Aircraft control cables – when were they made non-interchangable?

XX164 – earlier post edited with respect to location and cause

Read somewhere a Lanc during the war had bad flying tendencies due to crossed controls.

Vega, which Hawk was that?

More recently a Hawk was lost on a post maintenance check flight out of Valley (corrected from earlier post)

Poor practice during work hand between shifts I believe. Don’t know why the fool proofing didn’t work. (Ailerons were left disconnected after maintenance- corrected)

Thanks for that Vega

The Short-Bristow Crusader crash prior to the 1927 Schneider Trophy crash was caused by crossed aileron cables

[HTML][/HTML]The Avro Tudor II crash marking the requirement to prevent control cross connections…..Ah No

I have a copy of this AAIB report and it records that by design the production std control column would prevent incorrect connection of the ailerons but those fitted at the time of the incident were an experimental columns design (only for flight test) which did not conform to drawing in this respect. My interpretation of this is that it should have been impossible to cross connection the ailerons, maybe by a bulking web cast into the column but these particular columns didn’t have the features. This deviation from the drawing would have required an acceptance by a design office process known as a concession. If the concession process was done correctly i.e in accordance with airworthiness procedures, then an instruction should have been issued to undertake additional checks etc. The report also records that the ailerons/columns were disassembled the night before. This implies that the fitter who put it all back together may have thought that it could only go together just one way and the safe way. This could explain why so little attention was paid to checking the system out. A simple failure in communication…….flying is awfully unforgiving.

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and one of the F-117s, although probably an electrical cable swap in this case

Well certainly in 1947 the crossing of control cables was possible at Avro and cost the life of Roy Chadwich and 3 others in the Tudor ll.