No Brakes....sorta #2
When my leash gets tugged, I must obey. I call my pager "the leash" because I am required to be in the air within 45 minutes of getting the page. So while I'm "green" or on duty, my activities are limited to things that will allow me to drop what I'm doing and get to the airport as quickly as possible. Hence the abrupt ending to the last post. To continue the story.....
After we checked the Anti Skid system on the ramp and it tested normally, we decided the next course of action would be to get on the phone with maintenance . They wanted us to perform a high speed taxi test and check the brakes again. We told them that we would be unable to do the test at the airport we were currently at due to the short runway and the fact we were already halfway through loading our freight. We told maint. that we were going to do what we call MEL the item. Basically what we do is look up the inoperative item in a book we have in the plane. In the MEL book it tells us what items can be inoperative and what we as pilots need to do if an item is inoperative. Typically it involves placarding the item and pulling the circuit breaker to render it completely inoperative. This is the procedure we used to "MEL" the Anti Skid system. In addition to the physical disabling of the system, there are also performance penalties that need to be applied when calculating our take off and landing distances.
While calculating our numbers for take off, I applied the 1000 ft penalty to our take off roll and came up with a number that caught my attention. At the current temp. and pressure altitude our takeoff distance required was 20 ft shorter than the length of the runway. This meant that if we were to accelerate to V1 (Takeoff decision/Go or abort take off speed) in theory we would be able to stop the plane and have 20 ft left over. The reality of that number meant that legally we could depart the airport, but if we were to have an emergency that would require us to abort our takeoff around V1, we'd more than likely overrun the end of the runway. The numbers published in our take off performance charts are based on a brand new aircraft, new brakes, new tires a clean runway with zero rubber on it and a test pilot at the controls who is expecting an engine failure. We are flying a 35 year old aircraft, brakes-not new, tires-not new, runway-not new or cleaned of all rubber and as far as the two guys up front, we are not test pilots. With all this good stuff going in our favor, its a good idea to really brief the takeoff to make sure we know exactly what the plan is in case we have to abort. By not having Anti Skid, we would not be able to use the brakes hard or we'd risk blowing the tires. So in case of any abort calls above 100kts we would pull the drag chute to help us stop. Thankfully the takeoff went normally and we got out of there with out a hitch.
After we checked the Anti Skid system on the ramp and it tested normally, we decided the next course of action would be to get on the phone with maintenance . They wanted us to perform a high speed taxi test and check the brakes again. We told them that we would be unable to do the test at the airport we were currently at due to the short runway and the fact we were already halfway through loading our freight. We told maint. that we were going to do what we call MEL the item. Basically what we do is look up the inoperative item in a book we have in the plane. In the MEL book it tells us what items can be inoperative and what we as pilots need to do if an item is inoperative. Typically it involves placarding the item and pulling the circuit breaker to render it completely inoperative. This is the procedure we used to "MEL" the Anti Skid system. In addition to the physical disabling of the system, there are also performance penalties that need to be applied when calculating our take off and landing distances.
While calculating our numbers for take off, I applied the 1000 ft penalty to our take off roll and came up with a number that caught my attention. At the current temp. and pressure altitude our takeoff distance required was 20 ft shorter than the length of the runway. This meant that if we were to accelerate to V1 (Takeoff decision/Go or abort take off speed) in theory we would be able to stop the plane and have 20 ft left over. The reality of that number meant that legally we could depart the airport, but if we were to have an emergency that would require us to abort our takeoff around V1, we'd more than likely overrun the end of the runway. The numbers published in our take off performance charts are based on a brand new aircraft, new brakes, new tires a clean runway with zero rubber on it and a test pilot at the controls who is expecting an engine failure. We are flying a 35 year old aircraft, brakes-not new, tires-not new, runway-not new or cleaned of all rubber and as far as the two guys up front, we are not test pilots. With all this good stuff going in our favor, its a good idea to really brief the takeoff to make sure we know exactly what the plan is in case we have to abort. By not having Anti Skid, we would not be able to use the brakes hard or we'd risk blowing the tires. So in case of any abort calls above 100kts we would pull the drag chute to help us stop. Thankfully the takeoff went normally and we got out of there with out a hitch.
posted by Windsor at 12:49 AM
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