Originally Posted by ppppilot
Someone told me that the MD in air mode doesn't have steering, neumatic from the APU neither TO mode. Is that correct?
In
this post, and others. pichu17 talked about some aspects of air/ground sensing on the MD-80.
It appears that different functions that change behaviour between air and ground are controlled by individual relays triggered by nosegear (un)compression. So if one or more of them fail, there is no global "in the air"-condition, but some functions behave in their air mode, and others in their ground mode.
So, given that, as per above post,
- ground sensing for both RAT probe heating and Take-off configuration warning is controlled by the same relay,
- Takeoff-configuration warning is inhibited in the air,
- and
IF failure-in-air-mode of this relay was the reason for RAT probe heating on the ground
- and the relay as such was not fixed, but only the circuit breaker for RAT probe heating was pulled,
it follows that Takeoff configuration warning was inhibited.
Now if, for whatever reason, the flight crew did not select slats for take-off (others have calculated that flaps were probably not vital, a typical V2 being above slats-only stall speed), they would have been unaware of it during take-off.
Bernd