From elastic!lethe!abyss!news2.compulink.com!news.rns.net!news.van.rns.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-chi-13.sprintlink.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!uwm.edu!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.sgi.com!wetware!pa1.interserve.com!ditka!bounce-back Wed Jan 29 21:09:03 1997 Xref: elastic sci.aeronautics.airliners:2456 Newsgroups: sci.aeronautics.airliners Path: elastic!lethe!abyss!news2.compulink.com!news.rns.net!news.van.rns.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-chi-13.sprintlink.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!uwm.edu!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.sgi.com!wetware!pa1.interserve.com!ditka!bounce-back Date: 27 Jan 97 02:45:57 From: "john r." Subject: Re: Toilet sucks in child References: Message-ID: Approved: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Sender: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Organization: silence Lines: 56 Vaccume Toilets, some horrible facts. They are a pain in the backside, particularly for us poor people who have to maintain them. The 747-400 has four systems, the 767 three, each with 3 or 4 toilets. If the loads are light a 747 may fly with one system out but never with two missing, so a fix is a must. This is not as rare as you might think and its very galling for us to have an otherwise fit plane dead with such a snag. On the Boeing system differential pressure is the driving force and sends the 'goods' down to the holding tanks at the rear of the aircraft. For ground and low level operation, up to 14k ft, there is a powerfull fan system to provide suction. When you hit the button a small squirt of water comes in at the top of the bowl, if needed the blower cuts in and a gate valve opens for a few seconds and woosh, the supersonic turd is on its way, or not as the case may be. Electronic sensors cut the toilet operation when the relevant tanks are full. Failure modes are many and varied, stuck open gate valves are not common but it looks like that is what happened to the little girl, somthing can also fall in and jam open the valve. The pipes can block and it can take ages to locate the blockage, days in one case recently. Often they are caused by those little pots of facial cream from the goody bags they giveaway up front. If the upper deck are blocked, opening the pipes on the main deck can result in gallons of you know what all over the place. Difusers that spread the goods around in the tank as they arrive have a habit of breaking free and blocking the pipe to the dump valve, at the bottom. The inlet pipe has to come off for a top dump, you hope the tank is not too full ! Also some hero has to reach inside and try to hook up the offending diffuser. The dump valve release cables break, the valves freeze up, both cases the freight floor has to come up, now we have a quick lifting panel with slack screws but it was not this way at first. The fans die somtimes but you can fly this way, just keep the seatbelt signs on a bit longer untill diff pressure is strong enough. The fan relays somtimes short and put 115v onto the tank electronic boxes and kill two on one side, the relays are carefully hidden down a hole but at least its a clean job. Now you see why we hate working on them, remember there are all the diseases of the world in those pipes. One day Boeing will get around to fully developing the system ! We all have fund of stories about the system to relate to the squeamish, over dinner. Me, I do my best not to go at all when I am flying, well maybe a crafty pee. I might get my own back. Tootle pip ! -- _J_O_H_N____R_E_L_P_H____________ john@guava.demon.co.uk From elastic!lethe!abyss!news2.compulink.com!news.rns.net!news.van.rns.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-chi-13.sprintlink.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.erols.net!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.sgi.com!wetware!pa1.interserve.com!ditka!bounce-back Wed Jan 29 21:11:50 1997 Xref: elastic sci.aeronautics.airliners:2449 Newsgroups: sci.aeronautics.airliners Path: elastic!lethe!abyss!news2.compulink.com!news.rns.net!news.van.rns.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-chi-13.sprintlink.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.erols.net!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.sgi.com!wetware!pa1.interserve.com!ditka!bounce-back Date: 27 Jan 97 02:45:56 From: "Brian A. Reynolds" Subject: Re: Toilet sucks in child References: Message-ID: Approved: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Sender: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Organization: Rockwell Avionics - Collins Lines: 89 Gary Moffitt wrote: > > > On 7 Jan 1997, a South African Airways A320 [Flight SA327] flight > > from Johannesburg to Cape Town, the pilot had to decrease altitude in > > order for a 9 year old child to be pulled free from the toilet by a > > doctor that was on board after it had sucked her in. > > Two questions arise from this : > I am highly skeptical of the incident descibed. The child would have to > fall completely into the bowl and seal the outlet completely for the > described incident to have occurred. Urban folklore rumors the same to > have occurred to extremely obese using vacuum toilets, I have never seen > one of these cases substantiated. Good point Gary. One primary difference between an urban legend and fact is the use of verifiable names, dates, and other evidence; inlcuding s pecifics. Soooo.. here goes. (Not It think that this is the 'mother source' of all the stuck on toilet stories floating around. - start story - At 1700 GMT between Jan Smute and Kane at 18,500 feet Capt. JA Dademan (traveling supernumbery) reported to me in the cockpit that an 'old lady was screming becasue she was dtuck down on a tourist lavatory seat and the hostess could not free her.' Thinking the joke was in rather poor taste, I made some derogatory commend intending to dismiss the matter. However, this merely served to change Capt. Rademans's already eranest expression to one of alram at my lighthaeartness, and I realized soemthing might well be seriously amiss. A further verbal exchange convince me: but what shoud be done to free her? Emergency depresurization at 18,500 feet would be rather dramatic, so we decided to try increasing cabin altitude to reduce the pressure differential between the inside and outside of the toilet pail. At our altitude there was a presure differential of all but five pounds per square inch. Over a total approzimate area of 80 square inchs (the area of the top of the pail), it ment that she was being sucked down by an equivalent weight of 400 pounds, in addition to her own weight. It is small wonder that Miss Hoorn, travel hostess, who together with a lady passenger had been trying to help, remarked afterwards: "Gee, I tried my best to pull her off but I wasn't strong enought. Before cabin pressure had decreased appreciably, news of a dramtic rescue was brought to the flight deck by Capt. Rademon, who was, by this time, quite excited and fully absormed in his self-appointed role as a purveyor of profress reports to the cockpit. His nes was to the effect that we had an undaunted strong man in the crew. First Officer Lamprect had succeeded , by a process of doubling the harassed lady forward and pulling also, in dislodging her to the accompaniment of loud sucking noises as air rushed by to equalize the pressure. Mr. Lamprecht exclaimed afterwards that he had first attempted to lift her, but this was impossible and only caused emarressment. "She was a firm as a rock' he said. Next, in order to obtain the leverage to double her forward and pull at the same time, being tall, he placed on foot against the compartment wall behind the lady, and with hsi arms around here, succedded in wrenching her free. The cause of the trouble was that Mrs. Huston had seated herself directly on the metal part of the toilet pan without first lowering the seat. When apologizing to Mrs. Huston afterwards when she had recovered from her experience, she remarked that she was 'terrified of being sucked right through and out os the aircraft as I had no parachute.' Also: 'I thought that my insides were being drawn out.' Fortunately she was very good humored after the event, but no amount of explaining what had gone wrong would induce her to visit the toilet again unaccompanied. Something need to be done about these toileast as they may be even more dangerous to childers. To prevent a recurrance of this nature we have drilled five quarter inch holes with half-inch spacing just forward of the hinge line of the seat and covered these with a joggling strip revited to the container to prevent the holes from beincoming blocked. -end- This was an SAS DC-7B, and while the story is not dated, it is stated to have occured during the introductory period of the DC-7B into service. I have heard this story retold many times, but never with this level of detail, therefore I do tend to believe this is a true account of a real incident. In more modern vacuum toilets (the one in the DC-7B is more like a porta-potty in the sky), I don't believe that it would be possible to become 'stuck on the john' for more then a brief period of time. Brian From elastic!lethe!abyss!news2.compulink.com!news.rns.net!news.van.rns.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-chi-13.sprintlink.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.erols.net!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.sgi.com!wetware!pa1.interserve.com!ditka!bounce-back Wed Jan 29 21:15:00 1997 Xref: elastic sci.aeronautics.airliners:2438 Newsgroups: sci.aeronautics.airliners Path: elastic!lethe!abyss!news2.compulink.com!news.rns.net!news.van.rns.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-chi-13.sprintlink.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.erols.net!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.sgi.com!wetware!pa1.interserve.com!ditka!bounce-back Date: 27 Jan 97 02:45:57 From: megazone@livingston.com (MegaZone) Subject: Re: Misconceived Mammoth References: Message-ID: Approved: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Sender: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Organization: WPI Discordian Society, Undocumented Cabal of the Accursed Saint Shiranto Joe Lines: 33 ostreger@aol.com (Ostreger) shaped the electrons to say: >Why is the A3XX Omnibus not a V-tail mid-winger? 1. V-tails spook the public. The same reason commercial aircraft are kept symmetrical. Did you know Boeing considered a 727 design with engines on the wings and ONE SIDE of the tail? The tested it on the 367-80 and it worked fine. But it was not well received by those who didn't undertand engineering, so it wasn't taken very far. The only widespread aircraft the average flyer may have seen with a V-tail is the Beechcraft Bonanza. 2. Midwingers are hated. The wing carry-though must pass through the cabin at some point. The gap between the upper and lower decks is not think enough for a wing box - so it will intrude. Also, you have maintenence to think of. The same reason high-wingers are not popular would apply - harder to access the wing from the ground. A low wing means only the baggage area is interrupted. It means the public will accept the design. It is a better known quantity. It will save costs over its lifetime with maintenance. And I'd like to see your research that would prove the midwing would be so much better for *this particular design*. -MZ -- Livingston Enterprises - Chair, Department of Interstitial Affairs Phone: 800-458-9966 510-426-0770 FAX: 510-426-8951 megazone@livingston.com For support requests: support@livingston.com Snail mail: 4464 Willow Road, Pleasanton, CA 94588