Midland 331 - what are you going to dream up next! I felt ancient enough with your Midland DC-9-15 thread
Surprised Heathrow Director has only taken you back to the 747-100 and the early P&W failures. Now I feel even more ancient as I was in a well known detention centre near Slough a long time ago
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I remember Clipper 1 or was it 2 and 101 or maybe 102 coming overhead when we were being instructed and just deafening the place. They were 707-320's. An then it would be followed by a Teeny Weeny 70 at about the same height - they had never reached an Alt let alone flight level. The VC.10's and Super 10's seemed quieter which was strange - or is it just that I have only heard Stage 2 707's and DC-8's opposed to pure RR Conways during the current century
I used to live in Copthorne and the old man used to depart to Nairobi at about 20:00 in the VC.10 - the house shook! He also flew 70's and hardly ever heard him. Came out of EGLL one night of 28L in a 707 and we were 2,000 by the end of the runway headed for Epsom....empty positioning flt
Oh the days of the Jump Seat!
Back to original; Seaboard DC-8's didn't climb that badly - until they got the stretch ones. National and no doubt HD remembers, were hilarious on the R/T when they started inbound from MIA - remember one guy asking what the strange black & white animals were when he was about 3 miles out on 10R. Great southern drawl accent.
The best climbers I reckon were the Cedar Jet and Swissair CV.990's, but they were never going that far. On a summer evening when routeing via MID, you could see the smoke almost to SFD
Would not be appreciated in today's world ....but I'd give so much to see one of those fly again.
If down at Gatwick in those days, Russ Hill could be a scary place, but the best dep I saw was an American Flyers 727-100 off 09.....how the gear missed the nearest obstacle on the railway line still baffles me and he was going to JFK. (Think they had LR tanks). There were some great planes/airlines down there in those days; Ariana and SAM DC-6's, Capitol, TIA, Saturn, ONA, World, Pacific Western, Canadian Pacific-first time I got inside a stretch 8.....okay that's enough! Off 27 at Gatwick, when it was still a shorter runway than today, a lot 707's would line up on the runway heading 090 deg and the nosewheel cranked round.
By the time the 747's started, lessons got quiter and on four P & W's they managed to climb. One of the first take-offs I managed on the J/S with the old man in an early 74-200 with JT9D-7QS was sensational but we were light on fuel.
Now that I think about it, Vanguards didn't climb too well and were quite noisy.