A couple of Random Questions

D33, I applaud your asking questions in such an honest and clear manner. I am an old pilot and spent some time at Boeing working on the big tin birds and I can answer most of your questions but I think that it is better if an airline pilot addresses them from a more professional point. The rudder is very effective on take off. There are several speed points on the take off that are pre-calculated before it starts so the pilot knows when to initiate the lift-off and climb. The high lift devices on the airliners are very powerful and allows a steep climb angle on climb out. Hope this helps a bit..

 

Good questions. As for how we steer the aircraft down the runway, it's actually more involved than you may have realized. The rudder pedals, which are pressed with the feet (there is a right and left one), do two things: They steer the nose gear and they move the rudder (the vertical moveable surface) right and left. The combination of both allow pilots to accurately maintain the centerline of the runway while accelerating for takeoff. If there is a crosswind (meaning a wind coming from some other direction than down the runway), pilots will then use the yoke or stick to position the ailerons in a way to hold the windward wing down into the wind so as to not have the wing lift during the takeoff roll. Also, depending on the aircraft, a very slight forward pressure is sometimes applied on the yoke or stick to help with the effectiveness of nose wheel steering during the initial part of acceleration. As for the rotation speed and climb out speeds, yes, they are calculated prior to the flight based on weight of the aircraft, atmospheric conditions, runway length, and runway surface condition. The FAA or controlling agency will sometimes require certain rates of climb depending on an airport's departure procedures. These are often based on obstacles, populated areas, noise abatement, arriving aircraft procedures, etc. Beyond this, every aircraft has optimal climb profiles which will define an airspeed and configuration to achieve the best climb for the given conditions.

 

I am not an airline pilot but there are a few different factors in your answer. The first is the airlines dictate how the pilot is to fly the plane- well within the performance envelope but they’re supposed to avoid steep turns, max performance takeoff, etc. Departures from LAX will probably be subject to a noise abatement procedure when taking off to the east. Air Force 1 is not really subject to these restrictions.
The speeds you’re referring to are “V” speeds. In the tiny planes I fly you want to be at 70% Vr with 50% of the runway left.

 

The Captain and First Officer have identical controls. The only additional control the Captain has (although there are aircraft where both pilots have one) is a tiller. That is a steering wheel for slow speed nose wheel steering while making tight turns during taxi. Back to the takeoff, in the airline world, that is a team effort. Whoever's turn it is to fly (Pilot Flying) will handle the flight controls, while the Pilot Monitoring will assure the thrust is set correctly, will monitor airspeed trends and system advisories/warnings, and will call airspeeds ultimately for rotation. The Pilot Monitoring will announce the condition of flight, and will respond to the Pilot Flying's calls for gear up, flap settings, thrust settings, and after takeoff configurations. The Pilot Monitoring is also running the radios while the Pilot Flying is responsible for the specific task of flying the aircraft. The speeds, thrust settings, flap settings, etc., you are referring to are calculated through a computer system. They can be hand calculated using actual weights, weather conditions, runway info, etc., with reference information kept in the aircraft.

 

" A slide rule and thinker". Right on! Also a 26 digit handle cranked Marchant calculator and a helluva lot of personal labor time to derive the figures. Then, those figures were translated to the guys on the board that produced the lines and shapes that configured the airplane so the structure guys could fill it with the parts that held it all together and made it work. Thousands of hours were burned but then the pay scale was very low. As a technical draftsman, I made 1.63 / hour. I spend some time now talking to the younger set that never leave their desk when they are designing things on the computer. They can't believe the handwork and back-breaking labor AND SKILL that went into actually hand drawing everything. A skill lost forever, but that's progress, they say. Anybody know what a Master Model is/ was?

 

It's been a while. But....isn't there some FAR that mandates a certain rate of climb or decent in normal operations? (I seem to recall something about this). While it's not usually a player....when cleared to change altitudes by ATC.....they have to have a certain "expectation" in order to control traffic. Again...it's not commonly a matter of practicality in normal day to day operations...but when given a clearance...there is some minimum, published vertical speed that is published somewhere. Or am I imagining this?

 

I do not know about airliners, but on fighters generally, the nose wheel steering was disconnected at about 60 knots and only the rudder used from then on during the take-off roll. Same thing on landing, rudder only until airspeed dropped to around 60 knots and then the NWS was engaged.

 

I'm not a pilot, I only play one on TV... There is a good series on YouTube called Mentour Aviation. He's a 737 pilot and has many informative videos on pretty much everything commercial pilot related. Here's one on takeoff roll and rotation

 

For IFR flight, I believe it's 500fpm.

 

Also look at 'Captain Joe' on YouTube... some of his are better... watch both.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC88tlMjiS7kf8uhPWyBTn_A

 

One of the seven required reporting points in aviation is when you can neither climb nor descend at a rate of at least 300 feet per minute.
The takeoff procedure for an airplane I used to fly (CL44) was...The Captians left hand is on the nosewheel steering wheel, the Flight Engineer works the throttles (guarded by the Captian with his right hand) while the co-pilot pushes the yoke foreward to ensure that the nosewheel is "pinned" to the ground. During this phase the co-pilot must apply aileron into the wind if needed. At some point during the takeoff run (usually about 60 knots) the nosewheel steering is no longer effective so-the Captian moves his left hand from the nosewheel steering wheel to the yoke. The co-pilot then relenquishes control of the yoke and guards the throttles because sometimes (if the Captian didn't eat his Wheaties for breakfast) the Captian has to use both hands on the yoke to pull it back with enough force to raise the nose at the proper speed (called Vr- precalcuted by the co-pilot and posted on a card in full view of all the participants). After Vr is reached, the Flight Engineer would raise the gear upon the Captians command, the co-pilot would raise the flaps (to 5 degrees-using the alternate flap switch because there was not a 5 degree setting on the primary flap switch) and the Engineer would reduce power to his precalcuted (actually calcuted by managemt to save fuel) power setting. At this point we would be about 1500 feet above the ground, and out of the terminal area where the speed limit is 180 knots. Then we would lower the nose to try to accelerate to 250 knots which is the speed limit below 10,000 feet, climbing the whole way. It usually took us 200 miles to climb from 1,000 feet to 18,000 feet.

 

The good old days.

 

Climb out question triggered a memory of when the 707 went into service with American Airlines. Their engineering department did not agree that the 707 was supposed to attain a steeper climb angle after take off. They initially enforced the DC-7 climb profile until they were finally convinced otherwise. If I remember, there was a "stair step" climb out profile for the 707.

 

Same in the car industry... And yes, we do have master models in the studios at the end of the styling design process and later during the prototyping stages. I was lucky to just have started when car body and structures were still mostly drawn by hand and the models built by actual people. Amazing skills. Now basically it's all done on screen with VR gear and the models are milled...

 

Near the end of my days at the Kite Factory I was fortunate to be a part of the transition from Master Layouts on aluminum and full size Master Models to doing everything on the Catia computer system. The loft and all the parts within were digitized full size. The stretch forms and all trim and drilling tools were created from little numbers. No more full sized Master Models.

 

and then Boeing put all the 747 dwgs into CATIA, but soon found out that that was not how the actual airplane was being built for the last xx yrs (tool creep and what not)

 

Yes ! I remember when they first attempted to produce some 747 parts made from CATIA data and they didn't fit the airplane.Old .03 manufacturing tolerances weren't too compatible with 0.00 tolerances of the CATIA. Tool creep. Yeah, old things start to creep with age. I can vouch for that!

 

You think that's bad? Imagine the C-130, first drawn by hand in the 1950s! We made a lot of changes where we were revising the drawings to match the airplane, not the other way around! When a mechanic who knew the secrets of how to really build his part of the airplane retired, havoc reigned when his successor tried to do it like the drawing. It was even worse when an assembly being made by a certain vendor was transferred to another vendor who lacked the carnal knowledge.

The C-130J uses a mix of drawings created four different ways. In fact, I remember one multi-sheet drawing that used all four! Sheets 1 & 2 had been done on the drawing board (now scanned into CADAM, where we had techniques for erasing data originally done by hand); sheets 3 & 4 had been done directly in CADAM; sheets 5 & 6 had been done in CATIA Version 4 (the final version of the "original" CATIA), and sheet 7 had been done in CATIA Version 5 (effectively an entirely new CAD system, which can be done on any Windows computer and does not need the standalone UNIX workstations the earlier CATIA versions had required).

 

I don't know squat about airliners, but many [smaller] aircraft don't have any nosewheel steering...the rudder and brakes are all you have along with appropriate crosswind controls.

 

By small do you mean like the Grumman singles (Cheetah, Tiger)? Also planes on amphibious floats only have differential braking for steering. Can be a real ***** when on a slope.

 

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8000+ Pounds...my planes have no NWS.