Rolls turbine takes flight

By Virgil Shipley, News Photographer
Friday, June 30, 2006

MOUNT VERNON — “The customer wants the equipment as soon as possible,” said Rolls-Royce project manager Ted Rice, “so they are paying the extra cost of having it flown to their site.” The equipment is a RB211 dry low emissions mechanical drive package that will drive compressors for onshore gas transmissions. It was being loaded on a giant Russian cargo plane Thursday morning at Rickenbacker International Airport.

The units are destined for Thailand to meet the future growth in demand for natural gas. The second of three units was taken by truck to Rickenbacker International Airport south of Columbus on Wednesday. They will operate alongside seven previously installed Rolls-Royce Avon and RB211 gas turbine packages.

The nearly 55-ton turbine drive was loaded onto the Antonov ANT 124-100 for the trip to Thailand. It flew to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Thursday evening. It will then fly to Anchorage, Alaska; Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia; Inchon (Seoul), Korea; and finally Uapao, Thailand.

The five-day flight is in contrast to trucking the unit to Houston, Texas, a five-day journey in itself, and loading it on a freighter for a 48-day ocean voyage. Mount Vernon Machine and Tool fabricated the shipping outrigger brackets and beams which allowed sufficient space for the gas turbine package to be loaded using the aircraft sliding system.

Rice explained the package would just fit through the cargo door in the front end of the airplane.

So brackets were welded up and bolted to the sides of the package so it would dropped several inches. Then the beams fit under the bracket so the whole thing would fit into the airplane. Even the giant trailer that transported it to Columbus was widened so the turbine could be low enough to fit under bridges.

Two big cranes were brought in to lift it off the trailer, turn it 90 degrees and lower it onto the beams. That part of the project was carefully supervised by the Russian loadmasters. It measures 922 centimeters long, 430 centimeters wide and 408 centimeters high. Albacor Shipping, U.S.A., a freight forwarder, was responsible for the overall transportation arrangements.

The Antonov AN-124-100 is one of a series of cargo planes from the same company designed for the former Soviet Union military. A young flight engineer on this aircraft, who speaks very good English, said it is 18 year old. After the fall of the Soviet Union, private companies took control and developed a worldwide business for the big ships.

And the AN-124-100 production has been revived because of a demand for long-range, heavy load carrying airplanes. A Web site does not give the size of the AN-124-100 but does say it has 25 percent higher transportation capability than the United States Air Force C-5A and 10 percent more than the C-5B cargo planes.

The Web site says the United States military has used the Antonovs for transporting big equipment. After the turbine was loaded and secured there was a little perk for the Rolls-Royce folks helping with the project. Everyone was allowed to go up the 15-foot high ladder to the upper deck and look in the cockpit and living quarters for the crew.

For pilots and aviation enthusiasts, the Russian flight instruments are old-fashioned analog type. This is sharp contrast to modern American instruments that are all “glass” or simply computer screens.