DC3 Essendon
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sixtiesrelic, you obviously haven't flown a Metro then 
But then this
Every aircraft I have flown with an APU auto shuts down in the event of an APU fire 
But then this
I suppose they have the book out so they can do the fire drill if the bugger catches alight...
DC-3s wallowed and leaked and deafened you but all DC-3 pilots will climb aboard and sniff the same old smell she has had and remember the good days when ever they get a chance.
Relic...
Excellent!
On the list of aircraft I want and will fly one day.
Naturally you will not want an engineer to do a walkaround on that as you will be more than capable of doing your own
Excellent!
On the list of aircraft I want and will fly one day.
Naturally you will not want an engineer to do a walkaround on that as you will be more than capable of doing your own
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Monopole... No I haven't even crouched down to get inside a Metro.
You are getting all protective there mate, like I did almost fifty years ago when a fairly famous Aussie aviator mentioned to another in my hearing, that he'd had a fly of a Tiger Moth recently and “Hell there was nothing to do in the checklists”.
I, a thirty stupendous hour, grub, was suitably affronted at this slur. I kept my gob shut and went through the longest one in my head…Trim, throttle friction nut, fuel, slats, switches, instruments… ( there were six of those to check… ASI, Altimeter, T&B, tacho, oil pressure and compass!) Hatches and harness and controls... “What’s HE talking about”.
HE had flown evacuees in an Avro Ten in New Guinea with the Japs streaking in and shooting the place up and gone on to start his own ‘small airline’ that operated for many years, servicing the north.
We have been you… you have yet to become us. As a tall, superior, Austrian Check Captain once said to me…’”Right now you’re just a grub! One day you’ll emerge into a beeauutiful butterfly”. I suppose today he’d be up before some graduate in equity and diversity for being so insulting. I laughed and understood where he was coming from.
I had a bit of a look in the thread ‘Back in the day when you flew a real plane’ and I don’t see ‘the pencil’ mentioned. I didn’t go right through but feel free to enlighten me.
In say thirty year’s time, will there be the affection for the Metro that MILLIONS have for the old Goonie? The war helped I guess, as plenty of servicemen heard the drone and welcomed the supplies that would drop from her, or the relief of being carted out to safety.
Passengers can stand upright in the Three’s aisle and lean against the hat rack to look out the window as they’re mooching along a couple of thousand feet up. You can see people in their yards and watch what they’re doing as you pass slowly by.
Short people find the emergency exit row uncomfortable to try and eat in. Their table is too far from them. There’s plenty of leg room and the seats are wide.
I really don’t think many passengers have any particular love of the Metro... A good little aeroplane, but … just another screaming, people mover.
The couple of pilots who've flown them, don't get too misty when telling me about them. It was more the situation they were in and the heaviness of the controlls that came across to me.
You FLY a three, not ‘operate’ them … although in today’s climate of correctness, it looks like trying to operate them is coming in, much like the way the airlines changed the way of flying the Friendship so that the transition to jets was easier.
There were a couple of oldies who had flown big lumbering beasts through hours of bursts of flack for many petrifying tours and came back home and FLEW the Friendship ‘their way’. Some of us spotty little experts learned a thing or two about the aeroplane and flying when with them… uncomfortable perhaps to start with because it wasn’t in the manual, but we saw what CAN be done. I never heard of any of us doing the things but we knew what the aircraft was capable of.
OH! and does the fire bottle go off automatically too, when the APU catches alight?
I was endeavouring to point out that starting a jet engine is fairly straight forward because lots of computers take care of the fine tuning.
You didn't seem to be appalled at the effrontery of an untrained person going into the cockpit and touching things, which is a sad entitlement on the standards of training and respect today.
I haven’t seen it myself, but it was a pretty irate pilot who told me it’s happened.
I'm not having a serious shot at you mate, I was always excited about the next step up, like every other pilot I've ever met... Just don't look forward all the time. Look back over your shoulder occasionally, because it may well not be there when you realize you'd like it. That goes for old aeroplanes, a way out of a valley or your holding altitude while the bloke in front shoots another approach.
When flying Tiger Moths; a Chipmunk with its huge clunker of a Flight/Ground swithch to supply electricity to the aeroplane, flaps, TWO petrol tanks, a five channel wireless set, lights, brakes ... and artificial horizon and direction gyro... WOW!
AND a great big Cessna 172 with two wirelesses and an automatic direction finder with it's five inch, round, three channel dial on the dashboard... Complicated and scary ... hell! would I ever be able to fly one of THEM?
Funnily enough at that time I was often sitting in jumpseats of Viscounts and didn't have a clue what was happening... too far above my experience and knowledge.
You are getting all protective there mate, like I did almost fifty years ago when a fairly famous Aussie aviator mentioned to another in my hearing, that he'd had a fly of a Tiger Moth recently and “Hell there was nothing to do in the checklists”.
I, a thirty stupendous hour, grub, was suitably affronted at this slur. I kept my gob shut and went through the longest one in my head…Trim, throttle friction nut, fuel, slats, switches, instruments… ( there were six of those to check… ASI, Altimeter, T&B, tacho, oil pressure and compass!) Hatches and harness and controls... “What’s HE talking about”.
HE had flown evacuees in an Avro Ten in New Guinea with the Japs streaking in and shooting the place up and gone on to start his own ‘small airline’ that operated for many years, servicing the north.
We have been you… you have yet to become us. As a tall, superior, Austrian Check Captain once said to me…’”Right now you’re just a grub! One day you’ll emerge into a beeauutiful butterfly”. I suppose today he’d be up before some graduate in equity and diversity for being so insulting. I laughed and understood where he was coming from.
I had a bit of a look in the thread ‘Back in the day when you flew a real plane’ and I don’t see ‘the pencil’ mentioned. I didn’t go right through but feel free to enlighten me.
In say thirty year’s time, will there be the affection for the Metro that MILLIONS have for the old Goonie? The war helped I guess, as plenty of servicemen heard the drone and welcomed the supplies that would drop from her, or the relief of being carted out to safety.
Passengers can stand upright in the Three’s aisle and lean against the hat rack to look out the window as they’re mooching along a couple of thousand feet up. You can see people in their yards and watch what they’re doing as you pass slowly by.
Short people find the emergency exit row uncomfortable to try and eat in. Their table is too far from them. There’s plenty of leg room and the seats are wide.
I really don’t think many passengers have any particular love of the Metro... A good little aeroplane, but … just another screaming, people mover.
The couple of pilots who've flown them, don't get too misty when telling me about them. It was more the situation they were in and the heaviness of the controlls that came across to me.
You FLY a three, not ‘operate’ them … although in today’s climate of correctness, it looks like trying to operate them is coming in, much like the way the airlines changed the way of flying the Friendship so that the transition to jets was easier.
There were a couple of oldies who had flown big lumbering beasts through hours of bursts of flack for many petrifying tours and came back home and FLEW the Friendship ‘their way’. Some of us spotty little experts learned a thing or two about the aeroplane and flying when with them… uncomfortable perhaps to start with because it wasn’t in the manual, but we saw what CAN be done. I never heard of any of us doing the things but we knew what the aircraft was capable of.
OH! and does the fire bottle go off automatically too, when the APU catches alight?
I was endeavouring to point out that starting a jet engine is fairly straight forward because lots of computers take care of the fine tuning.
You didn't seem to be appalled at the effrontery of an untrained person going into the cockpit and touching things, which is a sad entitlement on the standards of training and respect today.
I haven’t seen it myself, but it was a pretty irate pilot who told me it’s happened.
I'm not having a serious shot at you mate, I was always excited about the next step up, like every other pilot I've ever met... Just don't look forward all the time. Look back over your shoulder occasionally, because it may well not be there when you realize you'd like it. That goes for old aeroplanes, a way out of a valley or your holding altitude while the bloke in front shoots another approach.
When flying Tiger Moths; a Chipmunk with its huge clunker of a Flight/Ground swithch to supply electricity to the aeroplane, flaps, TWO petrol tanks, a five channel wireless set, lights, brakes ... and artificial horizon and direction gyro... WOW!
AND a great big Cessna 172 with two wirelesses and an automatic direction finder with it's five inch, round, three channel dial on the dashboard... Complicated and scary ... hell! would I ever be able to fly one of THEM?
Funnily enough at that time I was often sitting in jumpseats of Viscounts and didn't have a clue what was happening... too far above my experience and knowledge.
Last edited by sixtiesrelic; 15th Aug 2011 at 00:46. Reason: Spelling
[quoteFunnily enough at that time I was often sitting in jumpseats of Viscounts and didn't have a clue what was happening... too far above my experience and knowledge.
][/quote]
That is not surprising. Some years after the Viscount was introduced into the airlines, a poll was started in Flight International I think, asking pilots to nominate which aircraft they had flown in their career that had caused the most checklist errors. The Viscount was on top of everyone's list because of the illogical layout of the numerous switches from the top to the bottom of all the instrument panels. Having flown the Viscount I would go along with that.
American cockpits were generally far better designed - Mustang versus Spitfire cockpits for instance.
The Convair 440 Metropolitan flight deck was excellent but later made a hideous mess when the turbo-prop Allisons were installed.
][/quote]
That is not surprising. Some years after the Viscount was introduced into the airlines, a poll was started in Flight International I think, asking pilots to nominate which aircraft they had flown in their career that had caused the most checklist errors. The Viscount was on top of everyone's list because of the illogical layout of the numerous switches from the top to the bottom of all the instrument panels. Having flown the Viscount I would go along with that.
American cockpits were generally far better designed - Mustang versus Spitfire cockpits for instance.
The Convair 440 Metropolitan flight deck was excellent but later made a hideous mess when the turbo-prop Allisons were installed.
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I was too young to have flown the Viscount, but I know from
reading McArthur Job's crash comic Vol 4 that the 700 was a
pretty badly designed heap of crap - Winton being the prime
example.
reading McArthur Job's crash comic Vol 4 that the 700 was a
pretty badly designed heap of crap - Winton being the prime
example.
that the 700 was a
pretty badly designed heap of crap - Winton being the prime
example.
pretty badly designed heap of crap - Winton being the prime
example.
And of course the Comet 1 structural failures in flight and not to mention the Canadair C-4 Argonaut with its poorly designed fuel system - Stockton, Manchester accident 1967. The list goes on.
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Hey Relic, sit down ol' timer and have a little rest. My post had my tongue so firmly planted in the side of my cheek it was almost pushing through.
My point being, that there are many aircraft types (while not in the same league as the D) that are still 'hand flown' and not completely computer operated. The Metro (a vast majority of them at least) is one of them.
I'm not getting defensive about anything. I couldn't care less for the Metro. And I agree that in 30 years time nobody will probably get "misty eyed" about it either. I also hope that we never again become so attached to an aircraft or reliant on an aircraft due to the process of war.
I do take my hat off to you guys who pioneered the industry, and bravely fought (my father and my grandfathers amongst them) for us latter generations, and I enjoy hearing people talk about and know personally some of 'Australia's Aviation Greats'. This will unfortunately one day be lost to the history books. But for those of us who through no fault of our own, were born in an era after yours, deserve the right to enjoy and be sentimental of the aircraft that we cut our teeth on, without constantly hearing how easier the things are to fly these days or that we don't fly them, but monitor the systems.
Not too sure where you got this opinion of me from. I would not be too happy to hear of this happening.
Also, you don't know me, the respect that I have for my fellow people, or where I've come from, where I am now or how I got here, so please don't lump me in with 'today's standard of training'.
I appreciate this Relic, and nor am I having a personal crack at you. For those that no me well though, they know that I looked back too much and this in fact hampered my way forward. Remember that Classic Wings operation with the 3 out of Perth a few years ago? I was well into the process of the exact same thing a few years before that. I was, and still am passionate about the DC3 and would love nothing more than to "FLY" one, but passion doesn't put food on the table and I abandoned the project.
No hard feelings Sixtiesrelic, but we are all adding our bit to the aviation industry with the cards that we've been dealt
My point being, that there are many aircraft types (while not in the same league as the D) that are still 'hand flown' and not completely computer operated. The Metro (a vast majority of them at least) is one of them.
I'm not getting defensive about anything. I couldn't care less for the Metro. And I agree that in 30 years time nobody will probably get "misty eyed" about it either. I also hope that we never again become so attached to an aircraft or reliant on an aircraft due to the process of war.
I do take my hat off to you guys who pioneered the industry, and bravely fought (my father and my grandfathers amongst them) for us latter generations, and I enjoy hearing people talk about and know personally some of 'Australia's Aviation Greats'. This will unfortunately one day be lost to the history books. But for those of us who through no fault of our own, were born in an era after yours, deserve the right to enjoy and be sentimental of the aircraft that we cut our teeth on, without constantly hearing how easier the things are to fly these days or that we don't fly them, but monitor the systems.
You didn't seem to be appalled at the effrontery of an untrained person going into the cockpit and touching things, which is a sad entitlement on the standards of training and respect today.
Also, you don't know me, the respect that I have for my fellow people, or where I've come from, where I am now or how I got here, so please don't lump me in with 'today's standard of training'.
I'm not having a serious shot at you mate, I was always excited about the next step up, like every other pilot I've ever met... Just don't look forward all the time. Look back over your shoulder occasionally, because it may well not be there when you realize you'd like it. That goes for old aeroplanes, a way out of a valley or your holding altitude while the bloke in front shoots another approach
No hard feelings Sixtiesrelic, but we are all adding our bit to the aviation industry with the cards that we've been dealt
DC-3
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So was the Lockheed Electra where several were lost...
that caused the propeller to rip the engines and wings off was
corrected by tilting the engine mounts 2 deg up, and this was
done just after the L188 entered domestic service in Oz.
As I recall there was a 220kt IAS limit on the Electras while the
problem was being worked on. The aeroplane turned out pretty
ok after that - as a Ta-Ta DC9 FO we used to race Ansett's L188C
from MEL to Launy, and those Wombats could give us a run for
our money!
I strongly suspect a person can only find out how good a
pilot they are by flying something like a DC3, Tiger Moth
or Auster aircraft.
pilot they are by flying something like a DC3, Tiger Moth
or Auster aircraft.
accurately and safely you could fly anything the buggers
throw at you in the future.
Was only able to ever do 3hrs in the J4 though....
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Driving past Caboolture yesterday I spotted either the TAA or Ansett DC-3 parked with her nose majestically pointing skywards towards the highway. Lost concentration on the driving as I shot my head back a couple of times trying to identify her.
While at a mate's place further north an hour later, we heard the unmistakable sound of the pair of Pratts burbling along at 2050 RPM. That had us out of the house and dancing about the yard to keep her in view as she slowly flew seawards of the coast towards the Wide Bay do that's on this weekend.
The silhouette is unmistakable and the sedate speed ... a giveaway, even when you can’t hear the old girls.
While at a mate's place further north an hour later, we heard the unmistakable sound of the pair of Pratts burbling along at 2050 RPM. That had us out of the house and dancing about the yard to keep her in view as she slowly flew seawards of the coast towards the Wide Bay do that's on this weekend.
The silhouette is unmistakable and the sedate speed ... a giveaway, even when you can’t hear the old girls.
