To which aircraft does this cockpit belong?

[EMF]

Hello everyone, a total newbie so please be nice :)

I was going through some old photos today which I inherited from my Dad in 1996. There's one that's always puzzled me. It's of a cockpit. I believe he took it himself probably in the late 60s or the 70s. It would probably have been taken in an airport in England - perhaps Heathrow. Mum and Dad didn't travel abroad until later in life.

I would love to know which aircraft it was taken in. And as a wildside bonus who are the pilot, co-pilot and navigator?

If anyone can identify the plane I will love you to bits forever.

Here it is - many thanks

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a127/Miss-Marple/img447.jpg

[Mad (Flt) Scientist]

Looks like a Trident (http://www.cwdflight.co.uk/cos05.html) of some kind.

[Chille Con Carnie]

Good to see an Adult on board (FE) ?

[whatbolt]

defo a Trident

[EMF]

Thank you everyone!

But CCC - I don't understand your remark about the Adult and FE?

Any further clues as to when and where it was taken

[Mad (Flt) Scientist]

But CCC - I don't understand your remark about the Adult and FE?

He's noting approvingly that the aircraft is old enough to have a Flight Engineer aboard - an 'adult' to stop the pesky teenagers in the front seats breaking thigs too much.

(Akin to the myth of the perfectly automated cockpit, with a big button, a pilot and a dog. The pilot's job is just to press the button. The dog's job being to bite the pilot if he tries to press the button)

[EMF]

Mad (Flt) thank you for that explanation ~ROFL~ and my apologies for classing the Adult as a navigator instead of giving him his proper title of FE :)

[Rainboe]

Tridents flew with 3 pilots, except Northeasts which used a Flight Engineer betwixt Newcastle and Heathrow. If it was BEA, it was 3 pilots. BEA did not employ F/Es. The unique controls and window combination give the type away, though which model Trident an ex-groundgripper can come up with. We'd need far better resolution than that.

[EMF]

Thanks Rainboe. I can do a much better resolution scan of the cockpit and then crop to a certain area so that I don't blow the picture sizing rules. I have scanned it big enough to see that the Adult (FE or third pilot - the one with three white/four dark bars on his shoulder at the back) wears a wedding band on his hand.

Which area could I zoom in on and crop to aid specific model (1,2 or 3) identification?

Dad did work for some time in the late 60's 70's for Westland Helicopters in London.

[Mad (Flt) Scientist]

How about scanning at v high res and putting it on one of the web's free photo hosting services, and then just post a link here? That way the PPrune photo size rules wont matter

[EMF]

How about this? It's about 1 meg in size.

Trident Cockpit (http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a127/Miss-Marple/trident1.jpg)

[Gainesy]

Hmm, Westlands eh? Did he travel to Aberdeen much, N Sea oil support?

[Flap40]

Reg on co-pilots panel is G-ARPR which was a series 1 according to G-INFO

[one11]

Reg on co-pilots panel is G-ARPR which was a series 1 according to G-INFO

If so it ended up with the Fire Department at Glasgow Airport after BA finished with it in '83.

[411A]

Note the nav display in the center of the instrument panel.
This looks like a Decca Navigator to me, and during trials in the late 1960's in California, we had one of these fitted to one of our aircraft.
A neat bit of kit, it was, very accurate.

[Rainboe]

Yes, the Tridents had Decca. Apparently for its time, it was amazingly accurate. Well served in North Western Europe for Decca stations. However, the Trident was flown by 'the enemy' at the time, though eventually we in BOAC were forcibly amalgamated with them and eventually the animosities passed into history! For the management, it must have been like merging 2 kennels of Rottweilers and Dobermans, but it didn't take that long before all was sweetness and light (about 20 years!).

The Tridents had red wings. The ad campaign was 'you could set your watch by the time the red wings passed overhead (whilst you were smiling up in the air watching them)' which caused tremendous mirth to the crews involved. The old BEA and BOAC crew checkins were totally separated. I would not have dared walking into the BEA pilot checkin- there was an effective state of war, not helped by rude comments being made about the unreadability of the various daft BEA logos on the fin. What fun it was in those days!

[dixi188]

Nav kit is DECCA HARCO I think.
We used to have a DECCA DANAC (very similar) on a Jetstream and also I installed one in a Hughes 500D. Very accurate but the guy flying the helicopter miss set his altimeter and tripped over some power lines in low cloud and crashed. He survived with just bruises.

[Rainboe]

Left Seat- A Leach sadly deceased after car crash in poss Zambia and poor hospital treatment.
Right Seat- C Clarkson, graduate of College of Air Training, Hamble 1974 (where the best airline pilots in the world came from), so dates picture sometime after that. Not showing his rings, so can't provide further date clues
3rd pilot- working on that. Clues a bit sparse!

Whatever is the big artistically curved lever to the left of the Decca? Speedbrake?

[Props]

The lever to the left of the Doppler not Decca is the Parking Brake.
The Map followed the track and Groundspeed from the Doppler.
The trickey bit in the third seat was not to have your tea spilt when P2 moved his seat back

[Rainboe]

Thankyou! What was that park brake lever- directly connected by cable? Must be the biggest one flying. That moving map is just Doppler? BEA did some work with Decca, didn't it? We had Doppler on the VC10- really only gave you digital L/R and DTG, no map at all. Hopeless over the sea, reasonably accurate (I think) over terrain with features. Not the best for an aeroplane that crossed oceans!

BEA would put the meal tray on the back of the copilot's seat. Designed so the 3rd pilot stabs himself in the face whilst trying to eat breakfast on final approach into Paris when the copilot adjusts his seat for landing?

[matspart3]

A Google search of the registration revealed this little snippet:-

Wfu 31/3/81 and moved to Teesside 16/9/81 for fire training. This aircraft, which made the world's first fully-automatic landing of a commercial airliner with fare-paying passengers on 10 June 1965, as Bealine 343 from Paris to London, should surely have been chosen for preservation.

[one11]

Matspart3

You are correct that RPR ended up at Teeside not Glasgow as in my post - I misread an old print reference.

[Props]

Sorry I guess it was the Airbrake Lever, In BEA we had Decca Navigator on Viscounts and Comets but this Doppler driven Map on all 3 Marks of Trident.Apart from the Channel and the North Sea we did not go over Water much.

[Rainboe]

It's interesting looking back at how things have changed in the last 50 years. All the separate navigation systems competing against each other, Decca, Loran, ILS, VOR, Consol, Astro, ADF......all swept away or being swept away by INS, GPS. Even flight instrumentation affected by INS and GPS. These navigation systems had brief flowering moments and then passed into history. Meanwhile the art of navigation evaporates into a few lines of code! I was struck (and slightly alarmed) flying on airways across the Bay of Biscay far from anywhere that oncoming traffic passed on our exact track- not a few metres left or right, but directly overhead or underneath. Accuracy like this is of no benefit to aviation safety unless you have it on final approach on GPS procedures.

[pjac]

Whilst BEA didn't employ F/Es, Channel Airways did and they had Tridents, a few foreign operators had Tridents with F/Es-some operating in to the UK.

[Rainboe]

That picture was definitely a BEA (Back Every Afternoon) operation. We're trying to identify which Bravo stand at LHR it's on! Having a bit of trouble with the third pilot.

[Juliet Sierra Papa]

I can recall Cyprus Airways and I think Sterling? Memory fade !!!

JSP

[COF&COE]

P3 has that old style metal-bound Tech Log on his knee. Weighed a ton.
Also certain G-ARPR was BEA (sister ship of the infamous PI) which means P3 definately a pilot.
Northeast's 1E's (the ones with F/Es) were all G-AVYsomething-or-other, if I remember.

[Doctor Teeth]

The curved lever to the left of the map display is indeed the airbrake lever.
The parking brake is the shorter lever with the button in the middle. It's to the right of the airbrake lever and below the map display.
Both of these levers were cable connected although I have a hazy memory of airbrake cables having a metal tubed section.

[Preppy]

I doubt whether this picture was taken at Heathrow. I think that the photo may well have been taken at the end of the flight.

The ADFs have been selected and displayed on the RMI, indicating a QDM of around 060/240 degrees. Thus an airport like EGAA/BFS or EGPF/GLA which have runways in that approximate direction might be more likely. The engines are still warmish, the APU is running and it appears that it had been the Captain's sector by the position of the autopilot selector.

If only the the doppler map display was a bit clearer and then the a/c position could be verified.

[Rainboe]

Did this thing have those funny BEA ADF dials where the other pilot could completely take over your display leaving you to sit there trying to work out WTH your needles were saying? I have to confess I never understood it when I went on the 748 and used to sit there in stunned horror because it was saying the wrong thing. Eventually plucking up courage to say something to the Captain, he'd laugh at me and explain he'd taken over my instrument. I just used to think 'why? Bloody leave it alone! It's mine! How the hell can I navigate if you switch it over to you?' We never did that sort of thing in BOAC. I could never understand WTH it was supposed to achieve.

[Flap40]

It could be what is currently stand 23 at GLA. The true heading of the stand is approx 075 and the variation in the late 1970's would give a mag' heading of approx 085 which is similar to the heading on the RMI. Other clues are the dark coloured brickwork visible behind the co-pilot and the lamp post which still stands.

I could be very wrong though!

[LAS1997]

If any of you want to see a 'live' Trident flight deck, visit the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust (FAST) museum at Farnborough airport.

They have a Trident three (G-AWZI) flight deck which has been fully restored with instrument, ceiling, floor lighting all working now along with some of her systems such as the stick shaker, engine stall warning horn and fire bell.

It has its own dedicated website WWW.G-AWZI.CO.UK (http://www.G-AWZI.CO.UK)

The FAST museum is open every weekend (1000-1600) and entrance is FREE. Located at Trenchard House, 85 Farnborough Road, Farnborough, Hampshire.

[COF&COE]

I could be very wrong though!

I don't think so Flap 40. I've been GLA based a few times over the years and that brickwork with what looks like the bottom of a door and the lamp post on that plinth look very familiar.

[COF&COE]

If only the the doppler map display was a bit clearer

Looking closely at the left side of the map display there could be a faint outline of the Firth of Clyde although I haven't a clue what scale these doppler maps used. Then again I might be trying to convince myself it is GLA and be barking completely up the wrong tree.:confused:

[COF&COE]

Just another thought!

Right Seat- C Clarkson, graduate of College of Air Training, Hamble 1974

I think a lot of the guys graduating cira 1974 were given ground jobs (Teatime House and such places) for a couple of years due to a pilot excess at that time, so if this happened to Mr Clarkson it could date the photograph from about 1976 on.

Also around the mid 70's, there weren't many SFO's in BEA. Most co-pilots were SO, AFO or FO with one or two stripes (this is in the days just before the long road to command) therefore the SFO in the P3 seat might be easier to identify.

Again I might be wildly out but I'm starting to find this quite intriguing.