Time to get moving again. In the last feature we had landed in Montevideo following the trail of a regular Lufthansa Cargo MD11's schedule. After a brief stop in Carrasco we launch to Buenos Aires where in the real world most of the cargo hauled from Germany and probably some picked up in Brazil gets usually offloaded.

Goods coming this way from Europe and the Far East by air are mostly technology or pharmaceuticals, return flights are for the better part repositioning since we are not major exporters of high value to weight goods suitable for air freight. Fact is I have seen sometimes Lufthansa Cargo MD11's skip Dakar in the return trip, go direct to Frankfurt and that is what we are going to do next. The jump from Montevideo to Buenos Aires is among the shortest scheduled commercial jetliner flights, being only 90 nm, less than half an hour including terminal ingress and egress procedures.

After topping tanks we make an early afternoon heavy departure from Ezeiza which takes the better part of runway 11 to become airborne. No matter, our trusty D-ALCM is a seasoned veteran in these courts, delivers without missing a beat. FSX calculated 6245 nm for this flight - just shy of max range - so taking a mean groundspeed of 470 kts we will be aloft for over 13 hours and see a full sunset and sunrise before getting to Frankfurt, plenty of time to digress. By the way, I never speed up simulation time, always actual flying time.

As some of you may know, Uruguay is a small and young country. In fact most South American countries are young for that matter, having attained independence only during the 19th century. Uruguay in particular established its Constitution in 1830, meaning we are less than 200 years old. During these same 200 years Europe endured an almost perpetual state of warfare wreaking havoc on national economies and bearing hard on its population, which in significant numbers looked to the Americas for a better future. Uruguay and Argentina did receive large numbers of immigrants mostly from Spain and Italy, but also in lesser extents from elsewhere in Europe, sharing the urge to escape grim prospects at home. This is why the majority of Uruguayans are of obvious European ascendance if judged by looks and family names, fact being that the aboriginal inhabitants previous to the Spanish conquest were few and mostly wiped out during the civil wars leading to independence. A dark fact in our history we are not proud of.

With the dawn of the 20th century, political stability and a modern, politically open minded government consolidated advanced social goals. Public education is free even at the university level - I got my engineering degree paying no fees whatsoever - quality public health is available for free; Uruguay got the most advanced labor legislation of its time being an early adopter of the 8 hour work day, prohibited child labor, and established universal social security retirement provisions. Being distant from Europe and its wars, and being producers of much needed foodstuff, we sailed World War I and II in comparative bonanza.

This is still a nice place to live. Uruguay sits on a geologically stable region with smoothly rolling plains almost 100% usable for agriculture. Weather in Uruguay is mild, winter temperatures never fall below freezing except for a few continuous hours at worst so we know no ice or snow, while summer temperatures may reach briefly over 35°C at worse. And as for "mountain ranges", one of our highest hills is "Pan de Azucar" (not to be confused with its namesake in Rio) about 1500 feet high at best, located close to the Piriapolis beach resort. During WWII Germans tried to man a watch post at its top, reason being from that vantage most of Rio de la Plata marine traffic could easily be spotted, making for valuable intelligence. Allied diplomacy cut short the attempt but the concrete foundations and layout of the planned facility can still be found in the summit. Only the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939 exposed bare what war looks like up close, when German pocket battleship Graf Spee was cornered by the Ajax, Achilles and Exeter British squad. Limped to Montevideo loaded with wounded and dead crewmembers, ended deliberately scuttled just beyond Montevideo harbor where it rests up to this day. Captain Langsdorff took his life after securing safe internment in Argentina for the warship's survivors.

Because of WWII, Uruguay was host to world class artists the caliper of Arthur Rubinstein or Erich Kleiber fleeing their natural venues in Europe, something my parents used to fondly remember, the luxury of having them and others performing within hand's reach, something we cannot afford nowadays due to our small market size. The war years and the postwar periods were times of high demand for our primary products - meat, hides, wool, cereals - bringing a windfall which was to last over a decade beyond. This bonanza and the scarcity of goods from Europe as a consequence of war, spurred in time growth of a replacement industry for manufactured goods and to a general state of welfare. Banks flourished and a new, affluent middle class, found itself able not only to save but to access durable goods like housing, cars, even a beachfront on the "Costa de Oro", the 100 km waterfront spanning from Montevideo to Punta del Este. Things turned sour in the late 60's and 70's when the Cold War staged regionally in the form of insurrection and military regimes lasting well into the 80's.

Hours roll by and we find ourselves over the state of Bahia, after having overflown Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Parana, Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, have still Pernambuco and Ceara to go before getting wet feet over the Atlantic. Brazil is a very big country, yet only developed along the Atlantic coast, at least in any significant way. And the Amazonia is still the biggest world reservoir of rainforest and who knows how many yet undiscovered fauna and flora, perhaps with significant potential impact on pharmaceuticals to be discovered among so many potential riches.

When Boeing launched model 707 and started the jet age for good, domestic USA carriers approached the company with their own ideas about a jetliner. Model 707 had been developed and launched in close collaboration with Pan Am to fit its expansive intercontinental routes, much as it happened later with the 747. Conversely, a smaller and shorter legged airframe was thought a better fit for domestic use taking into account projected demand and operating costs. From Eastern to United to American, each airline pulled and pushed for some characteristic or performance specification until Boeing could finally settle by 1959 on a final design, the "3 holer" powered by P&W JT8D turbofans.

But before jumping into the 727 saga, a detour in search of its lineage is on order. In a previous feature I mentioned in passing both the DH Comet IV and Sud Aviation Caravelle, which with the 707 were the first jetliners to provide commercial service.

The Caravelle is probably not very well known yet it was a remarkable machine featuring several pioneering design highlights. Though by a licensing arrangement with De Havilland Sud Aviation reused Comet IV cockpit and fuselage design, the Caravelle was otherwise a completely different beast. It was the first - in its later versions - to use early turbofan engines, first to mount engines in the tail section, making for a very clean wing design, even had a functional autolanding system, another first, as well as an APU. Only 282 were built among 11 variants which may seem ludicrous nowadays, but it must be remembered this took place at the very dawn of both mass air travel and jetliners. Caravelle started with RR Avon engines and a capacity for 80 passengers, but eventually grew to over 100 fares and P&W JT8D engines. At some time it even had thrust reversers, another first. It was a safe and reliable plane of which there was still at least one flying for Air Gabon until not long ago as can be found in YouTube. As a final note, Douglas considered for a time building a short / medium haul plane to complement the four engine DC8 but decided instead to sign a contract with Sud Aviation for marketing the Caravelle in America. Lack of interest from domestic customers killed the deal, which led to development of the highly successful DC9 using the same rear mounted engine planform.

As for the 727, ideally two engines should have been the economy choice, but with the thrust afforded by existing powerplants it was not able to carry the targeted 150+ passengers over 2700 nm, much less from Denver. Then again for four engines there was the 707, so three engines was the only choice left in between. Ended to be some of a pain, for the center mounted #2 engine fed by a "S" duct proved tricky to tune properly to avoid compressor surge / stall because of the contorted airflow. Practical as always, Boeing choose to reuse most of the 707 fuselage design albeit shortened to fit. Model 727 proved a smashing success with over 1800 units built and flown to the four corners of the world from 1962 to 1984, only model 737 able to outsell it later.

After many hours droning along, we are at last across, have just flown over Cape Verde Islands and head to the Canaries which show as a cluster of beacons on the HSI. The very first, very special airliner and one of a kind, the Dornier DO X flying boat flew around here decades ago. Among its firsts, the DO X crossed the Atlantic, June 1931 via this same Cape Verde islands to Natal in Brazil. The DO X was an amazing machine perhaps worth a full feature sometime in the future. To whet appetite, it had 12x 650 HP tandem engines mounted on six over wing pylons, a wing that was thick enough to let mechanics walk along its length for monitoring and servicing, could carry 150 passengers - as many as a B727 we should note - made it to New York on a sales tour but only one was ever built, ended at the Dornier company museum where it was destroyed by an allied air raid, 1943.

The Island of Madeira reminds again how the Portuguese got to establish a worldwide maritime empire, Brazil being one particularly notorious heritage, a remarkable feat if we take into account the relatively small size of the country compared with other European counterparts. Credit that to their ability to develop a skilled seamanship tradition, nurtured by Prince Henry the Navigator who had the vision to put together a first rate team of navigators, astronomers and cartographers based in Sagres, 15th century. Being blessed with a temperate climate in a large measure due to the Gulf Current, Madeira lives today mostly off tourism enjoying world class waterfronts. Surf fans discovered near perfect waves only in the early 70's turning Funchal into a hotspot for this sport. It should be no surprise, Madeira like the other Atlantic islands off Europe and Africa jut all the way from the deep ocean bottom, which means there are thousands of kilometers of open ocean in almost any direction for waves to pick up strength. Yet, Madeira has also made a name in the liquor industry despite its small size - 57 km in it longest direction - by way of the namesake wine of world fame, to be appreciated pure or as cornerstone for famous preparations like "sangria".

Now that I mentioned the DO X, there was a brief time before the war, when flying boats ruled the skies and formed the backbone of intercontinental air travel. Just a brief note, further in depth exploration for some future installment; Pan Am developed the Pacific routes to China with pioneering Martin M130 four engine "clippers", and just into the eve of WWII had a regular Atlantic service with Boeing 413 ships. Great Britain had its counterpart riding on the Shorts seaplanes, the Empire series plying the Imperial Airways routes to South Africa, India and the Far East.

Those pioneering efforts established foundations in rules and procedures on which the modern air travel industry was built, being it logistics, planning, training, passenger service and so on. In fact just after the war, flying boats were still considered the way to go in terms of large commercial airliner design, because of the mostly unlimited availability of long, always into the wind runaways in any decent bay. Hughes built the all wood Spruce Goose, flew it once in 1947, decided to shelf it for undisclosed reasons (probably because he felt it could not go above ground effect, or was simply scared, who knows). Saunders-Roe of Great Britain built the Princess, a six turboprop prototype test flown 1952 but never made to mass production. In the end the need of an appropriate water surface turned to be more a liability than an asset, concrete runaways were in the end not that expensive or hard to build and could be located anywhere they were required with no major constraints. And to make matters worse, the jet powerplant was still less inclined to make friends with water than piston engines so the matter settled by itself to what we now know.

We are now headed to the northwestern corner of Spain, will clip it over Santiago de Compostela while climbing up as we get lighter on fuel. Now that I mention, I am not very confident on the rather basic FMS in this MD11 model, keep interested attention on expected fuel at destination while eying fuel flow, current wind and groundspeed. Not very comfortable with an arrival estimate of 11000 lb, but I can divert to any closer airport readily at hand while over France, should current tailwind revert or other tabs turn foul.

Embarrassingly, dawn surprises us over the Bay of Biscay with the sun rising almost dead ahead at a bearing of ... 55 deg? ... at 45 deg north of latitude? ... in August?? ... OK let's quietly ignore and go on.

Looking from our 21st century vantage, B727 performance specifications may leave us unimpressed. Yet course this is not fair, think what happened with the computer industry. I was there while the drama unfolded; take for example word processing, a specific niche. Before the mid 70's personal correspondence was mostly handwritten and at best the well positioned were able to afford a typewriter, business correspondence was machine churned out by armies of typists. Intel launched the first microprocessor in 1971 but not until 1974 with the 8080 processor did a microcomputer become practical and with it, among other possibilities, the dedicated word processing machine. Amazing, now you could compose and correct (on a green on black text only screen), save templates (on 8" floppy disks, 128 kb) and print perfect copies as much as needed.

Perhaps the first turbojet powered airliners like the B707, Comet 4 and Caravelle where as much revolutionary with respect to piston powered planes as the word processor was to the typewriter. Equally higher in cost, equally narrow in market reach. Then came the microcomputer revolution of the early and mid 80's when general purpose machines based on standard hardware stormed the office (and home in the end) being capable of word processing and much more at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated word processor. Likewise, the 727 was the first to adopt higher efficiency turbofan engines with attendant lower per seat operating costs compared to first generation turbojets. Among other aviation firsts at least in mass production, the 727 featured an APU which made possible operation on smaller and lesser equipped airports it could fly from because of its shorter runaway requirements. If the 707 and colleagues revolutionized air travel with jets, the 727 telescoped this revolution to an order of magnitude larger access for passenger and destinations to jet powered planes. A typical first generation jetliner, it asked for a crew of three and attentive care to numbers and procedures for smooth operation, yet earned fond appreciation from almost all who had a chance to drive one. Late Len Morgan - with decades of Flying Magazine feature writing - elaborated from the perspective of a seasoned WWII military transport and later Braniff captain, a famous "Flying the Three-Holer" feature in a 1977 issue, later reprinted in February 2000 (vol 127 issue 2). The good, the bad, the quirks, all can be found from the styled pen of someone with the authority to tell it as it was.

And this is how our tale for today coasts to an end. Back to Frankfurt, ready for the next installment in which we'll head south for the Nairobi Johannesburg rotation. Air-Clips.com features a series of videos in YouTube very well shot and edited. Among them is a series of four chapters where Captain Fokko and First Officer Johannes take us in this rotation across Africa. Captain Fokko in his spare time weights in on a Lufthansa Cargo employee organization - cargohumancare.de - which gathers resources in support of those in need of help particularly in Nairobi where the NGO built a center for assistance to the young. Fokko is one of those good examples of people you get to respect for more than one reason.

Rodolfo Astrada
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