PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - TEAL Electra single engine arrival at Nowra NSW
Old 25th Nov 2016, 10:32
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Beez51
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sydney
Posts: 18
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NZ Flyers,
Not quite a single engine landing for a RAAF C-130. Although I flew for the 'opposition' at the time, my recollection from back then was that there was in fact an incident somewhat earlier after another C-130E was test flown out of deeper level maintenance by Air New Zealand in Christchurch. One engine flamed out during the test flight and upon return to Christchurch a number of the other operating engines lost power and were not responding to the power levers. The aircraft captain ('Frenchy' if I remember correctly) did a great job and landed safely. At some stage during the landing roll one of the other engines flamed out and once off the runway I think they might have suffered another flame-out.

A97-172 was test flown successfully some time later, again out of deeper level maintenance in Christchurch and arrived back at Richmond. A short time later, it carried out a task possibly to Canberra and suffered a similar experience and managed to land at Canberra safely. I think it was just before Christmas and it certainly sat there for some time. Eventually the RAAF determined that the power losses were caused by the blasting medium used to clean the fuel tanks not being adequately removed from the tanks which resulted in some type of jelly forming in the FCUs. The investigation was not straightforward in that most of the evident passed through FCU and wasn't obvious in the fuel filters. No doubt the engines successfully restarted and operated normally when on the ground.

A number of years later the USAF experienced a similar problem with a couple of C-141 aircraft and I believe that the RAAF was able to assist them with what appeared to be a similar issue.

As far as I know the RAAF have not landed any four engine aircraft on less than two engines in recent times. A RAAF C-130H conducted a successful double asymmetric landing at Davis Monthan in the USA after starving Engine 1 & 2 of oil pressure during a jinking maneuver. A C-130E also conducted a successful two engine landing (3&4 out) after two unrelated problems, a turbine failure followed by an oil pump failure. Both captains now fly for Qantas. I have little knowledge of the C-130A except that the different pairing of engines for the hydraulic systems (1&3 and 2&4 instead of 1&2 and 3&4) resulted in a number of two engine landing caused by hydraulic system failures but these would not have been double asymmetric. I'm confident that a number of the more mature members may be able to update this.

I think if there is any current RAAF four engined aircraft that could maintain level flight on one engine it would be the C-130J. Although a little heavier and more draggy than the AP-3C it has 25% more thrust than its' T-56 powered brothers for the same 4700 Hp. Obviously to achieve level flight we would be talking light weight, lower altitudes, no drag devices and ~160K.

For Centaurus, in the sim, the C-130J glide approach does not sound anywhere near as exciting as the Viscount. This is all helped by keeping one inboard at 100% Np to maintain electrics and hydraulics and the other props either feathered or autofeathered.
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