Man, Tough Crowd... Tough crowd tonight....
Well Guppy, so you guys didn't like my super secret mission drama queen characterization huh?
Fair enough. Just because a guy has to clear a TS and fly into a hot zone to pick up hazzard pay, you're not going to cut him any slack. I supposed you wouldn't be impressed with my dessert shield and storm medal either.
I didn't think so. It doesn't much impress me either. But the women in my thirties were convinced I was either a secret spy or a decorated veteran.... Who was I to destroy their need for mystery and intrigue?
Do they still even hand those out anymore?
If I had to guess guppy, I'd say you're a former management pilot. If you still did it, you wouldn't have time to hang out on a rumour board here and police people's war stories (no offense.) This board is just entertainment anyway. In light of the exact tower quote, I will concede the V1 analysis to you; aborting past V1 for (presumably) compressor stalls (if that's what happened) is bad news from a book standpoint only; not a PIC standpoint; the PIC is the only one who only can assess and make that decision. The Air France Concorde in Paris comes to mind. Statements using "always" and "never" are wrong about 90% of the time. So I retract my happy-hour "only a fool keeps flying" comment.
Do you have much experience in the third world on runways where you must not use the taxiways because they aren't stressed for the weight? Doing 180's on less than 150 foot wide runways in the dark can be done if you use the differential technique. The 747 with body gear steering activated, differential brakes and differential power used will turn a lot tighter than your "Book" figure of 154 feet. It will turn in about 125-135 feet if you're light as I recall. It's damn hard on the airframe. I didn't crack a window, but our check captain did during acceptance tests. Of course this also wrecks a set of tires too, but during a war or a profitable charter who cares. The dollar margin mitigated it.
I think you're also right about the body gear inop or off risking a cracked windscreen, it's been eighteen years since I flew 74's. I just know that when we pushed two up on one side and jammed the opposite brakes with full tiller the thing would turn in way less a radius than your book number and we were concerned about cracking the window and scrubbing the mission. Every operator is different however, perhaps they don't allow the captain any real command authority were you work. Or perhaps your airframes were too decrepit to do this. Or perhaps you just weren't aware it could be done.
Only had one slam into reverse climbing out of 180 on the 74. The reverser sleeve and the fan blocker doors and part of the cowling rained down over Brooklyn one night (metal fatique.) Other than that I'll have to defer to your greater number of runway failures. You sure seem to have a lot them!
We had lots of compressor stalls that weren't worth aborting for as I said, (they sound a lot different than the toilet seat falling down or the S/O's metal logbook hitting the floor; kind of a muffled mortar firing noise.) If you're heavy and you're taking off on a runway with less than 10,000 feet and negligible stop margin your pallet weighing must never make mistakes like our did.
Fly safe!
pac - out