Post by LOU on May 24th, 2013 at 6:53pm
Yup, my brand-x 747-400 is set to fast align too! :P
In all the years of flying the planes with INS or IRS, I never really had much of any problems.
One flight however does come to mind. We were the last flight of the day to arrive in KDEN. Our normal gate was occupied by a sick MD-80 so we were directed to the other side of the arrivals wing - about 40 meters across from our normal gate. Since we had minimum rest layover that night, I was surprised to see the plane was at the normal gate the next morning. This proved to be a BIG problem! The ground people hooked up the tug and pulled the plane around to the other side of the terminal without starting the IRS's up. Very bad! You see, these buggers have a real sense of where they are on the planet, and want to be in the same place when next they are started.
The next morning when we got to the plane and started the pre-flight you could smell the trouble. We turned the three IRS's to NAV and entered the gate position. Oh no you don't said the three IRS's, we're over yonder not here. It was too late to move the plane to the other gate area since the passengers were already on board. We spent 30 minutes trying to convince the IRS's that we had moved - NO LUCK! We got the mechanic to come to the cockpit to help.... all he did was scratch his head. We un-powered the whole plane, even removed the ground power.... NO LUCK! After about the 8th time of turning off and trying to align the IRS's I got one to go into align mode, the other two would not cooperate. So I got one to align and put the other two in ATT and that's how we were able to leave town. It was like the good old days in the 727 with two VOR's and DME's!
The one IRS in NAV allowed us to fly a normal flight plan and we had the VOR's for back-up if it went T.U. :o
I had heard of all kinds of problems with IRS units that were sent to Honeywell for bench work and then shipped to who knows where to be installed in a plane. It would take all kinds of vodo to get the units to accept their life in a new location.
Lou
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In all the years of flying the planes with INS or IRS, I never really had much of any problems.
One flight however does come to mind. We were the last flight of the day to arrive in KDEN. Our normal gate was occupied by a sick MD-80 so we were directed to the other side of the arrivals wing - about 40 meters across from our normal gate. Since we had minimum rest layover that night, I was surprised to see the plane was at the normal gate the next morning. This proved to be a BIG problem! The ground people hooked up the tug and pulled the plane around to the other side of the terminal without starting the IRS's up. Very bad! You see, these buggers have a real sense of where they are on the planet, and want to be in the same place when next they are started.
The next morning when we got to the plane and started the pre-flight you could smell the trouble. We turned the three IRS's to NAV and entered the gate position. Oh no you don't said the three IRS's, we're over yonder not here. It was too late to move the plane to the other gate area since the passengers were already on board. We spent 30 minutes trying to convince the IRS's that we had moved - NO LUCK! We got the mechanic to come to the cockpit to help.... all he did was scratch his head. We un-powered the whole plane, even removed the ground power.... NO LUCK! After about the 8th time of turning off and trying to align the IRS's I got one to go into align mode, the other two would not cooperate. So I got one to align and put the other two in ATT and that's how we were able to leave town. It was like the good old days in the 727 with two VOR's and DME's!
The one IRS in NAV allowed us to fly a normal flight plan and we had the VOR's for back-up if it went T.U. :o
I had heard of all kinds of problems with IRS units that were sent to Honeywell for bench work and then shipped to who knows where to be installed in a plane. It would take all kinds of vodo to get the units to accept their life in a new location.
Lou
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