And!! we still have a tanker commitment so taking tanks out would be a bit daft

Hmmmm, looks like a troll, posts like a troll.....:rolleyes:

Trimotor
 

As one of those who was in the trimotor that took fuel from a VC10, Why Not Tank the timmy all the way.

Mile Man:ok:

All well and good, valveclosed, however the fact remains that the RAF TriStar fleet appears to suffer far more delays and AOG problems than any other TriStar operator ever did, large or small.
I find it very hard to believe this is simply due to the added equipment the MoD requires.
IE: doesn't pass the smell test.

The RAF have the LARGEST fleet of tristars anywhere left in the world. Not 3 but 9, we have done fairly well with them over the last 25 years. How many of the remaining jets have been with the same operator that long ?. 411A how long has your company 'Owned' their jets ?

Well I can smell something coming from 411As direction ........

Sheep ......... No

Pigs ............ No

Cows ........... No

Bull ............. that's it, that's it, it's all bullsh1t coming from across the pond :yuk:

I suspect that it would be f*** all use as a tanker if it hadn't been modified (with the attendant increase in complexity and servicing requirements). Not to mention DAS etc.

It's quite a different aeroplane from the ones sold to the RAF by Pan Am and BA.

The same applies to RAF VC10s vs civil ones, RAF Hercs vs L100s etc.

Was it ever confirmed that 411As Tristars are registered in Honduras to avoid having to maintain them to FAA standards?

I recall someone had evidence that alledged that they were flying with tired LLPs that wouldn't be tolerated under FAA standards?

Maybe this is why they have less downtime - they employ a time saving "fingers crossed" maintenance regime!

Their website certainly shouts - "technically competent slick outfit" - :eek:

rollinsair.com

AVIATION SAFETY OVERSIGHT: The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has assessed the Government of Honduras Civil Aviation Authority as not being in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aviation safety standards for the oversight of Honduras’ air carrier operations.

Quote:
AVIATION SAFETY OVERSIGHT: The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has assessed the Government of Honduras Civil Aviation Authority as not being in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aviation safety standards for the oversight of Honduras’ air carrier operations.

Indeed so, and that is precisely why our company is actively training Honduran Aviation Safety Inspectors, to allow Honduras to once again obtain Category One status.

Lets review.
At one very small airline where I worked, with a fleet of Lockheed TriStars, several leased on a long term agreement with BA (good airplanes, all -200's) the dispatch reliability was 98%, plus.
Why?
Lockheed first hand assistance, direct from the manufacturer.
Perhaps...the RAF is behind the eight ball with their ops, relying on Marshall's (such as they are) for their 'support'.
Bob T (an absolutely first rate LOCKHEED tech rep, as they ALL were) showed up on a semi-annual basis to advise, and keep the fleet of seven fully operational.

It positively can be done, however I fear that the RAF simply does not know how...or...cannot fund their TriStar fleet properly.
Again, no surprise.:{

NB.
At this one small airline mentioned above, the daily utilisation of each TriStar was (at the time) 14+ hours, day in and day out.
All maintained in-house, except for heavy checks, and these heavy checks were done by GAMCO.

The RAF operation is clearly deficient...reliability-wise.
How very sad...:{

Thank you for the kind words about us Lockheed tech reps! But I am having a hard time placing a Bob T. The only Bob T I could come up with was not a tech rep, but a flight crew type.

I could care less about your opinion.
The RAF has a huge problem on its hands regarding their TriStar fleet, so...either they wake up and smell the coffee or will totally fail in their mission.
I suspect the latter outcome.:{

Lockheed flight crew type, actually, and his observations/advice saved big time bucks for affected operators.

It would appear that the RAF will continue to bumble along...with minimal success.:}

Minimal success....oh do f*** off you ill-informed tw@t.

How you have the nerve to come on here and denigrate those members of the UK mil simply carrying out their duty (not job, duty) to the best of their ability within some exceptionally tight constraints (overseen at the highest political level) makes my blood boil. You have no idea of the constraints within which they work, nor the lengths they go to in order to achieve a succesful mission. Some of us do. Now do us all a favour and toddle off back to Honduras and hide under your stetson.

(Mods,I do apologise but the effluent gushing forth from his posts is enough to make the Pope swear)

Don't have a stetson, but thanks for your jovial message, anyway.:rolleyes:

Don't worry Farfrompuken, I'm done...for now.;)

Just.......


Make.......


It........


Stop.


Please!!!!!!!

I can't take it anymore:{:{

ref 411A:We could just ignore him!:ugh:

A trio of observations if I may?

1. Quote! "You're not paying attention, Sideshow Bob, the tech stop for refueling also has a crew change, and in addition, catering uplift for the passengers (you do feed 'em in the RAF yes?), because... it would be operated as an airline operation not some off the wall military ops without adequate forethought.
The military is very good at what they were designed for, fighting, however, it would appear that the transport of personel could be greatly enhanced by adopting proven commercial airline ops, and at an expected lower overall cost.
One wonders...is the MoD up to the task?" Unquote

I know that as one ages the memory starts to fade, but do I not remember flying RAFAIR for a 9 month suntanning holiday 40 miles south of the Equator in 1973 (and returning safely courtesy of the same 'airline')?
My military employer at the time seemed to manage basic commercial airline techniques reasonably well, as they did for me on numerous occasions afterwards. And from what I see at the moment that same military organisation manages pretty well considering the impositions placed on it by the 'government of the day'

2. I sat and watched a 216 Sqn Tristar perform some spirited local flying for 3hrs or so last Saturday - the airplane looked fine to me.

3. My eldest son is due to fly out via the same squadron to Afghan shortly for a 7 month+ tour of duty - methinks I'd rather trust him into the tender and safe hands of the RAF than a Honduras air carrier operator

A wise old Aussie Herc Flight Engineer told me once:-

'50 nations fly the Hercules, 49 of them talk to each other'

Am I the only one who is enjoying 411A's contributions?

411A,

How generous of you to provide us with an excuse to have a look at this marvellous monologue!

YouTube - David Mitchell Writes - Dear America...

He really ought to record a simliar piece about using ellipses to link the clauses of a "sentence".

Do keep up the good work!

...& AGAIN
 

Guess what? RIP imminent, TriMotor says it's got a note from its Mum & can't do PE... :mad::ugh:

Guess what? Crashtest faked Trimotor's PE note. He'll be there! (Bad gen Crashtest)

In that case, Cockney Geezer, my humblest apols - seems like I was indeed given bad gen regarding the jet in Akro...

About 411's Posts
 

If . . . IF 411's intention is to wind you boys up - then he's been an unparalleled success. I don't know about a little dip on the float, you've taken bites out of his whole bloody boat . . .

Undeniably, the aircraft was badly modded, when to fill all the belly fuel tanks would exceed the bending moments of the aircraft. All that useful baggage hold wasted.

The story of how the probes were fitted too shows remarkable naivety. Glad they took the bloody noisy things off. Marshall's template rigged on Door 1L was not the best job in the world - communication would have helped (but in fairness, that is in hindsight).

Any aircraft capable of refuelling a trimotor in flight, could easily take on its task. Ergo, that was not really well thought out - unless you wanted to offload 10 Victors into the bloody thing. More naivety.

Just because you don't like him, doesn't mean everything 411 says is wrong. But YOU are the boys getting all wound up.

If he's so crass, then ignore his posts . . . duh!

I thought the purpose of the TriStar receiver capability was principally for Falklands emergency reinforcement as follows:

Formation of 4x FJs, 1x TriStar and 1x VC10 launch from ASI. VC10 refuels FJs (twice?) and then dumps rest of its remaining offload into the TriStar before turning back. TriStar then has enough fuel to get the the rest of the formation to MPA.

To update the scenario, 2 x FSTAs will have 20T more fuel available than 1 TriStar plus one VC10, and a considerably lower burn.

DD,

Using your logic, in the days when we still had them...

"...any aircraft capable of refuelling a Victor in flight, could easily take on its task....".

Fortunately for us, in 1982 Victors were capable of being refuelled in flight.

Having that capacity for a Tristar offers flexibility, not naivety, for who knows what situation that people probably haven't even tried to imagine....

I think it was in Aug 1985, when the VC10K3 was relatively new, which found us on task somewhere over the North Sea on the way to do some routine AAR. All of a sudden, Starfleet told us to turn back south to RV with a Victor, which had been scrambled to support a QRA intercept, the plan being to top him up before he headed north.

The captain was ex-Victors, so I asked him what the max fuel of a Victor was. I think it was around 58 tonnes; we were already hundreds of miles north of the Victor and still had considerably more fuel on board than he could possibly carry.

So we then suggested to Starfleet that a better solution would be that we should head north to the QRA support task and that the rubber-suited chaps in their ancient bent-wing ex-nuclear bomber should take our routine AARA task. Of course we had the 'codes' and 'red book' on board (as we always did in those days), so comms wouldn't be a problem. They agreed to the idea, so off we went to nab 1 x Bear B and 1 x Bear C in the supreme comfort of a VC10K3 (navigators might disagree), landing after a 5 hr trip.

"Why didn't they think of that?", I asked the Captain. "Because they're ground-pounders and we're tanker aircrew" was his reply....:\

If in fact the RAF TriStars were "grounded" I wonder how they managed to put over 1050 cycles and 3200 hours in the final six months of 2010?

Somebody do the maths ('math'?) for him...

I was on the squadron in 1990 and know what the 'theory' was. The TriStar prodding wasn't really followed up as it was impractical.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. The only practical tanker for a TriStar, was deemed to be another one (capacity), ergo, any aircraft that could refuel the aircraft could do its task. I knew what I meant, sorry if it wasn't clear.

I won't get drawn into this lot as it amounts to the redistribution of air at 37 Celsius and doesn't serve any purpose.

But for God's sake stop responding to 411, it's tedious.

Yes, I'm a volunteer and now I'm off somewhere else. Bye chaps, I might be some time . . .

Reported today in the Cambridge News, redundancies at Marshalls as the MOD have cancelled the Tristar cockpit upgrade "without warning"

I would have thought that being so far behind schedule that there was no chance of completing the contract before the planes went out of service should have given Marshalls a clue that a phone call might be on its way.

Cambridge News | Latest News Headlines From Cambridge City & Cambridgeshire | National News By Cambridge News | 65 jobs to go at Marshall

The Tab News must be rather behind the times - I heard about this about 4 months ago.


It seems that poor old ZD949 will be subjected to the 'MRA4 treatment'....:uhoh:

brilliant to see marshalls have kept there head in the sand even more than the military do!!! "without warning??????" Obviously mr marshall does not read the news, have cutbacks in the military budget been on the table for quite a long time, especially for projects that have overun!!! massivly overun

Bit like the MRA4 some of us out here never thought it would fly spooky! it never did

typical MOD procurement though

As with most of this military procurement/manufacture/repair/refurbish stuff, Marshalls had probably slipped a few notes someone's way in the expectant hope of seeing further in to the MoD crystal ball. Or perhaps they felt that their largesse might save them from losing business?

I'm editing a new book on the Victor and I need a lot of stories suitable for publishing from Victor aircrew Mk1s, Mk2s and K Mk2s. The book will be called The Victor Boys and match the recently issued Lightning Boys which is doing very well. The more photographs the better.If you are interested please let me know. I know I started life as a Vulcan man but i flew lots of K2s and they did a really superb job in the Falklands.

remember the SR2 ... please

SR2...

http://www.airrecce.co.uk/graphics/A...victor_400.jpg

TheVulcan

Just a query. Why have you posted your plans on a Tristar thread?

Would it not be better to start a new thread specific to the Victor?

Please understand, this post is not meant to be a criticism, just an observation.

Rgds

Yes, I only happened on this post by accident as its the first time I've looked at the Tristar thread. Suggest a new thread with a new name.

Great news about the book, will have to trawl through the log book and see if I can come up with a contribution

Dont forget the K1/K1a either!