London City problem
 

This from the BBC website


Pilots warned of magnetic threat

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/image...port203_pa.jpg A plane was forced to turn back in October 2006

London City Airport has warned pilots their instruments may be affected by magnetic interference from metal structures found below the runway.
A report was carried out after an aeroplane was forced to turn back when its autopilot system failed.
Railway lines, and other metal structures left from the days when the airport was a dock, were found to be causing "significant interference".
A spokeswoman said action would be carried out "wherever necessary".
An investigation was launched by the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) after a jet was unable to follow a standard departure route, because of an autopilot problem, after taking off on 31 October 2006.
Magnetic fields
The Raytheon Hawker plane, which had two crew onboard, had to turn around and land back at the east London airport 10 minutes after take-off.
A survey was carried out which revealed a series of metal structures beneath the runway. They were found to be causing significant interference to the magnetic fields on which aircraft compasses and some navigation equipment rely. The airport has been ordered by the AAIB to address the problem.

Oh Really!!! :=

OK
More here:

Raytheon Hawker 800XP, CS-DRQ

Report name:
Raytheon Hawker 800XP, CS-DRQ
Registration:
CS-DRQ
Type:
Raytheon Hawker 800XP
Location:
London City Airport
Date of occurrence:
31 October 2006
Category:
Public transport - Fixed Wing
Summary:
This aircraft experienced significant navigation problems after taking off from London City Airport (LCY) and was unable to comply with the Standard Instrument Departure (SID). The crew were able to recover heading information after approximately 10 minutes and landed back at LCY without incident. It transpired that several similar incidents had previously occurred with other aircraft and there have been similar incidents subsequent to this one. The cause of the problem was identified as strong magnetic anomalies in the holding area for Runway 28. Six safety recommendations have been made.
Download report:
http://www.aaib.dft.gov.uk/sites/mai...ed/ico_pdf.gif Raytheon Hawker 800XP, CS-DRQ 1-08.pdf (1,778.35 kb)

Very old news.

There has been paperwork floating around about this for a while. Those who operate out of LCY know of the potential problem, as do those who control them.

I think Tandemrotor has suffered an anomaly........:)

It's true ..... the magnetic pulses from underground objects cause your finger to wrongly input the correct three digits on the flight director.
My solution has always been to wrap yourself in tin foil when looking at the SID pages in your Jepperson manual.
The problem exists mainly when flying a compton 1 romeo, but a woburn 2 fox seems to be unaffected.
I am off now to polish my five bar epaulettes

titter

Ye Olde Pilot

Let me shed a few fact about the Hawker 800 and especially the XPC with the Collins Proline 21 avionics suite as DRQ has.

When the comparitors sense an imbalance an amber HDG symbol appears on both EFIS panels. This usually appears when you come off at 'Kilo ' and hold at 'Mike' on runway 28. You can see the railway lines and NJE like most companies have procedures to combat this, which is essentially to turn the HDG slew on and then line up, slew it to the Rwy Magnetic Heading turn off the slew mode check them and if the amber warning has gone and hdgs match you bugger off.

Some times as has happened to me despite doing all of the above it can come on in the air which means you have lost your ability to control the a/c heading through the autopilot. The aircraft will happily follow the SID and entire flight plan route faithfully until ATC asks you to fly a HDG.

As the crew had no pax, whoops, sorry.... "owners", on board and assuming the WX was fine i think they did the right thing. Maybe they could have gone to LTN but with all those heading changes it was probably better to recover it into LCY but i wasn't there.

This story in my mind doesn't really have any balls:zzz:.No fire engines no Mayday no dead bodies. Its a fact of life operating out of LCY and at the end of the day we can always go back to a bit of stick and rudder and give george the day off.:suspect:

P7lot

Five bars? Pah! were getting a new uniform and the word is that its all gold with six blue stripes:suspect::suspect::=:suspect:

Definitely Old News

This problem has been known about for ages.

Forever getting EFIS comparison warnings when backtracking 28. . .

for many years, and still now, New York's KLGA airport has similiar problems.

we fix it simply by setting our gyros to the runway heading as we line up and off we go.

I know one pilot who shall remain nameless...and a zoomie...who didn't do this and landed short of destination to have the compass fixed.

shame on you zoomie.

The Hawker 400xp also had the same problems and I saw it many, many times. After take off we slaved the gyros or Thames would ask where you were going.

Same prob at EDI on 24 when lining up at Charlie

Yup, you're right, this is seriously old news.

It's also been NOTAM'd for a bit, and has (infuriatingly) been the subject of a 20-second extra bit on the end of every ATIS broadcast at LCY. Even when using rwy 10.

Virtually every time we are lined up on 28, a HDG flag pops up, but taking a moment to re-align the ADC fixes the issue. OK, the XP may have a more fragile system, and while it's not really clear to me how the problem happens after getting airborne, re-syncing compasses is something that most pilots have been doing occasionally since basic training!

Can the XP not be reverted to magnetic reference until the clever electronics can be re-aligned?

CC

How old has news of potential hazard to be before you disregard it completely? Is it like politics, for example? :hmm:

Irrespective of what junk or deliberate structures are buried beneath the concrete, what effects do other clutter have on instruments at this one? Redevelopment around the site has been not inconsiderable for some years now, and the Jet Centre apron seems awfully crowded at times.

I remember three years or so ago seeing a Dornier dropping out of low clag on 10 approach considerably north of the centreline - never did hear the upshot of that incident but it received some comment at the time about the serviceability of the ILS.

Then there was the recent potential clutter formed by the dinged Avro until they moved it to fix it...

Errr, there are no standards for prevention of magnetic anomaly at airports, but aircraft rely on magnetic sensors for navigation. Not an LCY problem, but an ICAO one. :=

Is there any reason why the "extra bit" was recorded in the bathroom, with the soundtrack from another part of the ATIS recording noticeably playing in the background ?

later ammended to include after runway

'due to heavy landings'!

other metal structures left from the days when the airport was a dock.

Might be the Brinks Mat gold ! :}

Sorry hammy!
Brinks Mat gold in steel boxes.:ooh:

Magnetic attraction.
 

The problem had been there since the airport opened. On joining LCY Airways in the 1980s we were told it was the iron wellingtons used to keep the bodies from floating to the surface.