Originally Posted by
thetimesreader84
Not a salesman, but a driver in its later (white van) years. Where to begin?
134brat said "they designed the simplicity out of it" and that's certainly how it seemed in the pointy end. It felt like more than an update of the 748 (jump seated on one, once) and a long way from a clean sheet design.
Designed to be as quiet and fuel efficient as possible when the world wanted quick regional jets. Low wing design put limits on prop size, and a structure seemingly made from iron girders - good for strength, bad for payload.
First gen efis, which is good, but bespoke CRT's, and some strange electronic checklist (almost ECAM-lite) that never quite worked. Oh and every time a screen blew (almost a monthly event at one point) smiths had to make you another from scratch. Cockpit a strange mix of glass and parts robbed from the spares bin. Comm box from a Victor bomber, park brake from the comet, pressurisation controller from the vanguard, that required constant tweaking if you didn't want to blow your eardrums out.
Engine out climb was, quite frankly, terrifying. Legal, but only just. Enough time to make a cuppa while accelerating to flap retraction. 2 engines, well, you'd get turned out of the way of pretty much everything else on the airway, you were so slow. 240kt TAS in the cruise, if you were lucky.
Freighter had a sliding door (like a transit van) which would freeze shut if there was any moisture in a 30mi radius. To unfreeze it? Wait for spring...
Not enough elevator authority for flap 29 landings, meant you would have to trim in the flare. Never seen that before. Or since.
If you de-iced with (iirc) type 2 fluid, there was a real chance the tail would be aerodynamically blanked, meaning you wouldn't be able to rotate until something like Vr + 40.
Oh and everything that needs replacing was "fettle to fit". Using about 3 different size spanners (Imperial, Metric and Whitworth apparently).
not sure what BAe were thinking when they put this together. Surely a clean sheet design, or a "quick and dirty" re engine of the 748 would have been a better option? We might just have kept civil airliner production in the uk if that was the case. But, given BAe's record at project management, maybe not.
At least "Robbie" Robinson loved it. I liked it, it was my first type, but I was in no illusions as to its shortcomings.
Took me a long time to stop laughing.
But so true
Seems always in the UK aerospace industry, the objective was simply to build a brick ****house structure. Payload was never a requirement
Never flew it .
F50 was a good one though. For an outdated machine at the time ( late (90's) Fun to fly as well