Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2019 2:33:26 GMT -5
In these days of tubeliners we tend to forget or understand the depth of undertaking of these first regular airline flights across the Pacific from Australia to the USA and back again, daily. British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines pioneered these flights straight after WW2 not Qantas. BCPA was a joint venture between the Australian, British and New Zealand Governments, created to conduct an airline service across the Pacific. They started in 1946 but were broken up in 1954 when the Governments decided to refocus their energies into their own national airlines, Qantas, BOAC and TEAL. BCPA were farsighted and choose the DC-6 to do these runs, they had orders in for Comets when they came to an end. Qantas took over the Pacific routes, TEAL ran its own and BOAC code shared and went is merry way as well. The DC-6s went to TEAL who repainted them and reregisterd them as NZ aircraft and a couple survived being transferred to the RNZAF in the 1960s. BCPAs operations were marred by the tragic loss of one DC-6, Flight 304, that flew into terrain short of San Francisco on the final legs of a run from Hawaii about dawn conducting a range approach in IMC-VMC conditions.
I decided to redo the route in its entirety simply to get back into the DC-6 and set my self a number of challenges, no GPS and basic aids only and real weather taking what comes and sticking to the schedules for BCPA. The route went Sydney to Whenuapai. Whenuapai to Nadi in Fiji. Then Fiji to Canton Island. Canton Island to Honolulu. Honolulu to San Francisco and then San Franciso to Vancover. All the legs are about 4 and a half hours except the Honolulu to SFO leg which is about 12 and the SFO to Vancouver is about 2.
11 am Departure from Sydney. Weather is basically Cavok and light south westerly winds with some cloud and light winds for our arrival at Whenuapai. Great.
Loading passengers at Sydney, refuelling done, flight plan in.
For some reason no 1 engine proved cantankerous to start but eventually we are off now 10 minutes late on the ETD.
On climb to F160
That was where we sat for the remainder of the leg to Whenuapai. The DC-6 charts say that is it till you get a lot lighter and that is where it stayed and the last 500 ft to F160 it struggled at 100 fpm, so we went back down to F150 and she was fine. IAS about 195 TAS about 234 kts and burning about 580 lbs an hour on 2200 RPM and 32"MP. Needed carb heat from about 8000 and at F160 it was -20C, the DC-6 manual says use it avoid carburettor icing and to keep the fuel pumps on to avoid fuel cavitation.
As there was no GPS autopilot lock back the vagaries of resetting the DG every 10 mins and scrupulous checks of time and speed. Alas by time we were well into the cruise a thick haze was evident and navigation celestial because problematic. A fix mid way showed the winds were not as forecast and we were about 60 nm right or south of track. Not sure why but gremlins then got into the DG which decided to precess by about 5-10 degrees as soon as it was reset. A couple of times it went through 90 degrees out of alignment but when reset and heading was returned behaved itself for a while. Lesson, quality compass is critical and so is a quality DG.
I decided to redo the route in its entirety simply to get back into the DC-6 and set my self a number of challenges, no GPS and basic aids only and real weather taking what comes and sticking to the schedules for BCPA. The route went Sydney to Whenuapai. Whenuapai to Nadi in Fiji. Then Fiji to Canton Island. Canton Island to Honolulu. Honolulu to San Francisco and then San Franciso to Vancover. All the legs are about 4 and a half hours except the Honolulu to SFO leg which is about 12 and the SFO to Vancouver is about 2.
11 am Departure from Sydney. Weather is basically Cavok and light south westerly winds with some cloud and light winds for our arrival at Whenuapai. Great.
Loading passengers at Sydney, refuelling done, flight plan in.
For some reason no 1 engine proved cantankerous to start but eventually we are off now 10 minutes late on the ETD.
On climb to F160
That was where we sat for the remainder of the leg to Whenuapai. The DC-6 charts say that is it till you get a lot lighter and that is where it stayed and the last 500 ft to F160 it struggled at 100 fpm, so we went back down to F150 and she was fine. IAS about 195 TAS about 234 kts and burning about 580 lbs an hour on 2200 RPM and 32"MP. Needed carb heat from about 8000 and at F160 it was -20C, the DC-6 manual says use it avoid carburettor icing and to keep the fuel pumps on to avoid fuel cavitation.
As there was no GPS autopilot lock back the vagaries of resetting the DG every 10 mins and scrupulous checks of time and speed. Alas by time we were well into the cruise a thick haze was evident and navigation celestial because problematic. A fix mid way showed the winds were not as forecast and we were about 60 nm right or south of track. Not sure why but gremlins then got into the DG which decided to precess by about 5-10 degrees as soon as it was reset. A couple of times it went through 90 degrees out of alignment but when reset and heading was returned behaved itself for a while. Lesson, quality compass is critical and so is a quality DG.