With Qantas across the Pacific

[connieguy]

At the suggestion of John Hewson I am uploading these images which he sent me. The first is a page from Whites Air Guide for June 1948 which comments on the BCPA service across the Pacific and also shows (centre top) Captain Dickson, who was killed in the DC-6 crash near San Francisco on 29th October 1953. The other images are an article on Canton Island from the October 1951 issue of the BCPA in-flight magazine 'Air-Pacific'.

[connieguy]

I have just done the leg Honolulu-San Francisco with a not entirely satisfactory result, and will therefore re-do it fairly soon. The major problem came at the end when the weather report had led me to expect a landing in good visibility on R 28. I had therefore planned the required approach partly on the basis of the DC-6 BCPA accident report of 1953 and had taken off from KSFO to do a practice approach and landing, which went well. Unfortunately the weather report was a few hours old and on approach I was told that the wind was 154/5 and that landing would be on 19L in a visibility of three-quarters of a mile. I had not planned 19 in low visibility and in fact there is an ILS but no radio aids which facilitate lining up on it (edit. this was not correct. See below). In these circumstances it would would probably have been better to use 28 with a light following wind, but in fact I tried 10, using the San Francisco Gap NDB and bearing in mind that it is not directly in line with the runway, as Bill has pointed out. This delivered me over the airport but I could not see the runway and I aborted at that point. Subsequently I restarted the flight from the last point saved by FSUIPC and did a PAR and GCA approach on 19L. KSFO did have these facilities at that time, I caught sight of the runway just in time and made a good landing.

I am mainly interested now in what might have happened in reality in those circumstances, which I am sure were by no means unusual at this airport. Would they have used a PAR GCA approach on 19L or in visibility so low it gives one the frighteners would they have assigned an alternative airport?  On another matter the AILA gauge did not come up with Ocean Station November when it should have. However, I have been using Caps Lock to turn Voice Bot listening on and off and have realised that having it turned on causes problems for AILA, so that may have been the reason.

[Tom/CalClassic]

Hi,

There are some classie era SFO charts on my Calfornia Charts page, that might help?

s784.photobucket.com/albums/yy125/CalClassic/California%20Charts

[connieguy]

Thanks, Tom. John Hewson's Flickr album on KSFO includes Jeppesen charts from 1956 but I don't think either yours or John's throw any light on the approach to R19 (edit. Again, this was not correct, so see the correction below). The beam from the range at Oakland did not align with it. It may be, therefore, that it was approached visually or by GCA in poor visibility. The question is whether this was as low as zero visibilty or needed to be something better.



www.flickr.com/photos/12530375@N08/albums/72157645731215300

[Tom/CalClassic]

The TVOR "SFO" approach shows that over the VOR you travel outbound at 039 deg. and do a procedure turn to 194 degrees to line up on runway 19. There is even a descent profile under the airport diagram.

[mrcapitalism]

Feb 14, 2020 9:40:05 GMT -5 connieguy said:

I had not planned 19 in low visibility and in fact there is an ILS but no radio aids which facilitate lining up on it.

I don't understand how you made this determination.
For what year approach are you using? How did you determine that there are no radio aids which can be used to line up with the ILS? Looking at the current plate, I can see 1, current, legal means to identify the final approach purely using radio aids.
If we use FSAviator's methodology for backdating approaches, there are at least 3 other possible historical radio aid transitions from the enroute environment to the ILS beam. Without a doubt it has always been possible to find I-SIA 108.9 without radar, especially since this method has not been removed, even in the modern day of Radar+GPS

As of the date of this reply, there is still no requirement for any ATC authority to have any sort of functioning radar to authorize a crew to successfully complete the ILS 19L KSFO to a safe landing in 300ft ceiling and 3/4sm visibility.

You may be missing out on a lot of the experience of these wonderful aircraft if you're missing out on the world of classic IFR navigation.

[jwh]

Have uploaded some extra San Francisco charts for 1960-62 to my Flickr page. They may be of interest to CalClassic members flying that period.

Link to the album:

www.flickr.com/photos/12530375@N08/albums/72157713115514717

John

[connieguy]

Thank you John. This is a reply to the posts by Tom and Mr Capitalism.  I should begin by explaining that in the pre-1957 period in which I usually fly there were no VORs in most parts of the world, although I do now (see below) remember Tom pointing out in the BOAC Constellation thread that they were introduced in the US from 1946 onwards and Bill saying that even so it is unlikely that BOAC Constellations were fitted with VOR equipment as early as c.1950. As a result of this general background, I have the VOR display switched off in Plan G, which has not helped in this particular case. This Qantas Super Constellation flight, as I stated in the first post, takes place in November 1955, and I don't doubt that the KSFO and Oakland VORs had been in existence for quite some time by then; certainly they are shown by John's Jeppesen charts from 1956. However, these were not the charts I used to plan the flight. Instead I used the report on the DC-6 crash of 1953 and what that describes is ADF procedures for a landing on R28, illustrated by a BCPA chart (see above) and an indication of where the aircraft actually crashed. It could be that the reason for the use of ADF procedures was that a DC-6 built in 1948 did not have VOR receivers, but at the same time it seems very likely that a Super Constellation built in 1954 did have them. Obviously I relied on being given a landing on R28 and was not prepared for anything else. Mea culpa. I was also at fault in not checking the weather site found by Erik some time ago which gives past airport weather and records that early in the morning at KSFO on 9th November 2019 (the date of the file I was using) there was fog and that it lasted for some hours. It also records the wind direction. In stating that the charts gave no indication of any aids assisting a landing on 19L apart from the ILS I was wrong, because I wrongly discounted the VORs for the reason given above. I am not clear from Mr Capitalism's post whether there was something else I missed as well which was not related to VORs. I will also gently point out that unlike some people who post here I have no background in real aviation and that consequently I make mistakes. That is why I take care never to present myself in these threads as any kind of expert, and why I make it clear that I am always happy for what I say to be corrected or augmented; providing, of course, that such corrections and augmentations are expressed courteously.

[Tom/CalClassic]

Hi,

No problem, we are just pointing out alternatives to "going it alone". I have no charts other than the ones John or I have posted so I don't know if there was an approach to Rwy 19 based on the SFO Radio Range, for example. But the approach to SFO runway 19 was probably a precision approach soon after the war, one way or another.

[connieguy]

I am posting these images of an Australian National Airlines DC-6 at San Francisco in 1947 at the request of John Hewson. I am sure that forum members will find them of interest.

[connieguy]

Quantas Flight EM 732 was scheduled to arrive in Honolulu at 11:55 Local Time and leave for San Francisco at 20:00, a timing which had largely been inherited by Qantas from BCPA (Dec 1953 timetable, arrive 13:00 leave 20:45) and was maintained by them (June 1958 Round the World service, arrive 12:30 depart 20:00). BCPA advertising (see John Hewson's article above) stressed that it gave passengers time to enjoy Honolulu but whether that was the only reason might be doubted. The BCPA DC-6 which came to grief near KSFO on 29th October 1953 had a crew change in Honolulu and that may have been standard practice. A new crew could look forward to a night of navigation facilitated by reference to the heavens, but although a flight of just over 2,000 nm navigation by day may not have been out of the question, especially given that Ocean Station November was situated near the direct line and presumably had a range greater than the 112 nm of FS9. Also, the western coast of the USA was a massive target and the chances of getting lost would not seem to have been great. In this context I have wondered whether the arrival time may have been dictated to the airlines by the authorities at KSFO. However that may be, the early morning arrival was likely to come at a price, because San Francisco and a large adjacent coastline may experience fog of considerable duration. The weather file I used for this flight was a FSGRW dynamic file starting at 05:36 UTC on 9th November, 2019. On that day, as the weather history site found by Erik records, fog formed at 4:40am and lasted until 11:40am. On the 8th it formed at 2:56am and lasted until 9:56; on the 10th the timings were 6:56 and 10:43, including a period of Haze. On the other hand, in three days in April there was no fog. There is a Wikipedia article for those interested in pursuing this further, and this states that as a result of global warming the prevalence of fog is now lower than it used to be, presumably including the 1950s.
       As usual I have prepared a plan with waypoints spaced out about every 250 nautical miles. I load 29,892 lbs of fuel, which on the Super Constellation means that tanks 1-4 are full and the centre tank, Tank 5, contains 40% of its capacity.Tanks 1 and 4 have double the capacity of 2 and 3 and so there will be a lengthy period of cross-feeding. The weather forecast is for following winds blowing on the port rear quarter of the aircraft and this will mean subtracting two to three degrees from the aircraft's magnetic heading. Take off is on PHNL Runway 26.

Taxiing for take off with the bright lights of Honolulu in the distance.

Once in the air I turned to port and flew east along the coast until I reached a height about 5,000 feet, which allowed my to clear the terrain without issues once I had turned north for the beacon at Kaneohe Bay. As I made the turn Honolulu passed below.

        With Kaneohe Bay behind me I tried to establish a course with the rmi pointing to a bearing of 223 magnetic, the reciprocal of my course of 043. There was little trouble holding this course, which suggested that there was no significant drift at that point. During climb it was necessary to carry out blower shift, and here 1 and 4 have been shifted while power and rpm on 2 and 3 have been reduced preparatory to the shift being made. Engine synchronisation has to be switched off prior to this and on again once things are complete. Switching the engines in pairs results in the aircraft holding a direct course rather than lurching about the sky, although I believe in reality that 2 and 3 were sometimes shifted separately.

      Climb took well over 30 minutes and was directly to a pressure altitude of FL170, which was pushing things with this fuel load, although as outside air temperatures were about 0C at that height the density altitude was about FL190. This was another constant power cruise at 1700 BHP and initially the aircraft was flying more nose up than I tend to like, but of course it gradually lowered as fuel burnt off. Over the course of the flight OAT dropped to -7C and this allowed the cowl flaps to be fully closed with a resultant slight increase in speed; latterly this was approximately 260 knots true airspeed. Regular checks of the engine settings resulted in two alterations to the fuel to air ratio and the throttles.

       Navigation was not entirely straightforward, as there was quite a lot of cloud at times and this obscured the stars. Having done the flight twice (for the reasons, see above) with the same weather file on both occasions the Plan G breadcrumb shows that the aircraft was left of track, so much so that on the first occasion we did not pick up Ocean Station November at all. This raises the possibility that the heading adjustment was overdone because the winds were not actually as forecast. On the second flight Ocean Station November was picked up at 10:00 UTC at a bearing of 110 magnetic. Prior to that there had been a brief bout of propeller icing at 07:15 UTC and at 07:25 an aircraft heading in the opposite direction passed below; this suggested that I was at that time very near to the correct track. After the Ocean Station the breadcrumb shows that the divergence to port continued to a maximum distance of just over 40 nm and this was also indicated by a star shot taken around that point. As a result I changed the heading from 047 to 054 and then waited until calculations suggested that I was within 400 nm of KSFO, on the assumption that if there were beacons of that range at Sydney and Honolulu (see above) there may well have been one at San Francisco too. Switching on the AILA gauge and tuning it to Runway 19L showed that it was 370 nm away and at a bearing of 061 when my heading was 056. Not too bad, after all.

      I then tuned the radios to pick up the VORs at KSFO and Oakland and waited for them to register. And now that it no longer mattered, the sky cleared completely. Subsequently ATIS came in with a pleasant surprise. The wind at KSFO was 7 knots and visiblity one mile rather than the 5 knots and three-quarters of a mile experienced on the first flight. Perhaps this was because I was slightly earlier and the fog in the process of forming. ATIS advised me that 19L was in use, but when I asked for it some time later the voice (I'm sure you know it) rather loftily refused me permission to land because conditions were IFR; the flight plan was an IFR one but as I had not loaded it in FS9 that was probably the reason. John's 1956 Jeppesen charts show an approach through the KSFO VOR and then a turn back to 19L. However, I had not practised this, but instead a GCA approach with an intercept distance of 6 nm to the north of the airport. One of these practices forced me to fly by the controller's instructions by not switching on the ILS at all, but now that it mattered it certainly was switched on. Visibility was noticeably better than on the first flight and during the turn the passengers thrilled to the sight of the San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge to port (excellent scenery by Mike Mahat).

The approach went well and there was eventually the gratifying sight of the runway emerging from the murk dead ahead. Could I do it ten times out of ten? Probably not.

After settling on the runway the crew went through landing procedures (flaps up, cowl flaps open etc) and Beatrice welcomed the passengers to San Francisco. As we turned off the runway ATC gave landing clearance to AI flight Quantas EM732 - ourselves. We landed at 06:09 PST, 21 minutes ahead of schedule. Flight time 08:08. 6,710 lbs of fuel remaining. Thanks to Cal Classic for everything, to Karol Chlebowski and Manfred Jahn for the AILA/GCA gauge and to Manfred and the Connie Team for the superb aircraft.

[chris_c]

Outstanding! Or perhaps out standing in the fog... I have really enjoyed your adventures with Connie across both oceans and really hope that you're not done yet. Thank you for including us in your flights.

Chris

[connieguy]

Thank you very much, Chris. I am thinking of perhaps doing Qantas round the world.

[Tom/CalClassic]

Hi,

Nice job. You could just continue from SFO and keep going...

[connieguy]

Thank you, Tom. Yes, I was thinking that.