Posted on 11/16/2001 1:16:03 PM PST by Agent Smith
At 107 seconds after start of takeoff roll - airframe rattle.
At 114 seconds - comment about wake turbulence (speculation).
At 121 seconds - Second airframe rattle.
At 125 seconds - Call for "Max power.
At 127 seconds - Loss of control.
At 144 seconds - End of recording.
Assuming end-of-recording corresponds to impact, and not some other system failure, we can reference these CVR highlights to this radar track.
The first airframe rattle is 37 seconds prior to impact, or just about at the 09:15:30 mark -- the one that has the "Time (EST)" and "Altitude (feet)" legends attached.
The wake turbulence comment is about midway between that tick and the 09:15:45 mark.
The second airframe rattle is about at the 09:15:45 mark.
Calls for max power and comments on loss-of-control occur about where the track makes about a slight jog to the south, about 1.5 miles due north of IMPACT.
Another interesting piece of analysis: If we go upwind (11 kts from 320) from the point of the first rattle, we intersect the JAL 47 track at about it's 09:13:50 position, about 3/4 of a mile upwind, maybe 500 feet above, and about 100 seconds prior. For the wake turbulence (WT) to travel from that JAL postion to the AA position, it would have had to be moving about .75 nm/100 secs, or about 25 kts -- about twice what the surface winds were. (We really need to know what the winds aloft were.) Also, the WT would have been descending at about 300 ft/min.
The A300/A310 Family have been outstanding pioneers in such valuable innovative technological features as fuel-reducing wingtip devices, identical CRT displays on the flight deck, automatic windshear protection and digital electrical signalling (fly-by-wire) for slats, flaps and spoilers - reducing workload, maintenance and saving weight. Both aircraft are certificated for up to 180-minutes ETOPS operations, with both General Electric CF6-80 or Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines.So, the A300 is fly-by-wire for some controls, but not for the basic aileron, elevator and rudder
Only sort of. Those twin tails are neither vertical nor horizontal. They function to provide stability in both directions. However an example of an aircraft with no vertical tail at all would be the B-2. It uses the various control surfaces, which are all unconventional to one degree or another, to dynamically provide stability. The aircraft is, I would think, statically unstable in yaw, but with fly by wire, it's dynamically stable.
Looks like it might have gotten kind of warm too, don't you think? But maybe the inner layers always look like that?
Sadly, it must have been about 220 KIAS. But for all A300s, I have no idea. Prorbaly some good web-surfer (not me) could find it on the manufacturer's or FAA's web site.
ALL scenarios tell me THAT A300 was one sick, non-airworthy airframe when it took off.
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Or, it was a bomb or three that did ... (tin foil hat alert)
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