I used to ride the (TAA) 727 between Sydney and Melbourne. After taxi out to the runway, they would power down the galley and we would be off. The nose would really pitch and you would see the cabin lights dim as the flaps retracted. It felt like a ballistic lift-off and it was a fast ride. We could take off after an Ansett DC-9 and arrive before it.

(Written on 2020年 08月 13日)(Permalink)

Yeah, I walked into the control room of a nuclear reactor and the operator was sitting comfortably in front of the Data Acquisition System (DAS) monitor while over his left shoulder, the old Kent pneumatic 10" 270 degree dial of the secondary cooling water pressure was bouncing around like an oil pressure gauge on a recip engine with no air in the tube. I asked him what was going wrong with the secondary cooling water pumps and he just said: "Oh, there's a problem with that old gauge". When I asked him how he knew it was the gauge, he pointed to the field on the DAS monitor displaying the pressure to 4 significant figures. It was a little below normal but changing by only a percent or two every 6 seconds. That was the sampling/update time interval for an analog instrument outside the containment: it was averaging the pressure over 6 seconds. I went to the Auxiliary Plant Room, found the Outside Supervisor and we went to the Secondary Cooling Water Pumps. One of the running pumps' shaft

(Written on 2020年 04月 03日)(Permalink)

Thirty years ago, Qantas flew a non-stop flight from London to Sydney. The aeroplane that achieved that was Qantas' first of its class: a Boeing 747-400. After more than 25 years service to the airline, VH-OJA, City of Canberra was recalled from Los Angeles, just a short hop from the wreckers at Victorville and put out to pasture at the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society's Museum at Illawarra Regional Airport, just south of Sydney. Boeing found a way to store an extra 10 tons of fuel in tanks in the tail of Qantas' 747-438s. Thirty years earlier, Boeing produced a 'special performance' 707 for Qantas to fly the long hops from Australia to the rest of the world. John Travolta owned one of these "V-Jets". It is hard to believe that Boeing could not produce a new generation of 747s that would do London to Sydney, non-stop, commercially. Sadly, Joe Sutter is no longer with us.

(Written on 2019年 05月 10日)(Permalink)

Agreed: reprogramming the way-points in the aircraft Inertial Navigation System and not advising the Captain, one would expect would be more likely to ground the airline rather than the aircraft type, which is why I tried to separate it as an exception. Also, I could say that wings and not engines produce lift but that would not be as helpful as saying that both the Douglas Corporation and the Boeing Airplane Company designed the DC-9 and the B737-200 to use the same number, manufacturer and model of engines.

(Written on 2019年 03月 04日)(Permalink)

Not only was QANTAS an all Boeing airline, for 7 years it was an all B747 airline. That was back in the days before Airbus was even formed and when DC-10s were falling from the skies (although one airline did program the navigation computer of its DC-10 to fly into an extinct volcano). QANTAS' Chief Pilot appeared on national television to answer the question as to how the airline would be affected if a similar situation was to occur with the 747. The Pilot looked at the interviewer with a puzzled expression on his face and replied: "But, it's a Boeing": end of argument. When truck driver Peter Abeles took over Ansett, one of the first changes he made was to replace the airlines DC-9s with B737s. Australia's national capital is nearly 2000ft AMSL and surrounded by hills. Peter's argument was: you do not have to offload 30 passengers off a Boeing to get it safely out of Canberra on a hot afternoon. I have flown A320s, A330s and A380s and not only would I like to see QANTAS all Boeing

(Written on 2019年 03月 01日)(Permalink)