Garry Sommerville wrote a number of articles covering his years as a Flight Engineer on TEAL/Air New Zealand's Lockheed L.188 Electra, Douglas DC-8-52, McDonnell-Douglass DC-10-30 and Boeing 747-219 airliners, with the DC-10 and Boeing 747 articles being so huge, they are spread over a number of documents. If you published all of them as a book, it would be a very-substantial tomb. You can access and download all of them from here, but be warned, you will spend many days devouring their fascinating contents: http://flight-engineers-air-nz.*****...og-page_3.html

What are the asterixs hiding?

bean,

The asterisks are hiding the name of a blogging site that, for some unknown historical reason, is anathema to PPRuNe's management. However, it's easy to get around this bizarre restriction by using a URL shortening site like http://bitly.com which hides the offensive name:

AIR NEW ZEALAND's FLIGHT ENGINEERS: A DIRECT LINK TO GARY SOMMERVILLE'S ARTICLES:

tdracer,

Do you have any information on the 747-8 flutter flight testing data that you can share? I would be very interested to know how the 747 performed and handled in the 0.99 Mach range.

Then there was the 747SP , which stalled and departed , followed by hi speed with bits falling off in the pullout ..

rgds condor .

No - that was all left behind when I retired, and even if I did have anything I'm quite sure it's considered Boeing Proprietary. Besides, the stuff I was looking at was very engine focused - I was comparing the FADEC sensed Pamb with the aircraft trailing cone measurements to see if we needed to adjust the FADEC calibration curves and tolerances.
During the 747-400/PW4000 flight testing, when they did the high speed flutter testing they set 'ENG CONTROL' on all four engines at pretty much the same time because shock waves on the engine cowling really mess with the FADEC sensed Pamb... My then boss got a pretty panicked call from Flight Test wanting to know what the :mad: was going on - he replied to the effect he didn't know, but tell them to land!

The 707 was a wonderful bit of agricultural engineering. If something went wrong there was almost always a mechanical back up and a flight engineer.
Gear stuck up - open the panels in the flightdeck floor and wind it down. Gear doors stuck - back to in line with wing trailing edge, lift the panels and release the door locks. Down into Lower 41 for the nosegear.
Most bits of the pressurisation and aircon had a manual override.
Jammed stab - split the spoilers and fly it on the speed brake lever.
No hydraulics- electric back up for flaps.
Bleeds were definitely used for aircon and pressurisation. Qantas first 338C delivery flight from SEA to SYD was the first commercial aircraft non-stop US to Australia. Memory a bit rusty but I think they were running on one bleed and cabin altitude about 10,000 to save fuel.
I flew the DC8, much more forgiving in the flare than a 707. I was on the engineers panel for a couple of DC3 to DC8 conversions and was braced for the impact as they flared for a three pointer.
Use of inflight reverse for emergency descent was pretty scary, felt as though it was shaking itself to bits.
Much preferred the 707.
Boeing engineering definitely benefitted from the UK brain drain in the early 60s. I used to glide from Wenatchee, just up the road from Moses Lake, and quite a few of the Boeing gliding club were Brits.

The holiday brochures back then made a 'big thing' about flying you on your Summer holiday on a 707 or 720B to get you to book with them, rather than with a competitor with smaller aircraft.

Global Holidays used Caledonian Airways 707C's at summer weekends from LGW MAN & GLA to PMI ALC IBZ and TCI (flying quite a few 'W' patterns, ending with huge knock-on delays)
Lord Brothers Holidays used Laker's 707's from LGW and MAN
Cosmos announced Monarch's 720B purchase in 1971 as ''Look what we've bought for you!'' - flying these as far as St Lucia on package holidays.
Enterprise replaced the BEA Airtours Comets in 1971 with the ex BOAC 707-436's
Dan Air, Donaldson, and Lloyd International's 707's were often seen at PMI and TCI
Britannia Airways 707C's did not do a lot of work, but again were seen at PMI and TCI and flew long haul package holidays to Jamaica for Thomson Skytours to Montego Bay where they had built their own hotel.

BMA in 1982 refurbished their 3 707C's fitted with a new wide look cabin, new larger 757 exit doors, new seats and galleys and these were used on Med and Canary Islands IT's from BHX EMA and MAN, plus they subbed for other holiday airlines too, and also did Ski flights in the winter.
They also flew summer ABC Transatlantic charters from LGW and MAN to LAX JFK BOS YYZ and YVR.

Configured as Y212. Most charter configured 707s were ca. 189 if I recall correctly. Did any airline cram more PAX in than British Midland?

Remember fondly the days of the BD 707 base at BHX. Crews were a great bunch of people to socialise with!

No, BMA's 212 was the most ever. This entailed re-fitting the aft of the wing hatch with the new 757 type exit door with slide (same as Door 3L/R on a 757)
186/189 was the norm for a 320/430 series
170 to 179 for a 120B/720B
154 for a 138B

I remember working at Airline Engineering, (Monarch) back end of 1979. They aquired another B720B from Maersk.
We were fitting the seats and PSUs for 179 seats but when we got to the back of the LH side the seat rails stopped about 2 ft short of normal so we were told to just move all the seats forward to make them all fit.
I think the seat pitch was about 28 ins for quite a few rows. This aircraft was going on charter for P&O cruises to the Far East. I'm glad I wasn't a passenger being 6ft 2in.

Yes, I knew about that - The 720B really was for a max of 170 pax. 179 was pushing it.

The initial trio for Monarch were 720-051B acquired in 1972 from Northwest, first in and last out in 1983, which Monarch got good value from. The 1979 Maersk aircraft appeared to be from the same model number and initial purchaser, but had a different background, for the initial three were from a foursome which Northwest found surplus before delivery, so had been fitted out and sub-leased new to TWA (otherwise not a known 720B operator, and who Howard Hughes had caused to get into some financial difficulties with Boeing for new 707 deliveries) for some years, before Northwest finally took them on. The Maersk one was new direct to Northwest. Maybe a galley, a coat cupboard, or similar had been there in Northwest's own cabin spec, and they had just lived with the little difference afterwards.

Of course Monarch may have refitted the rails themselves some time earlier. I gather AEL could do pretty much anything short of building a new aircraft.

I guess new seat rails could have been fitted but the aircraft was due out of the hangar to go into service.
I also remember that the blue paint was sanded down over a weekend ready for painting. On the Monday morning everything in hangar 61 was covered in blue dust, including our toolboxes, the seats and cabin furnishings.
I only worked there for 9 weeks, then went to BCAL where things were much more organised.

I’m loving this thread .. 10 out of 10!!

The 720/720B was limited to 149 seats in the configuration that most were delivered, i.e a single overwing emergency exit on each side. Most original customers configured the aircraft in a first/coach split that did not approach 149 seats (with the seat pitch standards of the day). Monarch had it's 720Bs modified to two overwing exits before delivery.

As specifically about the 707-320C here, one has to ask why the convertible/cargo model became the default, rather than the all passenger 707-320B. It wasn't like that initially, it changed over in the mid-60s, and I suspect quite a number of aircraft never operated as cargo. It wasn't as if there was no downside - the additional -320C weight of door and floor strengthening was such an issue for BOAC that when London-Moscow-Tokyo began that although they had a number of P&W 707C in hand by then, a good proportion configured for passengers, they needed to order two new 707-320B for the service, which were actually delivered a year after the first BOAC 747s. Some 707Cs were initially used as stand-ins on the service, but they might need to leave the freight behind, as the difference in capability was notable.

Someone at BOAC bought a 707C to add to their fleet from Saturn, the US supplemental, on it seems little more due diligence than "it's a 707C, innit ...". It was apparently a notably different aircraft for cockpit layout and similar, to the extent that differences course was needed for both pilots and FEs.

The US military did an evaluation in the mid 1960s and decided the 707C was their choice for long haul capacity, at a time of substantial Vietnam build-up, run by mainstream carriers. Several thus ordered and received quite significant fleets - Pan Am, Continental, Braniff, plus supplemental World Airways. Just after their delivery the DC8-63F became available and the military changed their mind at the contract renewal to these, now to be run by the pool of supplemental carriers, and apart from this overtaxing Douglas at Long Beach whose sales team committed to them all getting delivered together, the 707Cs the initial carriers had got were now a bit of an orphan on their shorter route structures - Pan Am were OK for what to do with them now, but Braniff and Continental were rather left high and dry, and after various long-haul route applications which didn't come off they became early secondhand stock sold to various operators.

I imagine that the reason that airlines bought 707-320Cs rather than -320Bs was the greater resale value, The future of passenger travel in the early/mid sixties was supposed to be supersonic, which is why the 747 was designed to have the capability for nose loading of main deck cargo. Ultimate payload range was not really a factor in those days as so many long haul routes were multi stop.

Wasn't the reason the 747 was designed with nose loading capability that at the time Boeing were pitching for a large military transport, which was actually awarded to Lockheed for the C-5A? As an aside I recall that when Seaboard World operated the 747-200F the idea was to be able to load 2 x 20ft ISO size containers side by side through the nose, don't know if that ever happened though.

that came before - Mr B always said that the 747 was a clean sheet design but I think they realised it might also make a great freighter one day