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DDolfelin
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VC10 flight deck.  Scanned (badly) from a 35mm transparency originally taken in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. The VC10 that’s at Duxford.20220223-20220223-Scan2016045-2.jpeg.9da7a747ee3e35f2de4f5c1c48035ee5.jpeg

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2 hours ago, burgundy said:

How many on the flight deck? Did the VC 10 carry both a navigator and a flight engineer?

Best wishes 

Eric 

 

Before the universal installation of Inertial Navigartion Systems (INS), in the 1970's, VC10's & SVC10's had a 4 person flight deck crew.

 

My recollection is that BOAC had a captain, 2x co-pilots and a flight engineer.

The co-pilots had to hold a full nav ticket and had to become proficient in astro navigation, the use of LORAN (the main long range over ocean navaid), DR, air plotting and fuel flight planning.

They rotated seats on different legs of the journey, many of which in those days, were multi-sector to get around the globe and took several days, or even a couple of weeks for the round trip, with the multiple layovers between legs flown.

Non-stop to the US west coast, never mind to places like Jo'burg, Singapore Tokyo etc, was a distant pipe-dream.

 

Once INS was installed, they went down to a single co-pilot, 3 person crew, I believe.

 

The RAF had a captain, co-pilot flight engineer and navigator.

I don't know if they dropped the nav seat in later years?

 

Before the advent of INS and later modern navigation systems, carrying a fully qualified navigator was required for many long haul flights, particularly across oceans and the remoteness of places like the African continent.

 

Incidentally, when it comes to having more than one co-pilot.....

BEA (later BA) Tridents had a three man crew, comprising of a captain and two FO's, with no flight engineer.

One of the co-pilots would be in the flight engineer seat, with them swapping over on the (usually) return leg of a flight.

 

 

.

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