Abort Abort!!!

Had my first aborted takeoff yesterday as well as my first heavy and high takeoff. It was an interesting day. The abort came on the first take off of the day. It was my leg and my takeoff. As we took the runway, everything was normal. We ran our runway items checklist and the captain handed off control of the aircraft to me. As we were cleared for take off, I advanced the power levers to take off power and released the brakes. We started accelerating normally and just after the captain called "airspeeds alive" (around 60 kts or so) I heard him say "Abort Abort!!!". It took me a second or so to react to the abort call, its not something you hear very often. I reduced the power levers to idle and deployed the airbrakes and started braking as per the memory items checklist. We had plenty of runway ahead of us and we were not going that fast, so it was pretty much a non-event. Turns out the captains attitude indicator inop flag appeared. So after taxiing clear of the runway, we brought it back to the hangar for the mechanics to take a look at. Turns out the number 1 inverter had tripped off line and we were going to have to MEL it to continue on the trip. We took care of the associated paperwork and reviewed the procedures and blasted off again about an hour later.

The second interesting occurrence of the day took place in Qeretaro, Mexico. This was to be my first no flaps take off in a Falcon. The airport is at a very high altitude of 6400ft above sea level. This high altitude seriously degrades performance. At these altitudes, the aircraft does not perform nearly as well as it would at sea level. So there are different techniques that are applied to flying the plane as well as some performance penalties that we must adhere to. There are several factors that we had going in our favor last night that allowed us to complete the flight with all cargo on board. First, the runway was 11,300 feet long. Second, the temperature was not warm. Had it been a few degrees C warmer, we would have had to leave some freight behind. After loading up 3,300 pounds of freight and a splash of fuel, we were sitting at our max take off weight for the current conditions. According to the books, we were to do a flaps zero take off with a V1 of 139, we would need 10,500 ft of runway and 29 seconds to 100kts. (A typical V1 is in the low 120's, usually we wont need more than 6000 ft of runway and 15-20 seconds to 100kts) It was the captains leg so he was flying. We did a static run (bring the engines to full power before releasing the brakes a.k.a short field t.o.) and released the brakes. The usual kick in the pants was noticeably absent and the fat heavy bird slowly started to accelerate. After what seemed like an eternity, there was the 80kts cross check call out. Then after a few more seconds the 100kts clear panel call. A quick glance of my timer showed 27 seconds to 100 kts. (This tells me the plane is making sufficient power to make it to V1 and rotation) After 10 very long seconds and almost 3/4 of the 11,300 ft runway behind us, I made the V1 call. At this point we are going, no matter what. I call V1, VR, Rotate, V2 in succession. They were all within a knot or so. The captain started to rotate. The plane was definitely not itself. It seemed to squat on the runway and not want to become airborne. By this time the yellow lights on the runway were whizzing by and we were running out of runway fast. The fat bird finally lifted off the runway and began its slow climb away from terra firma. I sat there stunned for a second because I was amazed at how poorly the plane was performing. I quickly snapped out of it and continued with the after take off checklist. What a day. I learned a lot.