Friday, May 29, 2009

Guy Norris: ZA001 to start intermediate gauntlet tests today

UPDATE: Flightblogger is reporting that ZA001 is powered up and engines are running possibly signalling the start of gauntlet testing. Also Jon put up a few spectacular pics of the 787 from a different perspective. Jon's latest post.

Guy Norris posted on his blog early (very early) this morning that intermediate gauntlet should start later today. According to his report Boeing should have started some engine run tests at about 3 AM local time followed by a simulated Boeing B-1 standard profile first flight which all Boeing airplanes go through before they are delivered to customers. This should be followed by a modified B-1 test along with test of the GE-developed CCS (Common Core System).

There will be other systems tests during the day as well. If everything goes well, then intermediate gauntlet testing should conclude around June 5th. It's unknown how long final gauntlet would take but I'm opining that it would be about 3 to 4 days at the most but I'm not too sure. After the final gauntlet, Boeing would undertake Hot Fire tests of the engines and then low speed and high speed taxi tests with and RTO test thrown in there the day before first flight.

Let me wrap up by linking you to Randy's Jounrnal (Randy Tinseth's Blog at Boeing). He has a great view of the first engine tests that occurred last week.

Guy's 20th 787 Update
Randy's Journal

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