Fokker 100 fans

[finallyflying]

Do we have any F100 experts here?

If you fly this airplane, you may like me, have heard as many theories as the type designator as to the operation of the aircon fans.

So, we have 'Econ', 'Pack', and 'Cabin' fans.

Ultimately, (my theory) it would appear that in essence, they can be seen as a "1, 2, 3" level setting for the flow of air through the airplane, ie. Everything off, level 1;
econ off but the other 2 on, level 2,
'Pack' off, level 3, etc. etc.

Is this correct?

Is it ok to turn everything off in flight? (Thats my personal preference from a noise perspective)

Would be very pleased to gain some knowledge on this topic.

Thanks.

[Graybeard]

The Fo-100 is just further evidence that Europeans really don't deeply understand hot weather. The list includes A320, BAe-146, Jaguar and Mercedes.

Mexicana leased ten of them from GPA, with the small A/C packs. They became known as flying sardine cans. The SLF cooked until they got to cruise. The cooling air piped behind the panel to the instruments was already at 55C, as it had passed through the avionics bay first. The result was high failure rate of the instruments.

GB

[Dani]

I agree, the cooling performance is not very great in hot summer conditions. That's because in Europe it isn't as warm as in Mexico...

Packs and recirculation fans are two different things, and afaik every airliner has the same concept (maybe 787 is different): You take bleed air, drive the packs with it, out comes cool air. Because not all air is vented outside, part of it will be reused and blown into the cabin again, after going through some filters. These blowers are called recirculation fans.

In the F100, there are two different fan groups, one for the cabin and one for the cockpit. In some cockpit versions they are called cockpit and cabin, in some 1 and 2.

Economy is a reduced cooling by the air conditioning. Has nothing to do with the recirc fans. When button is selected, you get roughly 70% of the cooling performance. In our company, we start using ECON when 60 pax or less.

hth,
Dani

[CariocaCanuck]

FWIW..........being a piece of SLF myself I have never noticed what you would call a hot (or even warmer than usual) pax cabin on the F-100's I have flown on..........and that is over some 100 flights in Brasil with TAM, before they retired the aircraft.

[Piltdown Man]

Fokker were one of those companies that tried to have an option for everybody. The "fit" I have been used to had two pairs of recirculation fans and option to use ECON on the packs to minimise bleed air demand. We also had a local "mod" of a fan extraction system in the rear of the cabin to help with ground cooling on hot days when we also shut blinds on the sunny side and turned off the recirculation fans (even if just for the peace and quiet). The APU was only just up to job on hot days as were the packs. But aircraft equipped with the RR type APU and "Tropical" packs are apparently the Bee's knees, but we never got to see any of these.

Standard button settings for flying was everything "Dark" ie. no ECON (unless very small Pax numbers) and all recirculation fans on.

PM