Trident help
 

The DH Trident was capable of incredible rates of descent, aided by in-flight reverse thrust on the outer engines. But I remember hearing somewhere that it also had a facility to use the main gear as an airbrake – mains only deployed, and the gear doors closed afterwards (they were left in the open position when the gear was lowered conventionally for landing). Can anyone confirm this? If true, was there a speed limit to allow the gear doors to cycle?

SSD

Yes, the Trident had a phenomenal rate of descent when called for.
Back in the 70’s I was working G-AVYB, a Trident 1E North East Airlines
Newcastle to Spain. FL290 overhead MIDHURST (MID) Cracked windscreen and emergency descent. Turned him left onto east and he got the height off and got a straight in at Gatwick 26.
Happy ending. Never heard how the passengers ears were though !!

Mr G.

PS: Just thinking, shame it didn't go up as fast as it came down.

Thanks for that, Mr G. Can you (or anyone else) confirm whether or not the main gear could be used as air brakes , as per my original post?

SSD

Any gear in any airplane can be used as "air brake" (drag) to increase rate of descent, or to slow down. The only limitations are not to exceed gear extend speed and gear extended speed. I recall that in the L1011, a larger cousin of the Trident, the gear could be dropped up to M.85 or 300 KIAS, but it couldn't be retracted above something like 230 KIAS or so.

Quite so, Glueball, but I'd heard that the Trident had a specific 'air brake mode'. Using this, the main gear (not nose gear) was deployed and the gear doord closed afterwards (when the gear was deployed for landing, doors remained open). Thus the aeroplane could be dived a high airspeeds with loads of drag. The Trident's main gear had 4 wheels per side, 2 each side of the gear leg rather than the more conventional 4-wheel bogie, so was particularly draggy.

But - is it a myth or did the DH121 indeed have this facility??

SSD

I should be seeing Des Penrose in a week or so at Old Warden. Des did a lot of the test flying on Tridents with John Cunningham.

If I remember I'll ask him! :)

That would be most helpful VA, since it's possible this was a feature tried on early models but not put into production.

Cheers

SSD

grand piano mode !
 

from my time working on the trident I cant remember any way that just the main gear could be used as a speedbrake but I have no doubt that in "full drag" mode the Trident could fall out of the sky in a spectacular fashon , this seems to be a bit of a Hatfield thing as the only thing that the BAe 146 could do better than any other aircraft that I have flown was go down !.

While we are on the Trident subject, can anyone tell me the history of the Trident that is at Heathrow painted in BEA colours? I guess is doesn't fly but what is it used for now?

Thanks.

Further to my last post I have talked to people who flew all the Trident marks ( I only worked the 2 and 3 ) and yes its true that the main landing gear could be used as a speed brake , there was a switch near the gear lever to isolate the nose gear the main gear was then dropped in the normal way and you would get TWO greens when it was down and locked.

I can only wonder at how meny people came close to landing with the nose gear up !.

To make matters worse this option was only fitted to the Trident 1E.

I hope this answers the question fully.

GAWZK Trident 3, LHR. Retired Nov 85. Owned by the TPS, Trident Preservation Society. Basically used as a living museum!

Trident at LHR (Engineering Base)
 

The aircraft is preserved with most of its internal fittings. It was used for towing practice but alas it cannot accomodate the modern towbarless tractors. I believe at this time it is not used by conventional tractors either as there is some concern about the undercarriage. As space is money i.e. parking fees it is rumoured that it will not be long before BA wants it off the base and ultimately off LHR.

many thanks, A and C.

I knew I'd heard it somewhere!

SSD

I remember boarding an LHR to Edinburgh shuttle early in 1980 and noticing a Trident nearby still in BEA colours. Was G-AWZK still in that colour scheme then?

Probably a different Trident. G-AWZK has spent several years in the grey/blue Llandor scheme and was only repainted into BEA colours sometime in 2000/2001.

You can read about it on the Trident website.

I once read that the Trident's nosewheel was offset because the autoland was so accurate, that the nosewheel strut would take too much of a battering from constantly running over the centreline lights!

I was very sorry to read from the Trident Website that G-AWZO was cut up at Hatfield in August.

I travelled on ZO on its last day in service - 31st December 1985 on a 'tribute' flight from Manchester. We did a low pass at Liverpool and Isle of Man, and one back at Manch before landing. Later that evening (around 18:00) ZO operated the Shuttle flight to Heathrow - her very last flight in service.

She then flew to Hatfield for 'preservation', but when I saw her about 1999 she was still on the north side at Hatfield, and in very bad shape. She had obviously just been left parked since 1985.

Shortly afterwards Hatfield was used for filming 'Band of Brothers', ZO was towed to the main apron, and the runways were lifted.

When I spoke to the guys at the DH museum at Salisbury Hall a while back they were hopeful that they might at least get the nose section. I presume that didn't happen.

SSD

The Trident's nosewheel was offset because it retracted sideways. This was so that the nosewheel bay would fit between two complete bulkheads without the cutouts required for a conventially retracting nosewheel. After the structural failures of the Comet 1 De Havilland were a bit obsessed with structural strength!

:) What I would like to know is , what was the need for this aircraft to go down so fast? I mean engines that could be used as speed brakes, landing gear that could be used as speed brakes, speed brakes that could be used as speed brakes..........................why so much????

i think that this may have been an over reaction to the fact that modern airliners are not that easy to slow down and most of them will not slow down and go down at the same time.

At the time the Trident was being built most of the aircraft flying with the airlines were props or turbo props and when you put a propeller into fine pitch at speed it acts like a very big speed brake , I can only think that it was invisaged that the Trident needed to match the braking performance of the other trafic.

The landing gear speedbrake was only fitted to the 1E so it sujests that it was found to be an unnessesary complication and so omitted from later aircraft.