Gentlemen ...
I'd like to ask a technical question if I may. I'm not expecting my question to prompt specific stories ... But who knows !
I guess my question is more for our Air Loadmaster contributors ... But not exclusively.
With all these wonderful stories of delivering, dropping and transporting cargos various I'm intrigued as to the Weight and Balance calcs/processes adopted to ensure the Herc remained within CoG Limits. I'm familiar with basic W&B calcs in respect of training aircraft where essentially the only variables are the weight of the crew plus kit along with fuel load/burn rate. So all reasonably straight forward in terms of calculating Moment Arms and CoG movement etc.
Clearly the W&B processes for the Herc have evolved over time ... and I think that might make an interesting topic. I appreciate various W&B/CoG Limits will have been 'prescribed' by Boscombe, but as part of the pre-flight planning I assume all the W&B variables would need to be 'modelled' for the entire mission profile. In the early days I assume this was a manual task ... possibly automated these days. There also being the challenge of doing this under Op conditions with urgency.
Sorry if this is a bit 'anorak' but I'm genuinely interested and the story of how these processes have developed over time could be an important addition to this Thread.
Coff.