Sure. It would take some doing and I could have done it in my day but I don't have any idea how it would perform with more mass attached and to handle. Really an interesting challenge.
Boeing should at least investigate it. I think the An-124 and the sole An-225 are the only other commercial freighters with a lift nose, which gives the 747 an advantage none of the other Western freighters can match. Put two engines on it and, voila!, it's economical.
Braniff Fat Albert delivered 1971. Flew non-stop Dallas -Honolulu 7 days a week. Was on the ground only 6 hours a day. Here’s a story about the last flight..... Appropriately, N601BN flew Braniff's last revenue flight on May 13, 1982, returning from Honolulu to DFW Airport, as Flight 502, in the early morning hours the day after the carrier began cessation of operations. The day before, the 747, operating as Flight 501, had departed as usual, but late for the daily flight from DFW to HNL. Enroute over Los Angeles, the crew was informed by ATC that Braniff had ceased operations and that they were to land at LAX. The Captain decided to continue on to Honolulu, with his full load of paying passengers. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Seeing that orange 747 simply emphasized the lack of a stabile image of Braniff in the '80's. None of their airplanes looked the same, even when they were different colors, the application wasn't the same. Guys working on the flight line didn't identify the airplanes by line number or N number. When asked what airplane needed some attention or a part, the answer sometimes would be, " The Carrot", the "Banana", or the " Cucumber". It was a screwy run airline.
I would have to SWAG that one since I am not familiar with it. I remember when they were stripping the O.D. and grey off of the B-17's near the end of the war and it came off in sheets when they sprayed it with a fire hose. It took several guys to get it in the trucks but I never learned how much it weighed. I'll try to find out, however.
From what I could dig up, the 747 would take 90 gallons of paint. The paint would weigh 800 to 900 pounds BUT it was not stated if that was the dried weight or wet. A gallon of wet paint weighs about 10 pounds or more (depending on the color of the pigment). So, a Scientific Wild Ass Guess would put the dried paint at somewhere around 400-500 pounds after the volitives have left. Corrections are welcomed.
I hope. This has triggered another memory from aprox. 1960 when the first American Airlines 707 came back to the Kite Factory with all the paint stripped from the nose back to the passenger windows. A little problem that wasn't considered because the paint used was the best auto enamel that you could buy then, Dupont Dulux. Dupont Dulux wasn't designed to hang together when the airplane took off at standard day and in 15 minutes went from that to minus 70 and 600MPH. The company had to redesign the whole process of painting the airplanes...quickly. An acid etch primer was devised for the first primer coat that firmly attached itself to the Alclad. Then a paint that bonded to the primer. It worked beautifully and there were no more air stripped colors. Maybe in my calculations I discounted the weight of the primer coat which would have added another 300-400 pounds to a 747 hull. And then there is the Aeroseal on the wings that I'm sure is heavier than all the rest.... Maybe another 600 pounds. My old group could have answered all of these questions but they are dispersed now and difficult to contact, really sad.
I remember back in the 'old' days when American Airlines did not paint their planes except for a few graphics. They claimed they saved a huge amount of money by not hauling around all that heavy paint. They even talked about how much it weighed in their ads. Over 1K pounds IIRC (memory), Of course they cannot do that with composite bodies any longer.
Variprime is the self etching primer made by Dupont. The stuff is amazing but deadly if you breath it. That along with Imron(also deadly) are some of the strongest paints ever made. They use it on trucks, locomotives, airplanes ect.
Thanks, now we know more about it. I wonder if that also is what was done to make the SRF that is applied to the wheel wells and exposed wing areas that have hydraulic tubing runs. When we were pressure testing the hydraulic reservoir on the first 707 it it failed and blew Skydrol all over the left wing and wheel well. All of the paint and tubing tapes were dissolved and stripped from the structures. Skydrol Resistant Finish was created and it is the bright white finish that is used on the airplanes now. I was fortunate that the company installed eye washing stations near every airplane to aid those that got Skydrol in their eyes. It lets you know that it is there.
Bob- That reminded me of an old war story with an F-111F. The 48 TFW chief functional check flight pilot convinced the wing commander to let him take one of the F-111Fs up to Mach 2 on an FCF, which was easily accomplished since the F-111F could do about Mach 2.6. When he brought her back, though, most of the paint on the rear of the aircraft had stripped off from the heat and Q loads. Instead of LN for RAF Lakenheath, the vertical stabilizer read MH for Mountain Home (Idaho), the previous home of all the F-111Fs. No more supersonic FCFs after that.
In fact, when they got their Airbus A300s, the pure bare metal finish wasn't good enough and they had to apply something over it, but I don't know exactly what and exactly why.
The skins were hand selected for AA planes with attention to grain and were then polished early on. Later the polishing was abandoned, deemed too expensive.
The last two British Airways 747s left Heathrow this morning for their final flights to the scrapyard. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Another boring memory. I saw the first rough drawings of the 747 wing layout on two drafting tables joined end to end. Shortly after, the first computer drawing , pre-Catia being done. We had just come off the C-5 project and started this big airliner project, fifty four years ago. Last night I realized that this week matched the calendar sequences of dates of when I was finishing my first week of work as a flight line modification mechanic at Boeing exactly 70 years ago.
Saw a few 747s today. One in a museum and was GE's test bed. Another sitting in someone's front yard...presumably they are a big fan of the 747. N747GE Image Unavailable, Please Login N3439F Image Unavailable, Please Login