lots of fun! See yourself …
It took about 30 minutes to empty the cockpit from the smoke again and I did not find any remains of the smoke oil so far. So: to be repeated!