Albert Driver - that's not really fair, RA001 usually had engines installed, they just needed to be replaced frequently
. It was the early production 747s that often had 'cement block' engines installed
.
BTW, the last time I was on RA001 was when it was being used as the FTB for the 777 PW4000/112". We were going to do some engine running system checks but since we were not going to run above idle they didn't bother to position the aircraft into the wind We had a ~10 mph breeze up the tailpipe. The PW4000 was on position #2, and it started right up. But the JT9D engines on the other positions were so tired that 2 of the 3 wouldn't start with that mild tailwind - they kept hanging. We ended up having to shutdown and have the aircraft repositioned into the wind before we could get all four engines started
