Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
I have a distant memory of doing a run-up (on all 4) on a cold night-shift at LHR around 1975 following an engine change on a Merchantman (a good exercise in putting one's faith in brakes and chocks
Though presumably with the prop blades fully feathered, so you're not going anywhere.
Unlike a jet engine test - particularly the Comet at LHR just a few years before you, which suddenly lunged forward as Viscount chocks had been incorrectly used on it, striking the hangar doors in front of it and bringing them down on the tail of G-ARPI which happened to be inside. Poor old Papa India, not its first mishap (it also was the aircraft which lost its tail in the Ambassador accident), and not its last, being of course the subsequent Staines accident aircraft. I believe an initial investigation was to thoroughly check its multiple repairs to be sure that they had nothing to do with the accident.
Meanwhile, at the same time I was at university in Edinburgh. This was before the current main runway was opened, when 12/30 was the main runway. Crosswind to the prevailing wind and not too long. The airport authority and BA said that Tridents were impossible on it, and the Vanguard had only a limited life left, which was a principal justification in the early 1970s for the new runway. However, once approved Tridents were slowly filtered in, and had fully taken over well before the new runway opened. I think the last BA passenger Vanguard flight was in summer 1974, actually only just from BEA into the BA era by a matter of weeks (did the passenger aircraft even ever get BA titles ?). Anyway, up at Edinburgh Castle in the city centre, about 6 or 7 miles from the airport, you could quite readily hear on a summer evening a Vanguard at the airport, particularly manoeuvring on the ramp. It was the only such aircraft you could hear. Once I was out there, at the old terminal on the eastern side. A Vanguard came in and swung round, no airbridges then, and the noise inside the terminal building was quite deafening. Just what was it about them, engines or the square-bladed De Havilland props (I suspect the latter). For anyone who remembers its contemporary the Britannia (Dowty props), the noise difference was extraordinary.