One of us has it right (IMHO). The spoiler cancel switch should be on the
throttle. The TriStar was a whiz in cockpit design. There were four
different kinds of spoilers on the wing.
The first were big jobs inboard to plop the aircraft onto the tires on
touchdown because you could round out, put only five of eight mainwheels on,
catch a drift and touch brakes would blow out the tires on the runway - so
the full weight was required to save tires - called GROUND SPOILERS. The
second were roll augmenters and "speed brakes" in the air but accompanies
the biggies when the touchdown was complete, the third types were outboard
to balance fuel tank contents on an "active" wing (called 'direct Lift
control' - don't ask) and I can't remember the 4th, but three of the four
assisted in roll. The speed brakes could only be selected in air with no
flap out - they were then effective bakes.
So, you can call 'em speed brakes only if they operate to increase
drag - that's how the are engineered into the wing. Just to complicate it,
there were mixers which decided if your selection was (a) acceptable and (b)
possible.
The crux was on the throttles (4). The oputer ones had outside
buttons in parallel, so were called GO AROUND buttons. If Cap'n was flying
he used the No1 throttle button, if the F/O was doing it he had the No4
throttle button. When you wanted to abort the approach, you hollered "Go
around", pushed the GA button on your side as you opened the throttles to GA
power. The approach was made with some spoiler panels partially extended.
The button [1] demanded a proper nose-up pitch, [2] cancelled the extended
spoilers instantly which allowed the aircraft to 'leap' upward and [3] did a
number of complicated things which made aborting an approach magic and
instantaneous. No other a/c could do this and it meant (very early in the
trade) approaching to 7 feet (wheel height) from the runway and not drop a
foot farther - without ever seeing the ground. And 90% of the exercise was
aerodynamic - a miracle. Let's hear it for partial spoilers.
I suspect the throttle is the ideal place to cancel spoilers/speed
brakes because you are probably going to want to increase speed or improve
lift - and now.
I have to close, I hear matron coming down the hall.
Ferg
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