Dear friends and followers
Welcome back to my channel and to a video only a cargo pilot can show you
how to make the Jumbo smile or in other words how does the nose cargo door of a Boeing 747
Freighter work and what your average household turning rod has got to do with it.
So be ready for a big opening and let's get started!
"Yes that's seven six"
"Maybe must be cotton went into the dryer because what you're following there is a seven five." "Sorry about that, sir"
The Boeing 747 is one of the rarer planes which has the option to be fitted with a giant nose cargo door
If you order the Boeing 747 cargo freighter version.
Now the massive door can easily be opened and closed in a matter of seconds.
Now this feature makes her very unique for cargo airlines
As other cargo planes such as the Airbus A300 for example or Boeing 777
are fairly limited in the maximum size of pallets they can load.
A Boeing 747 could load a pallet via its nose cargo door
to a maximum length of 56.4 meters
2.4 meters in height and 3.8 meters in width.
Now that's a very large pallet.
An Airbus a300 with only the side cargo door
is limited to a maximum pallet size of 3.6 meters in width
and 2.5 meters in height
So it's no surprise that DHL favors the a300.
As they primarily transport parcels which are stacked into containers and then high loaded into the main cargo deck.
Now Cargolux on the other hand using the 747
operates a lot of charter flights and have specialized themselves in loading cargo parts like this
Gigantic drill up to 53 meters long, weighing 35 tons and not to sound cheeky
But 35 tonnes are peanuts for the 747
Nevertheless this is only possible obviously due to her movable nose cargo door.
So let's look at that in more detail.
So the opening and closing are done via the nose cargo door control panel
Located on the left hand forward end of the fuselage.
Now to a lot of misconception
The door is not operated hydraulically.
Instead, there is one electrical motor
Situated in the nose cone
which drives two flexible shafts each leading into a gearbox
positioned at the side of the inner nose.
Now the gearbox moves a large threaded rod which pushes the door
Outwards or pulls it inwards during closing now.
Now let's say we wanted to close the door
The operator has to push the system power switch upwards
at the same time pushes the nose cargo door control switch to the left
to start the closing.
Now the process can take roughly up to one minute and once the door seems closed
The operator has to maintain the switches in their position to activate the latch actuators.
Now the first one to be activated is the pull-in hook actuator which literally grabs the fuselage.
Pulling the nose towards the fuselage.
Now once the hook holds on to the fuselage an electric switch gives a signal to sixteen
equally spread out latch actuators
Which electrically push or turns a metal rod through its respective counterpart.
Once the rod is through the loop the rod presses a switch
Signaling on the control panel that the latch is locked.
Now in this case here you can see that latch 3 right
Shows that it's not locked.
Now to be sure, you first check if the light is faulty by pressing the switch itself.
The light seems okay,
So you walk across to the other side of the fuselage and you'll find
the latch actuator test panel.
Before selecting anything,
You have to check if the test lights aren't blown out by pressing the lamp test button.
Ok, everything seems fine.
Then you select the respective latch and by pressing the test button on the latched closed side
We identified that the latch wasn't in it's closed and locked position.
After maintenance Investigated the situation all was working fine.
Now most parts on airplanes are redundant
and so is nose cargo door.
It's pretty embarrassing if the customer doesn't get his freight delivered on time
because of a tiny broken electric motor for example.
That's why Boeing places these two turning rods near the nose cargo door.
Which fit into this coupling right here next to the gearbox with which you now can manually close the door.
Which is very similar to your household turning rod.
And I was told this can take up to an hour.
But luckily very rarely happens and the same goes for the latch actuators.
If one of them has an electrical fault you either replace the entire actuator if you are at your home base for instance
Or there is a tool which fits onto this coupling
with which you can then manually crank the actuator into its lock position.
High-five to those engineers. I admire your ingenuity
and nothing beats
redundancy redundancy redundancy.
The opening of the nose works just vice-versa, but there are limits to the opening procedure.
For example,
The maximum wind for opening and closing is 40 knots and in its open position
It can withstand winds up to 65 knots but by then the ground operation would have come to halt anyways.
Another rumor to be clarified. Can you open the nose from the cockpit?
No, there is no such panel in the cockpit
The only indication the pilots have is on the EICAS door page showing if it's either open or closed.
But to be fair you can see if it's open or not.
Also a special electrical power setting has to be given
otherwise the door won't open and this power setting includes
no running engines. So that annihilates the question
"Can you open the door in flight?"
Now another interesting fact, I'm not sure if you have heard of the so-called Boeing 747 BCFs.
Now the BCFs are the Boeing Converted Freighters.
Meaning Boeing converted a used passenger 747 into a freighter version. Now they are pretty rare
but great to fly as they have a different kind of air conditioning system
and obviously the longer upper deck.
But the BCFs never come with a nose cargo door.
As it is way too expensive to change the entire forward fuselage. So they come with closed windows
strengthened floor panels, floor rollers and a newly fitted side cargo door.
EVA Air or Martin air for example have a few of those and you can clearly see the
Longer upper deck with more windows and the fitted side cargo door.
They also call them 747-400SF for Special Freighter
or BDSF which is the abbreviation for the company who converted the plane.
So you see the nose cargo door at the side cargo door puts the 747 into a class of her own.
And so far no other plane can really compete with her.
Okay, maybe the Airbus Beluga or the Antonov freighters.
And her biggest rival, by the way, is the Lockheed Galaxy C5.
Why is the C5 her biggest rival?
You'll see in an upcoming video.
But the future will show what happens with the nose cargo door.
Because so far there is no planes out there which can be retrofitted with such a unique door.
So we will be seeing the queen of the skies for a few more years.
Until the engineers have come up with a solution in replacing her majesty.
That's it for today, Thank you very much for your time
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So you won't miss out on upcoming videos and don't forget a good pilot is always learning.
See you next week, all the best, your Caption Joe
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