It's like trees on a golf course, the rotor and stator discs in the turbine are 75% air and when they line up you can see straight through. (Or on the golf course, in my case, hit the tree.)

Thanks, Hobo. I suppose I'd assumed that turbine disks were like fan disks, less than 50% air, and that therefore one would never be able to see past both rotor and stator.

Shorly after starting up the 707's flames became invisible. Would this be because the flames themselves had reduced?

Because they were burning at a lot higher temp (and therefore different colour) than at start up maybe??

Wookey: You are absolutely on the right track, however, as Bergerie 1 says:

Any airplane, except one with electric motors, will eventually run out of steam as Weight/Altitude/Temperature increase. There's no substitute for horsepower!!

That's also one reason why you're starting to see electrically powered UAV's.

TC

Hot/High
 

An example of the difference altitude can make was demonstrated to us when we carried out a wet lease for Avianca in Bogota (8,455ft IIRC). Normal Vr would have been 120 -130 Kts. It still was as the Indicated Air Speed, but actual Ground Speed at rotate was, on average, something in the order of 195 Kts. Approach power (B757) is usually 1.16 EPR. At BOG it was 1.26.

In it's day, was the Trident economical compared to other machines?? Today, smaller Airbuses will struggle performance-wise and climb rate at high weights, but is economical once it gets into the cruise...

Cracking thread, keep it up!! Let's outdo the Concorde thread!!!

:D

BN2A
 

I think some of us are reluctant to pursue the subject for too long, for fear of becoming boring.

The average 'Gripper' driver looks back, I suspect, with a degree of adoration for the old girl (I certainly do). However, in the 90's and 00's any talk of the Gripper would be met with the response, "Oh no, not another b*oody Trident story", from the 25 year old F/O.

We old farts soon learned to keep silent. :)

Gripping as the Trident thread is, to those of us lucky to have flown in her, I doubt it will knock the Concorde thread of the top of the must read daily list, mearly due to the fact that Concorde was untenable to most mere mortals who could only dream of flying in her.

However please do not drop the Trident thread

I am glad the thread is still running-as an 'aviation enthusiast' (I stopped actual spotting at 14) living right on top of LHR Tridents were the most common site or so it seemed.
Also the most common sound but they didnt stand out that much against the Caravelles (how could two Avons make more noise than 4 or so it seemed ) VC10s etc. The T3 was also easy to tell by ear because the boost engine made a very distinctive noise.

Re-reading this fascinating thread again today it brought back a question to my mind. Sometimes when Tridents lined up for take off ( and I remember this scene with them using the intersection on as it was 10R (block79?) as the engines spooled up a jet of white vapour shot out from below the engines-was this water injection or something else?
Wonderful and fascinating variety of sights and sounds in those days at Heathrow-no doubt why I am sitting here reading PPrune 40 years on.
PB

kiltrash
 

"Concorde was untenable to most mere mortals who could only dream of flying in her."

All you needed was lots of money.:)

So far as flight crew were concerned, the Concorde fleet was listed on the annual bid-list, but very few (IMO) pilots bid for the type because...

1. It was a 7 year freeze for an F/O.
2. It was a 'final type' for a captain - ie. you're on it for life.
3. The route network was remarkably limited.
4. There was very little 'hands-on' flying.
5. Every sector was (as a flight-engineer pal of mine said of his Concorde job) "like a flaming sim-check", with so many things going wrong!
6. Fuel was always a real worry. Remember the Flight Manager who flamed-out exiting the runway?

It was a wonderful icon, and I suspect that most of us would have killed to fly it ONCE.

But as a full-time job - no way.

As a bit of light relief, here's an slight indication of how it felt to be P3... actually of course the P3 wasn't a qualified F/E and switched with the RHS P2. But this is such a good bit of aviation insider video I thought some of you might not have seen it. Anyway, as our transatlantic friends say, "Enjoy....!"
YouTube - The FE's Lament 2010 HD

PB
 

"....as the engines spooled up a jet of white vapour shot out from below the engines-was this water injection or something else?"

This was probably the oil/air mix being ejected from the engine's internal cooling/sealing outlet. Once the engines were running at power, the bearings would seal up and the oil content of the cooling air outlet would disappear. (if I remember correctly)

bizdev

Bizdev
Many thanks-I do seem to recall this was transient event but a very noticeable on the Tridents,I don't seem to recall other planes doing similar. I suppose it is one of those nice quirks of the time that came from having so many different types of aircraft. Other favourite oddities of the time were the great noise Swissair CV 990 s made and the enormous moving silencer contraption on the back of Alitalia DC8-40 engines . Apologies for thread drift into general nostalgia for LHR in the late 60s Thanks again
PB

In post 250, 777fly said:

The T1 had excellent high speed handling. I remember seeing over 0.95M during our high fly exercise (cb pulled) .......

I can guess which cb was probably pulled (:)) but I presume you wouldnt get away with this now in the nanny state we now seem to live in.

However 0.95M seems pretty impressive and I would guess not matched by any other civilian aircraft apart from Concorde?

As a copilot, I did a couple of air tests in Tridents, including several full stick pushes at various configurations. These were suprisingly 'gentle' with little or no negative g IIRC, presumably due to the low speeds at push (with the shakers going full blast of course).

We also had to do high speed runs, IIRC at .88, for 5 minutes.

Peter Hunt, IMHO the best tech manager ever, once told me that he had been involved in the flight test programme at Hatfield on the T3 with John Cunningham. This included a 'terminal velocity' dive, on each example prior to delivery, which involved winging over to a vertical dive with full power to see what the TV was.

TV
 

Well, what was it (the TV)? Don't leave us in suspense. By the way,I remember .92 was the usual high speed demo on base trg for the T1.
Prober

Way back then when oil was a sensible price was there a tendency to exploit the Tridents remarkable speed to make up time after say a delayed departure? I remember some very rapid transits from LHR to NCL !!

Just a personal memory of the speed of the Trident.

Many moons ago when I was a 23 year old co-pilot on the Viscount I was due to position from the N.E. of England to LHR on a Trident. The Captain, who was one of life's characters, and excellent if ill-advised operator, asked me if I would like a little fun. Of course says I in youthful ignorance. "OK he says, you sit in the RHS, the F/O sits in the E/O's seat and the E/O on the jump seat".

After a briefing which could hardly scratch the surface of my lack of knowledge of a jet aircraft laying particular emphasis on the setting of power on the take off run, never having operated one before, we set off into the wild blue yonder at what seemed like breakneck speed. I was used to the leisurely speed of the Viscount - I remember the routing down A1 was POL - LIC - DTY - Garston each portion of which required a position report and normally took about 10 minutes in the Vimy. Of course they all took a little less than half this and I seemed to be constantly on the r/t. I really didn't know which way to look as we rocketed up to FL260 then down again.

Of course we survived and a great time was had by all except the E/O who was distinctly uncomfortable with proceedings and 2 years later I was flying the 1-11, I never again sat in an operating seat of the Trident. I might add in slight mitigation that I had previously been allowed to hand fly a Britannia 102 by the same Captain on an empty positioning flight in cruise, so I wasn't a totally unknown quantity to him. However apart from the size of the flight deck which was more akin to a ship's bridge, the speed and handling characteristics were much closer to what I was used to.

I feel safe in recounting the story now as I at least 2 of the 3 other players have left us and the statute of limitations must have run out after 43 years.

Happy, politically incorrect, technically dangerous and pre CRM days. I can't imagine anybody being foolish enough to try the same stunt nowadays, but I enjoyed it!

Prober, IIRC, I think special 'test flight' pitots were fitted, Pete said TV was 'very close' to M1.0 ..... he didn't say which side...

Regarding high speed sectors, my logbook tells me I once did Aldergove-LHR in 38 minutes (with 632 kts G/S at one stage IIRC), and LHR-CDG in 29 mins A/B-Landing.

MS Flight Simulator Trident
 

Peter McLeland,

I just bought MS Flight SimulatorX as a result of seeing your pictures etc, never having had any desire to do simulator work at home previously!

I downloaded the files but the Tridents don't seem to be available, and I'm wondering if that's because Dave Maultby's website refers to FS4 and 9, not X. The file structure for FSX doesn't seem to be quite the same as is described, e.g. there's no "Aircraft" folder but rather a "sim objects/airplanes" one, and I wonder whether that is what is wrong - any thoughts?
Steve