Posts about: "G-AXDN" [Posts: 22 Pages: 2]

Just scanned this off the Concorde 01 (G-AXDN) Flight Manual, and cropped as much as possible.

Biggles78,

Re your questions about the CofG, this diagram should help you to visualise the CofG "corridor".



It's the one for G-AXDN (01) but the production one is closely similar.

To make some more sense of this.... all those percentages quoted are in terms of the "wing root reference chord".
Mentally cut the wing off the fuselage and measure the length of the cut (including the elevons)..
That's the "root reference chord", and it's 27,76 m.
To give you another reference point: the main gear attachment point is located at 57% ""root reference chord".
So any CofG beyond 57% on the ground, and you have yourself a tailsitter (it's happened)..

MEMORIES
Like so many in the Concorde family, I have millions, I'd like to share a couple here. I remember at Fairford in mid 1974, a CAA test pilot (I honestly forget the gentleman's name) was taking the British pre-production A/C 101 (G-AXDN) for a special test flight. The reason that this flight was so special was that for the first time, the CAA were going to do an acceptance flight trial of the brand new digital air intake system. This revolutionary system had been retro fitted to 101 barely a year earlier, and being a brand new (and totally unique, in electronics terms) system had been plagued with teething troubles. It was quite reasonable for any airworthiness authority to have serious misgivings about any system that was going to wave great big metal lumps around in front of the engine compressor face, and that if only a few degrees out from the commanded position out could cause the engine to 'backfire' etc.
So anyway, 101 took off and disappeared into the very blue sky and we waited, and waited, AND WAITED. (I'd only left the RAF and joined the project a few months previously, and did not want my new association with this amazing aircraft to end). I was biting my nails, drinking coffee, losing my hair... (without the help of M2V ). Anyway after about 2 1/2 hours the aircraft returned to Fairford, and everybody crowds around the crew for the debrief. A very stern faced CAA pilot looked at us all, broke into a grin and said "as far as I'm concerned gentlemen, you've got yourselves an airliner". At that point the room was a study of total happiness, blessed relief, and a need to go to the loo..... But from my point of view, I will remember those words forever.
101, which now resides at the Imperial War Museum Duxford was the fastest Concorde ever. She achieved Mach 2.23, which was an incredible irony, as Concorde can trace a large part of it's developement history back to the BAC 223, proposed SST.
As far as flying memories go, I just don't know where to start; My first ever Concorde flight was in November 1976, out of Fairford on a pre-delivery test flight on G-BOAD. (Now sadly bobbing up and down on the Hudson, next to the USS Intrepid). I was staggered how fast and high we flew (Mach 2.08, FL580). Most of my flying up to that date had been in C-130's in the RAF, at around 340 KTS and FL300; Concorde also being infinately quiter in flight than the good old Herc'. I remember a BA QA guy showing me how I could touch the skin of the aircraft at Mach 2 (You reached behind a door busstle flap, moved your hand through some insulation until you felt bare metal). OUCH!! it was hot, very hot.
But I think one of my most memorable flight memories was aboard G-BOAG, (now residing in the Boeing Museum of Flight in Seattle) returning from BKK, having stopped off to refuel in BAH. We were forced to fly subsonic over Saudi, and got caught in this amazing electrical storm, There was St Elmo's fire cracking and bubbling all over the visor panels, but just as incredible was the long blue electrical discharge coming off of the nose probe; it seemed to extend about 50' in front of the aircraft. The crime was, none of us on the F/D had a camera. Every time I bump into the captain on that day (are you reading this Ian?), we go back to remonissing about that incredible flight. Also, later on the same sector, after we had decelerated to subsonic cruise again, this time flying up the Adriatic, we had another fascinating sight: It was getting quite dark now, and here we were, travelling at Mach 0.95 at FL290, when above us was all this Mach 0.8 ish traffic at around FL330-350. All we could see were all these navigation and ant-coll' lights above us, seemingly travelling backwards. It was quite a sight. On the original BAH-BKK sector a week earlier, we flew through some of the coldest air I'd ever seen; The air was at ISA -25, and at Mach 2 our TAT was only about 85 deg's C. (You could feel the difference too; the cabin windows felt only warm-ish to the touch). The upside also of all this was that your fuel burn was much lower than usual. (The only downside of course is that your TAS is a little lower). Rolls Royce did some analysis on the flight, and were amazed at how well the propulsion systems coped with some of the temperature sheers that we encountered, sometimes 4 to 5 deg's/second. They said that the prototype AFCS had been defeated by rises of only 0.25 deg's/second ).
Not meaning to go off onto a (yet another) tangent; Negative temperature shears, very common at lower lattidudes, always plagued the development aircraft; you would suddenly accelerate, and in the case of a severe shear, would accelerate and accelerate!! (Your Mach number, quite naturaly, suddenly increased with the falling temperature of course, but because of the powerplant suddenly hitting an area of hyper-efficiencey, the A/C would physically accelerate rapidly, way beyond Mmo). Many modifications were tried to mitigate the effects of severe shears, in the end a clever change to the intake control unit software fixed it. (Thanks to this change the production series A/C would not be capable of level flight Mach numbers of any more than Mach 2.13, remembering that Mmo was set at 2.04).
There was one lovely story, involving the Shah of Iran, having one of MANY flights in a developmment aircraft. The aircraft encounterd quite a hefty series of temperature shears that plagued havoc with some Iranian F4's that were attempting to close on the Concorde, to act as an escort for the Shah. (or so the strory goes). I'm still trying to picture these F4's, on full afterburner trying to get close to a Concorde cruising away on dry power). It is said that the F4's were having such difficulties, due to their relatively crude powerplant, coping with the temperature changes, that the Concorde was ordered to slow down, 'so the escorting F4's could catch up'!! True or not, it is part of Concorde folklore.

Dude

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'.

Something I think I hinted at before, was how much the two Concorde prototypes differed from the aircraft that followed, even from the pre-production aircraft.

Wherever you look... the cockpit, the visor, the engines, the tail, the avionics, other systems... the prototypes were a first "iteration", designed and built to prove the concept.

The real development was done on what were the real "development aircraft", the pre-production and first two production aircraft (even if 01 / G-AXDN was a bit of a hybrid, retaining the short tail and the early engine nozzles).

I hope sometime the story; of how different were 001 and 002 from those that followed, will go on record before it fades into the mists of time.

CJ

Humble SLF here, hope it is ok to have a stab at the questions, mods please feel free to delete if necessary.

1) How many Concorde airframes were built?

22, 20 that flew and 2 test frames

2) As far as the British constructed aircraft went, name the destinations that were served?. Regular flight numbers only, excludes charters etc.

New York, Washington, Miami, Barbados, Toronto, Bahrain and Singapore, no British registered aircraft ever operated to or form Dallas, should not forget BAs most popular destination of all time-London


3) What was the departure time for the ORIGINAL morning LHR-JFK Concorde services? (Not called the BA001 then either).

0930-Local

4) Further to question 3 above, what WERE the original flight numbers for the BA001 and BA003? (The morning and evening LHR-JFK services?).

193 & 195 respectiveley

5) There were no less than FORTY SIX fuel pumps on Concorde. What was the breakdown for these? (Clue; don't forget the scavange pump ).

Pass


6) What was the only development airframe to have a TOTALLY unique shape?

101, G-AXDN


7) This one is particularly aimed at ChristiaanJ. What was the total number of gyros on the aircraft?

pass


8) How many wheel brakes?

8


9) What Mach number was automatic engine variable intake control enabled?

1.3


10) Above each bank of engine instruments were three lights, a blue, a green and an amber. What did they each signify?

Not sure here, best guess -green was part of the take-off moniter -red failure-blue reverse

11) At what airfied were the first BA crew base training details held?

Prestwick, shannon, and one in France


12) What LHR runways did Concorde use for landing and take-off? (Trick question, not as obvious as it might seem).

28L , 28R, 27L, 27R, 9L, 9R 10L 10R, 23

13) What operator had serious plans to operate Concorde from SNN to JFK in the early 1980's?

Fed-ex


14) What development aircraft did not exceed Mach 2 until fifteen months after her maiden flight?

214? G-BFKW

OK, I see others have already posted answers.
I've carefully avoided looking at them, but I'll might as well plug in mine now.

My personal problem is that I was involved in the very earliest days, before the aircraft went into service, and then in the last days and afterwards...
So the questions dealing with the in-service period are totally outside my field of experience... all I can do is guess, in case I saw the answers somewhere.

1) How many Concorde airframes were built?
Twenty-two.
Two static-test airframes.
- One at Toulouse, for purely static tests, and tests such as vibration and flutter.
- One at Farnborough, for the long-duration thermal fatigue tests.
(A few bits and pieces of the Farnborough test specimen have survived, and can still be seen at the Brooklands museum).
Two prototypes (001 and 002)
Two pre-production aircraft (01 and 02)
Two production aircraft used for certification, that never entered service (201 - F-WTSB and 202 - G-BBDG)
Fourteen production aircraft, seven that served with British Airways, seven that served with Air France.

2) As far as the British constructed aircraft went, name the destinations that were served?. Regular flight numbers only, excludes charters etc.
Not a clue as to the full list.
- Bahrain, obviously.
- JFK.
- IAD (not sure if that's rated as regular, or only incidental)
- Dallas (with Braniff)
- Barbados (of course, right until the end)
- Sngapore (with Singapore Airlines, and G-BOAD in Singapore Airlines colours on one side)
- Sydney (again no idea if that rated as a regular flight or only a few tries)

3) What was the departure time for the ORIGINAL morning LHR-JFK Concorde services? (Not called the BA001 then either).
Not a clue either. Vague memory of about 10:00 am which gave you a full working day in New York.

4) Further to question 3 above, what WERE the original flight numbers for the BA001 and BA003? (The morning and evening LHR-JFK services?)..
Never flew on them, never had to deal with them.
BA174 comes to mind from the depths of my memory, in that case BA003 would have been BA176?

5) There were no less than FORTY SIX fuel pumps on Concorde. What was the breakdown for these? (Clue; don't forget the scavenge pump )
M2dude, I did AFCS, not the fuel system. I believe you, but without pulling out some diagrams I honestly have NO idea.
I expect each tank had at least two pumps, which gets me up to 26.
Then there were a few emergency pumps for the trim tanks, and I suppose each engine had additional pumps associated with it.
Still nowhere near the 46 I need to find.....

6) What airframe had the only TOTALLY unique shape?
That would have been my old friend, 01 (G-AXDN), first pre-production aircraft, now at Duxford.
It was the first Concorde with the new transparent visor, but it still had the short tail that characterised the prototypes.
It was 02 (F-WTSA), the first French pre-production aircraft, that was close to the final shape of the production aircraft.

7) This one is particularly aimed at ChristiaanJ. What was the total number of gyros on the aircraft?
Good question.... never counted them all. But I'll try a guess.
First a nice one, the SFENA Emergency Standby Artificial Horizon (made by the firm I worked for).
Ran off the Emergency Battery Bus via a small independent inverter.
And if that failed too, it would still run reliably for several minutes on its own inertia.
Next, the rate gyros used by the autostabilisation system ; these measured the angular rate of the aircraft along the three main axes, pitch, roll and yaw.
There were six, three each for the two autostab systems.
Now the rest....
Each IMU (inertial measurement unit, part of the inertial naviagation system) had three gyros.
With three INS on board, that would make nine.
Much as I try, I can't remember other ones, so I'll look forward to the final answer.
I can imagine the weather radar using an additional gyro for stabilisation, but I never went there.

8) How many wheel brakes?
Unless this is a trick question, I would say eight, for each of the main gear wheels.
The nose gear did not have any brakes - unless there were some small ones to stop the wheels rotating after retraction of the gear, but not used during landing.

9) What Mach number was automatic engine variable intake control enabled?
No idea.
Mach 1.0 or thereabouts is my personal guess only.

10) Above each bank of engine instruments were three lights, a blue, a green and an amber. What did they each signify?
I know that they each monitored the status of one of the engines, because it was too complex for the pilots to fully monitor all the parameters of all four engines in the short time between start-of-roll and V1... they had too many other things to do.
But I don't remember what each light meant, would have to look it up in the manual.

11) At what airfied were the first BA crew base training details held?
No idea.
Was it Brize Norton, or Casablanca?

12) What LHR runways did Concorde use for landing and take-off? (Trick question, not as obvious as it might seem).
No idea.
Vague memory of it being systematically the North runway for noise issues.

13) What operator had serious plans to operate Concorde from SNN to JFK in the early 1980's?
No idea.

14) What development aircraft did not exceed Mach 2 until fifteen months after her maiden flight?
I would expect the obvious answer to be 002.
Working up from first flight to Mach 2 was a slow and laborious process, and in the end it was 001 that both flew first, and also went to Mach 2 first.
I don't think any of the other aircraft took that long.

A I said, I tried to answer all questions "off the top of my head", without looking at any other sources.

CJ

OK guys, here are the answers. If you disagree about any of them then fire away, the old memory certainly 'aint perfect.
As many of you have guessed, there were 22: The 14 production airframes, the 2 production series development aircraft (201 & 202), the 2 pre-production airframes (101 & 102) and the 2 prototypes 001 & 002. PLUS, the major fatigue test specimen at the RAE Farnborough and the static test specimen at CEAT in Toulouse. The CEAT tests actually tested the wing to destruction; I seem to remember it was something like a 200% overload before the wing failed at the root. And great but rather sad pictures VOLUME , never seen these before.
OK, from MY memory , we have: London LHR (duhhh!!), Bahrein BAH, Singapore SIN, New York JFK, Washington IAD, Dallas DFW, Miami MIA, Toronto YYZ, Barbados BGI, and Riyadh RUH. As well as charters being ommited, so are some of the special 'surprise' shuttle appearances that Concorde would make, substituting a subsonic to and from destinations such as Manchester and Edinburgh.
11:15
The BA193 and BA 195.
OK, there were 12 engine feed pumps (3 per engine) 8 main transfer tank pumps (2 each for the transfer tanks 5, 6, 7 & 8), 4 'A' tank pumps (2 each for 5A & 7A), 8 trim-transfer tank pumps (2 electric pumps each for tanks 9, 10 & 11 PLUS 2 hydraulically driven pumps for tank 9), 4 electric engine start pumps (there was a single electric start pump per engine that delivered fuel to it's own dedicated start atomiser in the combustion chamber. The pump automatically ran when the engine HP valve was set to OPEN and would continue running for 30 seconds after the DEBOW switch was returned to the 'normal' position), 4 engine first stage pumps (a single mechanically driven pump per engine), 4 second stage pumps (a single pneumatically driven pump, sometimes termed 'the turbopump, per engine. This would cut out at around 20,000'), our scavenge tank pump (triggered automatically when there was 7 US gallons in the tank; pumping it back into tank 2. This pump was identical to an 'A' tank transfer pump), and FINALLY, a single de-air pump for tank 10. The pump would drive the fuel through a mesh, removing air bubbles from the fuel. Tank 11 used the L/H trim pump for de-air (similar principle)and would be switched on during take-off. This is why the tank 5 trim inlet valve being set to over-ride OPEN would result in the tank being highly pressurised in the case of the Gonesse disaster; the pump would obviously pressurise the L/H trim gallery and any tank on that side with an open inlet valve!!!
G-AXDN, aircraft 101. (A production wing, fuselage, droop nose and intakes, but with the short tail section and secondary nozzles of the prototypes.
Ready ChristiaanJ? There were 18....Yes, the single SFENA standby horizon, 9 INS gyros (one per X,Y and Z platform in each of the 3 INUs), 8 autostab' rate gyros (one per axis for each of the 2 autostab' computers PLUS a monitor gyro for the pitch axis). The radar by the way used attitude signals from the INS.
9. One per main wheel plus the single 'in flight braking' nose wheel brake.
Mach 0.7!!! Between this and Mach 1.26 the intake surfaces were positioned as a function of engine N1 if the engine was shut down for any reason. (Otherwise of course the intake surfaces were fully up). You needed a sub idle N1 of 57% and below for all this to happen, and it was to assist relight performance and reduce buffet. Between Mach 1.26 and 1.32 the ramps were driven down slightly to about 5%, full supersonic scheduling itself commencing at Mach 1.32.
Already brilliantly answered by Brit312 (as well as the FSLabs diagram). Yep, Geen GO, T/O monitor armed, fuel flow and P7 at or above datum, A/C on ground, reverse not selected and CON light not on. Amber CON (Reheat selected and not detected, N1 OK or reverse selected and primary nozzle (Aj) not at minimum. Blue REV; steady buckets at reverse, flashing buckets in transit.
Fairford, followed by Brize Norton, and then a host of airfields from Prestwick and Shannon to Chateauroux.
OK, probably no surprises now:
Landing - 27L & R, 9L & R (prior to LHR mag' deviation update were 28L & R & 10L & R) together with 23/05.
Take off - 27L (28L), 9R (10R) and 9L. (10L never happened as take offs on this runway only occurred in 2003).
It was FedEx, they planned to operate two stripped out aircraft, leased from BA, between Shannon and JFK as high value parcel carriers. The idea was that parcels would be flown in from all over Europe by small FedEx feeder aircraft and the parcels transferred to Concorde which would then speed on to JFK in around 2 1/2 hours. It never happened because of a combination of economics appraisal by FedEx and BA deciding that it could would not release the aircraft anyway.
A/C 101, G-AXDN first flew on 17th December 1971 with FIXED INTAKES!! (101 was going to be the launch vehicle for the new digital intake control system, but the 'boxes' were still being designed). This placed an operating limit of Mach 1.5 on the aircraft, limiting her ability with such a restricted flight envelope. She returned to Filton in late 1972 for installation of the system, as well as the new Olympus 593-602 engine. (The engine, very similar to the production Mk 610 version, used a quite revolutionary annular combustion chamber, and eliminated at a stroke the thick smoke exhaust that had up to then been Concorde's unwanted visual signiture). The aircraft flew more or less smokeless on 15 March 1973, achieving Mach 2 soon afterwards. As ChristiaanJ pointed out, the British prototype 002 had a similar gap, actually significantly higher, of 19 months. (The French aircraft 001 had an even longer gap of some 20 months).

I hope you guys had fun with this one, regards to all

Dude

Only the two prototypes had the airstairs. Even preproduction aircraft 01 (G-AXDN) already had the same door arrangement as the production aircraft. Also the airstairs were in the tail section, without any wing structure at that location.
I had to pull out my copies of the "blueprints".....

The picture on 'heritageconcorde' is a good find!

If you look at the perspective drawing bottom right, you're basically looking at the volume of fuel tank n\xb0 6 (which is located under-floor just to the rear of the main landing gear bay) with the floor on top and the sloped area leading into the main landing gear bay in front ; the rear wall of the landing gear bay is in the plane of fuselage frame n\xb0 60 (see the side view at the top of the picture).

The "system routing" would therefore simply refer to the various 'underfloor' services routed to the landing gear.
There was a lot of stuff passing right under your feet in Concorde!

One problem with your photo..... there is no door anywhere looking rearward from frame n\xb0 60, neither on the prototypes, nor on any of the other aircraft.

However.... the forward wall of the landing gear bay is in the plane of fuselage frame n\xb0 54. And the blueprints show the same type of 'sloped area' at that location, this time making an 'indentation' in tank n\xb0 8, which is just forward of the landing gear bay.
And yes, on the prototypes, counting about 6 windows to the front, there is one of the two emergency exits (which were replaced by the mid-cabin passenger and service doors on all the later Concordes).

So the section on your photo was cut roughly at frame n\xb0 54, and the photo looks forward into the cabin.

I hope this helps?

Unfortunately I do not have a flatbed scanner, and all the drawings I have are larger than A4. But I'll see what I can do... a picture always says more than a thousand words.

CJ

howiehowie93
Welcome aboard and thank you for your kind words; I am so glad you enjoy our thread. You are in good company here also, many of the 'more mature' vintage Concorde people (like me) are ex-RAF. (And some of the pilots were ex-RN also, but no one is perfect ... only joking guys).
It is a matter of pride/embarrassment for me that up to the end of 2003, I'd only ever really 'known' two aircraft; the C-130 and Concorde .
I was really interested in some of the RB199/Olympus similarities; TBP was tried on the development aircraft for engine control TET calculation, but Rolls-Royce were unhappy with the performance and abandoned TBP in favour of indirectly computing TET as a function of T1 (intake TAT) and EGT (T7). (And this meant the removal of the four TBP amplifiers too... we had even more black boxes then.
As for the three 'control amps' you were speaking of, I'm 99% sure that A/C 101, G-AXDN still does have the units you described fitted. The ECUs (or ECAs as they were sometimes called) were a highly complex analog control unit built by Ultra Electronics. They could be quite a headache sometimes in terms of reliability, but would generally perform flawlessly in terms of engine control. As with any analog box, control law changes in the field were not too straightforward and a soldering iron was the flight test engineers best friend here. The Reheat Amp was built by ELECMA (the electronics arm of SNECMA) and unlike some of the other components in the reheat system, was a beautifully designed and constructed unit. Very few reheat failures (and there were many) were attributed to the 'box' itself. The main fragility with the reheat system was the ignition system used (a 20 KV swirl ignitor, which you will see is covered previously in the thread). We (BA/RR) were seriously looking at one point of investigatng the use of 'hot streak' injection as a backup ignition source, which I believe was used in the 199 (?), but it unfortunately never happened. The Plessey DECU that was tried on A/C 202 (G-BBDG) DID combine main engine control and reheat, but unfortunately was never taken up for the production A/C, and so we were left withe the '3 AMPS' as you so eloquently describe. We had a total of THIRTY ONE control units associated with powerplant control on Concorde; might be a little different now methinks ]
Thanks for some of the fascinating engine history snippets you shared with us, although purists might regard it as being 'off topic' I personally think this rather unique thread is all the better for your contribution here,
I think it is great that you are working with industrial Olympuses, all part of the family tree. I will dig out the verboten sustained N1 speed band for the 593, it certainly WAS a fact though.
Thanks from all of us for your contribution here Howie, keep on posting.

Regards
Dude

Nick Thomas
Jeepers Nick, I must have about a million, but I'd like to share a few here. (Some of them I have prattled on about before in this thread, so I apologise for any repetitions).I suppose my very FIRST Concorde image would have to be in Swindon in 1970, when I was this young RAF 'erk' at nearby RAF Lyneham; I heard this loud roar in the sky over what is now Debenhams, and looked up and saw for the very first time Concorde 002, along with her attendant Canberra chase plane.
My next memorable image was at Fairford in the summer 1974. (No longer a young RAF erk, but a still fairly young lad now working for BAC). I'd seen quite a few spectacular take-offs in my short time at BAC, but A/C 101 (G-AXDN) was being flown by a French DGAC pilot (I forget the gentleman's name I'm afraid) and did the most amazing of take-offs. It was the clearest of blue summer skies, and this guy rotated 101 and just climbed steeply into the Gloucestershire sky, and climbed and climbed until she was virtually out of view; truly memorable.
Another image that I will never forget is the view of Concorde taking off from JFK RW31L, viewed from the right side of the runway sat in a truck (I did this dozens of times and never tired of watching the spectacle). It always amazed me how ANY airliner could turn and climb that amazing fashion, and would try and keep her in view as she did an almost complete circuit around JFK. (But I found the view from the aircraft, when seated in the supernumerary seat just behind the captain even more amazing. You'd looked out of the rear L/H window and see nothing but the water of Jamaica Bay going by, very fast and VERY close).
Another GREAT image was in 1995; on a special test flight on-board G-BOAD out of LHR. I was sat on the flight deck with the three guys (just us four on the whole aeroplane) and we were positioned just aft and to the left of the BA189 Concorde service to IAD. We started the supersonic acceleration together, but as we peeled off south for our extensive test flight, the BA189 (can't remember for the life of me the registration) just seemed to streak ahead just like the Starship Enterprise, and was out of sight completely quite soon after that.
And I shall never forget the very sad view of the last ever Concorde take-off, watching from the side of Heathrow RW 27R in November 2003. OAF took off with all her usual grace, but symbolically just disappeared into the overcast, dark and gloomy sky. My own final personal image after 33 years of watching Concorde is that the aviation world, just like that November sky, is a far gloomier place without her.

Best regards
Dude

quote:I remember at Fairford in mid 1974, a CAA test pilot (I honestly forget the gentleman's name) was taking the British pre-production A/C 101 (G-AXDN) for a special test flight.unquote

It was almost certainly Gordon Corps, possibly the finest 'engineering' test pilot I have ever worked with. After Concorde certification Gordon went to work at Toulouse wher he did most of the development flying that led to the A320 FBW system. BZ was the public 'face' of the design, but knowing the two men I have a very shrewd idea as to who did the original thinking! Perhaps Andy could confirm?

Tragically Gordon died young whilst trekking to an A300 crash site somewhere in the Himalayas

ClivL

There's often so much so deeply buried in our memories, that we don't even know about it anymore until something, like an image, brings it all back in a flash.
To most people, a Concorde cockpit is just a bewildering array of 'clocks' and other bits.
People like Bellerophon and Exwok read it all in seconds.
Even an ancient like me, seeing a cockpit photo, instantly recognises a museum photo, because of the toppled emergency horizon, or because of the odd bits and pieces we used on the autopilot controller on G-AXDN (01).

Yes, two women. One in France, one in Britain.
Unless you also include Jacqueline Auriol, probably the world's first female test pilot, who flew Concorde 001 in the earliest days.

Maybe, and maybe not.
Speaking for myself, no, it's not a void, it's a highlight, that I now like passing on, in the hope other generations will find inspiration in the 'Concorde Story' for their own endeavours.

Christian

In earlier posts we were talking about the complex shape of the wing.

Looking through my 'archive', I've finally found this photo again... been looking for it for ages.



Kinky .... !!


Found on the net a few years ago. It's either 002 (G-BSST) or 01 (G-AXDN) at Fairford.

All Concordes have this 'kink', but the interesting thing is, that it's only visible from one very precise spot in line with with the wing leading edge. A few metres to the left or right, or forward or back, and the 'kink' disappears.
Many people are not even aware it exists.

Happy 2011 to all !

CJ

The clincher being that 002 carries the legend "SUD AVIATION FRANCE", whereas G-AXDN carries "AEROSPATIALE FRANCE".

Happy New Year, all!

OK Hercule

CliveL

CliveL , DozyWannabee ,
It's always fun doing a bit of 'aero-archaeology'.... isn't it?

You're both right.
At the roll-out, 01 was already marked "AEROSPATIALE", and the tracking camera 'target' was already painted on the right-hand side (but not on the left!).
So the earlier photo in question is definitely 002.

I recently re-scanned my ancient 'Filton' photos... only black-and-white, but maybe worth adding them to the 'records'.


G-AXDN being moved out of the hangar.
Interestingly, no tracking camera target on the left-hand side.... it must have been added very soon after, because I have a photo from a few weeks later, where it's in place on both sides.




Roll-out or not, G-AXDN still wasn't quite finished... three of the four engine nozzles/thrust reversers are still missing and replaced provisionally by 'space frames'.




This one again confirms the "AEROSPATIALE" marking. Also, somebody hadn't gotten round to painting the tail cone yet....



CJ


Oh, and a PS....

Another 'kinky' photo, this one of 001 when still outside the Le Bourget museum.



(Photo from the ConcordeSST.com site).

Interestingly, the 'concordesst' site has a photograph of G-AXDN under construction and I would think about 2 weeks from rollout where "British Aircraft Corporation" has been painted on but there is a big gap where "Sud Aviation/ Aerospatiale" should be. This would be in November/early December 1971 I think. Just maybe this was the time when the new French company were making up their mind how they would like to be known. I know they didn't like the simple use of company initials - Societe Nationale Industrie Aerospatiale if I remember correctly and one must admit that Aerospatiale sounds a whole lot nicer than SNIAS! Maybe Christiaan could comment?

CliveL

I don't normally frequent this part of PPRuNe but it has been suggested to me that I should post this image of mine of Concorde G-AXDN in AirSpace at Duxford - 08Jan11


Brian

G-AXDN and G-BBDG in the UK have the 3 INS controllers across the front of the pedestal under the primary engineer gauges. I can only suggest that this was dow to the Pilots being the navigators and the engineer being the engineer. Once in Airline service ensuring each crew member has an INS control panel greatly speeded up the checks. Of note 001/002 actually had a navigator in the cockpit behind the Captain, rather than the jump seat.

Standard spec INS systems for that time. Someone may have more information, but they were upgraded over time to having very little memory requiring load from a data card, to having memory for the core routes the aircraft flew in the system permanently, but still only 10 Waypoints could be loaded live at any one time.


GPS would been a complete replacement for an INS. The clever thing the INS system could do was use DME updating to refine their position when in range of a ground station....a bit like how your smart phone can work out your location by cell mast triangulation if it does not have a GPS receiver in it.

Very relevant for the current time: it was a similar INS system that was hashed into the Vulcan to allow it to find the falklands for the blackbuck raids.