Originally Posted by
rog747
BUA flew in and out of Ndola - I think that was quite short
Yes, the first BUA VC10 - a Type 1103 later incorporated into BCAL after Caledonian took over BUA in 1970/71 - replaced Britannias on the weekly BR211 route Gatwick/Entebbe/Ndola/Lusaka-City/Salisbury in October 1964, arriving SAY on a Thursday afternoon and departing the following morning on the reverse route at about 08:00 local time. So the more demanding northbound departure from Ndola for Entebbe would have been at about 11:00 local,
WHBM?
A report from 1961 states that Rwy 10 at Ndola was 6650 ft long (and only 100 ft wide), with an elevation of 4166 ft amsl. That would still have applied in 1964/5, as the runway was not extended to its present 8250 ft x 150 ft until the late-1960s. In the absence of any figures for stopway and clearway, I'll assume conservatively that they were nil. So TOR, ED/ASD and TOD equal. The runway slope appears to be about 0.4% down.
Assuming still air with a temperature of 27C (ISA+20) - both conservative values - the Type 1103 T/O performance charts indicate a "D" value of 6700 ft, the most limiting parameter in this case, giving an RTOW of about 105.5 tonnes (37 tonnes below structural). Ndola/Entebbe flight time would be about 2 hours. In the absence of any quick-calculation fuel tables, I guess 20 tonnes would be a ball-park fuel figure, using Nairobi as the alternate. APS weight in a typical mixed-passenger configuration was, IIRC, about 70 tonnes, so a payload of 15 tonnes might have been achievable on that short sector.