Rumor: UA 787 Triple generator failure inflight

We had a RAT discharge on the ramp once. Apparently on the CRJ-200, they're packed in with C4 explosives(or so I was told). I heard it go off from the break room a good distance away even with all the other airport noise. Good thing no one was standing near it, could do some damage for sure.
 
And, it's on the hot battery bus, so the RAT will deploy if you push the switch even with the battery switch off. They teach you to not walk under the RAT when you do the walk around.
 
ChasenSFO said:
We had a RAT discharge on the ramp once. Apparently on the CRJ-200, they're packed in with C4 explosives(or so I was told). I heard it go off from the break room a good distance away even with all the other airport noise. Good thing no one was standing near it, could do some damage for sure.
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No C4 on the CRJ. Just a giant spring and a hydraulic piston. It still is a lot of force coming out though.
 
BobDDuck said:
No C4 on the CRJ. Just a giant spring and a hydraulic piston. It still is a lot of force coming out though.
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One of the guys I flew with had a story from when we flew to Mexico a lot. Something happened that involved deployment of the RAT on the way in. Contract MX came out, stowed it, fixed whatever the problem was and they were almost on their way. Right before the door closed for the ferry back to ATL the mechanic came up with a rather large piece of the airplane and said "hey, this was left over."

They didn't go anywhere for a while.
 
Screaming_Emu said:
One of the guys I flew with had a story from when we flew to Mexico a lot. Something happened that involved deployment of the RAT on the way in. Contract MX came out, stowed it, fixed whatever the problem was and they were almost on their way. Right before the door closed for the ferry back to ATL the mechanic came up with a rather large piece of the airplane and said "hey, this was left over."

They didn't go anywhere for a while.
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I had that happen at CKB once.
 
mikecweb said:
I was sitting left in ours. Maybe we just have a busted hoopty.
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Nah, it was kinda loud for us. I just briefed SD that once it was deployed, his job was to run through the maintenance procedure with the mechanic in the jumpseat, and I'd be in my own little world on the left, flying the plane and talking to ATC. Even did the old "overly emphatic hand gestures" for the gear and flaps to make sure the point got across.
 
mikecweb said:
Excellent. We dropped ours on a maintenance run. Good god I wouldn't want to fly longer than 15 mins with that thing out.
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I'll bet that needs an inspectionI(RII) after that is deployed. There has to be some stress from that deploying in the airstream. must have been a fun flight with that noisy thing spinning.
 
I'm not seeing the hubbub behind this story.

Anyone who has been around professional or high performance aviation for any significant duration knows of EPs that, according to the manufacturer "could not happen" or were not covered in the manual, or were not part of the training program. Black Swans, strangely, aren't as unusual as we'd like to think they are -- I've had two of them (one in the Eagle and one in the T-38C), but fortunately neither of them were really that serious. Aviation has a way of getting things screwed up in new and unusual ways that we (or the engineers) have never seen.

And, oh yeah -- it is part and parcel of our job as pilots to handle these situations safely when they do come up in flight.
 
CcrlR737AMT said:
I'll bet that needs an inspectionI(RII) after that is deployed. There has to be some stress from that deploying in the airstream. must have been a fun flight with that noisy thing spinning.
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Nothing that I know of. I know it needs to be deployed on a regular interval for maintenance. By the time I walked down the steps though they were already stowing it.
 
TFaudree_ERAU said:
Nah, it was kinda loud for us. I just briefed SD that once it was deployed, his job was to run through the maintenance procedure with the mechanic in the jumpseat, and I'd be in my own little world on the left, flying the plane and talking to ATC. Even did the old "overly emphatic hand gestures" for the gear and flaps to make sure the point got across.
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A Challenger came into Camarillo once with the RAT deployed. Everyone knew it, you can hear the thing from the ground.

Hacker15e said:
I'm not seeing the hubbub behind this story.
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Meh. It's an all-electrical airplane, bleedless, so if the generators don't turn, there's no air being added to the people tank, which is an issue up high.

I think it's more of a media big deal because of the newness of the airplane and some of the technologies on it, than any -real- operational or engineering reasons.

Anyone who has been around professional or high performance aviation for any significant duration knows of EPs that, according to the manufacturer "could not happen" or were not covered in the manual, or were not part of the training program. Black Swans, strangely, aren't as unusual as we'd like to think they are -- I've had two of them (one in the Eagle and one in the T-38C), but fortunately neither of them were really that serious. Aviation has a way of getting things screwed up in new and unusual ways that we (or the engineers) have never seen.

And, oh yeah -- it is part and parcel of our job as pilots to handle these situations safely when they do come up in flight.
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Stuff breaks, and the engineers (not even you, inigo88 ) can edit: can't predict all the failure modes.

The Qantas A380 uncontained engine failure was a "not supposed to happen" occurrence. The Captain wrote a book about those events called QF32 - good reading. Fortunately, the operator was smarter than the airplane.
 
There is always a 1/XXXXXXXX chance something could happen, it just depends on when that 1 happens.
 
Hacker15e said:
I'm not seeing the hubbub behind this story.

Anyone who has been around professional or high performance aviation for any significant duration knows of EPs that, according to the manufacturer "could not happen" or were not covered in the manual, or were not part of the training program...............
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You mean like the sinking of the Titanic?
This isn't the first occurance of this at Boeing. During flight test, they had multiple generator failures; it caused a spike that started a fire in the cabin at one of the relay points.......
 
Autothrust Blue said:
A Challenger came into Camarillo once with the RAT deployed. Everyone knew it, you can hear the thing from the ground.


Meh. It's an all-electrical airplane, bleedless, so if the generators don't turn, there's no air being added to the people tank, which is an issue up high.

.
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Really? I wasn't aware that it was like that. That just doesn't sound like a very good design idea to me, seems like it would be more common to have some sort of electrical problem than a bleed air problem. So are the engines started electrically as well I assume? I have got to find more to read about the design of this thing.
 
Muff3n said:
Really? I wasn't aware that it was like that. That just doesn't sound like a very good design idea to me, seems like it would be more common to have some sort of electrical problem than a bleed air problem. So are the engines started electrically as well I assume? I have got to find more to read about the design of this thing.
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At a talk from a former project lead on the 7E7 (at the time) he said one thing driving the all-electric decision was that they considered pneumatics a "boutique technology" that isn't widely used in other industries.

The engines are started by reversing current to the pair of starer-generators on each engine (temporarily overdriving them, actually). I wonder if an engine can still be started when one of the generators is dead; they're already under a big load when both of them are starting.
 
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