Just Flight Standard VC10, Руководство по эксплуатации

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VC10 Professional – Operations Manual
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VC10 STORIES, INCIDENTS AND ANECDOTES
More than most airliners, the VC10 came to be admired and loved by its crews and passengers. Here is a
selection of interesting stories taken from the wonderful
VC10.net website which provides a fascinating look into
the VC10 story and contains all sorts of useful information, from routes and adverts to technical drawings and
much more. For VC10 enthusiasts the
VC10.net site really is a great resource.
The VIP and the Tampax
Flight Engineer Nev Boulton recalls a flight where the day was saved with an unusual tool way back in
1965…
As I remember, we had departed Rome and were just going over a place called Bennina (somewhere on the N
African coast), the flight plan called for us to do a stepped climb from (as I remember) 33,000 feet to 37,000
feet. Everything was running nicely, on flight plan for fuel, one or two minor defects, nice quiet night – hopefully
we would get our meal soon. The Chief Steward came in for a chat about the passengers and the VIPs with the
Captain and on his way out of the flight deck said something along the lines of, “By the way ‘Engines’, door one
left is a bit noisy and I can see stars through the gap”.
My immediate reaction was to check the door warning lights, which happily were all out – cabin pressure was
stable – must be some sort of joke! So, I told the skipper that I was off to the toilet and casually popped out into
the galley to have a look at the door. I pulled back the trim from the door, and sure enough the door seal was
deflated, the air was whistling out and any navigator would have been delighted to see such a fine display of
interplanetary bodies! The door seal in question was rather like a bicycle inner tube with lots of holes in it. The
cabin pressure was supposed to go through the holes and inflate the tube, thus sealing the door. Clearly this had
not happened with door #1L on VF.
This was not an immediate problem, but all flight engineers are suspicious blokes and are trained to look at the
next problem – preferably before it happens. The cabin air compressors occasionally failed on the VC10, and on
rare occasions we would lose an engine (which also meant the loss of a cabin air compressor, which was engine
driven). So, it might be rather a good idea to find out if we could maintain cabin pressure with one of our four air
compressors inoperative.
The skipper agreed with me and, under his watchful eye, I reduced the output of one cabin compressor
to minimum flow. The cabin proceeded to climb at around 700 feet a minute. The blower was immediately
re-selected to auto. I suggested to the pilots that it might be a good idea for one of them to go ‘on oxygen’ whilst
I took a look at the door.
When I got into the door/galley area I asked the Stewardess if we could have some tea towels, she was very
helpful and we soaked them in water. I fed them into the gap around the door and before very long we had run
out of tea towels, flannels, the lot. The passengers had got all the blankets. What on earth could we use? Then
the Lovely Lady Stewardess had a really bright idea. We always carried thousands of Tampax – box loads of
the ruddy things. Someone in BOAC clearly decided that the human female needed these devices daily instead
of monthly! So she filled the toilet washbasin with water, pulled the strings, dunked them in water and handed
them over to me. I fed them into the gaps (one or two went straight out – a wet semi-frozen Tampax should keep
a thirsty camel happy, thought I!) until eventually they all froze up in position and the door was sealed. A quick
reduction of mass flow on a cabin blower showed nil rate of cabin climb – very satisfactory – and I felt reasonably
pleased with myself.
Now we could have our meal. I had no sooner got rid of my tray when the Ding Dong, the Selcall, rang (sounded
like ‘Avon Calling’ – a sort of telephone bell). It was Company calling us from London on the HF. Now, the HF
reception, (short wave, if you like) is pretty rough at the best of times and that night it was very poor. It took about
ten minutes with numerous repetitions to understand what was being said. The long and short of the message
was that selecting first shot fire bottle #3 engine would actually fire the fire bottle into #4 engine and vice versa.
Hell’s Bells! (The unconfirmed story that I later heard was that one of our ground engineers (whilst working for
his licence) couldn’t work out how, when pressing the button for #3 engine, the methyl bromide was apparently
routing into #4 engine. Anyway, the engines behaved themselves OK and we landed at Nairobi.