Originally Posted by
Hobo
I was P3 on a LHR-GLA trip, when climbing through about FL150, I noticed a slight whistling coming from the back of the flight deck. This gradually got louder, and I drew it to the attention of P1/P2. They thought they could both hear it and P1 scanned the pressn panel and said 'probably a loose door seal - put it in the book for GLA to look at'.
It gradually got louder. Passing about FL230, I noticed that I had left the manually operated dump valve fully open - left open for T/O and closed shortly therefafter. Very slowly, to prevent any surging, I wound it closed with my right foot. Sure enough the noise stopped. Passing about FL280 I asked P1 & P2 if they could still hear the noise, as I couldn't detect it any more.
They couldn't and commented that 'these door seals often sort themselves out'.
I then owned up, when P1 said he had done exactly the same as P3 on a Comet - but on that occasion, he hadn't noticed until the 'rubber jungle' appeared.
PMc, do you remember doing a block of work 28-31/1/80 including 5 CATIII approaches (@ LHR BFS & GLA), including, on one of the GLA's ex LHR 28R, #1 blowing up on rotation, with an incredibly long and loud graunching sound - we all thought the U/C had collapsed as I rotated - closing the R/W for an hour while it was swept of fan blades, with a subsequent 2 eng landing on 27L in about 800m? As if that wasn't enough, we ended the block with a night Malta! Apart from Malta, we reckoned we did't see the ground above 200' all week.
Yes indeed "A"...I remember that number 1 engine blowing up as you rotated, very well. I remember that the bang was so loud that I thought we had hit a vehicle. I also remember, after sorting out the close down drill and keeping an eye on your flying, that my ASI needle sat very nicely on the yellow bug...Not just nicely but EXACTLY in the centre of the yellow bug. I also remember that I was so impressed that I left the controls with you for the assymetric landing back at Heathrow and a very nice job you made of it. I still have a mangled turbine blade from the runway sweep up. The engineer gave it to me as we were doing all the paperwork, prior to moving over to the replacement aeroplane now full of our waiting passengers...Oh yes! I remember it well
