while staying in Quito where we have our crew-hotel when landing at Latacunga in Ecuador, we visited the Equator-museeum and a vulcanic crater nearby.
while some of the effects are intresting, like there is never a hurricane on the equator due to missing coriolis-force and you need a double sided sun-clock, cause the sun is half the year south and half the year north, other experiments are more entertainment for the tourists without engeneering degrees...
fun fact:
Latacunga (LTX/SELT) is the highest altitude airport we are flying to, it's in the andees at an altitude of 9207 ft or 2806m. as far as i know this is also the highest elevation airport flown with the 747. problem here is that the cotopaxi vulcano is neighboring with a height of 19347 ft or 9207 m and Boeing certifies the 747 (400 or -8 equally) for use of flaps only below 20.000 ft which basically means that we have to dive into the valley with speeds exceeding 250 kt indicated which due to the high altitude and the thin air equals about 300 kt or 550 km/h ground speed before we can decelerate inside the valley. This and the close space for manouvering inside the valley makes for special simulator training and a captains only landing....
the landing on that day was with a weight of 217 t (about 40 t freight and 15 t fuel remaining) and an approachspeed vref+5 of 140 kt indicated, which corrlated to 170 kt true airspeed(thin air) and 163 kt groundspeed due to 7kt headwind.
it looks like this: (left NAV screen is radar, the right one is terrain display :-)
on a different note: i was also in quito when they lost their final game of the soccer worldcup, so this is the crowd at the Plaza Foch, Quito during an important game:
as i mentioned, at the end they were a little sad...
cu, brgds - nuck
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