Trip 109, Fall 2015, Jordan Fail



306 “Hurray!” Our squadron got some money, so that means the ye ole boots got swapped out for a fresh pair of steel toes. I’m superstitious though, I hope nothing goes wrong not having my lucky old ones on.







307 Range of patches showing the vintageness and experience of this crew. Wait, mine is the oldest. When did I turn into the old guy?







308 So cruising across the ocean, I was kicking back relaxing with a nap. Suddenly woken with a, “BANG BANG BANG BOOM BOOM!” WTF is that? As I’m pulling my glasses on looking between the pilots, I’m seeing and hearing a Master Warning light, and “THRUST LOSS” alarm. Now I know this jet will fly all day just fine with three motors, but it’s a disheartening feeling watching the number 2 engine roll back to sub idle while the throttle is still up at its set power. “CHIEF!!!” “Well let’s run the compressor stall checklist friends. Pilot keep us shiny side up, copilot what’s your book say?”



1. Pull affected engine throttle to idle.

2. If compressor stall stops, slowly advance throttle to as needed setting.

3. If compressor stalls continue, shut down engine.



Well, here we go boys, and he slowly pushed up the power back to a normal running engine. This isn’t something we should take into the desert, so we made the call to divert to Spain, and take a look at things. Biggest risk with a compressor stall is bending blades in the core of the motor, or even the fan forward as the shockwave of air is going the wrong way.



The engines used on the C-17 are Pratt and Whitney F-117-100s, and are normally very reliable. The core and fan is identical to the P2000 series of engines on 757’s that had a million flight hours in the air at 1991 before the first C-17 even flew. Airlines don’t mess around with less than reliable since they have to make money. Only minor differences we have include a bit more horsepower with tuning, and different thrust reverser system that allows in flight use, and ground use by blocking the core exhaust to walk behind the motor during engine running offloads and refuels. We get ‘er on the ground at Rota and crack the doors open. Well there is the problem…







309 Ha! Not really. This also was the very first high bypass turbo fan motor that is completely digital and throttle by wire instead of control cables. The computer is something like a million bucks in itself to run the bitch. One of the features is recorded data burned to a disk that P&W can usually pretty quickly tell what’s wrong. Unfortunately, the 14th stage bleed air control valve called out by the engineer who deciphered the data wasn’t going to be changed in time to get the cargo shipped on time. A backup C-17 was launched to come pick up and get the goods to continue on. C5’s pull this stunt all the time, but this is my 109th mission, and the first I’ve not delivered. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten new boots!







310 Next day had the part changed, engine bore scoped, power run, and all signed off to fly. We’ll be now heading empty to chase after our original cargo to bring it home when the customer is done.







311 If you all wonder what I do on these periods of disconnection from the wired world, I usually am sitting behind the copilot reading with the Kindle app. Normally nonfiction or history, but got pulled into this series about a group of people trying to survive after a nuclear holocaust.







312 Almost at our downrange sandbox vacation destination kickin’ back and then a, “BANG BANG BANG BOOM BOOM!”



“You son of a &$&$& mother $&$&*& motor that doesn’t want to run right for @#$%. I hate you, and your stupid compressor stalling fits.”



Well let’s not land this where we don’t want to be stuck if the engine needs major repair. Not enough gas to get back to Spain, so closest friendly airfield is in Italy.







313 Pointed to divert to Italy.







314 Mount Etna is snow covered and lightly erupting, so we got that goin' for us.







315 If I wasn’t so annoyed at our motor, I’d find this funnier.







316 Never even knew the Netherlands had an Air Force. Converted KDC-10 tanker airliner.







317 Oh 169. You’ve been good to me every time before, but really on my worst days this is still the best job I’ve ever had.







318 So now what to do? Forget the cry to Pratt and Whitney and beg for help. Book says it could be a fuel pump delivery problem, fuel control valve scheduling problem, or an engine replacement. Screw it, I’ll order both a fuel pump and fuel controller. Gotta take the fuel control off to get to the fuel pump anyway. Made the appropriate calls to have it shipped in, so we wait. Normally would be a short process but a drone crashed on the runway and closed the airfield for a few days. Launch another backup jet to go take our cargo home. Oh well, I guess we’ll go occupy a bar. This is what the C5s must feel like all the time.







319 Three days later finally got my parts and two helpers to knock out the replacement. Pretty much the same idea of a fuel pump and carb replacement of a small block Chevy, except it’s an 8 million dollar motor instead. The two Mission Recovery Team members were top notch like how I used to do it back before flying. Knocked out the pump change as quick as safely possible, along with finding a few other things that could have caused the compressor stall. Book said our variable stater vane controller linkage could have a maximum force limit of 300 inch pounds to close, and mine would bind around 500 inch lbs and finally snap shut above the 600 of my wrench. Never had seen that before. Crisis management team of P&W, Boeing, myself, and 10 other people I didn't know were on a conference call all arguing. I asked everyone to stop, and said, "1. Can I run this engine, and 2. Can we safely fly it home for an engine change?" *crickets* Finally a P&W engineer said if I power ran it for an hour straight on the limits, and it passed the snap accell/decell checks, he'd wright our ED to get us home. At 0200 AM in the morning, I woke the island up with power run on the runway with engines 2 and 3 screaming at MAX for 1 hour at 1.42 EPR. Our limit is 625 degrees Celsius for the exhaust temp continuously, and 20mins at 20deg more. Every time she’d hit the red line, just pull it back a bit to reset the clock, then right back on ‘er! Now it’s time for the real fun of power reverse runs. There is a technique of pausing at reverse idle from power reverse before going back to forward thrust to just help the core and fan blocker doors out, but not today friends. 10 times we sat at max reverse, then pushing to max forward to time the acceleration. The rocking up and down of the airframe we had even with a ramp weight of 480k full of fuel surprised me. Never have run motors that hard before, but no stalls so let’s get the hell out of here before this turns into having to change the motor.







320 All the way home she behaved herself, but our bossman back at Dover was going to have none of it anymore. Turns out this is a factory engine to this airplane with over 9000 flight hours, and due for a change to get rebuilt back at P&W. Oh well, win some and lose some.







016 Crashed drone that ran off the end of the runway and ****ed over the whole week closing the airfield







017 Looks expensive







018 Copilot hero shot







019 Pilot hero shot

 

Eurotrip 2015-12-10 to 2016-03-08.



004/005 – Night one, third flying stage: Starting it off right.











006 - I've created a scale model to explain why you shouldn't go to the 'Deid.







010 – All loaded up with Christmas cheer. 2015-12-25







018 – Iraqi Christmas dawn. 2015-12-25







024 - "Reach 435, expedite climb at best rate for traffic heading 230."

"Copy, searching for Santa, Reach 435." 2015-12-25







031/034 – Santa’s USAF delivery subcontractors. 2015-12-25











042 – Day after Christmas. Didn’t get what I wanted, but it’s still a cool trip.







044 – P&W power to the Moon!







046 – Ready to ride!







047 – ‘Murica.







049 – Sexy Dover tail.







054 – Who am I?







055 – All is well today.







056 – Heavy chooch.







058/059 - Baghdad bob!











062 – The load of maple syrup arrived eh?







063 – An old friend from McChord.

 

064 – A nice Iraqi sunset.







067 – I still forget who I am.







068/069 – 3292: A vintage girl from the first run of C17s made back in ’94. She’s quirky.











070 – “Uhh chief, the left outboard flap looks droopy.” “Well LT, when you get that old, you’ll be droopy too.”







071 - Moose ops.







072-076 - Use enough water in the desert, and things can grow. You easily can tell the farmers with OCD vs low givea****s.























077/078 – Tonight’s ride all the way from California.











080 – I see you!







082 – Get your **** off my jet!







084 – I see you!







085/086 - "Hi friend!" All around the world in every corner, always be runnin' into Team Dover.











087 – Second newest in the USAF fleet!







089 – What’s in the box?

 

Enjoyed your posts about the compressor stalls, Adrian!

Reminded me of the one I had on takeoff once. Scared me just about to death. Sounded just like a godawful series of explosions and I was momentarily thinking about ejecting. Fortunately, bringing the throttle back and then advancing it to about 80% cleared the problem. I landed pretty quickly, though.

- Jack

 

What did you fly sir?

Adrianspeeder

 

If I remember correctly, Jack flew Tweets.

 

Yes, I did fly Tweets, and about half of my time was in Air Training Command as an instructor - first as a basic instructor teaching new pilots and then as an instructor who taught Air Force pilots how to be instructors.

But, the compressor stall was during one of my two tours flying the A-37B (super-tweet). It had the same engines as the T-38, giving the aircraft about triple the thrust and twice the gross weight of a T-37. It happened in the left engine, and the intake was only about 4 feet from where I was sitting. It was LOUD! (and scary).

I also flew the O-2 as a Forward Air Controller which I would not wish on anyone, but it DID give me a few trips into the field with the Army as an ALO, and that was an education.

I have about 4500 hours total, and I bet more takeoffs and landings than either you or glc (combined).

Anyway, I enjoyed your discussion of the engine problem, and I appreciate the work you are doing.

- Jack

 

Awesome! Do you have pictures?

For sure wouldn't be anywhere near your sortie count with now only almost 2000 hours of airlift flying.

Adrianspeeder

 

I DO have a few pictures (mostly from Vietnam) but that was a long time ago (before the age of digital cameras). I retired in 1984, and they're all packed away. I should try to find them sometime.

My average sortie flight time was on the order of 1 hr, 25 mins. Did a little bit of air refueling, and that let me stay up longer. The multiple takeoffs and landings were mostly as an IP and flight examiner.

- Jack

 

Yikes - the O-2 Mixmaster? You have my sympathy, sir! Too bad you didn't get into the OV-10.

 

We called it the "Pushme/Pullyou", and yes, it was pretty bad. For anyone not familiar with that piece of junk, it was the military version of the Cessna Skymaster. But they added so much weight in radios that it was actually overgrossed. It would fly on two engines, but if you lost the rear engine with full fuel and rocket pods on board, the front engine was only good enough to take you to your crash site.

We didn't even wear parachutes, because of the added weight.

We lost one in the Nellis ranges during my time flying it because the pilots were not schooled in the art of mountain flying (it wasn't something the Air Force thought was important). They flew up the center of a valley, and all too late discovered they couldn't climb fast enough to clear the terrain and had no room to turn.

And, Adrian, I think I've hijacked your thread too much, keep your adventures coming, we all enjoy vicariously flying along with you.

- Jack

 

Not at all hijacking, I had never heard of this before. Had to look it up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_O-2_Skymaster

And you gotta find the pictures friend!

I will say mountain training is one of the more nervous things we do. It's all hand flying, so my pilots have to be on point. 500 ft terrain following at 12000-15000 pressure altitude when TAWS starts screaming, "TERRAIN TERRAIN, OBSTACLE AHEAD."

"Acknowledged crew, power is in."

It is a long long 10 seconds at that thin of air from idle to MAX.

"WHOOP WHOOP, PULL UP!"

"WHOOP WHOOP, TWO LOW GEAR!"

That was one that got me swiveling forward in the seat, as it is a 50ft radar altimeter alarm message if they would have forgotten to put the gear down on short final.

FINALLY each motor gets it's happy fill of air with the EECs commanding a full fuel flow rate of 14,000 lbs per hour, per engine, to suck squeeze bang blow in the core, to spin the last blade set, to turn a shaft all the way to the front fan, to make the 42,000 lbs of bypass air that pushes our fat *** up out of the hole.

"Everybody good?" Yeah, but don't do that again. "OK, back down in..."

Adrianspeeder

 

Gotta love those "pucker factor" moments, don't we? (At least if we live to tell about it.)

- Jack

 

Yup. Best job I've ever had.090 – Few days off and it’s nice not to shave.







091-093 - Next trip with an old friend, cool pilot, and an overnight in Turkey.















094 - Went on a BX shelf check, and bought the official GoPro selfie stick.







095 – Ze Germans!







096 – Next trip with an old friend, cool pilot, and an overnight in Turkey.







098 – Turkey.







100 – Turkey.







101 – Turkey.







104 – Turkey.







106 – Launch crew.







107 – Turkey.







108 – Turkey.







109 – Always a great pilot to fly for.







110 – Copilot hero shot.







111/114 – 4 – Heading into the land of Afghan.

 

115 – Pilot Hero shot.







116/119 - 4 – Heading into the land of Afghan.



















122 – ‘Murica.







123 – Workin’ on the night shift baby!







125 - Stepping to this jet for a ride I was like, "Oh ****, I remember you!" Once years ago had a longer than normal TCVM change with sheared mounts. But it was another great trip alpha one no problems.







127 – That’s not where that panel goes.







128 – New nifty50 lens testing.







129/132 – Campfire ole son!



















133/137 - 3 – New trip to Iraq. Weather was trash so not many pictures.















139 – Team Dover friend stopping through. Never hitchhike in Germany.







141 – Green countryside.







143 – Beautiful day to fly.