I wonder if MikeRo is one of those whose lively hood is being threatened by this techno advance? More importantly where does he get all his mis-info from.
If a Percy or a Wokka can flash around at 50' and 140kts with only a very basic gps and a competant rhs guy with a 1/4 mil as it's sole nav aids please explain why a J with state of the art avionics, HUD, moving map display etc can't manage it at 250' As regards lookout it would appear that us "trolly dolly's" are going to have a much more involved role "up front" which is great news for us and as we cost much less than the two other sources of white noise on the K HMG will no doubt be happy as well.
Yes it can't use all it's seats because of vibration however I can only think of a couple of occasions during my one K tour when we even got close to a full seat fit so this is a bit of a red herring as well.
We flew back last night/this morning from kebab land in 6hrs 50, 20 tons of fuel at 24-28k and during this time discussed just about every subject you can imagine. The suggestion that pilots spend their entire time time fevereshly pushing buttond is c..p. Guys new to the a/c do find themselves stuck in the "green tunnel" for long periods of time however soon discover the wonders of the black magic box and end up almost as bored as your average classic crew as the workload is not that high.
Sorry MRO but your wrong. The beast is extremly capable and you will not find anyone currently operating it, bearing in mind we are all ex K operators, who will tell you any differant. Yes it has it's problems as do all a/c, we left a "k" today issuing F34 onto the dispersal quicker than the bowser could pump so the assertion that the classic is somehow more reliable is tosh.
anyway after being up for almost 24 hours it's time for bed said..........what was his name?
any spelling mistakes are "df" alcohol induced.