Vulcan rate of climb
From PPRUNE, “military aircrew”, “Did you fly the Vulcan?”:
“Here’s one from the memory banks. Back in 1965 we did the delivery air test on, I think, XM655. The air test schedule required a combat power take-off and climb to maximum altitude. We had to take engine Ts and Ps every minute. Later the Vulcan was restricted to cruise power but we had about 104% on two engines and 102% on the other two. For some reason the maximum power was never uniform across all 4 engines.
Brakes off we accelerated down the runway. We had about 50% fuel so our AUW was about 137,000lbs. That was when the Mark 2 weighed in at about 97 or 98k. One minute later, passing 2,000 feet we read out all the figures to the AEO. After 2 minutes, passing 7k we started again. He had no sooner finished one set when we started on the next. We continued like a love-sick angel at 5,000 fpm. Passing 50,000 we were still climbing like a rocket just over 9 minutes after take-off.
Our ROC started to reduce but still over 2,000 fpm. Passing 55,000 we wondered just how high it would go. We had the full pressure gear on, g-pants and pressure jerkins, P or Q masks, but it was really into unknown territory. At 55,500 our ROC was approaching 500 fpm and we were passing Glasgow. We decided to call it a day and turned for home.”
(“Pontius Navigator”)
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=111797&perpage=15&highlight=Giant%20Voice&pagenumber=15
A very long thread, but fascinating: There is also a pilot, “BEAgle”, who seems to remember all speeds etc. from long ago. But you have some searching to do.
Best regards
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