exmpaI am specifically interested in flights over Glasgow. I suppose trying to find out this kind of detail might be a bridge too far.
Unless you have done so already, an enquiry on the Secret Scotland Forum may yield some information.
exmpa
exmpaAn excellent account of the CFS Course just prior to World War 2 may be found in:
Pilot’s Summer: A Central Flying School Diary by Frank Tredrey
ISBN: 1902914120 / 1-902914-12-0
A lot of it could have been written about Little Rissington in the 1960s.
exmpa
exmpaHow would the flares been deployed and how old would they be?Are the still in use or are of WW2 vintage?
Given the location, they were probably dropped from a Nimrod. They were last carried on 3rd June 1984 when Gordon Smith had one ignite in the bomb bay of XV257 shortly after takeoff from St Mawgan. An immediate embargo on carriage followed and soon afterwards they were withdrawn from service.
The 4.5″ flare had by then little operational application, Lightstrike and Velocipede procedures having been withdrawn from the tactics manual. They were only retained for SAR purposes and were very rarely used.
I cannot be sure, but I may have made the last operational drop of the 4.5″ flare on the night of 3rd Jan 1979. We dropped flares for Sea Kings from Culdrose searching for survivors from the Greek vessel Cantonad that had capsized off the channel islands. I do not recall hearing of their use subsequently.
exmpa
exmpabut never say never!
Except in this case.
exmpa
exmpaHave actually heard that Chickenhawk is largely stuff that happened to people other then the author.
That may be the case, however a very old friend of mine completed two tours in Vietnam, one of them as a helicopter pilot with Ist Air Cavalry, and he reckons Chickenhawk is not far off the mark.
Not autobiographical, but a good collection of recollections may be found in “Out of the Blue” with all proceeds going to Help for Heroes and the RAFBF. There is some real honesty in its pages with one or two people making a clean breast of it for the first time.
exmpa
exmpaHave actually heard that Chickenhawk is largely stuff that happened to people other then the author.
That may be the case, however a very old friend of mine completed two tours in Vietnam, one of them as a helicopter pilot with Ist Air Cavalry, and he reckons Chickenhawk is not far off the mark.
Not autobiographical, but a good collection of recollections may be found in “Out of the Blue” with all proceeds going to Help for Heroes and the RAFBF. There is some real honesty in its pages with one or two people making a clean breast of it for the first time.
exmpa
exmpaThere was also at least one at Cranwell during the same period, ’73-77, for student engineer training. Occasionally one of us from the BFT squadrons would go across to drive it for marshaling training.
exmpa
exmpaThe pilot tried to save the aircraft . The SOP is written from a military perspective -i.e abandon the aircraft where the value of the aircraft is not a concern.
I should point out that what you have written is a load of rubbish. The handling advice quoted in the accident report is taken from the Flight Reference Cards (FRC). The advice contained in the Aircrew Manual and precised in the FRC is not based upon cost. The principle on which it is prepared is an assessment of the likelihood of a safe outcome from the available courses of action. When a particular course of action is likely to beunduly hazardous or with little chance of success it will not be recommended, hence the advice given to abandon the aircraft in respect of two of the failures extant at the time.
Test and development teams spend a long time producing emergency and abnormal procedures. They had the benefit of testing them on multiple occasions in the simulator and in reviewing them in discussion before finally releasing them to the end user. The heat of the moment with an unfamiliar combination of lights illuminated is no time to start writing your own version of the procedure.
exmpa
exmpaPaul178 is close but not quite correct. Money can buy performance in the shape of improved times or scores and better technique. What it cannot assure is better outcomes in terms of places on the leaderboard. The former is down to the individual but the latter depends on factors that are outwith their control.
It is worth looking a little deeper into what support and funding means and what it might take to get an athlete into an Olympic final or equivalent at Rio. If you were starting from scratch in a “minor” sport such as; for example; shooting, Tae Kwon Do, BMX cycling, sprint canoeing. Then you would require an initial intake of 70-80 candidates to start with. All of them will have some experience and have demonstrated the qualities and aptitude you seek. After about 12 months, 20-30 will probably have withdrawn or otherwise eliminated themselves. Year 2 will see the number further reduced to around 30-40 with a lead group of 10, a second tier of 15 and the remainder being “long shots” or development athletes. By the end of year 3, the lead group will be down to 6 and the second group will number around 10. Everyone else will be in the group preparing for the Olympics after Rio.
The lead group will be in full time training by the 18 month to go point and the second tier will be spending at least 50% of their time in training. By the 12 month point it is unlikely that you will be making any changes, your contenders will come from the lead group. At the selection point you will now have to pick 3-4 athletes to go forward to the Olympics, probably with a 60-80% assurance that one of them will make a final.
Now the cost, you will have to pay for the following for an athlete in full time training:
Equipment
Accommodation
Living expenses
Loss of earnings element & pension contribution (you are after all asking them to put their life on hold for a couple of years or so)
Coaching
Physio, Nutritionist, Sports Science consultant, medical support etc.
Training facilities, gym etc.
Relocation expenses (They need to move to where they train)
Travel & Accommodation for international matches and overseas training
Admin support
You can probably add a few more items as well.
The annual cost is roughly £100,000 – 120,000/athlete/year
Add your second and third tier costs to this and you are probably looking at about £6m+ over an Olympic cycle.
You can of course get lucky with the odd individual but when you look at the resources that the Chinese put into their selection and training, you need really exceptional individuals and lots and lots of luck!
exmpa
exmpaPaul178 is close but not quite correct. Money can buy performance in the shape of improved times or scores and better technique. What it cannot assure is better outcomes in terms of places on the leaderboard. The former is down to the individual but the latter depends on factors that are outwith their control.
It is worth looking a little deeper into what support and funding means and what it might take to get an athlete into an Olympic final or equivalent at Rio. If you were starting from scratch in a “minor” sport such as; for example; shooting, Tae Kwon Do, BMX cycling, sprint canoeing. Then you would require an initial intake of 70-80 candidates to start with. All of them will have some experience and have demonstrated the qualities and aptitude you seek. After about 12 months, 20-30 will probably have withdrawn or otherwise eliminated themselves. Year 2 will see the number further reduced to around 30-40 with a lead group of 10, a second tier of 15 and the remainder being “long shots” or development athletes. By the end of year 3, the lead group will be down to 6 and the second group will number around 10. Everyone else will be in the group preparing for the Olympics after Rio.
The lead group will be in full time training by the 18 month to go point and the second tier will be spending at least 50% of their time in training. By the 12 month point it is unlikely that you will be making any changes, your contenders will come from the lead group. At the selection point you will now have to pick 3-4 athletes to go forward to the Olympics, probably with a 60-80% assurance that one of them will make a final.
Now the cost, you will have to pay for the following for an athlete in full time training:
Equipment
Accommodation
Living expenses
Loss of earnings element & pension contribution (you are after all asking them to put their life on hold for a couple of years or so)
Coaching
Physio, Nutritionist, Sports Science consultant, medical support etc.
Training facilities, gym etc.
Relocation expenses (They need to move to where they train)
Travel & Accommodation for international matches and overseas training
Admin support
You can probably add a few more items as well.
The annual cost is roughly £100,000 – 120,000/athlete/year
Add your second and third tier costs to this and you are probably looking at about £6m+ over an Olympic cycle.
You can of course get lucky with the odd individual but when you look at the resources that the Chinese put into their selection and training, you need really exceptional individuals and lots and lots of luck!
exmpa
exmpaThere are a number of UK domestic routes to LHR that have gone over the years ,MME is one also LPL, INV, NQY and more . Some Ex British Midland routes. Maybe that airline should have stuck with these , rather than loosing there way, they might still be here !
They would just have gone out of business even sooner.
exmpa
exmpaExmpa – yes in the case of a Squadron aircraft that flies refrequently. However in the case of XH558 that spends large amounts of time on the ground in maintainance or winter storage I think there is a stronger case for it.
David, I understand what you mean, silica gel bags are routinely used for corrosion inhibition. The spare engines will be bagged and within them there will be silica gel bags; that have been fully dried and tested; to absorb any vestiges of moisture and assist in corrosion prevention. The outer bags will have tell-tale windows that change colour if excess moisture is present within the sealed environment of the bag. However to place similar bags in the unsealed environment of the engine intake (whether or not blanks were fitted is irrelevant as they do not provide a proper seal) raises an large number of questions about the procedure. Was it a properly drawn up procedure, were the bags oven dried and checked, was the quantity specified, under what circumstances would they be used, who would decide and authorise their use and finally who would close the tech log entry? I am afraid that the whole episode has a ring of “custom and practice” rather than sound engineering procedure.
exmpa
exmpanot spotted by aircrew
An internal check of the intakes did not form part of the pre-flight walkround. You would have needed a safety raiser to accomplish it. The intake inspection was part of the bf.
exmpa
exmpaThe CAA will find this a trivial incident. There is no track record of this happening before with TVOC -the crew shut her down at the first sign of trouble and the appropriate steps were taken.
I work with frontline aircraft – people make mistakes no matter who operates them.
😮
Let’s see then. Items left in a critical area, presumably there was a Tech Log entry and presumably it was cleared when they were supposed to have been removed. Then there is the check on the DailyBF (whatever system is used) that presumably missed them, but was signed as completed. This is always assuming that the use of the silica gel bags is an approved procedure anyway and is fully documented. I never saw any when I flew the Vulcan or indeed any other aircraft, military or civilian. You may feel it’s “trivial”, but the Olympus has quite a history of uncontained failures, very fortunately this did not result in another one.
Would be interesting to know whether this has been referred to the AAIB. The incident is certainly serious enough and had it occurred on a public transport aircraft I am sure that it would have been. I doubt that the Inspector would view it as “trivial”.
exmpa
exmpaIf the failure of one engine can cause (and seems to be a common problem) the failure of it’s neighbour is the Vulcan effectively a two engined aircraft in terms of an engine out on takeoff. In other words can it safely take off on only two?
Reply With Quote
Takeoff performance planning caters for the loss of one power unit (the most adverse). Now, when you hear people talking about practicing double engine failures at rotate in the Vulcan what they really mean is one between V1 and rotate and the other above V2 with the gear retracted. The aircraft would climb satisfactorily, but net-flightpath, obstacle clearance, your guess is as good as mine; there weren’t graphs for that.
Just bear the above in mind when people confidently state that it was “common” to lose the adjacent engine. All the cases that I can recall where the adjacent engine was shutdownlost were accompanied by significant airframe damage as a result of the initial failure. I cannot recall an instance where the failure of one engine caused an adjacent engine to fail.
The two carcass failures are a case in point. The first XM610 was whilst airborne and resulted in the loss of the aircraft. The was a similar failure shortly afterwards, but this time on takeoff from Waddington. The No3 failed very soon after rotate and caused significant damage. The No4 was subsequently shut down as a precaution and the aircraft was successfully landed.
exmpa
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