Hacker News Reader

Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

Normaly the nose loading is done oy when absolutely necessary. It's a pain, takes ages and is complicated. When possible stuff is squeezed through the fuselage cargo doors. Back the day we did it with a ten foot sea container, never thought it would fit...

View on HN

> Back the day we did it with a ten foot sea container, never thought it would fit

How’d you end up doing it? Roll it on its side? Usually the height of a sea going container is ~2.6m and per the specs I’m seeing online the allowed height through the nose is only ~2.49m. Because they are just taller than they are wide, spec wise it would fit laying on its side, but still curious when doing it for real if that was necessary.

Presumably they're talking about a 8x8x10 container. The 747 is specced for 8x8 w/h containers.

Yeah, 8’ just barely fits in via the nose. You got maybe an inch or two to spare on height.

Going via the main deck side doors on a cargo style 747 would be much easier imho for a container that size. Not only can you go a full 10ft high, you’ve got around 11’ straight in width clearance.

They maneuvered it through the side door, with four people, inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter. Working for the airport at the time I didn't touch a thing, better to have crew damage a perfectly fine aircraft. Still impressive feat of loading, almost on par with the Russians, they use the cargo door to squeeze the cargo properly in, like avergae Joe slaming his trunk.

Ah, side door. That should’ve been easy then, no?

I agree about the nose loading part. Meanwhile, how does an engine with its nacelle compare to a marine container in terms of dimensions? Would it be easier or harder to load through the fuselage doors? I also assume that they will need a fixture or container for the engine if it was to be loaded into the cargo hold.

Engine is roughly 2.25m in diameter and 5.5m in length. So it would fit through the nose cone door, even with a modest fixture/container, with room to spare.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com