L-1011 in the RAF
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Hopefully this is the right thread to append this question to, as I believe the plane in question was a Tristar and would be interested in knowing quite what happened on leaving Al Jubayl sometime May / June 91.
The short story goes, just after take off, something went 'bang', we dumped fuel and diverted to Bahrain. After an approach to allow the all ready lined up emergency services to do a visual check we made an emergency landing, brace, brace and all that.
First smoke for two months followed and then back onto the same plane. As we taxied out to the runway the awe inspiring words 'We're not 100% sure what caused the problem before, but if it happens agains we will just carry on straight to back to the UK' came from the pilot.
It didn't happen again, thank god, and was just wondering if anybody could shed any further light on what happened, I remember vaguely them saying something about the APU, but it was a mighty big bang (and possibly shudder but all the depleted uranium out in the gulf has done my memory no good at all).
Thanks
Monty
The short story goes, just after take off, something went 'bang', we dumped fuel and diverted to Bahrain. After an approach to allow the all ready lined up emergency services to do a visual check we made an emergency landing, brace, brace and all that.
First smoke for two months followed and then back onto the same plane. As we taxied out to the runway the awe inspiring words 'We're not 100% sure what caused the problem before, but if it happens agains we will just carry on straight to back to the UK' came from the pilot.
It didn't happen again, thank god, and was just wondering if anybody could shed any further light on what happened, I remember vaguely them saying something about the APU, but it was a mighty big bang (and possibly shudder but all the depleted uranium out in the gulf has done my memory no good at all).
Thanks
Monty
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Monts,
I response to you interest in the "Big Bang" it could possibly stem from the ACM and the APU bleed air ducting a 6" dia. duct has a plate welded at the end of it with a 2" duct coming out as a "Y". This duct is located in the aft section of the Air-conditioning bay, causing the noise to appear to generate from the avionics compartment. The pressure build up in the larger duct eventually creates an "Oilcanning" effect on the end plate. Several write ups coming in from the KC-10 pilots “Load noise coming from the E & E bay”, “Mysterious noise noticed during climb just after take off”, prompting an investigation to determine the root cause of this mystery noise. This determination task the corrective action team to devise a cost-effective repair, which was fabricating two each "L" angle stiffeners and installing them onto the endplate.
Having worked on the civilian version L-1011 at ATA I do recall the A/C system is very similar in design.
Hopefully this will be of some use to you.
Thank you all for the information and the razzing. Bear with me guys, I live in Texas and we do "Brand" things around here.
[This message has been edited by Dragonspet (edited 25 June 2001).]
I response to you interest in the "Big Bang" it could possibly stem from the ACM and the APU bleed air ducting a 6" dia. duct has a plate welded at the end of it with a 2" duct coming out as a "Y". This duct is located in the aft section of the Air-conditioning bay, causing the noise to appear to generate from the avionics compartment. The pressure build up in the larger duct eventually creates an "Oilcanning" effect on the end plate. Several write ups coming in from the KC-10 pilots “Load noise coming from the E & E bay”, “Mysterious noise noticed during climb just after take off”, prompting an investigation to determine the root cause of this mystery noise. This determination task the corrective action team to devise a cost-effective repair, which was fabricating two each "L" angle stiffeners and installing them onto the endplate.
Having worked on the civilian version L-1011 at ATA I do recall the A/C system is very similar in design.
Hopefully this will be of some use to you.
Thank you all for the information and the razzing. Bear with me guys, I live in Texas and we do "Brand" things around here.
[This message has been edited by Dragonspet (edited 25 June 2001).]
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Dragonspet, not heard of this on the L1011, probably as the ECS uses 6" ducts from the pack flow valves (mounted in the mesc (mid elec service centre) and either 4" or 6" in the ECS bay. My only thought would be a surge on the #2 engine, what do you think extreme? As for the routing I was in Al Jubayl around that time and the aircraft went to Bahrain anyway.
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"please report further"
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Penn Doff,
See this site for L1011 it is the same airframe as your Tri-Star I m not certain what modifications were done to it for military conversion but typically they are the same.
http://www.terravista.pt/FerNoronha/4226/l1011eng.html
We all here at Boeing suspected some major malfunction as well, when the issue first came up. If there were any surging from the #2 Engine it would be apparent by monitoring the FE station but that wasn't the case with our situation. All indications in the cockpit were operating within specified parameters. It was indeed a simple fix, but not an easy problem to isolate. It sounded like hell; I went up, with the crew, on six different test flights to investigate myself. My initial concern was primary structure, thinking perhaps a hard landing had occurred and was conveniently not documented, flexing in the wing root that had created a crack that was being overlooked at PDM. We all were quite baffled, the word Gremlins started spreading, what can you do? It was a recurring problem only with one aircraft but it was sporadic and many times cleared off the logbook as "could not duplicate problem on ground".
I will pull up the documentation tomorrow with more specifics regarding part # s and perhaps run an alternate P/N query to see if the same problem could be occurring. These two A/C are very similar in nature and design.
How long ago did this incident occur? Has it happen since?
[This message has been edited by Dragonspet (edited 27 June 2001).]
See this site for L1011 it is the same airframe as your Tri-Star I m not certain what modifications were done to it for military conversion but typically they are the same.
http://www.terravista.pt/FerNoronha/4226/l1011eng.html
We all here at Boeing suspected some major malfunction as well, when the issue first came up. If there were any surging from the #2 Engine it would be apparent by monitoring the FE station but that wasn't the case with our situation. All indications in the cockpit were operating within specified parameters. It was indeed a simple fix, but not an easy problem to isolate. It sounded like hell; I went up, with the crew, on six different test flights to investigate myself. My initial concern was primary structure, thinking perhaps a hard landing had occurred and was conveniently not documented, flexing in the wing root that had created a crack that was being overlooked at PDM. We all were quite baffled, the word Gremlins started spreading, what can you do? It was a recurring problem only with one aircraft but it was sporadic and many times cleared off the logbook as "could not duplicate problem on ground".
I will pull up the documentation tomorrow with more specifics regarding part # s and perhaps run an alternate P/N query to see if the same problem could be occurring. These two A/C are very similar in nature and design.
How long ago did this incident occur? Has it happen since?
[This message has been edited by Dragonspet (edited 27 June 2001).]
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Reference the "big bang", quite possibly the problem was down to engine surging, its that not uncommon and can occur during crosswind take off. It is covered in the flying manual, however if it was severe or lasted longer than expected a check of the engine for damage was probably prudent hence the fuel dump and stop in Bahrain.
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The RAF has 8 Tristars in service, the fact that we operate 9 of them is down to ZE706 which is a reserve aircraft, hence the amount of time it spent in Marshalls on the long term corrosion trials!!!!
It is in fact designated as an "in use reserve" good excuse for them to keep the crew ratio so low!!!
It is in fact designated as an "in use reserve" good excuse for them to keep the crew ratio so low!!!
