Originally Posted by
VictorGolf
Not only short ferries Chris. I remember getting on a VC-10 in the Seychelles to fly to Colombo and much to my surprise was invited up to Business or whatever it was called in those days, along with about 10 other passengers. Once in the cruise I was invited to retake my seat in steerage. The hostie was most apologetic but said "it's something to do with the trim". Is that why the Russkies always used to prop up the tail of the IL-62 when it was not loaded?
Unless you were asked to return up front for the landing, VG, I can't explain that. Presumably it was a standard VC10 (Type 1101), as I remember from day stops in the Seychelles in the early 1970s. OTOH, if it was a Super, I suppose there might have been fuel stuck in the fin tank for the T/O that could have been burned later en-route. But that's a guess: I don't know the fuel system on the Super.
Although the Standards were tail-heavy for an empty ferry, they were on the nose-heavy side at the beginning of long sectors with a full pax load; partly because the centre tank would be full. As i wrote in a previous post, that was always noticeable after top of climb, when the TPI needed to provide a lot of nose-up trim; i.e., more negative lift than usual. (The more negative lift that is being produced by the tail-plane, of course, the more positive lift has to be generated by the wing, increasing total drag.) Once the centre tank was empty, the situation was a lot better.
Our Type 1103s were combis, and I think we also used a tail strut when loading main-deck cargo via the freight door, which was forward of the wing. If you think about it, the first few pallets always end up at the back of the cabin, so we probably used them when loading and unloading our B707-320Cs as well. I can't remember.