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Alternate trailing edge flaps

Started by 400guy, Wed, 11 Dec 2013 17:40

400guy

We are getting quite away from the original question, but as I have some comments concerning the discussion in the thread, I'll make them.

On the subject of "the less you know the less you can do wrong"

Back in  the 747-100 days we had a "second officer" or "flight engineer"  I flew with several who had originally been mechanics, and I'm pretty sure that theu could build the airplane if you gave them the parts.

One of the tricks that they were prone to using was to balance the fuel in the tanks by using the jettison pumps and manifold to cross feed the fuel.

United thought that was a bad idea (so did I for that matter), so the fact that this was possible was well hidden in the manuals, and NOT brought up in training.

This brought us to an incident where we had an airplane land at Narita on a single engine !   They had about 20,000 lbs of fuel, but it was ALL in the number one main tank.  (Why they got into that situation was another interesting story, but you can look up the incident report if you are interested).

Had they known that they had the ability to cross-feed the fuel there would not have been the problem,!  Sometimes what you don't know CAN hurt you!

My big concern is the lack of basic flying skills that the current folks (in many cases) seem to have.  I was one who resisted the idea that the airplane should be flown on autopilot almost all the time.  I wanted to be able to fly it myself if the "magic" quit working.  (Several LCAs commented about this to me on line checks)

The automation is great, but as shown in SFO and several other places  not long ago basic skills are still needed.

Just for fun try making steep turns (45 degrees of bank) for 180 degrees of turn, then reversing back to the original heading (again using 45 degrees of bank).  +- 5 kts of airspeed and +- 100 ft of altitude.  That was part of our requirements on a P.C.  It's not these days as I understand it!

jj

martin

Quote from: Jeroen HoppenbrouwersI slowly learn not to throw all cards on the table in such a case. It works better to think long and then write a one-liner email: "Try this: xxx."
Very tough to get this into my spine.
Try User Support! It doesn't get that paradigm into your spine, it gets it into your very DNA...  :twisted:

Cheers,
Martin "Try switching off and on!" E.

Jeroen D

#22
Quote from: 400guyOn the subject of "the less you know the less you can do wrong"



I started my career a long time ago in the merchant navy as a marine engineer. We are talking late 70's-early 80's, so really long time ago.

I worked for a shipping company who when I joined them, just appointed a new superintendent chief engineer at HQ in Rotterdam. I knew him because he lived just round the block from us and I was good friends with his son.

His philosophy  was to have as few dials, indicators and alarms in the engine room as possible.

His thoughts: All those temperatures, pressures, RPMs, alarms will only make you worry and you'll start opening up perfectly running equipment, only to replace all the parts. Do you have any idea what that cost?

Although he never officiallly published a policy the idea was just to run the equipment until it breaks down, so we were told. The idea being that all critical systems on board are fully redundant anyway. This worked well as maintenance cost came down spectacular for the first 24 months, only to sky rocket afterwards and several ships being out of operation for several days!

Live and learn.

Jeroen

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

Yeah, but then he had already left with a bonus, right?      :evil: