Originally Posted by
ATSA1
I often wonder about a "Super Super VC10" with 2 RB211s..especially when they were reborn as tankers...
It would have been far more fuel efficient, maybe not as fast, but a quiet VC10? Nah...the lovely noise of those 4 RR Conways were part of the attraction!
When I was on holidayat Ascension, an engineer told me that a VC10 had a similar fuel burn to the Tristars just coming into service, but the Tristar could carry a lot more payload!
I can still remember waking up in the middle of the night in Crawley, hearing the ghostly howl of the British Caledonian VC10s winding down... Luvverly!
Yes, the unique sound of four Conways idling after landing and then spooling down at some tropical aerodrome - so often at night - was the cue to alight from the crew transport and go to work!
Returning to the TS's original question: after the fuel crisis of 1973, the high fuel flows on the VC10 did become a commercial disadvantage. The mature B707-320Cs of BCAL (British Caledonian) with their JT3D turbofans had far superior payload-range capability out of major sea-level airfields, of course, and the days of our handful of early-production VC10s were numbered. But, unlike the Seven-ohs in the days before we introduced engine over-boost and increased V-speeds, they were able to do Nairobi/Gatwick direct. Their superior short-hot-high performance provided our commercial department with occasional charter opportunities, including some Greek islands.
In January 1974 I was P2 on a charter flight with 150 pax from Hurn to Tenerife-North. (Our a/c were "Standard" Type 1103s, which had the "super" wing-chord extension and the "combi" freight door.) IIRC, at that time the Bournemouth runway was only 6000 ft, and TCI (as it was then) was nearly 4 hours. Understandably, the skipper elected to do both legs but allowed me to handle the subsequent empty-ferry BOH/LGW. Because it was not one of our regular aerodromes, "Graduated" T/O thrust (using the assumed-temperature method) was not permissible. So rated thrust was used and, as I throttled back (the Conway is an "N2 engine" for in-flight power settings) to climb thrust passing 2000 ft and called for flaps and slats retraction, the VSI was top of scale so I had to start the push-over immediately to avoid busting the initial cleared altitude of 6000 ft and continue reducing thrust to avoid exceeding the flap-limiting speed..
Another slight advantage of the VC10, with its high, tail-mounted engines close together, was that it could operate on runways narrower than the standard 150 ft. So we introduced a schedule to Blantyre-Chileka (via Nairobi) on behalf of Air Malawi, who bought our last remaining VC10 at the end of 1974. IIRC, Chileka width was/is 90 ft. That advantage over the B707 and DC-8, not to mention the wide-bodies, became less important when Malawi switched its main airport to a new capital city; Lilongwe.