As a P.S., TWO of the ETP students thanked ME !
Sometimes one can take some elements of what had been found on earlier aircraft.
Our Chief Pilot ( a Long-haul man) wondered why his two short haul fleets seemed always to fly the same way , apparentlly regardless of todays conditions of wsight and weather...
" Why don't they fly TUDAY'S Aircraft ?"
An earler observation that the Hermes 4a normally climbed for 32 or 33 minutes to initial cruising level from most near sea level airfields might be helpful. ( NO performance information was available to me. Rumour had it that any such information was safely locked in the London office (opposite Harrods)
Graphs showing Optimum Altitude for weight and temperature were prepared and issued for each or the two short haul fleets with some a little lower ( a shorter climb time) for the shortest routes.
Many of the initial crews for the short haul fleet had flown (as I had ) on the cross Channel car ferry, where cruising levels were fixed,,, at !000ft. from Lydd tu Le Touquet and then 1500ft back. to Lydd. To Ostend, Calais and Dinard we used different heights,
( The A/P could not be used below 1500 ft And up to 12 round trips in a day meant that we got a fair amount of practice.... Ideal for Newbies in either seat.. PF was normally in the Left seat. ... If he were incapacited, seat changing ii flight would have been difficult. Think of a llarge body in a cramped space...)
Much later I was able to ask the Makers perfomance people at their base " How do you define Long Range Cruise on these, your aircraft.?" They said " When your climb has decreased to 100 ft/min."
.. But we carried no drop out oxygen, so that was that !
LT
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Last edited by Linktrained; 28th Jun 2015 at 18:50.
Reason: Keyboard errors