Trident autothrust system and autoland
Cremeegge
I was the stooge who worked outside with our traveling engineer while your dad drunk coffee in the warm!
It was around zero and slush everywhere.
The procedure was to start engine 2, remove the starter motor, fit a blanking plate which was carried in the engineers kit and then mount the starter on engine three.
After we started two we refitted the starter to engine three but it wouldn't start - I thought we had got the starters mixed up and we swopped them around - no joy.
We had already re-fueled after the first starter had broken - it took nearly an hour to carry out the procedure in the dark but with another good hour and a third re fueling in Moscow your dad decided we would run out of hours and we night-stopped. Fantastic decision!!!!!
The starter motors were flown in the next day on the subsequent service and we flew back with a couple of pax only.
I always suspected that the starter motor had gone bang ex LHR after some engineering bodge - it was the only time I ever had a starter motor failure in my career- let alone two!
In those days we often had a lot of carry forward defects as well as prodigious tech log entries "ground tested and found satisfactory".
The night stop was a hoot - although we didn't have a room party as Male and females were on separate floors with a granny sitting at the end of the corridor.
Station gave us a briefing about the KGB and BOAC who had unscrewed a chandelier floor mounting plate believing it was a secret microphone causing the chandelier to crash to the floor below.
The hotel room was similar to a french one - cold with a trickle of brown water running out of the tap - brushed our teeth with champagne.
The next day we paraded around Red Square in our uniforms jumping all of the queues into the churches. We got as far as jumping a 1/2 kilometer queue into Lenin's tomb but couldn't be a*****d just to see the coffin.
Moving Map
Played a prank once with a new skipper who decided to have a kip on a night med flight - probably Malta.
When he went to sleep I unplugged his head set jack plug.
We got descent with London ATC and took out all of the manometric locks, slightly throttled back and started the descent on pitch wheel.
It meant that the autopilot annunciator panel was blank - We always included it in our scan to understand what the autopilot was trying to do.
This was followed by winding the doppler map to it's very end - think it had the sector details on it.
All of our radio aids were detuned and P1s jack plug was replaced.
Waking up he would have immediately assumed that we had overflown Heathrow and that the aircraft was descending out of control.
As he stirred we assumed sleeping positions but out of the corner of our eyes we watched the panic dawn over his less than angelic face.
Dare not write the expletives down.
Bet he didn't let his FOs do all of the work on a night flight again!
I was the stooge who worked outside with our traveling engineer while your dad drunk coffee in the warm!
It was around zero and slush everywhere.
The procedure was to start engine 2, remove the starter motor, fit a blanking plate which was carried in the engineers kit and then mount the starter on engine three.
After we started two we refitted the starter to engine three but it wouldn't start - I thought we had got the starters mixed up and we swopped them around - no joy.
We had already re-fueled after the first starter had broken - it took nearly an hour to carry out the procedure in the dark but with another good hour and a third re fueling in Moscow your dad decided we would run out of hours and we night-stopped. Fantastic decision!!!!!
The starter motors were flown in the next day on the subsequent service and we flew back with a couple of pax only.
I always suspected that the starter motor had gone bang ex LHR after some engineering bodge - it was the only time I ever had a starter motor failure in my career- let alone two!
In those days we often had a lot of carry forward defects as well as prodigious tech log entries "ground tested and found satisfactory".
The night stop was a hoot - although we didn't have a room party as Male and females were on separate floors with a granny sitting at the end of the corridor.
Station gave us a briefing about the KGB and BOAC who had unscrewed a chandelier floor mounting plate believing it was a secret microphone causing the chandelier to crash to the floor below.
The hotel room was similar to a french one - cold with a trickle of brown water running out of the tap - brushed our teeth with champagne.
The next day we paraded around Red Square in our uniforms jumping all of the queues into the churches. We got as far as jumping a 1/2 kilometer queue into Lenin's tomb but couldn't be a*****d just to see the coffin.
Moving Map
Played a prank once with a new skipper who decided to have a kip on a night med flight - probably Malta.
When he went to sleep I unplugged his head set jack plug.
We got descent with London ATC and took out all of the manometric locks, slightly throttled back and started the descent on pitch wheel.
It meant that the autopilot annunciator panel was blank - We always included it in our scan to understand what the autopilot was trying to do.
This was followed by winding the doppler map to it's very end - think it had the sector details on it.
All of our radio aids were detuned and P1s jack plug was replaced.
Waking up he would have immediately assumed that we had overflown Heathrow and that the aircraft was descending out of control.
As he stirred we assumed sleeping positions but out of the corner of our eyes we watched the panic dawn over his less than angelic face.
Dare not write the expletives down.
Bet he didn't let his FOs do all of the work on a night flight again!
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I was P3 on a LHR-GLA trip, when climbing through about FL150, I noticed a slight whistling coming from the back of the flight deck. This gradually got louder, and I drew it to the attention of P1/P2. They thought they could both hear it and P1 scanned the pressn panel and said 'probably a loose door seal - put it in the book for GLA to look at'.
It gradually got louder. Passing about FL230, I noticed that I had left the manually operated dump valve fully open - left open for T/O and closed shortly therefafter. Very slowly, to prevent any surging, I wound it closed with my right foot. Sure enough the noise stopped. Passing about FL280 I asked P1 & P2 if they could still hear the noise, as I couldn't detect it any more.
They couldn't and commented that 'these door seals often sort themselves out'.
I then owned up, when P1 said he had done exactly the same as P3 on a Comet - but on that occasion, he hadn't noticed until the 'rubber jungle' appeared.
PMc, do you remember doing a block of work 28-31/1/80 including 5 CATIII approaches (@ LHR BFS & GLA), including, on one of the GLA's ex LHR 28R, #1 blowing up on rotation, with an incredibly long and loud graunching sound - we all thought the U/C had collapsed as I rotated - closing the R/W for an hour while it was swept of fan blades, with a subsequent 2 eng landing on 27L in about 800m? As if that wasn't enough, we ended the block with a night Malta! Apart from Malta, we reckoned we did't see the ground above 200' all week.
It gradually got louder. Passing about FL230, I noticed that I had left the manually operated dump valve fully open - left open for T/O and closed shortly therefafter. Very slowly, to prevent any surging, I wound it closed with my right foot. Sure enough the noise stopped. Passing about FL280 I asked P1 & P2 if they could still hear the noise, as I couldn't detect it any more.
They couldn't and commented that 'these door seals often sort themselves out'.
I then owned up, when P1 said he had done exactly the same as P3 on a Comet - but on that occasion, he hadn't noticed until the 'rubber jungle' appeared.
PMc, do you remember doing a block of work 28-31/1/80 including 5 CATIII approaches (@ LHR BFS & GLA), including, on one of the GLA's ex LHR 28R, #1 blowing up on rotation, with an incredibly long and loud graunching sound - we all thought the U/C had collapsed as I rotated - closing the R/W for an hour while it was swept of fan blades, with a subsequent 2 eng landing on 27L in about 800m? As if that wasn't enough, we ended the block with a night Malta! Apart from Malta, we reckoned we did't see the ground above 200' all week.
Last edited by Hobo; 4th Dec 2010 at 07:34.
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I've been trying to remember the type number of the boost engine but no joy.
I believe it was originally designed to provide vertical lift for some proposed vtol fighter that never got built. Consequently it had a very high thrust to weight ratio largely because it had no starter motor, no generator or hydraulic pump to drive, only minimal anti-icing and not even an oil pump. Probably the only commercial jet engine to run with zero oil pressure!
I believe it was originally designed to provide vertical lift for some proposed vtol fighter that never got built. Consequently it had a very high thrust to weight ratio largely because it had no starter motor, no generator or hydraulic pump to drive, only minimal anti-icing and not even an oil pump. Probably the only commercial jet engine to run with zero oil pressure!
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I was P3 on a LHR-GLA trip, when climbing through about FL150, I noticed a slight whistling coming from the back of the flight deck. This gradually got louder, and I drew it to the attention of P1/P2. They thought they could both hear it and P1 scanned the pressn panel and said 'probably a loose door seal - put it in the book for GLA to look at'.
It gradually got louder. Passing about FL230, I noticed that I had left the manually operated dump valve fully open - left open for T/O and closed shortly therefafter. Very slowly, to prevent any surging, I wound it closed with my right foot. Sure enough the noise stopped. Passing about FL280 I asked P1 & P2 if they could still hear the noise, as I couldn't detect it any more.
They couldn't and commented that 'these door seals often sort themselves out'.
I then owned up, when P1 said he had done exactly the same as P3 on a Comet - but on that occasion, he hadn't noticed until the 'rubber jungle' appeared.
PMc, do you remember doing a block of work 28-31/1/80 including 5 CATIII approaches (@ LHR BFS & GLA), including, on one of the GLA's ex LHR 28R, #1 blowing up on rotation, with an incredibly long and loud graunching sound - we all thought the U/C had collapsed as I rotated - closing the R/W for an hour while it was swept of fan blades, with a subsequent 2 eng landing on 27L in about 800m? As if that wasn't enough, we ended the block with a night Malta! Apart from Malta, we reckoned we did't see the ground above 200' all week.
It gradually got louder. Passing about FL230, I noticed that I had left the manually operated dump valve fully open - left open for T/O and closed shortly therefafter. Very slowly, to prevent any surging, I wound it closed with my right foot. Sure enough the noise stopped. Passing about FL280 I asked P1 & P2 if they could still hear the noise, as I couldn't detect it any more.
They couldn't and commented that 'these door seals often sort themselves out'.
I then owned up, when P1 said he had done exactly the same as P3 on a Comet - but on that occasion, he hadn't noticed until the 'rubber jungle' appeared.
PMc, do you remember doing a block of work 28-31/1/80 including 5 CATIII approaches (@ LHR BFS & GLA), including, on one of the GLA's ex LHR 28R, #1 blowing up on rotation, with an incredibly long and loud graunching sound - we all thought the U/C had collapsed as I rotated - closing the R/W for an hour while it was swept of fan blades, with a subsequent 2 eng landing on 27L in about 800m? As if that wasn't enough, we ended the block with a night Malta! Apart from Malta, we reckoned we did't see the ground above 200' all week.
PMc, do you remember doing a block of work 28-31/1/80 including 5 CATIII approaches (@ LHR BFS & GLA),
I am wondering if this is the same winter's time (because it was around then) when I was paxing extensively up to Edinburgh and back, it had been dreary grey on the ground for many days. Departed Heathrow at 0800, straight up into the stuff for several minutes, and with a good rate of climb the Trident burst out of the top into bright sunshine. The whole cabinful of suits (as we all were on the Shuttle at such a departure time) all went "aaaah" as it did so !
Early simulator visuals
The Trident sim was fitted with a visual display - it was a rubber conveyor belt around 6 ft wide and 20 ft long and mounted vertically. The black and white TV camera was mounted above it and positioned by two threaded rods to give vertical and horizontal displacement from the belt centre line.
Ah, the canvas countryside conveyor!! I thought my career was over with that thing. Not the Trident one actually but a similar thing on the Vanguard /Merchantman. It worked by projecting the TV picture onto a set of mirrors in front of you.
After 9 years almost to the day as a Trident man (boy really!) and still with only 2 stripes I got a Merchantman command. Did the 1st days sim with my “buddy” then had 2 days sick and had to catch up.
So it a dark and stormy night, and it was me and a ground instructor who I think was probably a retired Base Training Captain and not too pleased to be spending Christmas Eve in an otherwise almost totally deserted Heston Training Centre doing exercise 2, engine failure RTOs. Careful explanation of what to look for – stop the nose swing, instruments move, etc. The emphasis was on watching for a heading change on the compass I think. The Trident had pretty good clear Smiths SEP5 instrumentation and of course virtually no swing on losing an engine. The Merchantman had the Smiths Flight System (in my opinion the worst instruments ever designed) and of course big asymmetry! So this was a big deal for a Gripper boy.
Anyway line up on that cardboard runway with the grey flickery TV visual, instructor in RHS opens up, we accelerate, he pulls an engine, I think I am correcting the right way but can see the runway swing, frantically try again and the world goes mad as we ground loop off the runway.
Instructor says patiently “you corrected the wrong way didn’t you” and goes through it again. Repeat exercise with same result. And again. And again. My heart rate is rising exponentially. His patience is getting sorely tested! I am sure I am doing what he is telling me to and the damn thing is not responding correctly - poorest excuse ever but I can see my career vanishing down this black hole! Eventually he says “look I’ll show you”.
Instructor in RHS opens up, accelerate, he pulls an engine. We see the nose swing, and the world goes mad as we ground loop off the runway.
Long silence then instructor says “There IS something wrong here!” and swiftly departs the sim to get the engineers. Leaving me to deep contemplation of bad news for Christmas. When he returns I timidly point out my recollection that when I saw this on day one, the “airport buildings” were on the left – now they are on the right. Lo and behold the engineers had been working on the visual, and had somehow reassembled it so the runway image was for the reverse of the simulator direction, e.g. the sim thought it was on r/w27 while the image was for r/w 09. Or something. Don’t ask me to explain how you would do that. Anyway if you tried to correct a swing on the visual, you actually went in the wrong direction. In retrospect I can’t understand why we didn’t detect it even before the failure, I suspect that I was keeping straight by a combination of being frozen with fear, focus on that damned compass, and a combination of errors which totalled out to zero!
Anyway they fixed it an I eventually got one nailed for Christmas. And was very glad to get back to the Trident about 2 years later!
does anyone remember Capt Jimmy Green c 1967 (ish) a BEA Captain?
Steve
Last edited by slast; 4th Dec 2010 at 18:45.
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to crosswind limits
What DO you know?
The `gripper` or `ground hugger` as the Trident 1C was affectionately known to us in ATC, was due to the fact that it only ever got airborne due to the curvature of the earth.
A friend of mine, a British Eagle BAC-11 skipper said that aslong as he was stabalised he would select reverse idle over Heston, landing on 28R (27R to the youngsters).
I understand that DC-8 were certified to select reverse at altitude to inccrease descent rates. (all models ?)
Dave
The `gripper` or `ground hugger` as the Trident 1C was affectionately known to us in ATC, was due to the fact that it only ever got airborne due to the curvature of the earth.
A friend of mine, a British Eagle BAC-11 skipper said that aslong as he was stabalised he would select reverse idle over Heston, landing on 28R (27R to the youngsters).
I understand that DC-8 were certified to select reverse at altitude to inccrease descent rates. (all models ?)
Dave
Moving Map Display
If you look at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...FlightDeck.JPG
and zoom in on the rear of the centre console you will see the map display control panel immediately in front of the Nav 3 display and APU temp gauge. IIRC the system was told the general orientation of the map centreline (in this case "C" "1" and the pen could be driven about the map with the 4 pushbuttons - left/right moved the pen horizontally and up/down moved the map roll. The Doppler controller is to the right of the APU Temp.
and zoom in on the rear of the centre console you will see the map display control panel immediately in front of the Nav 3 display and APU temp gauge. IIRC the system was told the general orientation of the map centreline (in this case "C" "1" and the pen could be driven about the map with the 4 pushbuttons - left/right moved the pen horizontally and up/down moved the map roll. The Doppler controller is to the right of the APU Temp.
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Ref the above photograph. ....... I may well regret this - but I have to ask. Why are the Intercomm and Press to Talk switches on the inboard side of the yokes. 
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slast,
Thanks for that link!
It's rare to find a photo that's so hi-res that you can read practically all the legends.
forget,
I suspect you'll get the answer in the form of another question...
"Where are your thumbs?"
CJ
Thanks for that link!
It's rare to find a photo that's so hi-res that you can read practically all the legends.
forget,
I suspect you'll get the answer in the form of another question...
"Where are your thumbs?"
CJ
Christiaan J has it I think!!
unless you mean why are the yokes symmetrical as opposed to identical, in which case I don't know - clearly the A/P disconnect button and radio switches work on either side of a yoke!
unless you mean why are the yokes symmetrical as opposed to identical, in which case I don't know - clearly the A/P disconnect button and radio switches work on either side of a yoke!
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Well every aircraft I've ever known has those switches outboard so you can switch and use your inboard hand for whatever, things like knobs and levers and throttles. From what I can see the Trident is unique so the question stands - why?
And while I'm here - did the Chinese Tridents have a conventional yoke? According to one web picture they did.
And while I'm here - did the Chinese Tridents have a conventional yoke? According to one web picture they did.
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forget,
Apologies for having misinterpreted your question.
And I'd even add another question... if the outboard button is indeed the A/P disconnect, why is it so big?
It almost looks like a precursor of the 'coolie hat' four-way trim button, but I doubt it is that.
CJ
Apologies for having misinterpreted your question.
And I'd even add another question... if the outboard button is indeed the A/P disconnect, why is it so big?
It almost looks like a precursor of the 'coolie hat' four-way trim button, but I doubt it is that.
CJ
R/t switch and A/P button
Don't know the answers to those questions I'm afraid. I did over 7500 hrs and probably over 5000 sectors on it in both seats, and it never crossed my mind that either set of buttons wasn't well placed!
Last edited by slast; 5th Dec 2010 at 16:54. Reason: R/t switch and A/P button