Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,Newquay

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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,New

Post by Jelle Hieminga »

That's from production. Although it may be called 're-lifing' you cannot set the counter back to zero. The airframe has aged from every flight and that is something that you cannot undo without building a new airframe from new metal. You can only strengthen joints which you know to be critical and through that extend the life of the airframe.

Thanks for the additional data guys!
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,New

Post by vc10boy »

150 has quite low hours as she only flew for EAA form 1970 until 1977...and then i suspect the raf did,nt fly her too hard..id like to know what hours she had wen she arrived at filton in 1977 for conversion to tanker?..
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,New

Post by petet16 »

The life of an airframe involves more than just flying hours, pressurisation cycles, landings all come into the calculation, re-lifing just makes them good for more cycles and hours, it doesn't wind the clock back so to speak :)
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,New

Post by vc10boy »

forester...thats really interesting..re bringing GARVE back to heathrow to be scrapped,what condition was she in?,i herd the standards had quite a hard life,some quite rough runways on the old empire routs,and the undercaridge got quite a hammering as the sectors involved alot more stops then the supers going across the pond,is this true?..Do you remember what interior the BA standards had?..did they receive the BA new interior like the super fleet?..or were they kept as BOAC as they were being phased out?.I have a sink from toilet of GARVM and it had the BA over paint with the then inhouse colours cira 1974.
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,New

Post by forester »

vc10boy wrote:re bringing GARVE back to heathrow to be scrapped,what condition was she in?
To answer that I have to explain British Airways was in a financial mess by the mid-70s and managers did what managers always do in these times, cut down on cleaning bills. But at the same time the engineering standards of the time remained high. Cut backs and out-sourcing in Engineering were yet to come.
So the answer is the Standards were cosmetically in a poor state (the Supers got full BA livery repaints, as did VM) but technically they were still excellent. I recall that hardly any snags were in the VE Tech Log - and we actually cleaned up the flight deck after ourselves as normal out of respect for a fine aircraft.
If I recall correctly (may be wrong) the only indication of British Airways ownership was the name painted in blue on the white upper fuselage. Otherwise it remained pure BOAC.
Its later destruction by JCB in full view of all the company's office and engineering staff caused a massive outcry as you can imagine.
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,New

Post by vc10boy »

forester,great information,thank you..yes a great shame thoes standards were broken up under boengs orders,im sure they could have flown on with a new airline or with the raf?..britain at the time had such pride in the vc10..our great hope for the future in 1964..ten years later breaking them up with jcb,s?..and they proved reliable and profitable..we are a strange country indeed?
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,New

Post by Stewart »

Jelle Hieminga wrote:That's from production. Although it may be called 're-lifing' you cannot set the counter back to zero. The airframe has aged from every flight and that is something that you cannot undo without building a new airframe from new metal. You can only strengthen joints which you know to be critical and through that extend the life of the airframe.

Thanks for the additional data guys!
This has always bee my understanding of this as well however from conversations with my father and to quote Gwynn
Yes, you are right about the so-called mid-life update of the 707 & VC-10. I am not totally sure as to the actual hours involved but I believe the -10 was certified to 60,000hrs and needed minimal work to extend those hours. They were also certified for 20,000 landings I seem to recall but not exactly sure but I know 'VM' the everlasting trainer did well over it's certified number which included a lot of abuse by trainee captains up at Prestwick including myself. 
It would seem that some went over 60,000hrs yet there are seemingly no records indicating this unless at the time the thours were indeed returned to zero when the work carried out, have the rules changed or were the 60,000hrs never reached and the work to recertify never happened?
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,New

Post by Stewart »

I may have spotted the cause of my confusion. 'Midlife update' so the work would have occoured at 15,000hrs and 30,000hrs respectively for the 707 and VC10.. Although with respect to the original thread that's a lot of work for the 707 if it was only halfway through its 'life'!
It has also occurred to me if this is the case does that mean that 241, far from having the fewest hours left in fact has the most if this was carried out at 30,000hrs? As BOB would never have had this done and 147 given EAA gave it back almost certainly has not
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,New

Post by vc10boy »

Got some more hours to report....

5HMOG......19.12.1984......24,576 total hours flown with East African Airways

5HMOG.......21.11.1995.....30,141 Hours had been flown...

5HMOG.......24.9.2013......40,432 Total hours flown..retired
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,Newquay

Post by Jelle Hieminga »

This is another thread that has slipped down the list. As with the SELCAL codes I am wondering if we could somehow complete this list of flying hours. Can anyone add the total number of hours flown for an as-yet unmentioned airframe? I can add these to the list:
G-ARVA: 18,431 hours at time of accident (source: 5N-ABD accident report)
5X-UVA: 18,586 hours at time of accident (source: 5X-UVA accident report)
G-ASGO: approx. 26000 hours (source: G-ASGO incident report, no precise number provided as it was not relevant to the incident. I would appreciate a more specific figure.)
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,Newquay

Post by XR807 »

When RAF VC10 ops ended, I did manage to obtain some info from the BAE Systems JAVELIN team that showed the total flying hours of most of the aircraft the RAF actually had in service at one time or another. However, please note that for ZA148 there is a discrepancy with what's been reported from the Form 700 earlier in this thread, so there may be other errors as well. However, for those interested here goes

Aircraft Flying hours in military service at Out Service Date Total Flying hours in civil and military service

XR806 35987.00 35987.00
XR807 42737.00 42737.00
XR808 43866.15 43866.15
XR810 38881.00 38881.00
XV101 43330.15 43330.15
XV102 41802.20 41802.20
XV103 34316.00 34316.00
XV104 39383.30 38383.30
XV105 38272.05 38272.05
XV106 42193.25 42193.25
XV107 39354.45 39354.45
XV108 39202.00 39202.00
XV109 38598.00 38598.00
ZA140 5714.00 52506.00
ZA141 6885.00 52818.00
ZA142 5439.00 50633.00
ZA143 6273.00 50769.00
ZA144 5285.00 49258.00
ZA147 14725.35 49943.35
ZA148 15334.40 48294.40
ZA149 14977.15 42702.15
ZA150 15821.50 40397.50
ZD230 4901.00 57947.00
ZD235 2669.00 49568.00
ZD240 5315.00 52194.00
ZD241 7010.40 52692.40
ZD242 7058.00 50270.00

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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,Newquay

Post by bobisqueen »

There is also a discrepancy with 241's F725 in the 700. Her hours are logged at 52716:55
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Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,Newquay

Post by Jelle Hieminga »

That looks like a useful list Mark, thanks for posting that. As for the discrepancies I'm thinking perhaps the final weeks of flying may not have reached the JAVELIN offices. That's just a guess on my part of course.

ZA150 also seems to be about 25-30 hours short in your list.
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,Newquay

Post by bobisqueen »

I reckon your right Jelle. I suspect the reason for the discrepancy in hours will probably because the hours held by JAVELIN would have been the last 'End of Month' figures sent to them. On the Sqn, at the end of each month we would close down the last F725 (Flying Log and Fatigue Data Sheet) which had the Aircraft flying hours on it and send it to Eng records for stats purposes. A new one would then been raised for the new month.

In the case of 241, I suspect the hours Mark has of 52692.40 would have been the flying hours at the end of Feb 13 and the additional hours between that and the final figure of 52716:55 would have been flown during the March before her retirement on the 21 Mar 13.
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Re: Request total hours all airframes GJD,RAF,Brooklands,Newquay

Post by Jelle Hieminga »

I did a quick calculation and by my reckoning:
  • ZD241's total in the posted list is approx. 24 hours short of the F700 total.
  • ZA148's total in the posted list is approx. 57 hours short of the F700 total.
  • ZA150's total in the posted list is approx. 35 hours short of the F700 total.
Both 148 and 150 were retired near the end of a month (August and September respectively) but are these the sort of hours that an airframe would clock up during one month?

Another thing that could have happened is that the Eng records dept stopped sending the hours to JAVELIN for an airframe that had been taken out of service. Apart from the individual parts that GJD recovered there would no longer be a need to record these statistics, and the parts itself would be tracked differently I guess. I'm afraid that a trawl through the records at Brunty might still be useful Ollie.... :?

By the way, this list is still a very useful reference! I find it interesting to see that the K4s and K2s clocked relatively few hours in RAF service. One wonders if the RAF got its money's worth on those conversions... :D
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