Originally Posted by
er340790
Hope it wasn't a full flight - or it might be 200+ camp-beds in the hockey rink time.
Back when we were doing the final certification testing of the 747-8, it was discovered that GEnx-2B engines didn't like to start when it was really, really cold (~-30 F or below), and we needed to develop a fix, fast. GE brainstormed some software tweaks to the starting logic, and Iqaluit was the only place they could find cold enough that we could go to test to see if any of the tweaks worked.
We needed to cold soak the aircraft overnight so the entire flight test and mechanic crew (~50 people) spent the night there. We didn't max out the available hotel space, but it was close...
Oh yea, and one of the tweaks to the logic worked great - engines started right up.
While we were preparing for the test, one of the flight test pilots cracked that this was one of those places where "There is a beautiful girl behind every tree". Suffice so say there wasn't a tree to be seen (and little else besides snow). Best I could describe it was like being above timberline, but without the mountains (or much of any elevation change - just some small hills).