Hockham Admiral:
Many thanks for that. I flew the old girl for 6 years with the original owners and I do remember that we had to pay a lot of attention to LCNs. We often had to get permission from the airfield owners to let us in on a temporary basis when the published LCNs were too low.
Mind you, it never occured to anyone to let the tyres down a bit! I suspect that such a notion would simply not have been countenanced.
Did you know that the Belfast mainwheel tyre was the same size as the B-50 nose tyre? One of our aircraft blew four or five tyres landing at a SAC base in the USA one day. They managed to swop enough tyres around to get it on to the ramp. It then looked like they were in for a bit of a wait while they waited for the replacement tyres to be flown from UK.
An enterprising USAF Staff Sergeant in stores made the B-50 connection and found someone who had hundreds of them still in his store. The replacements were delivered in just a few hours!
As for being a great stopper and a poor goer, I could not agree with you more! The DC-10 was exactly the opposite.
Hockham Admiral:
Further to my last; your quoting "lowering" the tyre pressure to 120 psi got my curiosity so I have just dragged out my old Pilots Notes.
The normal tyre pressures quoted therein are:
Nose: 140 psi
Main: 120 psi
Tail: 100 psi
So if you lowered the mains to 120 psi, what pressure did Heavylift usually use?