Thread: air france a330 crash

Originally Posted by p38arover

My flying experience is limited to flying Blanik gliders in the 70s and flying model aircraft.

Me too. I flew a Blanik at Narrabri or more accurately, on a property at Edgeroi in the early 70's.

Originally Posted by vnx205

Me too. I flew a Blanik at Narrabri or more accurately, on a property at Edgeroi in the early 70's.

In 1968-69, I used to go down from Moree (I was working as a tech at the satellite earth station) to a place between Moree and Narrabri to watch the gliders. One of my colleagues was learning then. It might have been Edgeroi although that's not the name that comes to mind.

I worked here:

Originally Posted by p38arover

In 1968-69, I used to go down from Moree (I was working as a tech at the satellite earth station) to a place between Moree and Narrabri to watch the gliders. One of my colleagues was learning then. It might have been Edgeroi although that's not the name that comes to mind.

It would have to be the same place. It was on a property called "Plain Acres" (or Plainacres) on the eastern side of the highway.

It was a soldier settler block owned by Lyn Garden, whose son married my wife's sister.

Did they still have the open cockpit T31 glider when you were there?

EDIT: The T31 would have been there in 1969, so the question is, did you see it in action? Its performance was so poor that when it was released at about 1000 feet, it had to head straight back to the other end of the strip to get there before it lost too much height.

Yes, my colleague was learning in the T31.

The strip was on the eastern side of the highway. We knew the location as Bellata.

You are quite right. It was officially Bellata. Edgeroi is about 22km further south.

The property changed hands decades ago and the club is no longer there. I believe I can see a very faint line on Google maps that is probably where the strip used to be.

Originally Posted by muddymech

i think so, but in this case i think they had lost there reference to aircraft attitude

... So there was no chance of 'flying the artificial horizon' ?

I would have thought this would be one of the last instruments to fail... - Open to correction !

Originally Posted by superquag

... So there was no chance of 'flying the artificial horizon' ?

I would have thought this would be one of the last instruments to fail... - Open to correction !

The A/H 's, there are 3, didn't fail as these are not susceptible
To icing. Unfortunately, the junior FO panicked and pulled the side stick fully back where he held it for the entire "descent"! The captain, who was now standing in the flight deck, finally realised this going through about 10 000 ft? The problem was that the FO wasn't use to flying with reference to the AH, as normally there would have been flight directors to follow and the auto pilot normally follows after lift off and turned off just before landing.

He had also applied full thrust. On a low slung engined aircraft, the pitch moment, especially at low level, actually pushes the nose up increasing the stall.the latest teaching, is to reduce thrust first, drop the nose and when airspeed increases or "stall stall" stops then increase thrust and recover. A heavily stalled aircraft at high altitude can take a long time to recover.

Originally Posted by p38arover

Ian, do pitot tubes have heaters to remove ice? I would expect that they do.

I haven't read the whole report yet but I note this:



What is the reason for this?

Hi Ron,

The reason on the restriction with these probes was they had some design issue where they would ice up. Pitot tubes are heated for IFR aircraft, and on jets they go on before takeoff and stay on. The airbus probes were icing up for some reason and caused a few near misses, there was a QANTAS airbus that dropped a few hundred feet over WA they put down to this.
Problem being the probe info goes into an an air data computer, along with all sorts of other info, temp, pressures etc, so when airspeed suddenly drops/disappears the computer has a 'moment'!