NEW ERA

[Music] like this had a job cut out for himself they knew that they had to certify this airplane in the same year that the number one airplane made its first flight we had to take this airplane and first prove that had met the point and customer requirements and then prove that they met the FAA regulations we had to take the first five airplanes up the production line and do the job in the shortest possible time number three airplane utilized a longnose coolant which was used to measure just loads during the flight load survey program but these five test airplanes we had to respect personnel to match the responsibility to sign to each airplane quite a bit of competition between the different airplanes [Music] this whole job started way back down the line when engineers were still looking at paper airplanes and models and when tunnel testing began our people devote literally thousands of hours of their time and both on paper and in the wind tunnel to minimize drag because drag is money drag costs weight drag cost fuel the iron bird serves two outstanding purposes development of the reliability of the control systems the other is training for the flight crews later on we take to complete airframes and scientifically destroy them fatigue testing simulates the equivalent of two normal airplane life times static test design limit testing must be completed before the airplane can be flown through its full design envelope static test airplane is eventually subjected to ultimate loads to prove the design finally the airplane is destroyed to determine how much margin of safety has been built in the number three airplane was instrumented with streamgages pressure instrumentation to measure the loads on the airplane was also equipped with an instrument at probe to measure angles and accelerations during more than 50 hours of flying we measured loads during maneuvering flight landings ground maneuvering and during flight through turbulence the purpose of the preflight meeting is to discuss with all the flight through the intended plan of tests and the sequence of test events that will occur during the flight participants include Boeing and FAA flight crews of pilots copilot and flight engineers the flight test engineers instrumentation engineers and any observers from the staff a project group in flutter testing as in most other flight tests we go way beyond anything that would actually be encountered in normal flight all the complex functions a flight test team are required during these tests which take the airplane to its maximum design speeds for the first time but we have accelerometers located throughout the airplane and all the control services and all this is telemetered radio to the radio room there they're printed out on paper and the engineers down there monitor all our parameters and they can tell even sooner and we can't if everything looks satisfactory they are the ones that give us the clearance to proceed to the next higher speed or the next condition this is the way we see it in the radio room but the chase plane observer sees the real thing right here I was passing from left to right approximately 25 feet underneath the aircraft and the main reason why I'm along on the flutter flights is to note the general condition of the airplane and also to report anything unusual like what we had initially had some problems with the vanes and I could see a much easier and they could put them out within the cockpit when we apply in the airplane this is called minimum crude testing we just had a pilot copilot and a flight engineer just three people aboard the airplane we'd Lodge the fighter which I was flying and I would go up and check the atmosphere and make sure we had smooth air or couldn't operate free of clouds censuses baseline data we want to know exactly where we're standing in other words we don't want to have any inputs from the air we just want to have inputs from the controls or from the veins during these high-speed flutter tests the airplane was shown to be highly stable and we reached maximum Mach number speeds of 0.99 which is 99 percent of the speed of sound and as high as 685 miles per hour true airspeed [Music] one thing you'll notice about the Boeing engineering gang what each one thinks he has an individual enterprise the success of the Boeing Company and the transport business as a result of the engineers and the shop guys feeling their private enterprises and they're so anxious usually when we come off that airplane to know what happened that they're not willing to wait a half an hour for the post light beating they want to know what it is right now so that they can get going on urgent items we try and work very rapidly we take the flight tapes from the airplane while the airplanes up flying we're doing preliminary work and getting the calibration values for all the instrumentation that's on the airplane getting me stored into the computer and preparing to run the data when we get the tapes when we receive the tapes in conjunction with us we get data requests from the analysis groups these call out what time intervals the airplane was doing certain critical tests many times run the tapes first of all through our quick look around station which produces rolls of strip charts or Scylla graph rolls that give analog traces that tell us whether or not the instrumentation is working right and whether or not we have any problems with the data the greatest change that has occurred that is as far as by testing is concerned is in relation to the data handling system the amount of information that our company today finds out about the airplane in relation to each test that's conducted the amount of data that's obtained is fantastic and of course we couldn't have done this at all unless we've had the big computers that our company saw fit to get for us we only had 10 months to get the job done so we had to work around the clock in all kinds of weather [Music] [Music] took number two to New Mexico for landing performance refused takeoff and autopilot words first we thought we'd read the flight plan wrong place looked like a Mardi Gras [Music] [Music] the red carpet was rolled out the whole town was there FreeNAS people were just great but there was work to be done and we had to get with it the 747 has a landing gear the is forgiving and whereas that rate of sinking another airplane might have felt like a moderately hard landing the 747 that will field saw I think it's a very forgiving airplane on landing all our airplanes we have a system on the connect to the brakes that makes it possible for the pilot to apply brake pedal and not worry about getting the wheels and then blowing some tires this protective system is on all our planes and on all our planes we demonstrate the operation of the light of the airplane during landings and during refuse takeoffs with a system working and with it in various failure conditions one failure condition is with two wheels not connected to the anti-skid system and then we also check it with all wheels not protected with the anti-skid system and try to show performance of the airplane under these conditions standing by in the radio car I just got a call from the pilot that requested that we make a visual inspection of the aircraft's undercarriage wheel and tire assembly and that I wait until he becomes parked on the runway centerline and with due safety respect with the parking brake set run down through the centerline of the airplane keeping well away from the engines and inspect the 16 we'll entire assemblies for overheating of the brake assemblies possible loss of rubber from the tires and impingement upon the aircraft fuel leaks or fluid leaks if they should occur and just generally look at the condition of the underside over to ensure the pilot that he is safe to continue testing occasionally due to various objects on the runway or faulty tire tread or cut the tire tread it's possible to throw some rubber off which may in fact become implanted in a flat for whatever when installing these wheel assemblies is quite important if we torque up the axle nuts to ensure that they're all uniform and that the torque is properly applied to the tapered bearings within the wheel themselves in the case of the 747 as the final torquing is brought up to 500 foot pounds and the nut is backed off slack and brought back up to 80 foot-pounds torque this ensures that the bearings are properly pre-loaded and then loaded for use overall I was estimate that there was 200 brakes used for the testing alone [Music] when stations are used to determine the correction factor for an actual zero wind condition and then for any particular day you apply a correction for the actual wind conditions and are at the particular Airport the time you're gonna make the takeoff also and all this testing it's very conservative in that they always assume that you lose an engine and they further takeoff distance they take it to 35 feet so it's very conservative what goes in the flight manual and what the airplane will actually do [Music] during the landing approach of the airplane is never flown below 30% above the stalling speed in here so there is a 30% cushion built in the approach speed that is used and shown in the airplane flight manual then has 30% above the speed determined during the stall test [Music] during these more than 1500 hours of flight testing we tested the engines and engine systems the mechanical and electronic systems first beyond the normal envelope of operation and then simulating normal airline operation some of us had to handle logistics problems like who'd have thought we'd have to bring in a fire engine from Wichita but the extra capacity was needed so it had to be arranged an RTO is a refused takeoff and this is where the airplane is accelerated to the v1 speed or decision speed the engines cut back and the airplane is brought to a stop the first tests that were performed at Roswell were done at lightweight the purpose of the RTO and landing tests are to determine the actual stopping distance for the airplane this data is used in conjunction with takeoff performance work which was being done an airplane number one information is required to establish a set of curves to be used by the airline pilot to determine the weight that the airplane can be flown off a particular airport it ties in with runway length the ambient temperature the altitude and the gross weight of the airplane a remote based operation is very important in as much as that you have to be ready to conduct tests in other areas other than the Boyne location due to weather and also due to the type of testing that you conduct we always had to be ready to move into these remote bases and we were also able to support our organization from this area but parts and in the flow of data from the location back to Seattle the main reason went down Edwards were for weather conditions the weather is very very good down there the winds are very light and they have the longest runway in the United States over 15,000 feet of runway plus seven miles of overrun the runway is perfect very smooth not much crown to it it's been surveyed and we've used quite a bit so if we know a lot about the conditions down there even an airplane 3,000 pounds above than the maximum takeoff weight we've taken off actually made a Jill chop to the engine if the engine was inoperative this is to show our procedures were satisfactory the airplane performed as advertised our experience has been I think throughout the pilot group and with visiting pilots as well that it is really an easy airplane to fly an easy airplane to land at least I'm very impressed with the inertial system and the autopilot system we then went out and performed and showed the FAA that the airplane hits it's a v1 speeds its v2 speeds it's V ours it's liftoff its climb gradients out to 400 feet I thoroughly enjoy flying the airplane I get a big charge out of it and enjoy it it has no bad characteristics it's an honest airplane and I'm not just saying that from a sales tan well I think it's it's really a good airplane for piloting and also from a passenger standpoint our effort is always to combine tests and run as many tests concurrently as we can and this is done successfully in many cases for instance during drag or level flight performance determination we can frequently run certain systems test such as hydraulic temperature surveys air conditioning performance certain electrical tests currently what permits us to do this is the highly sophisticated and complete digital type instrumentation system abused it has enough recording capability that we can frequently in order to optimize our testing run several tests at the same time [Music] somebody mentioned the flow of data back to Seattle and then the point came up about surveyed runways well the auto light film makes a good tie in all together about 600 takeoffs and landings are recorded by the auto light cameras aboard the 747 we read the film and the computer gives the engineers all the answers they need concerning airplane attitude and position relative to ground reference points this data is critical especially when airplanes are at remote base stations after processing the answer is that at is called down to the remote base by five it's expensive tattoos so we don't want to risk any repeat the autopilot is designed to fly the airplane during the landing approach and right onto the runway simulated autopilot malfunctions are introduced during the test program to prove that the pilot can always recognize and compensate for a problem should it occur at any point during the landing hundreds of automatic landings were conducted during the test program the stalls are done for performance installs are also done for what we call characteristics and characteristics we have to show and these are tests that must be certified that the airplane is controllable in stalls or recoverable in stalls in general the characteristics are excellent on this airplane for a airplane of such tremendous size it's almost impossible to describe what a gentle fully controllable stall we have during a flight test program such as the 747 there are as many as 500 stall tests conducted we try to appreciate the operational environment that the airlines put the airplane and to in so doing we try to find that condition like we look for 35 to 40 not cross winners which is a rarity an actual operation we're looking for the strong United States right now we have one airplane standing by the minute we get a report that there are strong crosswinds he's going to go that's his party finally found one in our own backyard right in Walla Walla Washington we've always established team philosophy we're gonna test our planes and treating that as though of the airplane because part of them you often see the men out there shining up the airplane or their particular engine responsible for it when a man assumes ownership of an airplane then they take on the responsibility of taking care of it we had a game going on here between five test airplanes what's your plan could outdo the other each team knew that they wanted to go to remote base and take on certain jobs the bmu tests determine the maximum performance of the aircraft in the take-off configuration they're performed by placing the tail section of the aircraft and contact with the runway until the airplane lifts off speed which it lifts office call the minimum unstick speed or vmu so the vmu then determines the basically the take-off perform to the aircraft it also determines the ability the airplane to tolerate inadvertent abuse case of the 747 it's impossible to abuse airplane enough so that doesn't lift off cleanly with very good flying qualities number one airplane conductive shimmy testing in the nose gear linkage systems we simulated the wear by having the Lynx machine down to where we could put washers him to take out the slop we just took the washers up and now we had a replay linking system and we proved the airplane is shimmy free and the airlines then have a maintenance requirement that they'll watch there's all kinds of adverse conditions that have to be simulated operation from wet runways for instance the barn MOA doesn't make a very smart paint job but it'll sure tell us all we want to know about spray patterns first of all the Boeing shop supervisor signs the air plan is being ready for the test then the Boeing inspection department verifies this size then the Boeing plate test engineer in charge of that airplane signs it off which means that our engineering department agrees that the airplane is a proper configuration for the test we're going to perform and the FAA inspector signs it and then that's ready for the pilot and I barely sign it off a sort of formality when you get in the airplane it does seem very high up your eye levels approximately 27 feet high above the ground however you've got very good visibility looking down so you can see very close to the nose of the airplane as far as tax and gets much easier than say a 707 to taxi after taxiing around for a little bit or even the landings are the takeoffs it seems very normal and the other airplane seemed like they said too close to the ground this seems like it's just the right height on the spray testing when he made two runs at 30 knots one at 50 knots one at 75 knots and one over a hundred knots this braid truck is approximately eight feet wide seventy feet long and it had a half an inch of water in it we're looking for any impingement of water on the air conditioning and let's around the static ports of the airplane and make sure we don't have any ingestion from the nose we'll spray going into the engine inlets other adverse weather conditions include simulating ice buildup on the airplane we put on simulated ice shapes which are fabricated plastic shapes that look like the worst possible ice configuration and then the airplane is stalled and also fine off the drag is significantly different in usually the natural aging has always been less severe than our simulated icing test that we do with these shapes after a time you become pretty well convinced that you've found all there is to know about an airplane that is you and your own people - and when you welcome the FAA Administrator the man that's bringing that vital paper in his pocket you know you've hit paydirt the final type board meeting resulted in signing of the airplane flight manual the production certificate and the type certificate and the one meeting which is a first for a final type board meeting the airworthiness certificate has since been issued for the first airplane to be delivered with a full type certificate I thank you George no man have these productions your kid Decatur oh did I have you know a stroke that a pen doesn't take very long but insured sure is a big girl really I did sign the airplane flight manual there I'm going to sign now the production certificate and the production limitation record final certification board winning model seven four seven thank you [Applause] the outcome of this effort is if we find the boy seven four seven as meeting or exceeding the safety standards developed from experience of the Federal Aviation Administration as a result of this effort which included some 15 a-- the standards for safety evolved in civil aviation history we therefore recommend the Boeing 747 received the faa type certificate [Music]