Cron
I gazed long and hard at it (closest I ever got to the supreme lady) and noticed a series of mysterious ‘bolts’ sticking out of the rear edge of the rudder. One of the helicopter engineers present rubbed his beard thoughtfully and surmised they may be ‘static wicks’ – but nobody present was really sure.
Sounds like the helicopter engineer's guess was right, they'd be the static wick mountings.
Feathers McGraw
I assume that there must have been some sort of fuel control failure for a sub-idle N2 to establish with the engine lit.
Yes there was, that was the problem alright Feathers. I'd only heard an engine stuck in rotating stall during startup once; even on the flight deck it sounded like a tom cat with his gonads trapped in a vice, and we shut the thing down straight away. (The engine, not the tom cat
).
What steps were taken to prevent his happening again? Modification of the fuel control scheduling or something else?
It was mainly a case of increased vigilance during engine start; it was always noticable to see rotating stall clearance on startup as the N2 went past normal idle and then rolled back. As far as modifications go, I'd designed a modification to detect and alert the crew if rotating stall had not been cleared on startup, but it was felt to be too costly and complex, when increased vigilance by all could prevent the nasty event happening in the first place. (I suppose only one BA occurence in 27 years is not so bad, and if the automatics did their job you had no problem anyway). But now at least EVERYBODY was aware of the malignant consequences of not clearing rotating stall on startup; it was no longer just a phrase that we all learned in training, but scary reality.
Dude
