Warbird Information Exchange

Lots of military aircraft clips as well.

http://www.dc8.org/video/birthvideo.php

P.S. Love the overly dramatic music!

I was born in 1958, & I grew up & still live in the west approach/departure side of Atlanta International Airport. I remember those DC-8's, man what bunch of jet fuel they left on our yard, cars, etc. Jet engines have came a long way since then. Funny I got a lot more bugs around here now than we had back then. All BS aside, got to see & hear a lot of the stuff that a lot of folks will never have the chance to see/hear/smell/.................Connie's , DC- 7's, 6's. 4's 3's, Convairs..............butt load of twin Beech's, & a bunch I forgot. THANKS for the memories.
Robbie

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Up until a few years ago ship 1 still existed, parked in Marana collecting rattlesnakes and sand, I don't know if it's gone to the big ramp up yonder or not. I remember UAL bringing their travelling road show through Seattle @ SEA TAC and the lines of people, me included as an 11 year old, who came out to see the 'enemies' airliner (remember this IS a Boeing town).
I always enjoyed the ride you got on a 'death cruiser' 8 and the very large cabin windows while Boeings always seem like tank view ports.
My appreciation for the Long Beach cable cars really grew when I started teaching them to mechanics @ BADWRENCH, except for the rigging on an 8 (do not adjust anything because you'll have to re-rig every system in the airplane, blue dots and golden rivets) I marveled @ how similar the 8, 9, 80, and 10 were in design and philosophy if you understood one system and how it worked on the 9, it was the same on the 10 just bigger. Common sense things like remove the entire section of rear spar plumbing as all the 'B' nuts are together on both ends of the run, to access rear spar structural items rather than undo 56 separate lines and clamps as you have to on a 727. When you accessed a leading edge it might have some dirt and dust inside, not 31 gallons of black, grimey skydrol on everything in sight.
Does anyone remember the original 'window blind' reversers on the very very early 8's?
One huge mistake Boeing made after MickeyD took over in the merger (think otherwise? look @ the current management and management style prevelant @ the lazy 'B', thanks a lot Harry for getting caught patting your secretary on the pooper) was to kill off the LAMM books which explained in simplified, cartoon-ish layout, just how a system worked so a new mechanic could look and see where the pump was in relation to the valves, system by system in ATA order I keep mine for the 9, 80, 10, and 11 in a box, I may never need them again but they are a constant reminder that someone was thinking about the poor guy on the ramp @ 2 A.M. in horizontal rain and sleet. If you ever worked on the structure, then you know as long as you keep longeron 24 in good order, you'll never wear an 8 out-ever.

THANX BDK

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

I have fond memories of the DC-8 in 1974 when I worked for United at ORD. It took alot of practice driving luggage out to the DC-8 and lining up the containers correctly under the belly of the plane so they could be hoisted onboard. If the tractor driver was off just a few inches you had to drive around again and hope you were in proper alingment. Good times for sure.

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!

Thanks for the comments Inspector.

I personally think the Douglas products were underrated. Made to last forever, that's for sure! Not sure if Douglas was just done in by bad management or what, but the McDonnell buyout only served to bleed Douglas dry further. They made very little investment in tooling, manufacturing or the product line. At the end, everything was done for stock price- the stock split like 6 ways in two or three years. John McDonnell made a killing on the sale I'm sure.

The video seemed to show a mockup of the bucket style reverser. Didn't realize they had a cascade setup at one time. The DC-8 was certified for in-flight reverse which is unusual for a commercial aircraft. I can't think of another in fact. I've been in a DC-9 backing away from the gate in reverse a number of times, but that is a little different.

If anyone ever doubts the efficacy of the Douglas design methodology, you need to look no further than the C-17. The same philosophy was carried over from the DC-10 (MD-11 came later). The mission capable rate of the C-17 is phenominal, especially considering how it is currently being operated.

Sorry if I got a bit nostalgic there...

The first, original reversers actually opened on the sides of the cowl like opening a 4 paneled venetian blind, not a slider or a blocker door set up ('get a chock, this one ain't closed all the way'). The reason for being able to reverse all four engines in flight stems from the fact that the airframe originally had NO pax 02 and in an emergency, a steep descent was the plan until the second time someone did one and all the pax were scared out of their minds and the crew nearly lost the airplane.
I understand in their greed to maximize military side profits, the St Louis bean tabulators decided it made more profit to write off commercial and do everything possible to alienate customers coupled with their habit of job shopping teeny parts to guys in small shops and garages so that if 'old Fred Inc.' cashed in, no one could pick up the contract for that part because of the thin profit margin on each part, that's why the package Nazis were doing their own porkchops and MLG trunnions and other critical parts so they could keep their fleet flying. That worked until military went in the dumper and no one was interested in their by then out dated airliner designs, altho the original DC-10 and the proposed MD-12 were both 4 engined, double decked, 550 pax designs comparable in size to the A-380, the original DC-10 in 1965 and the MD-12 in the early 90's and if big engine technology was better in 1968, the DC-10 would have been a 250 seat twin and the 767 may never have happened!
And did you ever see the DC-8 AWACS design?

If the moderators want to move this thread, please feel free!

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Hello bdk:

Your comment that Douglas products were "made to last forever" is certainly confirmed by a statistic that I read recently stating that 14 commercial 707's still flying vs. over 100 DC-8's still operational. A rather remarkable stat given the fact that there were 1000 commercial 707's buit vs. 575 DC-8's!

BTW, I was at Long Beach Airport on May 30, 1958 and witnessed the maiden flight!!

Although I never worked on the MD-12 program, I did work MD-11 and had friends on MD-12. I saw plenty of 3-views and artists renderings of full length double-decker 4-engined DC-10s! I did see the two-engined renderings as well. THe MD-12 was continuously descoped to reduce development cost until it was merely an MD-11 with a supercritical wing. It just wasn't enough of a leap forward in efficiency to make it worthwhile for the airlines. Obviously Douglas was in trouble when McDonnell bought them out, it's just too bad that McDonnell didn't invest anything in DAC. They sent plenty of managers to Long Beach that didn't understand the business though. Kind of like being sent to the Russian Front I guess.

To this day I'm puzzled as to how what amounted to a stretched DC-10 gained so much weight and went from an intercontinental design to a barely transcontinental flop. Considering the success Douglas (NOT MDC) had in adding 200 and 400 barrels to the DC-9 'we gotcha 10 series, we can getcha a 50 series, howzabouta 80 series? it's all in the barrels'.
I had minimal contact with 11's thru one of the customers @ BADWRENCH, but found it to be logically laid out systems wise (10 logic) and the flight deck to be very intuitive.
I know the original 10 design made airport authorities turn pale @ the concept of 550 pax all wanting their luggage @ the same time (in the same time frame where JETWAYS were only found @ really big airports and everyone else still used rolling airstair ramps), and that AAL was the motivating force behind stretching and causing the center engine to be put on the 10.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Thanks for the video link. I worked on the DC-8 line at Long Beach from 1967-1970. All of my time was spent at the north end of Bldg. 80 in Dept. 555 wing/fuselage joining. The video shows some shots of the wing joining process that I witnessed and participated in so many times. Most of the plant west of Lakewood Blvd. is long gone. It was sure a different world way back then. Lockheed, North American, Douglas all gone but I’m still shooting rivets!

Dan

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Cool video, Brandon!

A few questions:

1) In the movie, it says that the DC-8 will be flight tested at Edwards AFB. I didn't know any civilian airliners were ever tested there. Was that a one off deal, or did other airliners get tested there also? When was the last time that happened?

2) In the movie, it also says that the reason that the air inlets are located underneath the nose is to prevent jet fumes from entering the air condition system and getting introduced into the cabin. Is all of the bleed air taken from those two inlets or is any taken from off the engines themselves? Why did Douglas design the inlets that way, when they could easily filter the air and prevent the fume problem?

1) Apparently they are still doing commercial flight test operations at EAFB.



2) The theory at the time was that fresh air had to come from the front of the aircraft. Bleed air was used to power the air cycle machine and then the fresh air from the front went through a heat exchanger. Now, I think they just use bleed air directly and the fumes aren't such a problem. Of course jet engines are 20% less stinky than they used to be.

Like most airliners of that era, the 8 used freon as a heat exchange medium. Cabin air was tapped from the engines as usual (except the 787 which does not use engine air, the compressors are electrically driven) @ one of the upper stages of bleed. This was referred to as 'trim air' (stop snickering!!) and was pretty hot. The four turbo compressors (the 707's were out in the 1,2,&3 pylons) were under the flight deck floor along with the mix valve equipment and heat exchangers, and turn around 24000 RPM's. They had to be started individually by the F.E. after engine start/stabilization (anyone who ever experenced a DC-8 start scream from the ramp can tell you the noise would make the hair stand up on your neck coming off the start cart). The T.C.'s could start backwards, could exceed RPM (runaway) or, happiest of all. grenade under the pilots feet, like firing a big shotgun in a broom closet!! They are about 16 inches in diameter and look like blower impeller wheels.
When the SUPER series with CFM's came along, the freon system was deleted (along with 2 of the 4 T.C.'s) hence the closed off looking inlets on 'big motor' 8's, and replaced with two ACMs from a 727. When we were doing DC-8's @ BADWRENCH, I had to have the Facilities Manager for the complex sit in, and get a certificate for that portion of my 40 hour gen-fam dealing with AC/Pressurization because he was the only one certified by the EPA and Washington State, to deal with freon gases (millwright works on airplane).

Trim air was used for cabin pressurization and temperature control, and bled off and used as rain removal on windows 2 and 3, the 8 was NOT equipped with windshield wipers, 500 degree trim air worked just fine thank you and no T9 needed either!

Eddies air patch IS an Air Force base but also a great open test facility, lots of the 'GEE WHIZ' landing and crosswind stuff you see on YOUTUBE (that's Y'ALLTUBE for our friends in the South) is shot @ EAFB. McConnell in Witchita is an active AFB as well as home to SPIRIT/Boeing and Raytheon and CESSNA. Boeing is also pretty much the only tennant @ Great Falls Industrial Airpark in Galsgow, MT (ex Great Falls AFB) and it's is rigged up in the surrounding area with sensitive microphones to monitor, free of background noises, the DBa levels of aircraft/engine combinations as well as where lots of cold weather stuff and maximum lift capabilities are carried out as they North end of the main runway is clear for hundreds of miles up through Alberta.

The DC-9/MD 80 series use a squat switch on the mains to close the inlets for the packs and shut off the packs as well as enable the MkIII reverser controller box which are in the aft fuselage (the inlet is in the base of the fin below the 'Q' spring probe) so the reverser smoke won't get into the cabin, it also allows the cabin to start naturally exhausting pressurized air so the door can be opened @ the gate. The 9 series has negative pressure valves in the lower aft pressure bulkhead behind the aft pit wall as well as the 'sewer lid/sugar scoop under the left pylon, and the top of the cabin door is also a cabin pressure relief. Next time you ride in 1st class on a 9 series watch and listen for the top of the M.E.D. to go 'boop' and close completely.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Thanks for the info, bdk and Inspector, I learned something new!

Some follow up questions:

1) What was the last American commercial airliner to utilize freon in the heat exchanger? When was that built? Do any current foreign commercial airliners still use freon?

2) Regarding the use of Edwards AFB. I had no idea that current civilian airplanes were tested there. Does Boeing or whoever uses it pay the Air Force a fee or do they just get to use the facility because of their vast contracts with the DOD as a side benefit or "perk"? I thought that the Air Force, because it was a federal government body, was prohibited from making a profit off of any services such as this?

Here is a little historical tidbit regarding the first flight of the DC-8 on May 30, 1958 at the Long Beach Municipal Airport. As you might imagine there were camera crews lined along the runway to capture the liftoff of the DC-8. These camera crews included teams from the various local TV stations. Just as the DC-8 was about ready to make its maiden flight in came a 707 crewed by a Boeing Test team and it made a long touch-and-go on the very runway. Of course the TV station camera crews thought that "was the DC-8" and ran off to get the film developed for the evening news...prior to the actual first flight. So guess what was pictured that evering in the TV news broadcasts. Needless to say the PR people at Douglas were livid !! And of course during the entire first flight of the DC-8 it was shadowed by this mystery 707. A normal Boeing test flight at 10:00 am on a Saturday morning 2000 miles from Seattle? Yeah right! To this day I still think it was done in pretty poor taste.

Yes, I was there to witness this tacky spectacle.