DP Davies interview on 747 certification (audio)

[alcannata]

https://www.aerosociety.com/news/audio-the-d-p-davies-interview-on-the-boeing-747-the-trident-vc10-one-eleven-the-boeing-727/

Have a nice Sunday!
Aldo

[Hardy Heinlin]

I conclude from the first ten minutes:

The 747 typical nose-down trend at stall speed should be reduced in the simulator when the flaps are fully up.

Anyway, it confirms the fact that the gap between the (Boeing programmed) stick shaker speed and the actuall stall speed is much greater when the flaps are up: You have enough time to manually push the nose down when the low speed buffet or the stick shaker starts while in flap-up configuration.


|-|ardy

[Britjet]

Interesting what DPD said about the clean stall. Of course I’ve never done it for real but I did try it once on a 744 sim.
Never again! I was actually frightened that I’d broken the sim and that the projectors on the roof had fallen off with the vibration.
I think that 744 sim training these days is taken only to the stick-shake.
Peter.

[ahaka]

This was a very interesting interview. It is remarkable when he talks about flying the 747, that it matches so well to how the PSX 744 behaves in flight.

I was also surprised to hear that according to him, some pilots could not pass the 707 type rating and were moved to the VC-10 instead. I’ve already gathered the 707 was tricky to fly, but so much so a professional airline pilot could not even pass the training?

[Britjet]

I can only assume that this was related to asymmetric flying skills.
We used to train with the Lufthansa 707 simulator in Frankfurt, as well as one in Dublin. I well remember my fellow co-pilot trainee getting “low and slow” on two successive approaches without the infamous “rudder boost” and scraping us in sideways into the same radar tower twice in succession as he lost directional control. He got out of his seat and walked out of the sim (they weren’t on jacks in those days) and I was sent out to get him back. I well remember him standing there in a corridor holding a cigarette in shaking hands (hello Pete H, if you are still around!).
I was next, and succeeded in just managing to get on the runway to cheers all round - then I relaxed a bit in the rollout and the sim visual went upside down..!
Peter.

[ahaka]

I wish there was a 707 simulation of the same standard as PSX... Would love to try how it compares to the 747.

I presume the sim visual going upside down was actually a glitch in an early day simulator?

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

We used to train with the Lufthansa 707 simulator in Frankfurt.

The one where you had to manually pull a punched paper tape through the bootreader to start up the system?
The one with the pendulum cabin above the greasy oil pit?
Real hardware!
I still smell it!


Hoppie

[Britjet]

I presume the sim visual going upside down was actually a glitch in an early day simulator?

No! That was me rolling the thing on its back!

[emerydc8]

I remember back in the late '80's the Flying Tigers DC-8 sim in LAX broke and the techs were beside themselves trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Turned out that a prior crew had managed to land it upside down on the runway on the last landing and didn't say anything.

I also remember how frustrated I was to pass the maneuvers portion of the type in that sim and still have to take the real airplane out at a later date for V-1 cuts and landings. Today, there's a whole generation of pilots that wouldn't even know why.

Jon

[jcomm]

But I wonder if those (ancient) simulators weren't, somehow, not doing a great job in terms of replicating the "flight dynamics" of the real world counterparts of those aircraft, but those of you who flew it could easily anwer that.

When I got my GPL in 1980, one of my instructors was a seasoned 707 captain at TAP. He always told me the best about that aircraft, how great it was to fly - hand fly actually... - and used to compare it a lot to gliders :-)

[Hardy Heinlin]

The 747 typical nose-down trend at stall speed should be reduced in the simulator when the flaps are fully up.

Just rechecked in PSX: I reduced it already some years ago based on Boeing data re stick shaker speeds and true stall speeds with reference to flap settings. So, no change required.


|-|

[United744]

Great interviews! Shame there aren't more!