Originally Posted by
Checkboard
BUT
The “pull to CB to deploy the flaps a bit for better high alt cruise” was a stupid idea to anyone that gave it a moments thought. It meant that Boeing would have completely stuffed up the wing design for it to work.. and of course, when the idea was tested, performance was significantly worse, so anyone stupid enough to try it would know it didn’t work.
The slats were shown to deploy independently on failure of the jack, and that happened on other aircraft, despite Boeing’s assurances. The jack was never found on the accident aircraft.
Not sure I agree with one part of your statement. There is an STC that was done on another quite similar wing that resulted in a slight deflection of the TE flap in the flaps up configuration. Two effects resulted; the fowler flap translation resulted in an increase of wing area, in the inboard section of the wing and it increased camber. The camber increases CL,/AOA. area increases total lift. the outcome was an improvement in performance at altitude. That STC is still available for sale for the large transport. On a mid-size jet I still occasionally drive, it has a similar STC, where the camber is altered, along with area.
Pulling a breaker to get that effect is not a brilliant idea, but the effect, when obtained by a design, is reasonable.
Back in the day, we used to practice some stuff in the aircraft, some stuff like 2 engines out on one side for approaches and GA etc.. the sim we had at the time was a FBT and was not deemed acceptable for completing all training. One bright happy day we were tooling about burning tax dollars and the new engineer was in the seat, and the check engineer wanted to show the effect of an uncommanded light off on restart. We had engines shut down on almost every flight we did, and the one thing this plane was not short of was thrust, we could get to VNE with 2 engines shut down, at near sea level. So the Fuel/Ignition CB for the shutdown engine was pulled by the check engineer. when the engine was started up, the new engineer noted that as soon as the feather button was pulled out, the prop spun up, RPM went past 16% and the engine lit off, the new guy handled this happily and the engine accelerated up to normal RPM and stabilized. The newbie checked the breakers and confirmed that the #`1 F&I breaker was out. As we were discussing the implications of that, (the Fuel switch was still turned off.... ) the 3rd engineer walked up from the back, and reset the breaker.
"Engine Failure, #1!"
"Roger, Confirm the Engine... "
"Failure #1 Engine Confirmed...."
"Noted, E Handle #1 Please....."
"Confirm !", E Handle 1 Confirmed....",
"E Handle Pulled".
Coffee break time.
The rest of the flight was quiet, the 3rd engineer sat back in despondency, the check engineer was not much happier.
The newbie did good, and never let anyone pull breakers on his plane.
Stuff happens.