Gawd, I was hoping someone would come up with the correct sequence that caused the momentary loss of electrics, which I thought was a well known trap for young players. It wasn’t a frequent occurrence, but certainly happened a number of times when I was paxing on the -9, and I was shown why it happened in the sim. during my conversion. (It was a well enough known trap that the checkie made a point showing it to us.) However, that was many years ago, and my memory could be totally off.
As I recall, it was the FO’s (or PNF’s?) failure to switch the main AC busses from APU to engine generators in his after start scan. I’ve probably got that utterly wrong – standing by for correction from people with better memories than mine. Did the dark occur when the APU was switched off on pushback after start, or, (as my faded memory has it), just after takeoff, when some PFM* box automatically kicked in after gear (or flaps?) were selected up? It was a classic ‘finger trouble’ pitfall, and maui, I doff my hat to you that in 6000 hours, you not only never fell for it, but flew with myriad FO’s who did not do so as well.
Edited to add that I think one of the many air-ground sensor squat switches on the MLG was the catalyst for this event.
* For its vintage, the -9 had quite a few PFM boxes. (PFM = Pure F.. Flaming Magic.)
Last edited by Wiley; 9th January 2009 at 19:52.