I was an Electra co-pilot for Eastern Air Lines in 1966-1967. It was certified in the US for a three-man crew. The Electra Allison 501 turboshaft engines are a constant rpm engine. They had two speeds, one for flight and a 30% lower one for ground operation for noise reduction. The airplane had 115 VAC 400 cycle power with four direct coupled generators. Only one engine generator had a two speed gearbox to provide power for the whole aircraft on the ground at the ground RPM. Their were at least four different AC buses. Before takeoff, the three non-gearbox engines were shifted to flight RPM and the generators came on line and the flight engineer shifted the AC buses to these engines. Then the forth engine was shifted up. The reverse happened after landing. The FE was extremely busy. Everything on the aircraft was AC including the hydraulic pumps for the flight controls. Eastern had an accident at BOS where thousands of starlings were ingested right after takeoff and caused all the engines to surge in RPM and the AC generators all started tripping on and off the line due to automatic underfrequency protection. Due to loss of hydraulic power, the flight controls "froze" and the aircraft crashed. The forward cockpit floor under the pilots was raised a few inches and the rear edge of that had at least three flip up doors that protected the hydraulic bypass handles that allowed manual flight control. The FE sitting in the center position for TO was supposed to lift the doors and pull the handles if necessary. The bird ingestion happened too fast for that to occur. After that accident, on every TO, the doors were lifted to the open position to allow faster access to the bypass handles. I cannot imagine operation of this aircraft with a two-man crew. If the lower-speed ground RPM was abandoned, that would reduce a lot of the routine work but the FE panel was huge with all the hydraulic and electrical system controls.
Once the nacelle and wing was beefed up to prevent the "whirl mode" cause of three inflight break-ups, the aircraft was safe and reliable and a dream to fly. I think they seldom changed the brakes because of the massive reverse thrust available.
Last edited by lolder; 21st Dec 2016 at 13:16.