4X Engine Fire During Transonic, No Failures Active?

[Magnus Meese 15]

I was taking the lady from LHR to JFK tonight, and everything ran smoothly. Then during the transsonic climb, as I passed aprox Mach 1.25, N2 numbers fell to about 94%, throttles still at full and reheats on. I checked Master Warning, all instruments panels and then went into both FSX and FSLabs Failure pages to clear all failures (No failures was listed as active). A little after the N2 numbers fell to about 82%, and just seconds after, while I was thinking "This can't be good...", all four engines recieved fire warnings and flamed out immideately. Seconds later FSX Flight Dynamics took over and took the plane into a neck-breaking stall. Game over.

Now, I've flown this bird many times, both SSTSIM and Concorde-X, and I followed every step as I've always done, using the same flightplan, checklists and documents. Only one thing was different this time, I loaded the INS waypoints via the Segment feature. This should be irrelevant. The only thing I'm not a 100% sure was carried out normally, is the Engine Bleed / Cross Bleed config. Checking the panel after splashdown though, it was configed properly. (VFE shoudl've been controlling this). I'm not sure I have time for another flight tonight, but if I do I'll take careful note of everything and see if the problem happens again.

So my question is, has anyone encountered this before? Does anyone have a clue what might've cause it? Why was the failure pages clean?

A little more technical data on the incident:

- VFE Enabled, except for Engine control.

- Reheats worked properly until engine flame-out.

- EGT and Fuel Burn was normal up until the flame-out, however EGT was rising slowly as the N2 dropped the second time.

- No warnings or other failure markers illuminated/showed before the flame-out itself.

- Engine anti-ice was not used out of Heathrow. Thunderstorms in the vincinity, but outside temps were good.

All help is appreciated!

[Andrew Wilson 7749]

Sounds like the intake-ramps were not configured correctly, and the engines would have surged. You may have heard them banging? The result is, as you described if no action is taken, a bust engine that will likely overheat and catch on fire. It's not a triggered failure, per se, so you wouldn't see anything in the failure menus. Rather, a malfunction as a result of flying the aircraft incorrectly configured for that specific phase of flight.

If you notice it happening again - check the intake controls, specifically that the lane computers are in AUTO.

I'd be interested to know if it was indeed the intake ramps if you find out.

[Magnus Meese 15]

Probably the ones right there. Forgot about it, but yes I heard them bang before the engines said good bye. What kind of faulty configuration NOT controlled by the VFE (in other words, me) could cause this?

[Andrew Wilson 7749]

If the intake control lanes were in manual mode, I believe.

[David Barnett 1]

Hi Meese, don't know if you ever resolved your issue. I had the exact samer thing happen to me 3x.

Well, glad to have figured out the problem, but it was all my fault. I too had the VFE not controlling engines. As you know, after take-off things are very busy, especially if you are handling some things by yourself.

Well, in my hastiness of flying the plane and doiingthe after take-off checklist, I didn't want to puase for realism; I missed one very import switch on the after takeoff flow.

ENGINE RATING MODE.....FLIGHT. I was leaving it in the takeoff mode, since the VFE doesn't controll those switches. So, the intakes didn't get the proper signals as needed. Went swimming back to Maui a few times till I got it figured out.

Hope it helps.

Best,

David

[Grex 1]

Have the same problem, in my opinion that situation causes Intake Manual Mode.

Finnaly I made an emergency app at KIAD. This failure appeared exactly in Supersonic Climb.