reccepuke - when a receiver aircraft disconnects from a tanker, it may cause a brief yawing moment to be applied to the tanker similar to a deliberate rudder doublet. In a normal tanker aircraft, the autopilot will merely return the aircraft to the original attitude it was in before the disconnect and will not excite any lateral stability mode. However, if the autopilot is slaved to heading and is also under the influence of full flight regime autothrottle, a transient yawing moment will cause a heading error to be sensed. My concern is that the A330 FBW system might then attempt to recapture the original heading rather than attitude and may also detect the change in speed resulting from the receiver's disconnect. Would these effects lead to an unpredictable and possibly divergent tanker flight path for the other receiver? I don't know - and I'm prepared to bet that Airboooooooos don't either. Too problematic to accept without a technology demonstrator programme? Definitely! Whereas none of these effects would concern a 767K.....
If the BA sourced 767K has 'heavy' RR engines then it will have benefitted from life time wing bending moment relief greater than its P&W or CFM powered siblings....
The podded TriShaw programme was an utter disaster which wasted millions of pounds. Dull procurement would be the description to apply to any other TriShaw tanker derivatives - the fast-jet customers aren't too pleased with the current ones and certainly wouldn't relish any more Lockheed Trimotor tankers!!
But what we should really be doing is asking Mr Boeing to include another couple of dozen in the USAF programme for the RAF - and TO HELL WITH PFI!!!!!!!!
[ 11 December 2001: Message edited by: BEagle ]