Posted on 04/15/2006 12:54:35 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative
The first of the superfreighters that will ferry pieces of the 787 across the globe is now nearing completion in Taiwan.
These previously unpublished company photos convey the magnitude of the modification work involved in transforming the used 747s into oversized delivery vehicles.
Evergreen Aviation Technologies is modifying the planes in a 3-acre maintenance hangar at Taipei's Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport.
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That spurred Adam Pilarski, an analyst with Avitas, to quip that Boeing's new superfreighter fleet is "designed in Russia and built in China."
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
It's in the tail. The cargo section is separated from the nose of the aircraft just behind the passenger door by a newly desingned pressure bulkhead. It is impossible to get into the unpressurized cargo section from the nose section, because there will be no door there. The tail section will swing open to allow specially designed loaders load and unload cargo from the LCF. The hinges which are being designed in Spain will carry and protect all the cables and hydraulic hoses necessary to control the control surfaces and flight data recorders in the tail. This will enable quicker loading and unloading than was possible with the Super Guppies formerly used by Airbus. Those aircraft which were modified C-97's required disconnecting all flight controls before opening the nose of the plane and reconnecting them before taking off.
That loader sure looks a lot like the one that JetWay of Ogden Utah was designing for the 747F. The whole thing used servo loops to slave the loader to the motion of the plane as ISO containers were loaded through the nose. (A 30,000 lb container will cause the plane to drop from it's unloaded attitude and crosswinds will cause it to yaw. The first trip up to the plane would have an operator riding along w/ an electronics package which was clipped to the fuselage inside the door. The package contained inertial sensors to activate the servos. On the trip down the system memorized the location of the door, after that loading was like pushing buttons in an elevator. I don't know what ever happened to the project as I interviewed and they weren't in the mood to pay what I was asking. A couple of months later they called and asked if I was still available but by then I was out of the market.
Regards,
GtG
Interesting. So that's how it works. A picture is worth a 1000 words. Thanks!
No faux wood paneling.
A lot of the engineering of the cargo hold and tail of the plane is being done in Russia under Boeing's supervision.
One reason why a lot of cargo airlines like the 747-400 is because it has a great lifting capacity, and some say even better than the A-380 once the 747-8I comes in service.
Whoa. I'm not sure I'd want to subject a 747 to those kinds of stresses.
Two different companys, Evergreen that refurbed a 747 for firefighting (still not approved) is a US company in Marana Arizona.
The Evergreen group, which is a Taiwanese shipping company that also runs the wonderful EVA airlines is all out of Taipei.
I fly EVA once or twice a year, they are great, 747, 777, A330, and a few 767's.
In addition to their usual tactics of offering subsidized loans and bribing foreign officials for contracts.
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