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New fuel and CG management version

Andre Poirier wrote:

I have had the pleasure of flying the L1011-500 for a number of years, and after retiring from commercial flying, I took an interest in flight simulators. In 2007 I came across X-Plane and quickly built up a roster of aircrafts and eventually purchased the L-10 version by Mike Wilson. After some time spent at performing different flights and scenarios of flight occurrences I got in touch with Mr. Wilson and discussed the possibility of producing a version of the aircraft that would be more of a challenge to those of you interested in planning and executing flights with the L-1011.

The first step was to produce a check list that is close enough to the one I used for years, adapted for the equipment found in the simulator version, including some manipulation tending to diminish the changes in viewpoint in the cockpit without affection the security of operations. The main checklist reflects the required steps to be carried out for a cold start at the gate. At the end, you will find two alternatives, one providing for a flight originating at the gate with the engines running. The second covers the items to be covered when the flight starts on the runway.

During the lecture of the checklist you will notice that we refer to Takeoff figures and Center of Gravity. It is easily understandable that due to the length of the fuselage and size of cargo holds it would be as easy as detrimental to throw the C of G outside limits and therefore create a situation which coupled with the wrong fuel loading would result in a catastrophe. In todays aircrafts the C of G is administered by onboard computers. In the seventies all these figures had to be manually worked out of large number of charts. I have created one chart that will allow you, while you enter the payload and fuel quantity, to be able to enter the resulting C of G in the program, making the aircraft fly very much like the real thing.

Lockheed, as many large aircraft manufacturers have issued strict procedures concerning loading and burning2€ fuel. The scope of which was to maintain wing structural integrity. The L-1011 had no less than eight tanks, four of which constituted the number 2 tank. Number 1 and 3 (inboard) would supply their respective engine. Number 1A and 3A would only be used when all other tanks were filled completely. These two alternate had C of G well ahead of the others as were #2 outboard being well behind. That, needless to say, kept the second Officer (Flight Engineer) busy. Now you have a chart to do that work for you. It MUST be used for takeoffs and landings. Bless your soul if you wish to use it on long flights and correct your C of G every two hours or so.

Also included are two pages from the aircraft operating manual referring to the take-off distance (14 degrees of flaps) corrected for altitude and temperature. Kind of useful when you try to take a heavy load out of questionably short runway, unless you are bent on picnicking in the weeds. These charts also include wind correction and runway gradient. As to the slush correction, you can ignore that one since X-Plane, to this date, has not made allowance for standing water or slush on runways.

Please have fun flying as the pros did, back then……………..Andre P.

Regarding the Checklist, retired Tristar pilot Andre Poirier wrote:

As promised, I have made a checklist so as to delete material that the model cockpit does not show and relocate some items so as to reduce considerably the number of times it is required to move from the lower panel to the overhead panel without inducing any systems mismanagement. Some places were introduced in the before landing i.e. TOUCHING DOWN and REVERSERS. I understand that at that point you would certainly not be reading a checklist but, in normal operations, the third crew member you be calling those as a memory item, so I decided to leave it in. Hope you have a chance try it, I did and it seems to work fine (emphasis on weights, center of gravity, also keep a note near your display of V1 / VR / V2 that one will give you the proper flap retraction speeds. The same applies to noting Vref (according to the weight you select for landing) useful so as not to go floating off the end of the runway or stalling short.
Have fun, Andre.