You are in a foreign country, all by yourself, with people you don’t really know, and you’re going to live with them for the next 11 months. It’s only been three days since you arrived and your host dad asks you if you would like to drive a plane. What would your reaction be?
This actually happened to me and my reaction was like this: AAAAAAAAAA!
I was so happy and excited!!
But let me explain this a little better…
My name is Marina Benintendi (aka Mery), I’m an exchange student at Papio South and I’m from Albino, Italy, a suburb of Bergamo in the north of the country. I first arrived here on the 3rd of August, and by the 6th of August I was driving a plane simulator for the first time in my life.
My host dad, Douglas Johnson, was a military pilot and flew for almost 20 years of his life. While he was retiring from the military, he found out that a plane simulator was going to be built in Papillion, and he realized he could definitely get the job. So, he did.
We went to the CymSTAR, which is the place where my host dad works, and he showed me some pictures of the planes he used to drive.
The CymSTAR supports the first ACCS (Airborne Command and Control Squadron), an active United States AirForce unit, and they fly the E- 4B. This plane model is also known as the Nightwatch or the Doomsday plane. The ACCS has multiple missions, such as flying the secretary of defense around the world or providing direct support to the president.
The simulator can be flown by young pilots and engineers that are still in the process of learning. Those who work there sometimes bring family members or close friends to try the simulator, but nobody else can use it.
We headed to the simulator room and what I saw was not what I was expecting to see: there was a big white cube in the middle of a very large room. And I thought to myself: “How can that be an airplane simulator?”
When we first entered the simulator I was shocked because there were so many buttons and switches that I didn’t know what to look at.
In the simulator with me there was Douglas, who helped me to understand what all the buttons were and taught me how to drive. There was Adeline, my host sister, who was there to support me in this new experience.
One of Douglas’s colleagues turned on the simulator and everything immediately lit up.
Douglas was an incredible pilot and he is a great teacher. He showed me all the commands, he told me what I was supposed to do and then we started flying.
Even though I was just flying a simulator, it seemed like I was flying a real plane.
It is harder than I thought I would have been, and there are so many things you have to pay attention to.
Landing is definitely the hardest part. I tried to land multiple times, and with Dough’s help I made it! But the first time, I have to be honest, I crashed the plane. There is a small screen between the two front seats, similar to the screen you usually find in a car. It shows the land in green and the sky in blue, and it has a cross in the middle of it. When you are landing, you have to try to keep the cross right in the middle: the horizontal line that you see between the land and the sky has to line up with the horizontal line of the cross.
Douglas set the simulator to good weather conditions, because I’m not an expert at all. With the simulator you can have any kind of weather condition: snow, storm, rain, fog, wind… Pilots use the simulator to learn how to drive real planes, so it has to include every situation you can get.
And you can also drive wherever you want: Paris, London, Chicago, Omaha, Australia, China, Mexico…
After we finished using the simulator, Douglas showed me how they can get all over the world. There is a big projector that surrounds the front of the white box. And based on where you choose to fly and what weather conditions you choose to fly in, the computer is going to project it on the projector.
I had so much fun driving the plane and it was interesting to learn about something I’ve never really thought about before. I challenged myself to do something difficult and it ended up in a great way, better than I thought it would have been.
For me, it was a great and fun way to start my exchange year and to get to know my host dad better! I probably wouldn’t have done it in my own country, but being an exchange student makes you step out of your comfort zone everyday and makes you do thighs that you wouldn’t normally do, without thinking about it too much. It is a great lesson I’ve been learning.
