While RC501 was up on its first flight during the afternoon of Feb 8, Boeing opened up RC521 – the second 747-8F – for a close inspection. Here’s a photo tour to show you what we saw.
Heading up to the left side main entry door 1, the freighter’s only passenger door (all photos Guy Norris)
Looking aft – viewing the revised contouring of the wing root fairing and inboard wing cross-section.
Water ballast barrels in the Section 41 nose section for center of gravity testing. We counted 33 in all for the whole aircraft, each of which holding around 1,000-lbs.
Between the ballast barrels around 16 racks of test equipment and engineer’s test stations occupy the bulk of the main deck.
The reel mechanism for deploying and stowing the trailing static cone sits on the main deck just forward of the aft pressure bulkhead.
Nippon Cargo will eventually be the operator of RC521 – as already painted on the inside of the main deck cargo door.
The raked tip as viewed from the cargo door.
The GEnx-2B67 – the world’s first production turbofan to feature noise reducing chevrons on both the fan and jet ducts - something that was not sufficiently mature at the time to be used on even the 787.
RC522, the third test aircraft and – as yet – unpainted, makes for a dramatic sight as it is towed down the flight line to occupy the stall just vacated by RC501.