Posts about: "Filton" [Posts: 73 Pages: 4]

M2dude,

Nice set of photos of "The Thing" here :
MEPU at MAE at le Bourget .
This one is at the Air and Space Museum at Le Bourget, near Paris. My guess is that is was a spare, since the manufacturing date is 1973. 'SA flew in January '73 and 'SB in December '73.
IIRC, Delta Golf arrived at Brooklands with the MEPU still in place; I might have a photo.

As to the installation, we're obviously thinking along the same lines....

However, there were already several conduits through tank 11, such as hydraulics for the tail wheel, various electrics, and the 'backbone' fuel manifolds, that ended at the fuel jettison port in the tailcone.
A couple of fairly substantial air ducts would only have displaced a few hundred kgs of fuel at the most, out of the more than 10,000 kgs in tank 11.

And yes, of course, the whole point of the APU would be to have independent ground start and ground airco available, so clearly an APU would have been bigger and heavier than the MEPU (which was only just over 80 lbs), plus the problem of the air intake and bigger exhaust.
I'd have to get the drawings out to see how easy or difficult it would have been to fit one in the available space.

Since the tailcone was BAC, and both 214 and 216 were built at Filton, I wonder if anybody there still remembers?

Hi Nick, thanks again for your comments. As far as not being a commercial success, for the airline this side of the Channel it was a HUGE commercial success (but of course I accept that in manufacturing terms this was far from the case. The project suffered from very poor financial control). Concorde was the first commercial FBW aircraft as you rightly surmised.
A huge amount of Airbus work was 'burried' in the Concorde project; at Filton a large amount of Airbus components came through that were almost identical to those on Concorde. (witness the STRIKING similarity between the A300 main gear and that of Concorde). Apologies if this post is a little tardy, it's done from my IPhone).

Nick Thomas
You are right on the button first time, the white paint finish is for heat reflection purposes. (When I worked at Filton/Fairford I remember reading a document showing the difference in 'hot soak' supersonic skin temperatures for white and black paint finishes. I'm afraid I can't remember any figures (it was a couple of million years ago ) but there was quite a surprising difference.

G SXTY
A hearty welcome to this thread, and thank you for your very kind comments; I'm sure I speak for all the Concorde people here when I say that it is quite amazing that so many people, both aviation professionals as well as more 'normal' people are so fascinated by what most of us still regard as the finest aircraft ever to grace the skies. Your comment about 'men with slide rules' is so totally correct; I still remember the No7 & No8 design offices at Filton, these were huge rooms filled with draughtsmen's boards, a horde of designers, all without a single computer in sight.
Dave Rowland is a total gentleman as well as being an extremely knowledgeable flyer too, and I know he (like most of us) would be happy to talk about Concorde until the cows come home.

ChristiaanJ
Aghhhh The dreaded AICU. I'd almost forgotten the innards, as you say the motherboard wiring was a total nightmare (good piece of knitting I seem to remember). As far as the 'secret' bit of the AICU, I think we all know that is a little bit of Concorde mythology, more science museum than secret really. Around ten years ago we had some fairly substantial modifications done to the units, due to component obsolescence. (I seem to remember that some of the components concerned were not only out of production, but only a few hundred examples existed worldwide}. I do remember that the power supply board, resolver demodulator boards as well as a couple of others were replaced with new ones using modern components. The modification did do wonders for component reliability.
The PROM board that you have the photo of reminds me of a really amusing anecdote, told to me by Dr Ted Talbot a while ago. Now Ted is one of the true fathers of the Concorde air intake, an absolute genius as well as being a really pleasant gentleman indeed. I'm pleased to say that when I met him a few months ago, he was still as sharp as ever in his advancing years.
The story goes like this: Much of the Concorde intake development trials were flown out of Tangiers and Casablanca, where cold stratospheric temperatures would be guaranteed. Software changes as a result of the flight trials had to be done in there and 'the field'. The way that you made programmed the PROMS was by 'burning' each individual logic gate with a 9v battery. It was highly specialised, as well as extremely tedious work indeed, as we can all well imagine. Anyway, in while he was in Tangiers with aircraft G-AXDN, Ted had arranged for a rather lovely looking lady to be flown out to do his ROM programming. The HS 125 from Filton landed at Tangiers and taxied in and parked next to Concorde, and all the flight test people were waiting on the tarmac. The door of the 125 opened and out stepped this really leggy lady. 'who's the bint then ?' pipes up a really gritty airframe fitter, in a really broad Bristol accent. Without giving it a thought, Ted chirps 'she's come to blow my proms'. The little fitter grunts, glares at Ted and comes out with 'typical office staff, you get all the ***ing perks'.

From the thousands of hours of windtunnel tests, test flying with aircraft like the Mirage IV, HP 115, BAC221, etc. etc. they already had a pretty close idea of how the aircraft was going to fly.
IIRC, Andr\xe9 Turcat remarked after the first flight of 001 it flew pretty well like the simulator, or if anything somewhat better!

There were two development simulators, one at Toulouse and one at Filton, that were used by the test pilots and by the engineers. These were "tweaked" whenever more data became availble before the first flights, and then updated with flight test data.
For airline crew training , two new simulators were built in the early seventies, again one in Toulouse (later moved to CDG) and one in Filton.
In the best Concorde style, they were designed and built by two different firms....

I don't believe anything of the development simulators has survived.
As you will know, the "cab" of the British Airways Filton simulator was salvaged and taken to Brooklands, where it's now slowly being brought back to life.
The Air France simulator at CDG, minus motion system and video display, was taken back to Toulouse, where it's slowly being restored, to go on display in the planned Museum at Toulouse.

CJ

It was a Lightning that intercepted Concorde from behind:

English Electric Lightning Site - Story of the Month

I was in the Air Training Corps in Bristol in the late 80s and flew in the Chipmunks based at Filton. Used to see the spare Concorde sitting there outside the hangar. My father worked at BAe so we would go to the open day and see Concorde do her stuff there.

And a question of my own - I've heard that the engines were pretty powerful even at ground idle, so powerful that if all 4 were running then a tug would not be able to push her back. Any truth to this? Were just 2 started, pushback and then start the remainder? Also heard that the pilots had to watch the brake temps whilst taxiing out to takeoff - was this also due to the power?

Notfred
Love the lightning story, hadn't heard that one before.
That would have been production series test aircraft G-BBDG, A/C 202 before a purpose built hangar (more shed really) was built to house her, with fin and U/C removed. This aircraft has now been beautifully restored at Brooklands museum.
You are quite correct about the pushback, not having an APU (THAT story again ) meant that a one engine in each nacelle pair had to be started on the gate, and the other in each nacelle started after push. Having a symetrical pair started enabled all 3 hydraulic systems, and hence most of the critical systems to be checked puring pushback.
Brake temperatures always had to be monitored; they really could get very hot. If a wheel was still too warm after T/O, then the gear would be left down just a little longer to aid cooling. (Each brake also had an electric cooling fan).
Idle thrust was always a problem in that it was too high; there was a 'lo idle' setting, but depending on the temperature of the day the difference was not that big. You could not just reduce idle some more because of a malady known as rotating stall. This can plague any engine, but the Olympus 593 was particularly susceptible. At very low idle speeds, pockets of air 'rotate' around the first few compressor stages and can completely alter the airflows through the engine. It is important that the engine is always accelerated quickly through this zone on start-up, because serious damage can occur if the engine runs for any period of time in the rotating stall region. If the engine DOES operate in this zone, then the combustion process can even occur in the last few stages of the HP compressor, causing extreme damage. This damage, although malignant, can result in blade failure and the subsequent damage to the combustion chamber and turbine areas. This can occur within a few flights of the event, so just cranking down the idle was never an option.

Bellerophon ,

Many thanks for filling one of the many current gaps in my memory!

I only "flew" her once, and that was on the original Filton development simulator.
Took her up to Mach 2.11, well into the "cricket" zone... never forgot... (I think that was some development issue we were trying to settle at the time).

I've been involved in a minor way with the restoration of both the Filton/Brooklands sim and the CDG/Toulouse sim, and with the SSTSIM and FlightSim Lab Concorde simulator programs, but never yet "flown" any of them.
Maybe it's time I should !

CJ

BRIT312
This story is totally hilarious, can't quite get this visual out of my head. ('100 KTS, POWER SET' sounds so boring in comparison). I never had the good fortune to meet any of the Braniff guys; sounds like there was certainly a character or two there. It really is a pity that their operation never really got a chance to expand into the proposed Pacific Rim service, who knows, it might really have done something.
It's generally known that the BA aircraft were temporarily re-registered to facilitate Braniff's operation out of IAD to DFW; G-BOAA, B, D & E were re-registered from G-BOAA and so on, to G-N94AA etc. Being an older registration, G-BOAC was re-registered as G-N81AC. At IAD, the 'G' part of the registration was covered over, leaving a now perfect 'American' tail number. Only five aircraft were involved in the operation (at the time BA operated just six aircraft, G-BOAF was still at the manufacturers at Filton, and G-BFKW (later to become G-BOAG) was on loan from British Aerospace. In order for the necessary FAA certification, required for operation by a US airline, a modification package were required by the FAA. Some of these modifications seemed a little 'picky' and irrelevant at the time (they still do). However some modifications were certainly not in this category, and quite honestly should have been 'picked up' by the CAA & DGAC during original certification of the aircraft. As an example, if the flying controls had been operating on GREEN or BLUE hydraulics only (due to an indicated spool valve jam) and that particular hydraulic system was subsequently lost, there was originally no automatic switching to select the standby YELLOW system into the flying controls; the controls would have been completely unpowered until a manual selection was made by the pilot. . One of the 'FAA Mods' was to facilitate just that, so if this (extremely unlikely I grant you) scenario had occurred, then YELLOW would automatically been selected into the controls, and at no time would the controls have been in an unpowered state.
The Braniff operation ended in May 1980, due to heavy losses on the subsonic only route, and it's a rather sad irony that aircraft G-BOAF had been modified and reregistered at Filton, from it's original registration of G-BFKX to G-N94AF. Unfortunately the aircraft was delivered to BA in June 1980, one month too late to participate, and prior to delivery it's registration was converted to it's 'normal' British registration; all other aircraft also reverted to original registrations also.
ChristiaanJ
Not really, being the sad b****d that I am, I still remember the Concorde flare law of: h+5h. = 0, so it was fairly easy to work out the programmed descent rates. (I did have to check the final 1.7'/second figure though). The rest I'm afraid is straight out of this sad old memory of mine.
Bellerophon
A brilliant description of the mechanics of final approach. It's so easy for us mere mortals to forget just what an involved and skilled process it was, to fly, and in particular land our totally amazing aircraft.

Dude

What a fascinating read, thanks to all guys contributing to it.

The fact that the Conc still fascinates so many people after so many years is the best prove of its uniqueness. Never flown on one, but having brought clients to it I remember a time where we parked right under the nose of an AF example at CDG with our tiny Cheyenne. The Pax was lead from our airplane up the stairs and off they went. (1989ish, I was a wet as a fish F/O then) Queing in Heathrow a few years later I couldn't hear my KingAirs engines for quite a while when the guys opened up and fired the cans. Fond memories and still the most graceful airplane I saw in my life.
I still use the opportunity to see the 2 examples at the museum at Le Bourget when there. Having seen a documentary on the first flights in Toulouse and Filton I had a trip to Filton a few days later and sitting in the air field ops Landrover was sort of a time travel.

We had the pleasure to have ex FE\xb4s and an ex Capt. as trainers at FlightSafety in Farnborough. Very nice blokes and I should add, very capable and knowledgable guys. One can see why they were on the sharp end.

Sorry that I cant ask a good question right now, just had to get my thanks off my chest!

TopBunk
Thanks very much for the info; totally blows my argument out of the water as far as a near V1 reject. (The Vr figure does not really matter so much; we aint going to be much braking there ).
I was repeating what we were told at the training school at Filton in the early '80s. OK, no 744s alive then but certainly 'Classics' around aplenty. (I'm sure the Classic's V1 figures are not going to be a mile away from the '400's). Perhaps more relevent is going to be the brake energy required for landing (average Concorde landing speed was around 160 KTS, how does that compare to the 744?).
Thank you again for the info TopBunk, and sorry for coming out with such bilge previously

Dude

Hi again Stilton. We really need one of the flying folk to answer this one fully, I am not sure what drill there was for this scenario, but I'm sure there was one. The Concorde flying manual had a drill for everything, from a four engine flame out at Mach 2 to a blocked toilet (ok, maybe not the loo thing ), and one of my winged friends EXWOK, Bellerophon, SEO Brit312 would remember one.
As far as your point about moving the CG further aft; you never had oodles of fuel to play with , and I'm sure that the guys will mention about handling the aircraft on approach with the CG too far aft. (After landing four tonnes of fuel were transferred from Tanks 5 & 7 into the empty fwd Trim Tank 9, 'to aid ground stability'. ie, help stop the aircraft from trying to sit on it's rear end as the passengers got off).
As far as your visor query goes, well the visor is either up, or retracted into the nose. The nose itself (which I suspect is what you are really referring to) would already be at the fully down 12 1/2 degree setting for landing anyway.
Oh, and back to the ground stability issue, was Concorde ever sat on it's tail by accident? Oh yes, just once to my knowledge. In May 1977, aircraft G-BOAA was returned to Filton for some modifications that were required, and part of these 'mods' was some improvements to the main trim-transfer pipes connecting the three trim transfer tanks 9, 10 & 11, as well as the trim tanks 5 & 7. Now the flow into tank 11 (the rear tank) had to be checked, but there was insufficient fuel at the front of the aircraft for stability. This shortcoming was passed on to the BAe manager in charge of everything, who stuffily refused to listen, and INSISTED that these transfer checks were carried out, 'do as I tell you, I am the manager here'. The man's sole concession to any sort of common sense was to allow a BAe employee to sit on the flight deck 'and watch the CG indicator', what the point of this was, well your guess is as good as mine. The name of the guy sitting on the flight deck was... John Thomas. (Hilarious I know, but true). So in goes the fuel, and in a very short period of time, John Thomas notices that the roof of the Filton assembly hangar seems to be slowly getting closer, and closer, and BANG!! The aircraft nose is high into the roof section of the hangar, but fortunately because the hangar is so huge, the nose did not hit anything, it was just stuck up there, complete with a very worried/terrified John Thomas who is sitting terrified in the captain's seat, staring at the hangar roof. The rear of the aircraft however was not so lucky. The right hand inner elevon came down on top of a hydraulic rig, damaging the elevon badly, as well as FLATTENING the rig. The opened #3 engine bay door came down on some large access steps, tearing the corner of the door. (not much left of the steps either). The rear fuselage, in the area of the hydraulic tanks, was holed quite badly by some access staging, entire spectacle coming to a very 'grinding' halt.
So now we have this Concorde G-BOAA, due to be returned to BA the following day, sat down on top of a lot of equipment, it's nose high in the air with a terrified John Thomas requiring a change of underwear. (The brilliant manager of course was nowhere to be seen). The aircraft was eventually returned to it's rightful attitude by someone WITH some sense instructing Mr Thomas on how to slowly, a little at a time, pump the fuel from Tank 11 forward into Tank 9.
And was OAA returned to BA the following day? errr no. The best skin repair man that BAe had to offer was sent from Weybridge to sort out the holes in the rear fuselage (he did an amazing job) and the crunched bits of aeroplane were repaired or replaced. OAA flew back to Heathrow four short (??) days later.

Dude

Whilst on the Concorde conversion course at Bristol, occasionally crews would have the privilege of meeting some of the original design engineers and draughtsmen who had worked on the Concorde project.

They were always fascinating to listen to, and provided an intriguing insight into a design world, now long gone, inhabited by engineers and draughtsmen armed with slide rules, drawing boards and blueprints. As ever, with people of real ability, they tended to talk more about their few failures rather than their many successes, often in the most amusing and self deprecating terms. It is their stories which really ought to be preserved, although it is not for us, even now, to relate some of their tales, told to us with a chuckle, but in strict confidence!

Suffice to say that the senior fire officer who misread litres-per-minute as gallons-per-minute during an Olympus water ingestion test probably would not want any further publicity, likewise the apprentice who didn\x92t defrost the chicken before firing it into an engine running at full power in the bird ingestion test. My favourite was the supersonic hailstone story, fired as part of a hailstone ingestion test, but with uncertain results, the final resting place of said hailstone still being slightly obscure to this day. If anyone in the greater Bristol area got hit by a particularly hard snowball in the early sixties, the Filton test engineers are very sorry, and would like to apologise!

However, it is often the little insights into the past that amuse one the most and stick in one\x92s mind. During one such conversation, with a couple of thermodynamicists, I ventured to ask how they had settled on the (rather difficult to memorise) various temperature limits associated with Concorde.

For instance, why a nose temperature limit of +127\xb0C, why not +130\xb0C, much easier for a pilot to remember?

\x93Isn\x92t it obvious?\x94 one replied politely, genuinely puzzled by my question.

\x93Computer generation\x94 replied his colleague to him, pointing his pipe stem at me.

\x93Ah yes\x94 said the first, \x93that would be it\x94.

They then went on to explain, in ever such a kindly manner, that, in thermodynamics, apparently the square, and the square root, of the absolute temperature of a material are terms used in many equations. Being armed mostly only with slide rules (and as they were in the vicinity of 120\xb0C to 130\xb0C as a limit anyway) it had been decided to make life easy and settle on +127\xb0C as the limit, a temperature for which they could easily calculate the square and square root in their heads.

Noticing my bewilderment at the thought that anyone might be able to calculate the square or the square root of 127 in their heads, they proceeded to explain it to me still further, very slowly; in the manner that one would speak to an aged and rather deaf great aunt!

\x95 Absolute zero = -273\xb0C = Zero Kelvin = 0K
\x95 Max Nose temp = +127\xb0C equal to 400K
\x95 √400 = 20
\x95 400\xb2 = 160,000.

These are the people with the amusing stories to tell!

Best Regards

Bellerophon

See post #328 for the rest of the story.
In "Concorde - The Inside Story" by Brian Trubshaw there is actually a photo of what is almost certainly the same incident.

But there is another story....

After the first-ever landing at Bahrain, a crowd of Very Important Persons was allowed to visit the aircraft.
Of course they had to see it all, including the rear cabin.
Since the aircraft hadn't been refuelled yet, the inevitable happened... the aircraft started slowly but inexorably tilting backwards.
A very undignified stampede towards the front resulted, just in time, so the aircraft did not actually sit on its tail.

But there was a sequel. The incident had been watched by the airport manager, who promptly decreed that from then on a tractor would have to be chained to the nose gear whenever the aircraft was on the ramp.

Urban legend has it, that from then on there was a new item in the pre-taxy checklist for Bahrain.

CHAIN REMOVED FROM NOSEWHEEL - CHECK

CJ

I don't think you'll be finding hydrazine on a pax-carrying aircraft anytime soon! And it wasn't an APU as such, but a source of power for non-normals potentially found in the flight test programme. M2D and ChristiaanJwill know far more.

The charter flights were different insofar as they often went to non-BA stations, so there was a bit more donkeywork to be done to get all the paperwork organised, but nothing a regular charter pilot won't be used to. Generally one would get a fuel plan/flight plan filed from Ops at LHR, but apart from LHR/JFK/BGI/IAD (and presumably MIA/BAH/SIN in earlier days) we produced our own loadsheet. I only once had to produce a fuel plan/route plan from scratch and that was at Sondrestrom (as it was) with a dodgy fax line. You'd have to file a flight plan occasionally.

We carried a ' PR ' on most of them - a line pilot or FE - to carry out a running PA and do general liaison. They were volunteered to do the loadsheet.

The atmosphere on board was very different - these were pleasure flights and so were the opposite of the JFK business run. Landlady may be able to elaborate on this.

The round-the-worlds were just a big charter in this respect. As you note we carried a 'flying spanner', since Concorde-qualified LAEs are hard to come by downroute. It looked like a great job on paper, but they were often at the airport for many hours before or after the sectors carrying out routine maintenance or dealing with snags.

I enjoyed the charters a lot - everyone was geared up for a good time and in general the flight had something different for us, too: Whether a lightweight departure on a 'round-the-bay', squeezing into a short runway (e.g. Bournemouth), visiting SFJ or Rovaniemi, or setting off around the world, predominantly to non-BA destinations. My favourites, though, were the RTBs out of Filton - EVERYONE was either connected to Conc development or manufacture, or was related to someone who was. Fantastic atmosphere. Shame the runway wasn't a bit longer........

Kangerlussuaq? Wow, that should have been awesome. Ronivaniemi flights were supersonic? I built and flew a EGLL-EFRO flightplan on the flight simulator once, supersonic along the Norwegian coast, descending and entering continent to reach Ronivaniemi from Northwest. According to my calcs, the difference to a subsonic-only trip using normal airways would be small, so that got me wondering how you actually did that.

Nice! So, by what I already read on this topic, you only worked with Concorde, right? But do you know if Concorde had the same issues as other airliners, or even for you guys "you're not (working) in an airplane, you're in Concorde" quote hold true?

For BA001 and BA003, 2 Concordes were prepared for the same flight, right? Did ever happened some situation that required a ready-for-takeoff Concorde be brought back? How long a cargo and passengers transfer would take? The backup Concorde was fueled?

Please, Landlady, that would an even bigger pleasure! Very interesting to read about Concorde from another point-of-view, much more human than Tons, Kgs, CG %, Celsius degrees, etc.

My long (eternal?) love affair with Concorde probably started, like with so many other people (at least those ancient enough to remember) on March 2nd 1969. I was at home at my mum's house on leave from the RAF, (I really was a funny hairy little 'erk') when the live TV coverage, in glorious black and white, showed the first prototype 001 taking to the air in Toulouse. Raymond Baxter's classic commentary understatement of 'she flies, Concorde flies', combined with the sight of this sleek white aircraft, trailing a cloud of thick black exhaust smoke, taking to the air for the first time. (The prototype aircraft in my view looked a little ungainly compared to the pre-production and production babies, and the -22R engines fitted to the original aircraft was a real coal burner). And as far as TV went, it was quite a year; While on night shift at RAF Lyneham I got to watch the live feed of the first Apollo moon landing too.
The next stage in my love affair was in 1970, when this same hairy little 'erk' heard this roar in the sky over Swindon while shopping and saw the British prototype 002 with its accompanying Canberra chase plane flying very low, straight over the top of Debenhams; my jaw dropped as I stared at this amazing (but rather loud) spectacle unfolding right in front of my eyes.
The die was cast I guess for me in 1972. I was on the ramp at RAF Lyneham, chatting to a visiting USAF C-141 crew. "do ya ever get 'the Concorde' flyin' anywhere near hear ?" asked one of the pilots. I was about to tell him that sometimes on occasion we get a brief glimpse, when the pre-production aircraft 101 flew straight over the top of us. Now these USAF guys just stood there in awe, their eyes popping out like organ stops, and I just figured that this amazingly on cue spectacle just had to be a sign. When I left the RAF two years later I joined BAC at Filton and Fairford engaged on the production and flight testing side of Concorde, leaving there for BA at the end of July 1977. (The story goes that I was delivered to BA a week after G-BOAE as part of a surplus, auxiliary spares package ).
So that's my personal Concorde love affair, it started in 1969 and continues to this day, forty one years later. GOD I AM OLD!!

Dude

My "Concorde Story" really started around April 1968.

I'd only just finished my aeronautical enginering studies and had already been sending CVs all over the place... when I received a letter from the French firm (SFENA) that was building the French half of the Concorde automatic flight control system, to meet them for an interview : they needed a "flight test support engineer" to take care of their equipment in the UK (Fairford and Filton).

"No experience needed".... since everything in Concorde was new anyway....
My engineering degree, which included a fair amount of electronics, was considered enough... I could learn the rest "on the job".
What clinched the deal at the time was that I was aleady pretty well bilingual Dutch/English, and spoke enough French to get by, whereas in those days most of the French engineers in the firm had very little if any English.

So Dec. 1st, 1968, I moved to Paris, after delivering wife and new-born daughter to mother-in-law in London.
Some nine months of intensive study followed, before my move to Fairford and my first encounter with Concorde 002.

During my "indoctrination", the firm thought it would be a good idea to at least have a personal look at what I was going to work on, and also meet my 'counterparts' at Toulouse I was to be in continuous contact with.
So, sometime end January 1969, only a few weeks before the first flight of 001, I first set eyes on a real Concorde, still buzzing with final preparations.
With all our stuff being in the "pointy end", that's where we went, of course, and I spent half an hour or so in the left hand seat getting familiar with the cockpit lay-out and "our" systems..... the same seat where Andr\xe9 Turcat would be sitting a few weeks later during the first flight.

After that came five years of Concorde at Fairford and Filton, until the development flight test support largely came to an end, and was taken over by our 'product support' department, and I returned to France.

In my case, I wouldn't yet have called it a "love affair" in those days, more an intensively satisfying job.
It was really not until afterwards, that I started to regard those "Concorde days" as the best time of my professional career, and that I started to realise she'd gotten "under my skin".

And I can call myself lucky.... I've "met" 002 again 35 years after last seeing her in the Fairford hangar.
And I've also sat again in that self-same left-hand seat on 001, more than 40 years after that first time.
And I've had the chance of flying once on Concorde, even if in the end she retired just before I did.

landlady is right. We were there, at the right time, and the right place.
I think that says it all.

CJ

1) How many fuel tanks werer there on Concorde? - Lots
2) How many seats were there? - 12, the rest were freight bays
3) At what approximate altitude and KNOTS EAS was Mach 2 achieved? - Very high and very fast but NOT very very fast
4) Only one BA Concorde had three different registrations, what was it? - The one that was made at Filton
5) What was the maximum permitted altitude in passenger service? - Feet, metres or FL?
6) How many wheels on the aircraft - Just enough
7) How many flying control modes were there? - Fast, very fast and very very fast
8) How many positions of nose droop were there? - With the STOP or without?
9) What was the first microprocessor application on the aircraft? - Pacman (wild guess)
10) How many main electrical sources were there? - Tomato and BBQ

So what do I win?

As promised here are the answers to our trivia quiz.
Actually there were 14 (but if you are not necessarily a Concorde person, 13 is acceptable). There were '13 fuel tanks, numbered 1 - 11' as we used to tell all the visitors to the aircraft, (The wingtip tanks 5A & 7A making up the extra 2) PLUS a single small scavenge tank at the rear of the aircraft that was used to remove fuel from the vent lines and return this fuel via a transfer pump back to tank 3. (A fuel level sensor would trigger the pump with only 1 US Gallon of fuel in the tank). If the trim gallery became over-pressurised (ie tank 3 already full to the brim) an overflow relief valve (ORV) underneath the rear of the aircraft would open and dump the contents of the tank overboard. There was a flight deck indication if the scavenge pump was running in flight to give the crew an indication that a tank somewhere was probably over-filling and to take the appropriate action. There was one added goody about the ORV; If you were on the ground with the refuel door open and due to a refuelling overfill anywhere, fuel entered the scavenge tank, at 7 gallons the ORV would open and rapidly dump the fuel on the floor. For this reason a vent pipe and fuel drum was often placed underneath the ORV during high load refuels. If this was not fitted and you just happened to walk underneath the aircraft at the wrong moment during fuelling........
As a total aside to all this (or me going off on a tangent yet again) the fuel tanks themselves were gently air pressurised above 44,000' to around 2.2 PSIA. This was to prevent the beginnings of any boiling of the fuel in the tanks, due to the low ambient pressure/high fuel temperatures, causing pump cavitation. (Boiling itself could not occur much below 65,000'). A small NACA duct at the right side of the fin was used to supply the ram air for tank pressurisation, the two vent valves in the tail cone, one per trim gallery, closing off automatically at around 44,000', the pressure being controlled by a pneumatic valve, with full automatic over-pressure protection. OK sorry guys and gals, back to the answers:
This is the stinker.... there were 114 (although at entry into service there were 115!!). 100 passenger seats + 6 cabin crew seats + 5 flight deck seats (including the fold up seat in the aisle at the rear) PLUS 3 LOO SEATS (Originally 4 loos, the fourth loo being removed in the early 1980's).
50,189' and 530 KEAS, but we'll settle for anything around FL500 being correct.
Aircraft 216, G-BOAF, the last Concorde ever built. When 216 first flew in 1979 she was a variant 192 'British Unsold Aircraft' and was registered as G-BFKX. In late 1979, BA purchased the aircraft and it was subsequently converted to a Type 102 British Airways variant, and after modifications were complete, test flights were carried out from Filton under the registration of G-N94AF. This registration was to enable the aircraft to participate in the Braniff interchange between IAD and DFW, but when the Braniff Concorde adventure unfortunately ended in 1980, she was again re-registered to G-BOAF, this is how she was delivered to BA later that year.
Easy one this I hope; 60.000'. (As we've said before this limitation was imposed because of the dual window failure / emergency descent time consideration, not as a performance issue. On test flights 63,000' was routinely attained, and altitudes of up to 68,000' were achieved during development flying. (On her maiden flight, G-BOAB achieved 65,000' and Mach 2.04; the first British constructed Concorde to achieve Mach 2 on her maiden flight, and the ONLY one of the original five BA aircraft to achieve this).
Hopefully an easy one... there were TWELVE: 2 nose wheels, 8 main wheels and 2 tail wheels. (No, even I'm not nasty enough to include the wheels on the bar trolleys ). Oh, and there were 9 wheel brakes, one for each main wheel and as was mentioned in a previous post, a single steel disc brake for the nose wheels (the nose having a live axle), for automatic use during gear retraction only.
Three modes; Blue electronic signalling, green electronic signalling and mechanical signalling. I suppose we COULD be pedantic here and include the Emergency Flight Control mode where even with a jammed control column/control wheel, strain gauges (and Safety Flight Control Computers of course) would still enable you to control the elevons.
OK, three basically. Up (Duh!), 5 degrees for taxi/take off and low speed flight and 12.5 degrees for landing. As ChristiaanJ quite rightly pointed out in an earlier post, the prototype (and pre-production) aircraft landing position was 17.5 degrees of droop. (In my view the nose of the aircraft looked a little like an armadillo in this extreme configuration).
In 1977 the new digital Plessey PVS 1580 Aircraft Integrated Data System was progressively fitted to the BA fleet, this being the first microprocessor application on Concorde, this application being followed in several other systems during the life of the aircraft. The 'final' applications being TCAS and the superb retrofitted Bendix RDR-4A weather radar system.
No we are not including torch batteries and emergency lights etc. There were a total of seven main power sources: 4 x 60KVA AC generators, one per engine, a single 40KVA hydraulically powered emergency generator and 2 lead acid (or ni-cad in the case of G-BOAG) main aircraft batteries. (Not a terribly Re-Volting question I hope).

I hope this quiz was fun and not too perplexing to any of you guys.

Dude

Hi everyone
Earlier in this thread there was an interesting discussion on emergency depressurisation. During the rapid descent I would guess that the FE would be very busy find out "what was what" etc.

So I have been wondering if there were any special procedures for managing the CofG in a rapid descent especially as there could also be many other factors needing the crews attention?

BTW it only seems like yesterday when I was sat in front of my parents TV watching Concorde take off for the first time from Filton and in fact it's now nearly 42 years ago. I like most people watched the event in black and white which just goes to prove how far ahead of her time she was.
Regards
Nick