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!

Peter

Private message sent.

Best Regards

Trident Sim

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.

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!

Trident fourth engine.

Rolls-Royce RB162 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rolls Royce RB162 Cutaway - Pictures & Photos on FlightGlobal Airspace

Yes indeed "A"...I remember that number 1 engine blowing up as you rotated, very well. I remember that the bang was so loud that I thought we had hit a vehicle. I also remember, after sorting out the close down drill and keeping an eye on your flying, that my ASI needle sat very nicely on the yellow bug...Not just nicely but EXACTLY in the centre of the yellow bug. I also remember that I was so impressed that I left the controls with you for the assymetric landing back at Heathrow and a very nice job you made of it. I still have a mangled turbine blade from the runway sweep up. The engineer gave it to me as we were doing all the paperwork, prior to moving over to the replacement aeroplane now full of our waiting passengers...Oh yes! I remember it well :)

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
 

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!

My earliest record of flying with a Captain Green is LHR/FRA/LHR 4 May 1966, and apparently we did the famous runway 25 high level penetration, but I am not sure if it was Jimmy Green, there was at least one other, Neil I think.
Steve

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:)

So was the Concorde ;)

to arearadar

I know absolutely nothing or very little, hence my question! ;)

Glad to see the thread develop so well. All interesting stuff - keep it up!:ok:

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.

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. :confused:

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

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!

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. :bored:

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

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!

slast,
Since you flew the beast... for this (avionics and AFCS) ancient, could you just confirm that big 'outboard' button is indeed the "instinctive A/P disconnect"?

CJ

Thanks slast. This is intriguing. Why did the 'where to put what committee' decide that the A/P cut-out was best placed on the outboard yoke? Or is there another reason? :confused:

I can see this as being a minor pain to convert to/from Tridents.

Interestingly on this thread, our own Bellerophon considered the Trident yoke to be better designed than that of Concorde:

Concorde Style Yoke — Tech Ops Forum | Airliners.net

I can't see any "press to talk switch" inboard though. It would make a lot of sense if the outboard button was indeed the "press to talk", because if one were using the yoke one-handed while operating the panel with the inboard hand, there'd be less chance of inadvertently knocking the inboard selector switch.

Regarding conversion, remember the Trident was designed in the late '50s. Ergonomics was in its infancy and commonality across types was practically unheard of!

Christiaan,
yes.

Well I'm not Slast but I can confirm that big button is the Autopilot Disconnect and if you have your left hand on the left grip then your left thumb naturally rests on that button. That is handy on an Autoland as the your first action as the wheels touch the ground is to press that button.

Edit...sorry Slast...Crossed!

Dozy, this is the FO's yoke. You can see the switch is marked OFF - I/C - OR(?).

OFF is Intercom OFF. I/C is Intercomm ON. OR(?) is Radio Transmit and is spring loaded to I/C. I've checked other pics of other aircraft, lots of 'em. They all make sense - apart from the Trident.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2.../trident-3.jpg

I have only just found this thread. Some of you might not realise that the Belfast had the same auto land system as the Trident and in fact did a lot of the system proving trials.

Now the Belfast also had a "rams horn" type of control column which I found to be very comfortable.

I have just looked at my old Pilots Notes and I can confirm that on the cockpit photographs the disconnect button for the automatics were on the left side for the captain and the right hand for the F/O. The PTT/intercom buttons were inboard.

This seems very logical to me. We had a set of throttles each so it seemed right to have your outside hand on the control column and your inside hand on your own set of throttles with your thumbs close to the disconnest buttons for the automatics and the auto throttles.

1063? Fairly high pressure day then!


....PM - I've still got a couple of those melted blades myself! It was my 2nd engine failure - I seem to recall it was your first - do I remember P3 telling us it was his 8th?!! 30 years ago and it almost seems like yesterday. Great days eh?

Can't disagree with that - as I said. Just include the 'radio switches' on the outboard and everyone's happy. :) I knew about the Belfast Autopilot but I couldn't find a decent cockpit photograph. The only one I've seen doesn't (seem to) show a huge A/P cut-out, a la Trident.


PS. Interesting - from Wiki.

The Trident’s autopilot had separate engagement switches for the pitch and roll components, and although the normal autopilot disengagement was by means of a conventional control yoke thumb-button, it was also possible to disengage the roll channel while leaving the pitch channel engaged. In these operations the pilot had acquired full visual reference, normally well above decision height, but instead of fully disengaging the autopilot with the thumb-button, called for the second officer to latch off the roll channel only. He then controlled the lateral flight path manually while monitoring the autopilot’s continued control of the vertical flight path – ready to completely disengage it at the first sign of any deviation. While this sounds as if it may add a risk element in practice it is of course no different in principle to a training pilot monitoring a trainee’s handling during on-line training or qualification.

intercom and R/T
 

I think in fact the switching was push forward to transmit, centre position was off, down was intercom and the O/R position was" over-ride".

In fact I think you're right. Is the Txmt bit over the top and unseen in the pic above? What was O/R for? (Hard to believe I worked avionics in BEA hangars very early 70s; 1-11s, Merchantmen conversions, and Tridents. :hmm:)

slast is right, forward to transmit - you can't see the decal in this pic.

Having flown a 'conventional' Seattle made yoke before the Trident (and afterwards) the rams horns with its switches was no problem and was completely intuitive - I never gave it a thought until now.

In fact, I think the rams horns made very accurate manual flying easier.

I'm pretty sure that it was my only engine failure in BA...Although I did do a three engine ferry on the Vanguard. I had a few engine failures on fighters in the RAF and one of those involved a dead stick wheels up landing...The others I managed to relight.

I expect you are finding like me, that time flashes by at an incredible rate when you are retired...Every time I reach an age, devisable by 10, when I thought I would be old, I find myself saying "No I won't be properly old till (age+10)". I'm approaching another one of those points and wondering if I will say it again. :)

Yes they were all great days and I find myself thinking about them a lot. Here is a PowerPoint presentation that I made this year about events in my life Fifty years ago:-

http://www.petermcleland.com/powerpo...n_in_Kenya.pps

The download will take at least 5 minutes and you must have Microsoft's Powerpoint to view it...A free download of Powerpoint Viewer can be obtained here:-

Download details: PowerPoint Viewer 2007

Nice to speak to you again "A"...Surprised to find this much interest in the old Trident.

P3's responsibility on every autoland was to monitor the autopilot's performance and latch off the autopilot in the event of a failure.
(he was bent forward and had his fingers stretched across the pedestal and resting on the AP engage levers from around 1000ft).

Can't remember all of the functions but one was possibly the kick off drift and It's associated green light??????
Think there was a latching indication for either roll or yaw damper and also a dolls eye for when the ILS (loc and/or GS?) had been captured.

INTERCOM.

Think the O/R position would block out all other inputs to the headsets and override the Off position.

It was the only aircraft I flew and only used I/C to communicate between FD members- I was told it was a legal requirement!

Witnessed a captain insert two butter pats under the headset speaker cotton covers of a colleague who had a reputation for verbal diarrhea when the victim went into the cabin - It took about 15 mins before we noticed the butter dribbling down his cheeks and an another 5 before the guy saw the mess on his trousers. - Kept him quiet for about 10 mins.
Still brings tears to my eyes..............

For all you Trident aficionados passing near to heathrow - BA has an excellent museum 2 mins walk from hatton cross tube station.
It is staffed by volunteers and you need to make an appointment but it is well worth the visit. Allow yourself a couple of hours and take a packet of biscuits along to complement the free mugs of tea (the staff really appreciate good ones).
There are all of the aircraft manuals, some of the old uniforms which bring back far too distant memories - the B-Cal kilts, the BOAC pinafore dresses of the early 70s and not forgetting the last BEA one with a wrap around skirt!!!!!

And for the gruesome lots of the old flight safety reports and I mean lots!!!!!

Spent 3 days researching their archives.

67 mb for those who have bandwidth limitations. Interesting photos of East Africa. Half those cars look pre-war.

Well it should be a little over 100MBs so you may have been limited yourself...It may be better to choose "Open" rather than "Download" and then select "Open with Microsoft Powerpoint"...I think that makes the file just Temporary rather than permanently cluttering up your disc space :)

Oh yes, it has music so you might want to turn the volume off or up according to taste!

switches in standard positions
 

Forget, Dozy…..

Interesting you refer to the 'where to put what committee' and to “remember the Trident was designed in the late '50s. Ergonomics was in its infancy and commonality across types was practically unheard of!” While I’m pretty sure the decisions in this case were taken in-house, I don’t know how much awareness there is of the airline industry's actual cockpit “where to put what" committee. It dates from the late 1940s when the US airline industry started acquiring lots of ex-military transport aircraft, which came with a variety of instruments scattered in all sorts of places and ended up in accidents because the pilots became confused about what was where on different aircraft of allegedly the same type.

I believe it was Scott Flower who was chief (test) pilot for Pan Am who got some of the other chief pilots together to try and get some standardisation into civil cockpits, and started with really enforcing the implementation of the “Basic T” that we see today. That kind of work became formalised under the banner of the Society of Automotive Engineers as “SAE Technical Committee S-7, Flight Deck & Handling Qualities Standards for Transport Aircraft”.

I had the privilege of being a member of it for quite a few years and chaired it for a while before I retired. It was an extremely interesting group to be involved with, as the pilot members were all either senior test pilots from the major manufacturers and authorities or chief technical pilots from the major airlines, plus we had a lot of very good engineering and research guys as well. The official output is “Aerospace Recommended Practices” but bureaucratic inertia and commercial pressures meant, as always with standardisation activity, that it actually reflected the past while trying to address the future. Remember also the two rules about standardising things: “the great thing about having standards is that there are so many from which to choose” ; and “the BEST is the enemy of the merely GOOD” !

In reality by far the most valuable aspect was the informal discussions, as for example Boeing and Airbus test pilots could get “off the record” criticism and comment on their products from people they respected, and feed that back up the chain in a way that wouldn’t have otherwise been politically acceptable. However on many occasions of course there were “agreements to disagree” after debates that took place more in the bar afterwards than in the committee sessions – it was a very social group! The requirement that you had to be an active pilot to vote was important in keeping things fresh but I think the economic squeeze has reduced industry willingness to release people for such activities. A great pity really. Anyway, I’ll have to try and see if there’s an ARP which refers to positioning of radio transmit switches!

As well as commenting on WHBN s question about loads to Eastern Europe I wanted to say what a great thread this has been. I started flying as pax in 71 and made full use of fathers BEA/BA concessions which treated me as a child until age 26 (on reaching age 26 I married a Speedbird London radio op so the concessions continued)

Flew a lot on all BA Trident marks as pax thought they were great although on a trip to Rome with a friend who was a BOAC SO or junior FO on 707s he said he was never that good passenger especially flying backwards.

Tridents took me safely all around Europe and on my honeymoon and back so great affection for them. In fact the return from there was a very rare landing on 05R wooden approach light poles and all into a freezing and snowy Heathrow after a fascinating approach from ‘overhead the field’ which gave me my best ever view of my home airport.

Anyway back to Eastern Europe, I don’t think low load factors were confined to Eastern Europe –because I travelled sub load a lot I got quite adept at finding which flights were less busy. Some seemed to be virtually positioning flights to operate a peak hour sector back to LHR –mid mornings or afternoons to Amsterdam come to mind. As to Eastern Europe (proper Eastern Europe in those days too with soldiers and guard dogs on the ramp) I made a couple of trips there in 70s Budapest was one I think and that was a sort of Tue Thu Friday affair and as I recall was fairly busy but a trip back from Prague seemed to have about three people in addition to a BA football team I was a ringer for and of course we were all subload. Lot of fussing around by the crew on weight and balance issues on that trip –everyone forward of the wing I think.

A noisy beast on the outside but a good looking plane and I believe very fast-I recall one trip back from Rome as we smoothly passed a BOAC VC10 a few thousand feet below; the Captain ( this would have been pre BA) pointing out that we were easily overtaking the other iconic Brit jet. I also went to Stockholm several times on Tridents and they were markedly quicker than the Scandi DC9s over that sector but I don’t suppose saving 10-15 mins on even the longer short haul sectors made much sense economically.

Enjoyed all the postings here and it is so nice that PPrune allows those of us not Crew or ex Crew or Airline staff to enjoy such fascinating discussions.

slast,
Ever met André Turcat?
I've met him a few times, never got to discuss the subject.

But reading his book ("Essais et Batailles"), he too really 'pushed' for more readable instruments, more 'ergonomic' controls (not sure the word was invented yet), and better panel lay-outs.

CJ

Address? Link? Contact details?
May pass that way sometime in the not too distant future (I hope), and would be livid ending up in front of a closed door.
And yes, I'll remember to bring the biccies.

CJ