NY Times GA feature

Richard Riley wrote in
:

On Fri, 26 Oct 2007 23:31:19 -0700, James Sleeman
wrote:

On Oct 27, 6:33 pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
don't make a dent in the nation's air traffic. Nobody is landing
737s on grass strips.

Yes, they are.

I've done it.

Do tell. It'd have to be a pretty hard packed grass strip I'd have
thought?

I've seen one operate on gravel, I haven't seen it on grass.

http://www.b737.org.uk/unpavedstripkit.ht

Intersting site, but the screens inside the wheel well were on all -200s
of the period. They aren't for gravel protection, they are to protect
the hydraulics in the event of a tire burst. If they are badly
disturbed, there's a warning in the office to say so. Later ones didn't,
but on those, most of the hydraulics and the aileron actuator were
forward of the wheel well bulkhead.
the gravel deflector on the nosewheel is huge compred to the one we had.
Our's retracted inside the wheel well, unless i'm remember ing it wrong.
I have a pic of the airplanes somewhere.
It doesn't show the vortx killers under the nacelles. They looked like
long pitot tubes that stuck out a couple of feet in front of the intakes
and used bleed air in some mystical way to keep dust from coming into
the engines. They may have workedm but you could shave with a fan blade
after six months of operaton in fine dust and sand.
I never even noticed the fence on the ends of the flaps, though. We
might not have had 'em. and the 1.8 EPR they mention is considerably
more than idle! We didn't worry too much about fod from reverse. It
wasn't as bad as hitting something landing on a hot day at max landing
weight on a short runway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8LICWf1QZY


eah, landing in the snow with those -200s was even more fun. the sleeve
reversers on most airplanes just blow snow sideway, but the bucket on
the 73 blew it all out in front fo you and to the sides, f there was no
crosswind. If there was a strong crosswind, you were blind.


Bertie