FJJP wrote:
And yes, a 90KIAS approach would induce an almighty high pucker factor!!!!!
I am afraid that a single channel autoland in anything less than Cat 1 would produce a similar reaction in me! I do not recall that the 10b autopilot had any dual mode associated with "alnd prime" which would have made the failure case interesting to say the least. As a general rule, nowadays, single channel sytems are limited to Cat 2 manual landing (DH 100' RVR 300m). Anything below that requires dual autopilot. All low vis ops (RVR >550m) require in addition, supplementary lighting, which of course we did not have in the 60/70s. An added difficulty would have been the limited visual cutoff from the Vulcan. This would have made the visual segment of a Cat 2 very difficult and a lower approach speed would certainly have exacerbated the problem.
Things have come a long way though. I had a slightly bizarre event a couple of months ago. My destination, a Cat 1 airfield, was below limits with an RVR of 450M so I landed instead at the alternate where the RVR was 125M. We now have the technology.
YS