Detailed tour through the FIRST Boeing 747 prototype - RA001 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle

the boeing 747 absolutely revolutionized civil aviation and this aircraft behind me is the first one the prototype the first flew in 1969 and in this video i'm going to take you on a detailed tour of it we're going to walk around the outside and i'm going to point out what makes it unique and interesting and then we're going to crawl inside and up see what it's like in there so let's get into it i'm paul stewart and i make videos about planes this includes reviews of flights from around the world and tours through significant civil and military aircraft in museums i'm also on instagram and facebook now this aircraft was only recently restored after being left to decay for several years and it's a huge credit to the staff here at the museum of flight in seattle as it looks absolutely brilliant boeing expected that their supersonic airliners would be preferred by customers therefore the 747 was planned to be a freighter hence why the cockpit was up higher as it enabled the whole nose to open up allowing easy access for the freight as we all know the boeing 2707 was cancelled and the 747 went on to be the huge success you see many different airline logos including pan am here and they were the launch customer ordering 25 747 100s in april 1966. you can make out the kangaroo of qantas and for several years their entire fleet was actually made up of jumbo jets exclusively and they only recently retired at their final 747 400 ers two years ago the prototype was known as ra001 and named the city of everett which is where the massive new factory was built to assemble it now the footage doesn't do it justice but it really is a tall aircraft and you can only imagine how impressed everyone would have been when they thought that the dc-8 or a 707 were big planes at the time now don't get confused because this wing here is a 727 and i'll be making a separate video around that by comparing the size of it to the 747s wing really shows how big the jumbo jet was being such a huge aircraft meant that it was going to need a much more impressive landing gear there's four main landing gear legs with four-wheel bogeys and it was designed so they could land on only two of them being deployed on opposite sides in december 1969 during flight tests the pilot undershot the runway and the outer landing gear was ripped off then also in 2014 a virgin atlantic 747 400 landed with the starboard landing gear still retracted due to a malfunction and there's great footage of that on youtube in both instances the aircraft was able to land safely on the three remaining gears it's a beefy looking landing gear but no surprise when the maximum takeoff weight was over 360 tons on this model and that increased to over 480 tons on the latest 747-8 model we'll make our way further back this massive door here provides access into the aft cargo hold just underneath the flight deck as well as carrying a lot of people the 747 also carried a lot of freight several airlines also installed lower level galleys where food could be prepared and then lifted up to the passenger decks this allowed for ever important space for more passenger seats and therefore more tickets could be sold this was especially useful in the earlier 747s that had much smaller upper decks being a massive aircraft meant that it required an auxiliary power unit to generate both pneumatic and electrical activity on the ground without the main engines being turned on here's an example of one of these turbines which would normally be located right at the end of the aircraft and exhausted out via a small circular exhaust the horizontal stabilizers blocks your view of the apu's inlet and while it has been removed from this aircraft and i'll show you footage shortly this was equipped with an air-to-air refueling boom and the operator could look through here and back to the horizontal stabilizer which obviously provides pitch control and what's interesting is that in the 400 series upgrade they actually put fuel tanks inside of it this gave them an even greater range in fact the first 747 400 delivered to qantas flew non-stop from london to sydney now admittedly it was a bit of a stretch and the aircraft was towed to the runway so that the engines could be started there and save every single drop possible as we walk forward you'll get a glimpse of the now famous n7470 registration you'll also get a good view of the wings which were also massive for the time these large pods are aerodynamic covers for the flat mechanisms for the triple slotted flaps which deploy out of the trailing edge increasing their wings surface area by over 20 percent and increase lift by 90 and i'll explore these in more detail in my 747 400 video what's especially interesting is that they were having problems with fluttering during testing but they fixed this by using depleted uranium as counterweights on the wings in fact the ll-747 freighter that crashed in amsterdam in 1992 had over 200 kilograms of uranium on board which made the authorities quite anxious another major advance with the 747 was the use of high bypass turbofan engines up until now turbojet engines would suck in at the front and then propel the air out at the back now they would do this but also add a large fan at the front which would then be spun by the jet engine and also push air backwards in fact now the majority of thrust would come from cold air being pushed by the fan that would bypass the hot core hence the name bypass this created more thrust and used less fuel if you look at this gap here this is where the cold air would be expelled at great pace while we move further back towards the end of the engine and you'll see where this small amount of hot air would also be expelled in coming decades the engines would get wider as bigger fans with even bigger bypass ratios were used these air vents here which kind of looked like the doors on a ferrari 355 were actually used to allow in cold atmospheric air to cool the pressurized air bled from the engines once it's cooled down it then enters the cabin and is used to maintain pressure if the pressure builds up too much these circular devices here will vent some air out and protect the passengers eardrums but back to the engines as we walk upstairs the pratt whitney jt9d program struggled to keep up with the rest of the aircraft's development in fact as production built up there were 20 stranded 747s awaiting the engines that weren't yet ready to be installed even the inaugural pan am passenger flight had to be delayed by several hours due to engine problems but fortunately their second 747 had just been delivered the day beforehand so they swapped that in for the flight from new york to london its name was clipper victor and it flew until 1977 where tragically it was involved in a collision in a tenner reef with another 747 entering via door 1 left will first check out the nose and immediately down below is the mec or the main electrical compartment in my 747 400 tour i'll actually climb down into this this provides in-flight access to much of the navigation and electrical equipment as well as the forward landing gear and even the forward luggage hold being a prototype much of the underlying insulation and cables were in full display the original design of this aircraft was actually a full length double decker similar to the a380 as you can see with this model but with a narrow interior with only eight seats across there were concerns about the speed of evacuation and also the potential luggage storage so they went with a single but wider deck and a smaller hump for the flight deck remember that the cockpit was directly above us and these cables here are the flight controls directly connected from the pilot's controls that will move the full length of the aircraft to where the hydraulic actuators and flight surfaces were located here's the famous spiral staircase now unfortunately this prototype isn't open to the public so his footage captured on board a 747 200 which was essentially identical upstairs qantas used this space for their famous captain cook lounges and it wasn't until later models that they installed permanent seats on the prototype it would have had spare seats and equipment here turning around we'll make our way into the cockpit if you've been inside a modern cockpit you'll notice that this one doesn't have any of those large screens and all the displays are dials and behind the first officer was the flight engineer's position where they would monitor all of the engine hydraulic and fuel parameters leaving the job of flying the plane to the flight crew while there were auto pilot systems flying was a lot less automated than it is now so the two pilots would be fairly busy the flight engineer's position was eventually replaced with computers in the 747 400 model that first flew in 1988. let's make our way back down the stairs and more cockpit details can be found in my other videos and i'll link to them below here we are back on the prototype and as you can see there's no normal seats as you'd see in other 747s as they'd often be flying with a fairly large crew of engineers they needed some of the standard luxuries including toilets you've also got some bench space and kitchen equipment and the all-important coffee for those caffeine-addicted engineers in passenger versions there could also be a galley directly under here where crews could prepare meals and then send them up a lift to the passenger deck this prototype was pressurized but there were no masks that would fall from the ceiling so each crew carried one of these oxygen cylinders for use in rapid depressurization you'll see lots of orange cables around and these were spread all across the aircraft checking for different pressures and stresses this information would then come back to these stations made by an engineer and all the data would be recorded and explored after the flight it's actually really interesting to compare the test equipment with the 1940s test equipment in the hughes h4 hercules prototype and i'll link to that video below as well now this is really interesting in fact the 747 is such a versatile platform that it has been used to test many new engines including the massive ge9x going into the upcoming triple 7x but in 1993 these cables were used when the aircraft tested new and massive engines for the upcoming boeing triple 7. these measured multiple parameters including fuel consumption now looking up at the roof these huge pipes are all involved in the air conditioning and pressurization system that i mentioned earlier considering how big the cabin is they needed a lot of air to constantly circulate before it was eventually vented out the rear of the aircraft these barrels over here carried water to help simulate the weight that you'd expect from passengers and crew and obviously they'd be on both sides of the aircraft to ensure the centre of gravity but some were removed for this walkway in this display if you look closely you'll see those flight control cables that i mentioned earlier there were multiple cables running along together so that if one breaks the other can take over the same task boeing were a little disappointed that their proposal for the heavy logistics system military contract lost which ended up going to the lockheed c5 galaxy so they considered the idea of creating an in-air refueling version of the 747. now the air force did say no and i must admit that i'm surprised that the idea never took off although maybe the kc-135 was a little smaller and probably far easier to operate out of smaller airports up here on the right is the flight data recorder also known as the black box and some other electronic equipment these red cushions here were obviously for the boon operator and their supervisors and they would be positioned so they could look through that glass window and in the background now is the rear pressure bulkhead spinning back around again you've got this trailing static cone which would be ruled out around 100 feet from the top of the vertical tail fin and measure the static air pressure and a true air speed while the prototype was flying here's a contraption where this wire would be wound up in up until march 2022 1571 747s had been built and many are still flying to this day one of the older ones is the vc 25 which is a 200 series and carries the president of the united states if you're a fan of the boeing 747 then make sure you check out my other detailed tours through a retired 747 200 and a 400 series where i'll be crawling through the mec storage holds and having a closer look at the flight decks thanks for watching

Channel: Paul Stewart

Views: 395,058

Keywords: boeing, boeing 747, 747, boeing 747-100, N7470, RA001, City of Everett, first BOeing 747, first 747, 747 prototype, museum of flight, museum of flight seattle, boeing 747 seattle, aviation, airplane, avgeek, airplanes, aviation geek, paul stewart aviation, aviation tour, aviation documentary, museum of flight 747, 747 tour, 747 guided tour, first 747 tour, 747-100 tour, 747 paul stewart

Id: _fU1EUwwH_8

Length: 12min 29sec (749 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022