There is a similar story about the DC-6. Leaving the gust lock lever in the locked position duringwould lock the horizontal stabilizer in a slight "up" attitude, which could easily be compensated for by dialing in some trim. At least once the lock was accidentally engaged in flight, and like all propellor driven airliners of the time, speed increased as fuel was burned off and as the speed went up, so did the tendency to climb. With the initial design, it was possible to more the lever freely in flight.
When the co-pilot discovered the lock was engaged and pulled the lever to the unlocked position, the "down" trim shoved the nose down hard, causing an unexpected power on dive, from which the pilot managed to to recover by rolling out of a fully inverted attitude -- not something one would normally do with a plane load of passengers. The gust lock was changed so that it could not be inadvertently activated and the problem never occurred again, except for the instance where a pilot "demonstrated" it in flight -- he resigned when he got to the ground before he got fired. A DC-3 crashed here in Evansville in the 70's killing a local team, including a friend of mine for similar reasons -- on the DC-3 the gust lock is a wedge inserted by ground crew, not an internal mechanism, and the ground crew failed to notify the flight crew it had been inserted. The air crew failed to do "range of motion" control testing before taking off. The plane took off on ground effect, and promptly flew into the hill at the end of the runway because the elevator were locked. Peter _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
