Detailed Discussion Desired: Flying in the Past

[chris341]

Hi all,

As a connoisseur of all things retro, especially in aviation, I've been thinking a lot about what flying used to be like, from a technical perspective of those sitting in the front offices. Little information seems available on this, as most people are (obviously) more concerned with passenger comfort these days than pilot comfort.

So, my question is, what's different today about being an airline pilot than it was in say, the early 90's, or even before then?

How widespread was ACARS usage, and what was it capable of back then?

What did a typical airline pilot's day look like in 1990 as compared to today?

Feel free to get as detailed and technical as you desire, I love detail!

Thanks!
Chris

[Art Smass]

sh!t - hearing the 90's referred to as if in the distant past.... I must be veritably ancient!!

[Airclues]

Quite a lot of info here;

http://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/551133-boac-b707-ops-1960s.html

[staircase]

Well for a start, flying a charter jet around Europe in the '80's, you had to navigate the bloody thing from one VOR to the next!

And, if you did not see the 'lights' by 200ft, it was off to the diversion. Non of this sit on your hands and wait for the cat 3b autopilots to put you on a runway, so you could go home.

[rogerg]

Non of this sit on your hands and wait for the cat 3b autopilots to put you on a runway
Quite a few aircraft had CAT 111b in the 80s The 11-1 I flew for BCAL had it and other types as well.

[staircase]

Dan's didn't mate! Nor their 727s

[Airclues]

As staircase says; When I joined the VC10 fleet in 1969 we had to navigate using VOR's and NB's and the 'heading select' knob. We used Aerad charts to find the tracks. I remember that there was a line across the track indicating where one should tune the next VOR (the position depended on the relative strength of the VORs). Is this line still there, or has GPS made it redundant?
When there were no ground aids we would have to navigate using the stars and loran. Most of the time we thought that we knew where we were.

[megan]

Most of the time we thought that we knew where we wereWell, you obviously always found home, that's all that counts. :ok:

[crewmeal]

Well for a start, flying a charter jet around Europe in the '80's, you had to navigate the bloody thing from one VOR to the next!

Isn't that what being a pilot is all about? Better than sitting up front trying to do The Sun's cryptic crossword!!!

[staircase]

Well I could go back to flying Hastings and Varsity for the queen, and having a navigator to even do that. (Navigate that is, the flight engineer did the crossword, although it always seemed to be the Times or Telegraph)

Then I thought I was giving up getting wet sitting on a flight deck when I left and joined the 'civies', but there I was again, on a shed flight deck wearing a raincoat to keep dry in rain storms.

Would I have missed any of it? Not a lot, but some of it - you betcha!

[noflynomore]

Anyone remember "Airmanship"?

[Meikleour]

In the mid-70s after some years of VOR tracking, I transferred to the B707 fleet which was just being retrofitted with early INS, (Litton7 ?) or Omega. These early INSs were prone to a not insignificant drift rate so, as Airclues alludes to, we were often not exactly sure where we were after a long oceanic sector. Today's crew NEVER are unsure of their exact position such is the improvement in nav equipment. This does breed a different mindset though..........................
For the "magenta line" generation a "map shift" seems to be totally ignored. Why not just accept that the ND never lies?

[albatross]

I remember a particularily sarcastic comment from an instructor to one of my fellow students after a memorable screwup on a solo X-country...."Airmanship is Not the boat you arrived on!" followed by a rather brisk impromtu ground school for all on "Navigation at low level and some of the potential pitfalls which may be encountered with an emphasis on map reading". Fun daze.

[bafanguy]

chris341,

Your question covers quite a lot of territory. Hard to know where to start or what to cite because change has been so vast and rapid.

I had the span from DC3 to glass cockpit (but not WB international). I'll assume my experience is not appreciably different in a broad sense from my fellows in other parts of the world; it may be and I just don't know it. Please excuse if that's the case.

From the standpoint of the change around strapping in for a day in the cockpit, there are three things that come to mind:

(1) The relationship with fellow employees has changed for the worse, particularly the cabin crew. Now there's a bullet-proof door between cockpit and your allies aft of the door…and opening it in flight almost involves an act on Congress. I'll ignore the matter of VERY large airlines vs smaller for those relationship differences post flight…they exist but perhaps for reasons of scale.

(2) Technology has "progressed" to the point where much of the mental work, and awareness of the total in-flight environment with all that encompasses, has been taken over by devices; these devices seem to promote less hand flying leading to a degradation of this basic skill. The advantage in such "progress" is much debated and I don't have the energy to enter that debate here.

I will say that it used to be that a pilot would have to assemble several, if not many, bits and pieces of information from now rather rudimentary sources (VOR and its radials, DME, IAS, altitude…and a paper chart) to produce a 3-dimensional picture of where the airplane was which would dictate what you should do about/with that in terms of what needed doing. I use the term "Mind's Eye" to say where these calculations took place and resided.

I also say the Mind's Eye has been blinded by "progress". There is now a generation of aviators who not only have no Mind's Eye but are not aware of the need for it as a baseline function. I knew that on the rare occasion I was dispatched without an FMS, I was likely to be flying solo as my partner was a bit too accustomed to FMS, DGFS and AP.

(3) The demands of getting from Pt. A to Pt. B remain the same at a base level.

This isn't a criticism of them; it's not THEIR fault. They can only function within the system as they found it.

There are likely other differences I don't recall.

[Anilv]

One big difference was if the passenger didn't make the flight, he would be stuck without his bags.

All this changed after PA103.

Anil

[Herod]

Rules and regulations have changed. Back in the late seventies it was "there's the aeroplane, take it to XXXX and back, don't scare the passengers and don't scratch the paint". Nowadays, with the digital recorders almost to the point of noting how many times you pass wind during the ILS, most of my colleagues still working say it's a matter of trying to work through the library to remember which rule applies when, at the risk of no tea and biscuits.

[mcdhu]

Early 70s:

No SIDs
No STARS
Sometimes therefore long and complicated departure clearances to be written down and read back.
Two figure transponder codes
Not much traffic
Opposite direction traffic on same airway appeared miles away
Airway Fan Markers
Preston FIR (and volmet) in U.K.
Position reporting
Happy Days
mcdhu

[Spooky 2]

Well here in the colonies we even had a "lighted airway" which was ahold over from the late twenties and forward. One of the last once that I can recall was from east of the San Bernadino mountains between Dagget and Las Vegas. I think this was shutdown back in the late sixties?

[noflynomore]

Short Haul European Ops 1990's

You operated the aeroplane with a checklist, knowledge of the systems and manufacturers stipulations and Airmanship. There were no SOP's (Esso-whats??). You just knew what to do and how. Every Captain did things in a slightly or not so slightly different way and some could be rather intolerant of a FO who did not fit right into their sometimes very idiosyncratic way of doing things. This could make longer trips unpleasant. One or two captains were out and out mavericks. They were scary. But you knew when to slow down, deploy flaps, what speed to set and when, etc etc there was no book to tell you other than the speeds and feeds from the manual. You flew a visual circuit or a visual approach as you did in a Cessna - just bigger. You had an IR so you knew how to do SIDS and STARS, ILS and NDB approaches. What else did you need to know?
FOs always had many hundreds of hours as instructors at least. Next to no-one did Approved 200hr courses (no one could afford them). This could be both an advantage and disadvantage as variation in quality and initial experience were both very much greater. At least you could talk aviation with them.
A Stable Approach was one without too many wobbles.
Briefing for STN - LTN goes, "Rwy 23 TOGA thrust, raw data right turn to BKY 3000ft 250Kts, intercept ILS26. Autopilot off. Autothrottle's for pussies. No questions (no pause) good! Standard emergencies. Your sector, Bloggs!" Apparently this is one way to bring on promising FOs! I leave it to your imagination what else it is good for.
Far from being a dirty word or heretical thought Airmanship was a highly desirable quality and far from being a complete debar from Captaincy it was considered an essential qualification! Jeez! What went wrong there?
Problems down route were solved by the crew on the spot with or without the assistance of a handling agent. The company was too mean to provide mobile phones so a call involved a half hour away from the a/c and a trip in a van to the handling agent's office.
Interviews were often of the "can you start monday" variety.
Type rating was always paid for by the airline. This is much the same as saying saying "the airline paid for the fuel" would be nowadays. Well, who the heck else would pay for a type rating? The question itself would have been so daft it would never have occurred to anyone to ask it.
Some type ratings were bonded but BALPA were of the opinion that a bond was an Illegal Indenture and was legally unsustainable but they never had the balls to test it. Thanks, BALPA.
Anyone could sit in the jumpseat at any stage of the flight at Captain's discretion. Girls. Journalists. Moslems. Family. Girls. Anyone, as long as they were more or less sober. And no harm ever came of it. "Hey thkipper" the No1 lisps on the intercom, "Therth a couple of hotties in row four, do you want to do a vithit"? Bless him, you think. They turn out to be men!
Smoking was a most unpleasant habit in a colleague if you didn't. Even so it never occurred to most to ask someone not to.
8 hrs from bottle to throttle. Some airlines had a serious drinking culture. (2 TRI's and me in hotac for the sim. They'd got to the pub the previous day at 1100 and had sunk 10 pints by mid afternoon when I left. They returned from the pub at 1900 and went to the hotel bar. Sim at 0400)
One particular Company Chief Training Instructor who in the sim screamed, yelled and belittled you and apparently thought this was useful training value.
Room parties that went on way into the 8 hrs too.
Landing drinks - a G and T slipped in to sip as you taxiied in (though some skippers insisted not imbibed until brakes were on)
The contents of the bar tipped into a carrier bag and consumed in the crew-room.
Resultant outrageous drunken goings-on in the crewroom.
Pillaging the hotel bar til it was empty after they'd shut it early due to rowdy crew.
An all-night bar near a N European airport where it was not unusual to have to step over unconscious FOs in National Airline uniform collapsed under the tables amongst the fag ends and spilt beer on the floor at 0400. If you could even see them through the impenetrable tobacco smoke.
Finding cheap or attractive items (furniture etc) in foreign cities and carrying them home in the hold. Once very disappointed that a Penny-Farthing bicycle couldn't fit through the hold door.
Curious promotion system for cc who got particularly "friendly" with the chief training captain.
Hotel crew bus was a huge Chevvy V8 van with a rorty exhaust, tinted glass and and swivelling velvet armchairs inside - riding to work in style wid yo bitches like some Harlem pimp!
Radioing the engineers at XXXX for an uplift of Green Oil. (slabs of pilsener) which you carried trough the terminal with your bags on the way back to the office. In uniform, of course. Why ever not?
Chief Pilots/training Captains straight out of the military who knew absolutely stuff-all about civvy ops. Some made utter goats of themselves.
Ex fast jet Captains who still operated single pilot and thought civvies were all gash. Oh boy did they get surprised - and some deeply humbled when bailed out by said gash low hours civvy FO.
Truckies, tanker trash and helo jocks who just fitted straight in. And, to be fair, the odd FJ jock too.
The last of the Atlantic Barons in their twilight years. Giants to a man.
5 day deployments downroute involving 4 sectors deadheading, 3 operating and two days on standby.
Nothing unusual about 4 consecutive days SBY downroute with a deadheading sector at each end.
Deadhead out to XXXX via YYYY, spend a day there (REST) and deadhead back home on day 3, then 2 days OFF.
Do 24 sectors in 4 days 2 days later.
No one ever flew more than 300 hrs per year. Ops couldn't organise it.
Pax numbers in the tens and twenties were normal.
Flights cancelled when pax numbers got too low.
You never stopped polishing your cv.
Every Thursday you rushed to WH Smiths and opened Flight magazine at Situations Vacant, smart ones had a subscription and got it Weds by post.
You did not dare get a mortgage for a decade or more.
Contracts where you flew 2 one hour sectors mon - fri and were finished by 1000.
Schedules where you spent 4-5 agonising hrs on the aircraft through the night on a split duty before returning at dawn. No facilities, no food, no heating, no crewroom. No legal split duty either, but that was considered an unnecessary whinge.
The gradual realisation that crew duty limitations were becoming collective targets as opposed to individual limitations.
In your first 10 years on the job you've been made redundant twice, had 3 companies go bust and been sold to someone else twice.
The relief in being made redundant from a rampant cowboy operator and going back on the dole. I hope you never have to work for a company that bad.
Companies where the CEO wrote every newly made Captain a thoughtful, individual handwritten letter of congratulation. Doubt you'll ever work for a company that good, sadly. They no longer exist.
Flying airways with 2 VOR, 1 DME and 1 ADF. En route charts always to hand. ""cleared direct XXXXX" when XXXXX was a waypoint on an airway 100 miles away defined by a VOR 200 miles away and the alps in between. You learned to either decline or use the RDMI as a sort of makeshift whizz-wheel and cuff it. No one seemed to mind and you were seldom far out on arrival.
The skill of setting up VOR and ILS frequencies in the right order so you had what you needed in sequence. How many children of the magenta line have ever flown a SID/STAR with manually tuned nav and courses to set?
Some FOs bought GPS sets and expected to use them in flight! Now that was scary.
No FO would dare to read a newspaper, let alone a novel in flight without asking the skipper first.
Captains you wouldn't even dare ask if you could read the paper but from whom you learned more than all the other captains put together.
ie the last of the Atlantic Barons in their twilight years. Giants to a man. But it wouldn't do to remind them that they'd finally joined the F.E.W. That would never have been a good plan but the mere thought often made me chuckle. How are the mighty fallen!
Learning the job from Captains rather than from books, company published doctrine or Esso Pees.
FOs keen to lean and pick your brains at every opportunity - nowadays there'll be a sullen offence if you try to suggest a different way; after all, they're fully , completely and utterly trained so what the hell is your input? This is where it's really come unravelled.
FOs who thought they knew more than you because they could spout the books verbatim did not exist and would not have been tolerated even if they did.
Few pilots of any rank could spout the books verbatim, it wasn't considered necessary or desirable. It was sufficient to know limitations, essential facts and where someting might be looked up in time of need. It was much more important to have the Airmanship to operate an airliner. It made for a more relaxed and less in yer face willy-waving competitive environment.
140KMH diagonally across the apron at an international airfield in the hotel minibus was normal. Airside driving permit? Que?
Previous two days were SBY but not used so they are reallocated as OFF to allow working days 7 and 8.
"Verbal exemptions" allegedly from the *AA to do things you knew Ops knew were illegal - extending duty, extending discretion, reduced crew etc were day to day occurrences. Even on Sundays when even the dimmest (Ops excepted) knew the *AA was closed...
On refusing such an illegal tasking the call transferred to Flt Ops Director who revealed that "We don't apply that paragraph in our Ops Manual" and backed it up with a fax!!! The skipper, I doubt not, has that fax framed on her toilet wall to this day.
Aircraft with multiple no go faults that flew like that for months.
Not being allowed to write defects in the tech log.
A week after 720 channel VHF became mandatory cringing in shame at the very public bollocking you're getting from London because you can't tune in Brecon.
A week later listening to Aepoblot getting the same treatment with added threats, and then having to fess up yourself for a second helping.
Boss whining he couldn't afford new radios. No wonder, the **** wouldn't afford routine maintenance either.
Operating multiple jets for months all over Europe with an Ops Manual unapproved by the *AA, and the *AA quite happy about it.
An aircraft variant on the fleet that was neither listed on the AOC not even approved by the (different) *AA
Snidey public remarks from Chief Pilot if you'd diverted from minima. Pussy...
Chief Pilot universally known as the pr!ck, Ch training Capt as the @rsehole. Guess what they called the boss's wife? Mind you, I suppose she really was the boss. Picture the quality of that operation...grim.
Ops calling you in the hotel downroute to ask what you thought you were doing for the rest of the week because they'd lost the plot. (a regular occurance!)
Being tasked to a destination outside the AOC coverage area, questioning it and being replaced by someone less in/quisitive/telligent. Marked as a troublemaker from then on.
Suites for captains in some hotels. (provided by the hotel incidentally as it would be undignified to give the Capt the same class of room as his crew) Made for great room parties.
Car parking outside the office, not a 40 min trek to the other side of the airport.
Crew morale and cohesion was rock solid and life downnroute was a blast.
Not being able to call Ops for every little decision, but this was when Airmanship not only still existed but was believed essential. You could easily go for a 5 day trip around Europe and not speak to Ops once.
Captains' decisions (almost) always respected.
Handling agent forgot to tell you the baggage handlers didn't show so you unknowingly take the outgoing bags back home with a wildly incorrect loadsheet.
Electric domestic fan heaters used to warm the cabin up pre boarding.
Type ratings taught by an engineer with the aid of a blackboard and some slides. You certainly got the inside knowledge that way. Later this degenerated to special briefings and a shonky CD that made your computer crash. It was not of much use to those of us who did not own a computer. They hadn't thought of that.
A Leatherman tool and a set of cutlery lived in your flight bag.
You used your whizz-wheel in flight.
A colleague who brought his daughter's hamster along for the day in his flightbag. Something to do with hamster-sitter u/s. It sat on the glareshield and watched the scenery. And crapped on VHF2 during the turnaround.
Security was someone who made sure no one got into the offices to steal handbags.
Terrorists were from that unmentionable bogland west of Wales.
Garb on the apron was a black gaberdine coat. No one ever got run over.
You altered the cost index as you saw fit according to the schedule.
You habitually landed with about twice the amount of fuel in tanks that you do now and thus seldom sweated about fuel for diverting even with Cat 1 only.
Airfields that returned their ILSs to the lessor in the summer because they "weren't needed". (even Luton did this!)
Interview questions like "How many cans of Boddington's fit into a standard flight bag"? The only interview question in fact, apart from "May I see your logbook" and "can you start monday". (Not mine, that one).
A Personnel dept, not some woolly euphemism like human remains.
Full dropline loadsheets for every sector.
A Metman you could actually talk to.
You knew the staff in FCL2 by name and vv.
Ops handed you an envelope containing all the paperwork needed on reporting. There were no printers or computers to log into and fill with data post flight.
Getting back late to an empty crew-room and finding Ops had gone home hours ago. Throw envelope into "in" tray and go home too.
Pilots briefed the cc, not vice-versa.
The utter joy in being able to run your own operation efficiently even if it was a single aircraft.
Remember, no mobile phones, no SMS, no internet, no ACARS, no computer on the crewroom. Just a VHF and the handling agent's phone in extremis.
Booking the curry house over Biscay via Portishead Radio, bless them.
Medicals once per year.
AME who told the same old tale of Lancaster ops for half an hour and then ran a line of ticks down the form and signed it.
Being in the middle of Biscay with no navaids working except for the ADF wandering about in the general direction of Bordeaux was not uncomfortable.
The expression "magenta line" was unknown although you'd heard some aircraft had TV screens!
Finding smoked salmon, "caviare" and brown shrimps in your business class crew meal.
Stinking the cabin out with garlic from your home-made curry heating in the oven when all pax got was a curly ham sandwich.
Alarming the FO by doing a PAR when you went to a field with military controllers.
Silly games like "Can I land from FL100 without touching the trust levers again?
Hand flying a whole sector!
Cleared direct LUT from sabadell! OK, midnight but even so!
No one had yet "rationalised" that if it isn't mandatory it must therefore be forbidden. See "Airmanship"...See visual approaches.
BALPA promising big and never ever delivering a thing. That one at least has stood the test of time.
Things have changed a bit since then, have they not? And thank goodness in many cases! More variety back then and far more interesting I think, but much progress made since then too.

[Herod]

mcdhu and noflynomore. Yep, that's how I remember it. Great times, great fun and wouldn't have missed it for the world. I wouldn't want to go back into flying as it is now, even if I could.

[wiggy]

noflynomore

Yup, sounds about right.

[Anilv]

ahh.. manual loadsheets.

1. Doing the load-sheet in the upper deck of a B747 combi with the station manager, FE and some curious First class pax looking over your shoulder. A 747-400 combi at MTOW was jolly good fun.

2. Having your perfectly good load-sheet (albeit with a few corrections ... ah-hem) thrown out the direct vision window.

3. Chasing the crumpled piece of paper across the ramp.. by this time you'd usually learnt to have a few blank copies in the car but you'd need the old one to copy the basic data..(DOW, DOI, MLAW MTOW MZFW etc).

4. Drying your manual load-sheet using the avionics exhaust vent behind the nosewheel of a B747. Said Load-sheet usually got wet due to rain but also tears and blood.

5. Using your airport-pass as a ruler to draw the lines.

6. Handing over the load-sheet to the captain of a B747 freighter who was already in his shorts and t-shirt (on several occasions).

7. Handling a chartered World Airways flight where you just gave the compartment loads (1/2/3/4/5) to the FE and he used a slide rule thingy to calculate the trim in less than a minute (That was a nice guy and he gave me a spare he had on him). This was something for the exclusive use of calculating trim, not the circular aviation slide-rule.

Anil

[JW411]

To say nothing of the joys of maintaining a listening watch on HF AM before Single Side Band was invented. Trying to make a position report could be a major challenge especially at night over Africa, the Middle East and Indian Sub-continent. Addis, Cairo, Aden, Bahrain, Karachi, Bombay and others were ALL on the same frequency and trying to shout over one another.

I remember hearing this gem one night (shortly after they had had a bit of a skirmish):

"Bombay, Bombay, Karachi" no answer.

"Bombay, Bombay, Karachi" no answer.

This went on and on and on.

Finally "Bombay, Bombay, Karachi. Why don't you answer me?"

The answer came back "Because I am not hearing you!".

Happy days.

[JW411]

I suppose another one that comes to mind was flying around in aircraft that wouldn't go much above 15,000 ft and very seldom above 20,000 ft. What with that and very primitive weather radar, flying around at night (or even by day) in the Tropics could be quite exciting and many a time the only option was to bite the bullet and just go for it. Certainly, getting struck by lightning was a fairly common event (I once managed six strikes in a month).

[mcdhu]

1 in 60 rule!!
Fuel graphs showing PNR, CP, LPD (All been renamed - to what I don't know)
TAS from OAT and MN chart
OFTS/AFTN/SITA addresses to tell folks you were coming.
Writing out your own CA48/F2919
T/O Perf was a bit hit and miss though.
No RTOTs or RTOGs - just the good old "D" and "X" Graphs. The twin turbo I was on had a choice of 3 flap settings for TO - each with or without Water Methanol. 'Optimisation' was pretty much up to you!! EFB Perf is rather better than that - but also prone to input errors as most airlines have discovered!!
No Emergency Turns/EO SIDs - use your head.
The 7 Ps
mcdhu

[trident3A]

noflynomore - brilliant and a most enjoyable read

[B2N2]

noflynomore - brilliant and a most enjoyable read

Hilarious too :ok:

Chief Pilots/training Captains straight out of the military who knew absolutely stuff-all about civvy ops. Some made utter goats of themselves.
Ex fast jet Captains who still operated single pilot and thought civvies were all gash. Oh boy did they get surprised.

https://gistpages.com/system/internet_slangs/slang_images/000/000/010/medium/rofl_example_image.png?1468040492

[NRU74]

JW411
Slight thread drift, but it was even worse if you were military going from, say,Bahrain, Dubai or Masirah to Gan.
Neither Bombay nor Madras would ever answer, the solution was to call Bombay saying Speedbird rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb and they'd usually come back saying 'Speedbird calling Bombay say again your callsign, and we'd reply negative Speed bird- it's Rafair whatever and send the position report. (Mind you we were still using morse code till the seventies possibly later with some agencies)

[Herod]

NRU74. IIRC, didn't Addis have a similar problem? They didn't like the Brits, so wouldn't answer. The trick was to use a fictitious Aeroflot callsign, and when they answered..."Aeroflot zzz, relaying for Ascot xxx. He was ..etc. Seemed to work.

[JW411]

Excellent engine, kept me alive for 10 years.

[brakedwell]

To say nothing of the joys of maintaining a listening watch on HF AM before Single Side Band was invented. Trying to make a position report could be a major challenge especially at night over Africa, the Middle East and Indian Sub-continent. Addis, Cairo, Aden, Bahrain, Karachi, Bombay and others were ALL on the same frequency and trying to shout over one another.

I remember hearing this gem one night (shortly after they had had a bit of a skirmish):

"Bombay, Bombay, Karachi" no answer.

"Bombay, Bombay, Karachi" no answer.

This went on and on and on.

Finally "Bombay, Bombay, Karachi. Why don't you answer me?"

The answer came back "Because I am not hearing you!".

Happy days.


or

"Bombay, Bombay, Bombay, shut up Karachi"

[JW411]

One night one of our co-pilots (NC) got so frustrated trying to raise Bombay that he started making bugle noises on the frequency. It went like this:

"Taroot Taroo, Taroot Taroo, Taroot Taroo".

Nothing.

"Taroot Taroo, Taroot Taroo, Taroot Taroo".

Bombay finally responds:

"Speedbird 123 standby, man with trumpet go ahead"!

[Wander00]

Just remember, for many of us we were "flying in the past" - hand swinging props, tail wheels, no radio, 35,000ft without pressurisation (JP 3 and 4), etc. Go easy on we old men, and women.....

[mustafagander]

Ah yes, HF. Even with the luxury of SELCAL, flying B707s over the South Pacific, the eastern bit that is PPT-ACA, it was often necessary to turn 30* or so off track to get the target station, any station really, within the propagation pattern of the antenna on the fin. The B707 fin antenna had a propagation pattern roughly like a butterfly with the body axis aligned with the aircraft, so stations straight ahead or astern were out of it. Bloody lonely bit of airspace in the 1970s, about 6 aircraft per week, so we were rather keen to get our position reports off. Spoofing the ground operators was sometimes used here too, I am reliably informed. Calling in French would often elicit a response after a few tries in English as I hear it.

[binbrook]

North Atlantic 1958: 2 engines, 2 crew, 2 pax (in a hurry to mend VSO's Vulcan). For navigation: Gee, ADF, Consol, DME (Eureka). For comms: 2 x 10 chan VHF - not many to talk to but useful to say Hello and find out where the weather ships were. No A/P and no synch so much too busy to take pictures - bu66er all to see anyway - and cruise-climb (but remember what you're cleared at). Wouldn't have missed it . . .

[Soddit]

McDhu....post #25...slightly confused. Was the 1 in 60 rule not laid (sic)down in a papal encyclical of 1968 ( Humanae Vitae??)which proscribed all artificial,ahem,intervention in procreation? And safety was offered by abstinence other than once in 60 days? Or have I misunderstood?

[JW411]

Water Methanol Injection; does anyone use the stuff nowadays? It was a big thing on the Dart and the Tyne. If I remember correctly, on the Dart it enabled take-off power to be restored to sea level conditions when operating in hot and high conditions (on the Tyne it would also give a 6% power boost at sea level). Apart from the built-in system itself, it meant carrying anything up to 2,000 lbs of the stuff around with you in the tanks. The biggest worry was running out of it just when you really needed it most (it lasted for about 4 minutes or so).

Then there was the problem of finding supplies of the right stuff wherever you went for not every airfield kept it.

I believe the BAC 1-11 (with Spey engines) used a similar system that used de-mineralised water. There was a terrible accident in Germany with one when the tanks were filled with the wrong specifiaction of water.

[DaveReidUK]

I believe the BAC 1-11 (with Spey engines) used a similar system that used de-mineralised water. There was a terrible accident in Germany with one when the tanks were filled with the wrong specification of water.

Landed on an autobahn following a double engine failure. The "wrong specification of water" turned out to have been kerosene.

[brakedwell]

We used De-min water in the Britannia, often procured from a local Coco Cola factory or Pepsi in the Middle East. Once switched on it ran until the tanks were empty. We also carried water to humidify the cabin.

[Bergerie1]

chris341,
If you PM me with your email address I can send you some stories which might help give you some idea of what airline flying used to be like not so long ago.

[noflynomore]

Can't you share them with all of us?

[JW411]

Water Humidifiers:

All of the British-built aircraft that I ever flew had a water humidifier system. The DC-10 was the first machine that I ever remember that did not have such an animal. I started to have symptoms caused by dehydration that I did not fully understand. Fortunately, my GP was an ex-RAF medic and he put me right. Some exploration established that the cabin of a DC-10 flying from LGW to LAX could be as low as 7% humid (we normally like around 80 - 90%).

So, I stopped drinking lots of coffee and similar diuretics until I got to the bar after landing.

As usual, I have to tell a funny story. As Brakedwell will no doubt remember, the humidifier system on the Argosy consisted of a drip feed from the domestic (potable) water tank. The capacity of this tank is firmly imprinted upon my brain. It was a 26 gallon tank. At the bottom was a brass tap which was normally wire locked into the "drip feed" position.

The aircraft are coming brand new from the factory and I am a very junior sprog co-pilot. My captain is an "old hairy" called Dad Owen. We get airborne from Benson one morning headed for Malta. Just after take-off, the F/E puts the blowers on (air conditioning packs).

Suddenly, it is raining everywhere! It is coming out of all the punkah louvres and all around us. I look across the cockpit and Dad looks like a drowned rat and not a particularly happy person. I want to laugh but this is actually really serious.

My leader is far more experienced than I will probably ever be and the first thing in his mind is that all the invertors and other critical stuff are all underneath the freight floor.

So, what happened?

The airman who had been sent out to replenish the potable water system had just arrived on the station. Because the aircraft was brand new no one had got round to wire-locking the brass tap at the bottom of the domestic water tank to the humidifier position. So, when your man started pumping, he succeeded in getting 200 gallons into a 26 gallon tank.

The other 174 gallons had ended up in the pressurisation trunking and that is what we received when the F/E put the packs on.

The aircraft did not fly again for 6 weeks.

[Bergerie1]

Aaaaah! Punkah Louvres,

We had them on BOAC VC10s too. I always had this image in my mind of a turbaned Indian down in the cargo bay with a string tied around his big toe, gently wafting, via a suitable system of knotted strings and pulleys, a large feathered contraption above my head wafting cool air to sooth my fevered brow while I flew a complicated approach!!

But it never seemed to work quite that way.

[NRU74]

We'll be on air conditioning next !
On the Beverley it was remove the Verey Pistol, get a cardboard cup and cut a slot in one side of it, stick it in the now vacated Verey Pistol orifice with the slot facing forwards into the airstream, and, hey presto, you had a flow of coldish air into the cabin. Luxury!

[brakedwell]

Cows were the most efficient humidifiers I came across. Fifty or sixty of them in pens spread along the full length of the cabin produced an immense amount of humid breath. During the cruise there was no real problem, the trouble started in the descent. Water poured out of the sound proofing in the flight deck roof, soaking everything below. The Britannia was the original all electric aeroplane and prone to short circuits, popped fuses and sticking relays, water was not welcome. Experienced hands donned their hats and dirty old raincoats before TOD.
Fortunately these deluges never caused any problems for me, but an angry Boar bursting through the flight deck door with the loadmaster hanging on to its tail was a different story when it buried its nose in the central pedestal as we crossed the outer marker on an ILS approach into Malpensa. The situation was saved after I abandoned the approach and the flight engineer grabbed the pig's left ear, the first officer took it's right ear and the loadmaster was pulling it by the tail. They managed to force the monster animal into it's pen at the front of the cabin and bent the bars back into place while we were in the holding pattern and I was trying to explain what was happening to ATC.

[Exaviator]

Many differences come to mind, depending just how far back I care to think.

In the early sixties you were not considered an experienced pilot until you had a command on an aircraft over 12500 lbs., the DC-3 being the main contender. Turbo props were the next step up and the pure jet for the hallowed few…

As for getting from A to B, these were pre VOR days and the normal was ether straining ones ears to hear the “A” or “N” of the aural leg of the VAR, or bracketing the ADF needle as it swung fifteen degrees either side of course towards the NDB.

Flying over water and out of radio beacon range it was a matter of running an air plot, and if you were lucky, supplemented with an angle from the drift sight.

And at one point in my career, I found myself flying a four engine aircraft, single pilot IFR, and with no auto pilot to assist.

As the years passed technology changed and one adapted with each change, but those basic skills, once learned, were never forgot…

[JW411]

A couple of small but quite important things came along in the 1970s which we now take completely for granted. In the RAF we were issued with the standard issue Aircrew Watch. They were, of course, driven by clockwork and although they were considered to be valuable and attractive items, they were not really very accurate. They were all calibrated at the Greenwich Observatory and were probably as good as you could get for the time.

From a navigators point of view, having an accurate time piece was essential for measuring longitude.

Then along came the Seiko Quartz watch and they offered a degree of accuracy that had hitherto been only a dream. I bought my first Seiko 4004 in Masirah for £17 in 1975 and it is still going strong 42 years later. I simply have to change the battery once a year. Needless to say, the standard issue Aircrew Watch was handed back to stores very shortly afterwards.

The other great invention was the Personal Calculator. I was talked into buying my first one in Hong Kong shortly after I bought the watch. Compared to the modern version, it was huge but I was quite fascinated by it. I can remember sitting in a HK pub while we all tried to beat it by giving it quite complicated (we thought) sums to do. We didn't succeed. We were in Singapore a couple of days later and I found myself multiplying 50 x 2 on the new toy.

I suddenly wakened up to the fact that the thing was taking over my brain so I put it away for the rest of the trip. I flogged it to one of the navigators (at a modest profit) when I got back to Brize. (They found them invaluable for working out 3-star fixes etc).

Since then, I have continued to use mental gymnastics and will only ever use one to check my answer to some particularly complicated calculation.

I wonder how many of the younger generation could manage without one?

[BEagle]

Ah yes, calculators...

When my university degree course included the flight testing course at Cranfield using a Dove repossessed from that crook Savundra, the only calculator the College had for our use was an electro-mechanical thing. Which worked fine for working out the CG etc - but was slow and rather noisy, much like the old Dove.

Then in 1972 I bought my first calculator - a 'Prinztronic Micro' which was about the size of a packet of cigarettes, used 4 x AA cells and burned half a watt of power. If you held it against your ear in a quiet room, you could actually hear it working. It also knackered reception on any nearby Medium Wave radio.

I noticed that the rules of the game for my Aero Eng finals stated that 'slide rules and calculators are permitted'. Being somewhat doubtful that they actually knew about personal calculators, I made sure that I left the final calculations in one exam in 'long fraction' form, then quickly calculated the answers with the Prinztronic Micro. I managed about 3 before the invigilator came over and snaffled it. "But your rules, see here, allow it!", I protested. When the exam was over, he reappeared with a piece of paper on which it said that electronic calculators were not allowed. "This is dated today, so you've decided to change the terms and conditions of an informal contract without the other party's agreement, have you?", I said. "Err, don't know. But you may not use your calculator!".....:hmm:

But that was the last exam which involved significant number crunching. As soon as I'd finished the last exam, I went back to Halls, collected all my belongings and drove to the UAS aerodrome for much Chipmunkery! Far more fun than that wretched degree course!

[Discorde]

For greater accuracy in pre-calculator days we used 4-figure logs.

Punkah louvres: you could have fun with your pax asking them to point the louvres rearwards to add extra thrust for take-off.

[Herod]

Calculators. I promised myself the first one in UK under £ 20. 1973. Red LED display, so the flight bag was full of spare batteries. Reverse Polish Notation, which I never understood, but it meant you had to really work out how you were going to enter a calculation before you did so. Four functions and a constant. What is £ 20 then in today's money, and what would you get for it?

[Chris Scott]

The Herald (http://www.british-caledonian.com/images/Herald%20G-APWG.jpg) also used water-methanol when extra power was needed from the two Darts. The tank held up to 80 kg, and we seemed to carry it around quite often in case it was needed? That's equivalent weight to an adult, which seems a bit wasteful.

In hot summer weather (well, hot by UK standards ;) ) we could actually be WAT-limited at sea-level. So with a full pax load out of Southampton - even just to get to Jersey or Guernsey - we had to do a flapless, water-meth take-off.** To an outside observer, the Dart seemed to make a sort of flapping noise with water-meth.

** [only for those not familiar with Performance]
To improve the single-engine initial climb gradient. The runway at SOU was just long enough to permit the higher take-off speed involved.

Digital Pocket Calculators
Prior to smartphones, the handiest one I ever had was solar powered, but in practice also worked indoors with normal room lighting. Like JW411, I've always been paranoid and bloody-minded about retaining my mental-arithmetic skills, even if it only involves achieving an approximate result. The latter is invaluable for checking that, in the 8-figure result from the calculator, the decimal point is in the right place...

We early users were sometimes sceptical on reliability, and I wonder if anyone else used this test:
0.9 X 12345679 = 11111111.

Going back to about 1970, before such things were cheaply available, the Dart Herald's fuel-quantity gauges were calibrated in imperial gallons, whereas the flow-meters and fuel-used counters were in kilograms. At the end of each sector, prior to refuelling, we would log the arrival fuel in both indicated and calculated amounts. (The "calculated" would be the recorded departure fuel minus the burn-off recorded by the two flowmeters.)

As every schoolboy knows, the SG of kerosene is about 0.8, so an imperial gallon weighs about 8 lb or 3.6 kg. We therefore needed to divide the burn-off in kgs by 3.6. The trick is to divide it first by 4. Then you first add a tenth of that to the result, then an extra hundredth, and (if you really want to!) an extra thousandth.

Who needs calculators? :rolleyes:

[Allan Lupton]

T I've always been paranoid and bloody-minded about retaining my mental-arithmetic skills, even if it only involves achieving an approximate result. The latter is invaluable for checking that, in the 8-figure result from the calculator, the decimal point is in the right place...

Just as necessary with computers as GIGO still operates. We who grew up with sliderules had to keep track of the decimal point (or factor of ten!) so it has always been second nature, and remaind so even in such mundane surroundings as the supermarket check-out queue

[Herod]

The F27 (Dart) also carried water-meth. I forget the exact quantity, but in my company we carried sufficient for two take-offs and one go-around.

[max alt]

Vickers viscount as well.We called it wet power for the water meth as I remember,as we carried full tanks and we included it in addition to the zero fuel mass
I can still remember the green painted blob on the torque gauges when we called wet power on all four.
Rgds,
M

[Chris Scott]

Quote from JW411:
"All of the British-built aircraft that I ever flew had a water humidifier system."

...as did Bergerie's VC10. Haven't checked my course notes, but I'm under the impression the water was from the aircraft's Domestic Water system? The F/Es, ever mindful of corrosion, etc., were not overly enamoured with it. Being much cleverer than us pilots, they knew that frost was building up on the inside of the fuselage skin, unseen because of the ceiling panels. Cue a massive outpouring of melt in the descent, particularly into tropical airfields - most of all into humid, sea-level airfields like Lagos - if it wasn't switched off a couple of hours before top of descent. They used the unheated portions of the cockpit side windows to gauge how much frost might be building up, and when to switch then humidifiers off.

The other idiosyncrasy of the VC10 was that the air conditioning system, in addition to having air-cycle machines for cooling the conditioned air, also had freon refrigerator packs which were used when the OAT was particularly high. In the climb, if the humidifiers were inadvertently switched on before the 'frig packs were switched off, snow would emanate from the punkah louvres.

Re punkah louvres (or fresh-air vents, as the younger generation of cabin crew insisted on calling them), I think it was Mr Boeing that first did away with them in the 1980s? Not sure about the current products off the production lines at Toulouse and Hamburg, but the louvres were still installed on the A320s through the 1990s. They're a great boon when one passenger is feeling hot, but his neighbour isn't.

[ICT_SLB]

Chris Scott
Mr Boeing did not do away with fresh air vents, they became an option - IIRC Delta always had their "Gaspers" on 757s & 767s and Canadair (Bombardier), probably because they were standard on the Challenger bizjets, still provides them on all their CRJs and even on their CSeries aircraft.
My last design work at BAC Hurn in the late 70s was on a 1-11 for RAe, a Type AP/H. This had every modern Navaid known to man including Decca Navigator, Decca Type 72 Doppler Radar (with a linked TANS), LORAN and, IIRC, a huge Litton IRS. When I saw my first L aser IRS at Boeing a year later, I couldn't believe how small it was.

[4Greens]

The best thing was having pax up to the Flight Deck. We met lots of interesting people. We could put little kids on out knees and pretend to fly the aircraft. On really long haul ops visitors kept you awake.

[bafanguy]

Exaviator,

Ah, the 4-course range approach. Had forgotten about them. I think there were a couple left in the US when I started instrument training. Pretty sure it was covered in the Zweng manual and we may have taken a run at a few in the hissing, lurching C-8 Link but fortunately, I never had to wrestle a real one...can't say I regret it !

Fixed-azimuth ADF...that was also a mental gymnastics event. :-))

[Chris Scott]

Quote from bafanguy:
"Fixed-azimuth ADF...that was also a mental gymnastics event."

Surely you can't be talking about relative-bearing indicators? Easy-peasy... ;)

Quote from ICT_SLB:
"My last design work at BAC Hurn in the late 70s was on a 1-11 for RAe, a Type AP/H. This had every modern Navaid known to man including Decca Navigator, Decca Type 72 Doppler Radar (with a linked TANS), LORAN and, IIRC, a huge Litton IRS. When I saw my first L aser IRS at Boeing a year later, I couldn't believe how small it was."

AP/H? :confused: My first experience of INS was around 1976 when my airline retrofitted dual-INS (Litton) to its B707-320C fleet and retired its specialist navigators. A few years later the airline started acquiring DC-10-30s, with triple-INS. They also had PMS - a rather crude tool for descent guidance - but no FMS.

My first experience of la ser IRS (Honeywell?) was in 1984 on the A310, the two of which we operated mainly between London and various parts of west Africa, plus Lusaka. You'll appreciate that pilots are not normally aware of the size of individual black boxes in the electronics bay, but the drift performance was noticeably better than the old INS.

The A310 also had FMS with radio position-updating (pairs of DMEs), although the shortage of DMEs in Africa meant that we were navigating on IRS most of the time. The Smiths FMS was, IMHO, more than a match for the Sperry/Honeywell in the early, lateral-nav-only configuration, but the two a/c were sold before Smiths made V-NAV available.

We soon got used to taking the FMS's display of PPOS on the CRT ND (Navigation Display) with a pinch of salt over Africa, where the nav-accuracy assessment was almost invariably low. Unsurprisingly, the presidential palaces in African countries are often within a mile or two of the runway approaches. In the normal absence of radar vectoring from ATC, it was all too easy to fly near one when self-positioning for finals on Rwy 10 at Lusaka, for example, if the (green) FMS line on the ND was taken too literally after several hours with no radio updating.

[bafanguy]

"Surely you can't be talking about relative-bearing indicators? Easy-peasy... "

Chris Scott,

Yep, that's what I'm talkin' about. :-)))

MH +/- RB=MB ? I'm going back many decades so I won't vouch for the accuracy of my recall. But...I just never wanted to work that hard.

Along came the ADF with an RMI card and I was saved !!

Truth is, we just don't do all that much ADF stuff here in the States anyway but those unreasonable people at the Puzzle Palace wanted to see you dance the dance...so we did.

[brakedwell]

I first came across INS in an RAF Britannia when I flew a Polar Trainer for half a dozen navigators at the end of their twelve month Spec N course in 1972. We had all sorts of kit fitted on tables in the passenger cabin including a Litton INS looked after by a Litton technician and a UK INS which was usually fitted in a Harrier at RAE Farnborough for recording parameters during test flights. I think it was made by Marconl.The Polar Trainer route was Brize - Thule nightstop, then direct to the North Pole, about twenty minutes of orbiting overhead the pole before setting course to Brize. The Farnborough INS was virtually useless, but this may have been due to the cobbled together nav read out. The Litton worked perfectly from take off to landing over twelve hours later and the Litton man spent half the time asleep or reading a pile of Playboy Magazines he brought with him. The Smiths flight system in the Brit surprised everyone with it's accuracy. (The compass was cheched every twenty minutes). Four years later I was flying DC8's with twin Litton 72 INS, which took twenty minutes to wind up and waypoints had to be entered manually. In Feb 1983 I was introduced to triple Honeywell IRS and glass screens in the B757 with only LNAV for the first six months. The DME updates were also a bit iffy and Map Shift caused problems during approaches on the nav display. On a couple of occasions the FMC decided we were at TOD for Palma in the middle of France. Fortunately I had the auto throttles disconnected to stop continuos hunting due to poor software, so we maintained height. Software updates and certification of the VNAV sorted most of the problems out by the end of 1983.

[Exaviator]

Having flown both F.27s and H.S.748s I am very familiar with the use of water methanol and on one occasion nearly became a statistic as a result.

The water increased the density of the air and the methanol added a few more BTUs giving an increase in overall power. It was fairly expensive stuff so wet take-offs were only carried out as needed, but the pumps were always selected “On” during approach. Can’t remember the actual RPM that the water cut in, but it was around 75% thrust.

I had flown an eight sector day with three approaches down to absolute minimums but with no overshoots, and due to light loads and winter conditions had not used any water until the last sector.

With a contaminated runway and a steep climb out required due to terrain I elected to do a wet take-off.

As we accelerated down the runway and the water cut in there was an almighty surge of both engines accompanied by both noise and rapidly rising TGTs. I managed to abort with only a slight over temp on both.

In the ensuing investigation it turned out that what we had in the methanol tanks was in fact mostly avgas. An almost empty drum of water methanol which was stored in the hangar had been used to dump fuel from an other aircraft and had been re-cycled as a full drum of methanol.

The Gods were sitting on my shoulder on that day for had I needed to carry out a earlier missed approach, the outcome may have been very different…

[finncapt]

Ex.

I have a memory of it being 14800rpm when the meth cut in on the 748 but I may be totally wrong.

I think standby meth, for the engine out case? (Stby and On, toggle switch on the centre console), was an option on later models but, again, I could be wrong.

It was very difficult to dip the meth tanks and easy to lose the dipstick in the tank.

[JW411]

I thought the primary reason that methanol was added to the water was to stop it from freezing?

[brakedwell]

I'm sure you are right Jock. The de-min water in the Proteus was only used at hot or high airfields and once switched on for take-off ran until it was all used up. Bahrain was the only place I ever remember using it, normally on the way to Gan.

[Chris Scott]

Quote from brakedwell:
"Four years later I was flying DC8's with twin Litton 72 INS, which took twenty minutes to wind up and waypoints had to be entered manually."

That's the one! Only 9 waypoints; all to be loaded manually. For the uninitiated, that's using Latitude and Longitude: as in N5626.5 W00322.4 - easily screwed-up. So then we would religiously check that the TRK(T) and distance displayed between each waypoint coincided with the initial track (not the mean track) of the great circle between the two points. The figure on our computer plans was, IIRC, the mean track and on a long NAT track, for example, there could be a big difference between the two figures. Accordingly, there was a difference-table in our Nav Manual, which most of us had a copy of on our clip boards. Clip boards: remember those? :rolleyes:

Usually it was not really practical or necessary to load all the turning points on airways in western Europe, as there were too many to keep up with the reloading. (And at the end of a flight the INS was not accurate enough anyway.) So we continued navigating using the usual beacons and HDG-select until we ran out of beacons.

IIRC, waypoint 0 was INS PPOS. The destination was eventually entered as waypoint 9, and on arrival the distance from 0 to 9 was recorded in the Tech Log for each INS.

Exaviator, that's a real horror-story of yours on water meth... :eek:

[brakedwell]

ISTR if the Litton ended up twelve to twenty six miles off track approaching the destination it had done a good job {after a seven hour flight)

[FAStoat]

If you want some ring tickling nostalgia,just open the memory banks on STAND 32 CAFU,attending your first IRT????The Memories of the Non Drinking,Non Smoking, Eastwood or Eric" Piles" Markwell,and then the bubbly Mike Edwards,who brought light relief!!There were of course others that were brilliant and fun to fly with,but the thought of the first two still bring shudders to the stomach!!An Ex 104 Luftwaffe Mate of mine,was alledged to have had "Piles" up against the wall,after he had failed him after a whole Ex 17 had been flown to CFD ,when on start up, he had in fact not been able to see the OAT,so failed the perpetual "Ice Checks", as being screened off,by the Scabair Instructor,who had delivered "Wolfee" for his Examination.Happy days and extremely funny times,which now would be very Non PC.I was very lucky to have flown with many wonderful colleagues,who like myself,endeavoured to add a bit of colour to the otherwiseoften dull norm!A Water Meth Take off with,I think 20flap,on the roll out of Soton was particularly good fun,plus being one of the Nominated "Bullet" crews by AMS ATC,it was always lovely to be able to break off from ILS to 19 about 250ft,then jink and arrive on Rnwy 24,then drive off the first taxiway into the Alphas and park with the pax dissembarking,before the queue of the rest of them in the hold,over the North Sea, had commenced their approaches!!!Then when we got the "Jet",positioning left hand base at 1500ft IMC on the weather radar,250kts,closing on to the 09 ILS at Guernsey,then closing the throttles and airbreak out hanging everything down from 210 kts to land and park,when the BA and Midland 737s were still 10 miles out.Wonderful times,and no such thing as Autopilot Stabilised Approaches,as we all knew what we were doing and trained by the best to be good handlers.A joy to remember it all,flooding back!!!!!

[Herod]

FAStoat, would we be boasting too much to extend your statement to read. "Trained by the best, to be the best"? Great days.

[FAStoat]

Indeed it was,but further fun times were to be had with just as much a magnificent bunch of excellent Operators and Trainers on another outfit,that was a heavily guarded secret amongst the chaps, operating out of Cologne and Birmingham,and then Luton.

[DaveReidUK]

If you want some ring tickling nostalgia,mjust open the memory banks on STAND 32 CAFU,mattending your first IRT????The Memories of the Non Drinking, Non Smoking, Eastwood or Eric "Piles" Markwell, and then the bubbly Mike Edwards, who brought light relief!!

I met Eric Markwell on a couple of occasions, having joined BEA in the same student apprentice intake as his son, whom I still see from time to time.

I think I'm right in saying that Eric passed away in October of 2015 at the grand old age of 92. How did he get the "Piles" nickname?

[staircase]

I did my CFU IRT with Eric.

During the debrief he asked why I had put the transponder on 100ft after take off and not before the take off roll.

'I thought a bloke of you experience would have known that Eric.'

'Well no I don't, why did you do it?'

'I forgot!'

He still passed me!

[eckhard]

The Memories of the Non Drinking,Non Smoking, Eastwood or Eric" Piles" Markwell,and then the bubbly Mike Edwards,who brought light relief!!

Here are some that I remember:

Bernie 'size 'em' Sercombe
'Chalky' Whitehead (did my initial IRT as well as GFT 1-3)
Mike 'smiler' Edwards (FI test)
'Chopper' Eastwood (IR retest and GFT 4)
'Ben' Gunn
Dennis 'Skin 'em alive' Skinner

I used see my candidates off and then wait out the result in the greasy spoon.
There was a telephone mounted on a pole outside from which we filed the afternoon's route 15 training sortie.

Stansted was fairly quiet in those days. Apart from the Fordair 1-11s and the CAFU 748s, 125s and Doves, the bulk of the traffic was IR training. You could fly around the SAN hold all day, shoot a few approaches and if your wheels didn't touch it was all free!

[Exaviator]

I have a memory of it being 14800rpm when the meth cut in on the 748 but I may be totally wrong.

That figure sounds about right finncapt, 14700 sticks in my mind. The incident that I wrote of was on a F27 with RR528s. and happened back in 1974. Needless to say some maintenance procedures were changed as a result.

[Exaviator]

On a lighter note I was recently reminded of a toilet incident that occurred back in the early 70s, during a period of flying DC-3s in Canada.

The aircraft toilet was located in the tail of the aircraft and consisted of a bucket with a wooden seat above it. To facilitate emptying, the bucket was lined with a black plastic bin liner and when away from base it was the F/Os job to take care of its disposal, which sometimes was a problem particularly at capital airports which were only geared to handling modern jets.

On a trip to Regina in Saskatchewan I had gone off to organise our return flight plan and had left my F/O to refuel and take care of the rather full "Honey Bucket".

On my return the F/O seemed rather agitated and in a hurry to depart. Once airborne and established in cruise I mentioned this observation to him and received his explanation.

Apparently rather than carry the actual bucket he had just tied off the full bin liner and carried it off the aircraft for disposal. His first choice had been a drain at the side of the tarmac but had noticed the tower operator taking an interest in his activities through binoculars so instead elected to go through the virtually empty terminal and use the main toilets to empty the bag.

Unfortunately, half way across the terminal the bottom fell out of the bag and dumped its contents on the polished tiled floor.

When I asked what he had done about it, he answered, "What could I do, I just kept on walking"...............

[dixi188]

RR Dart Water Methanol was 55/45 mix.

IIRC the Dart 520 series were restored power and the 530 series were boosted power. The engines were the same, just the W/M unit different.

With system armed it cut in at 14500 rpm as the engine accelerated to 15000 rpm for T/O. In the climb when the rpm was reduced to 14200 the W/M stopped.
If you forgot to turn the pumps on before T/O and did so at 15000 rpm there would be a massive surge in power as the Water Meth unit on the engine adjusted its valve to control the flow and limit the torque. I saw this done once on an HP Herald by a training captain who had forgotten to arm the system.
Me, I was just a travelling spanner man, I wonder how often this happened?

[Chris Scott]

Don't recall making that particular mistake, dixi188, and it sounds like the sort of thing one might remember. But then I only did 2 years on Dart Heralds. Does anyone else remember the flapping sound I mentioned in my previous post? You'll remember the other no-no on the Dart was to forget to select ground-fine during or after landing, and then open the taps to clear the runway...

Going back to the de-min water-injection on the Spey, the typical scenario would be a 1-11/500 departure from some over-heated, Spanish coastal airfield with a charter-load of pax for the UK. Don't have any figures to hand, but if memory serves the increase in RTOW was only about 200 - 400 kg? The water, which in our case had been carried with us on the outbound flight in several plastic casks, weighed 100 kg or so. Therefore, the difference to the available payload was only a couple of pax. Bit of an embarrassment. And first it had to be pumped into the tank. At most aerodromes, IIRC, that had to be done by the flight crew.

On one such occasion I found that the normal electric pump had not been available ex-base, and we'd been given a manual one instead. It wasn't self-priming, so I had to improvise and borrow a jug from the galley. Filling the jug involved tipping one of the fully-laden casks without spilling half the contents on to the apron. Then the pump had to be held upside down to fill the inlet tube from the jug, before rapidly dunking it into the cask. After pumping its contents dry, the process had to be repeated with the next cask. Happy days!

[dixi188]

I don't remember a flapping sound from the Herald with W/M on, just lots of noise. One or two of our Captains had over 10,000 hours on them and were a bit deaf.

I did 2 years line maintenance with CEX at Hurn on Heralds and used to fly with them around the night freight routes, before becoming an F/E on the Electra.

In an earlier life, I also remember hand pumping de-min water into the 1-11 tank but this was from a small bowser that we towed around in Muscat.

[oldchina]

de-min water:


If it only gave 200-400 kg I don't think BAC would have bothered. I've got old manuals showing over MTOW (99650lb) from 8000ft ISA, SL, but only 97000lb without water injection. Over a tonne therefore.

[Allan Lupton]

de-min water:
If it only gave 200-400 kg I don't think BAC would have bothered. I've got old manuals showing over MTOW (99650lb) from 8000ft ISA, SL, but only 97000lb without water injection. Over a tonne therefore.
The Spey's thrust curve was flat-rated to some temperature which I can't remember and which depended on elevation and water injection extended that flat rating. If you were at higher temperatures you got the benefit but at lower temperatures, where you were on the flat rating anyway, water gave nothing. It's a long time ago but I was surprised that there was any benefit at SL ISA but that reminded me that there was a 512"DW" which BAC used which did have a slight increase in the flat-rated thrust when wet. The low increase quoted before could have been with a 512 "W"

[Chris Scott]

Hi oldchina,

Frustrating that I don't have any sample figures, but I think on the 1-11/500 the most limiting factor for the RTOW (other than the structural MTOW of 45200kg/99650lb) out of many of the sea-level Spanish airfields in hot summer wx may have been WAT, rather than runway length. You are quoting figures at ISA on an 8000-foot runway, where runway length is evidently the limiting factor.** I'm talking about something in the region of ISA+20 (35C), where the most limiting factor could be either WAT or the runway criteria (TORA/EDA/TODA) or, of course, net take-off flight-path (obstacles, as at Malaga).

Allan may have identified the problem-area. I think the Spey was flat-rated, as he says, and perhaps to ISA+20. Maybe the flat-rating stretched to a higher figure with water-injection? I really don't remember.

Frankly, the 500 series was under-powered for summer weather on the Costas! We needed the B737-200. (Many years later, as you know, we got the A320, but that's another story.)


** Must admit I'm surprised your figures show the 500 srs incapable of achieving MTOW off an 8000-foot runway at sea-level (still-air?) without water injection. Worse than I thought.

[arem]

I flew the 111-510 mainly on the Berlin operation, but we didn't have water injection - the only time we could have done with it was out of STR Rwy 08 going back to LHR in the summer when we were WAT limited on occasions

[Arthur Bellcrank]

The "flapping" noise on Dart aircraft came from the prop leading edge erosion strips, held on with evostick type adhesive, the strips would erode or tear, become unstuck.
Impossible to rectify on the line due to the long drying time of the adhesive.
I've seen the results of forgetting to select WM on take of, torque goes off the clock and ITT follows it.

[oldchina]

Chris Scott:
"Frankly, the 500 series was under-powered for summer weather on the Costas!"


It certainly was, but what else could carry 119 pax back from their hols on less total
installed thrust than one CFM56?


Hence the WAT problem and the fact that BAC never considered giving it draggy leading edge slats.

[Chris Scott]

Quote from Arthur Bellcrank:
"The 'flapping' noise on Dart aircraft came from the prop leading edge erosion strips, held on with evostick type adhesive, the strips would erode or tear, become unstuck.
Impossible to rectify on the line due to the long drying time of the adhesive."

That rings a bell, and perhaps the peeling strips flapped even harder with the slightly coarser blade-pitch when water-meth was being used.

Good point, oldchina. BTW, I recall that the total cruise fuel-flow was about 2200kg/hr with 119 pax at M0.70**, whereas the A320 with (say) 168 pax is about 2400kg/hr at M0.78. Not completely sure what you mean by "draggy slats", however?

** [Edit] Or was it M0.73?

[dixi188]

The 1-11 518 srs. for Court Line had a fixed droop to the leading edge which was developed to allow max weight ops from Luton. Most others after this had the same. Not sure if earlier A/C were modified though.
There were also plans to re-engine the 1-11 with Tays and JT8s but, with the exception of the Dee Howard aircraft, came to nothing.
More wing improvements were trialed on "YD" as the 670 srs.

[rogerg]

Before that BAC wanted to use JT 8s but is was at the time of currency controls and was not allowed, so the 1-11 was never developed any further than the 500. After that BAC did not help any new engine developments in case it took sales away from the 146.

[oldchina]

rogerg
I believe BAC offered American Airlines an engine choice for their 30 aircraft order. They selected the Spey.
Chris:
It's just that slats add lift but also the drag that comes along with it. The latter was unacceptable with so little thrust on board.

[Chris Scott]

Quote from dixi188:
"The 1-11 518 srs. for Court Line had a fixed droop to the leading edge which was developed to allow max weight ops from Luton. Most others after this had the same. Not sure if earlier A/C were modified though."

Yes, from my experience - limited to BCAL - we eventually obtained two Dash-528FL a/c from Hapag Lloyd to supplement our 500 fleet in 1981/2. They had the new leading-edges you describe, and a choice of three flap-settings for T/O instead of the usual two (8 deg and 18 deg). I think the lowest setting may have been 6 degrees, which would presumably improve the WAT situation (for the second segment climb), provided the runway was long enough to take advantage of it. I don't remember any penalty for cruise performance with the new leading edge.

(Re WAT limitations, the technique in common use today of trading any excess runway to achieve a higher VR and V2, and therefore an improved second-segment climb angle, was never adopted on 1-11 operations - AFAIK. Don't know why we did not try to introduce it in BCAL, because we had already been using it to improve the payload capability of our B707-320Cs out of hot-high-long Nairobi since 1975/6.)

Quote from oldchina:
"It's just that slats add lift but also the drag that comes along with it. The latter was unacceptable with so little thrust on board."

Am no aerodynamicist, and I hesitate to stumble into a debate on what no doubt involves complex compromises for aircraft designers. I appreciate that thrust has to exceed drag on take-off, and it was in rather short supply! But my simplistic understanding is that slats enable an a/c to fly at a lower speed by enabling a higher AoA while maintaining a safe margin from the stall. We are not asking for more lift; merely the same lift at a lower IAS (okay, EAS).

I guess that the higher AoA may involve a slightly inferior L/D ratio (= more drag). The alternative is to use some or more flap, which probably causes an even bigger deterioration in the L/D ratio?

The best WAT performance for take-off on an A310 involves a flapless T/O with slats at the T/O setting. Taking your argument to its logical conclusion, one might expect it to use T/O flap with the slats retracted?

[Raymond Dome]

Really straining the memory for this but if I recall correctly on a standardish day, still air RW26 at Luton gave an RTOW of 43610kgs (13 flap dry). Using demin water allowed a takeoff at max structural weight of 45200kgs (also 13 flap), so a benefit of 1590 minus 320 kg for the water =1270 kgs of extra fuel or payload.
We did have an "Optimised V2" procedure ("Improved Climb" to Boeing pilots) which IIRC gave an RTOW of about 44500kgs, but there were restrictions on its use, although I don't remember what these were. Anybody?
I always loved the noise!

[Chris Scott]

Quote from Raymond Dome:
"We did have an "Optimised V2" procedure ("Improved Climb" to Boeing pilots) which IIRC gave an RTOW of about 44500kgs, but there were restrictions on its use, although I don't remember what these were. Anybody?"

Never did it on the 1-11 but bans would have included wet or contaminated runways, perhaps? And maybe reduced thrust (assumed temperature method on the 1-11), although the latter's use with optimised V2 is everyday practice on big jets these days to minimise the required thrust.

But was the Luton runway long enough to increase the take-off run for a higher V2, or was runway length more limiting than WAT?

[pulse1]

I always loved the noise!

Me too! Especially before they fitted hush kits. A practice, or perhaps a real, EFAT out of Bournemouth meant they were still pretty low when they got to where I worked in those days. The noise level was so loud, even from one engine presumably using methanol, I thought it was superb. Many local residents didn't agree with me of course. It was quite a common experience as, in those days, there was extensive crew training, especially in the early Spring.

[rogerg]

using methanol
Only demin water.

[Chris Scott]

Hi pulse1,

The Spey certainly has a shrill roar.** If you thought one or two at full chat were noisy on crew training, however, imagine 2, 3 or 4 Conways - as on the VC10. Not to mention, of course, several Olympus 593s on reheat...

** Could you actually detect any difference with that ugly hush-kit? :rolleyes:

[DaveReidUK]

** Could you actually detect any difference with that ugly hush-kit?

That depended on whether your ears were calibrated in EPNdBs. :O

[Allan Lupton]

We were always puzzled that the Trident was no noisier with three Speys than the 1-11 was with two, until we had closer contact with the Weybridge opposition post-nationalisation. They told us that the 1-11's air-driven CSD was responsible - and I presume that the "hush-kit" did not include that in its scope.

[oldchina]

Allan
The metal rod carried on some 1-11 flight decks was not there to fight off hijackers, but to whack the bloody CSDS when it got stuck.

[pulse1]

Not to mention, of course, several Olympus 593s on reheat...

I was talking to someone just outside the BA engineering offices at Heathrow and I could just see the end of one of the runways from which aircraft were regularly departing. When there was a really loud jet noise and I thought it must be Concorde taking off so I was quite excited. But no, it was just a BAC111, hush kits and all.

[Chris Scott]

Quote from Allan Lupton:
"We were always puzzled that the Trident was no noisier with three Speys than the 1-11 was with two, until we had closer contact with the Weybridge opposition post-nationalisation. They told us that the 1-11's air-driven CSD was responsible - and I presume that the "hush-kit" did not include that in its scope."

The 1-11's CSDSs definitely produced a horrendous noise on engine start-up, but would they have made any difference after that?

(For those not familiar, a CSD provides a constant-speed drive for the AC generator, which enables the frequency of the AC to be maintained at the standard 400 Hz (if you're lucky!). It's driven mechanically from the engine's accessory gearbox. However, on the 1-11 the two units also incorporated a turbine which enabled them to be turned by the air used for engine start. Most other a/c had dedicated air-starter units on each engine, but the 1-11's CSDS was used to turn the engine via its accessory gearbox. So it combined the two roles. The drive shaft was a bit fragile, having a tendency to shear - particularly during a cold start, and particularly if the pilot was "milking" the HP fuel-cock to avoid exceeding the maximum EGT while the engine struggled to accelerate to idle r.p.m.. When that happened, you had also lost the generator on that engine. As oldchina says, it could also get stuck.)