Posts about: "JFK" [Posts: 82 Pages: 5]

For spfoster:

You've pretty much worked HLI out. No particular special requirements, it was normally associated with 54% CG departures, since that was the norm with high fuel loads.

Contacts were bridged which allowed some of the tanks to operate at a higher level before shut-off. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But it was a pain in the a***.

The tanks were first filled to normal level (this got tank 11 filled) then a metered amount was uplifted with the bridges in place to those tanks with HLI (M2dude will remind me which they were.....I'm guessing 5,6,7,8 and maybe 9&10?????). It could take ages.

It was invariably followed by a taxy with a Pre Take Off Burn Off to get the CG to its correct position, so you now had the problem that you had to burn enough fuel from tanks 1-4 to allow them to be topped up by tanks 5 & 7 to the extent that 5 & 7 could accept fuel from tank 11 to bring the CG fwd to 54%. Because they were so full it could take ages to get 5 & 7 to accept fuel and then any bump or turn would shut them off. So overall you've filled the tanks, presumably because you need the fuel, but because you've done this you have to burn loads of fuel taxying while you get the CG sorted out.

As you guess, it was mainly a LHR-BGI thing, or a JFK with weather problems, and more often than not you gained very little.

That was obviously a personal memory... so it did happen!

CJ

PS I was just reading all the other comments from that BBC link.... Sad.

OK, here is a photo that I took at Fairford in November 1976. I'd just had my very first Concorde flight on a brand new G-BOAD, and took this flight deck photo in the hangar later that afternoon (the doors are open hence the late afternoon Cotswold sky. The point of this rather poor (sorry guys, I was young for goodness sake) photo is to look at just how subtly different the 1976 flight deck WAS.



The first thing I know EXWOK and BELLEROPHON will (maybe) notice is that originally OAD had a 'normal colour' electroluminescent light plate on the visor indication panel. (If I remember rightly (it was a million years ago chaps) when this one 'stopped lighting' we could not get a replacement and had to rob 202 (G-BBDG) at Filton; this one being the same black development aircraft colour that OAD has to this day.
The OTHER first thing that you may notice is the Triple Temperature Indicator on the captains dash panel. (The first officer had his in in similar position). These got moved around (twice in the end) when TCAS was installed in the mid-90's. It was amazing just how much equipment got moved around over the years, in order to 'shoe-horn in' various bits of extra equimpent.
The cabin altimeter here fitted just above the #1 INS CDU also got moved (to the centre consul) when the FAA 'Branniff' modifications were embodied later in the 70's. It's spot got occupied by a standy altimeter mandated by the FAA but this was removed after Branniff ceased flying Concorde; the cabin altimeter returning to it's former home. The REALLY observant will notice that there is neither an Autoland Ca3/Cat2 identifier on the AFCS panel (glued on by BA at LHR) or the famous and precision built 'Reheat Capabilty Indicator' flip down plate fitted to the centre dash panel a few years later by BA.
Also not shown here, as they were buyer furnished equipment also fitted at on delivery LHR, are the two ADEUs (Automatic Data Entry Units, or INS Card readers). These were located immediatel aft of the CDU's and were used for bulk waypoint loading ('bulk' being 9, the most that the poor old Delco INU memory could handle). These were removed in the mid 90's when the Navigation Database was fitted to Concorde INUs, and bulk loading then was achieved by simply tapping in a 2 digit code. (Hardly the elegence of FMS, but still very elegent in comparison with the ADEU's, and worked superbly). A little note about these ADEU things; You inserted this rather large optically read paper data card into the thing and the motor would suck the unsuspecting card in. As often as not the ADEU would chew the card up and spit the remnants out, without reading any data, or not even bother spitting out the remnants at all. Removing these things FINALLY when the INUs were modified was absolute joy!!
ps. When G-BOAG (then G-BFKW) was delivered in 1980 it had neither any of the Branniff mods or ADEUs fitted. (Also the INS was not wired for DME updating). This meant that obviously she could not fly IAD-DFW with Branniff but also she could not do LHR-BAH either, because of the lack ADEUs. (You could not manually insert waypoints quick enough over the 'Med', or so the guys told me. So for the first few years good old FKW/OAG just used to plod between LHR and JFK. And plod she did, superbly. She never did get the ADEUs (not necessary thank goodness when the INUs got modified) but we wired in DME updating and so she could navigate around with the best of them.
My gosh I do prattle on, sorry guys.
Best regards

Dude

PS Welcome back Landlady, hope you've recovered from your fall XXXX

So many vivid memories from so many people.
I suppose personally I'll always remember the first time that I ever saw Concorde flying as well as the LAST time :
The very first, as I posted here many months ago, was in 1970 when I, as a young grotty little RAF erk, was in Swindon and heard this loud roar in the sky over what was then Bon March\xe9 (Now Debenhams). Looking up I saw this amazing sight of 002 complete with her attending Canberra chase plane flying over. (And trailing a sizable black exhaust plume to boot).
The very LAST time I saw her flying was in November 2003 at the side of LHR 27R as G-BOAF, the last Concorde ever built and the last one ever to fly, made her final departure out of a very dismal Heathrow bound for Filton. For me, the weather at LHR that day perfectly matched to gloom of the occasion I'm afraid.
A really lasting memory I wil always treasure is while my now VERY grown up children were still young, they were (almost) as big Concorde 'nuts' as their dad. Concorde would fly over our house daily and they would run to the window every time they heard the sound of an aeroplane. The general disappointed chant they would come out with was 'it's not Concorde dad, it's just a plane'. For the life of me I don't know why they would develop THAT kind of prejudice and from whom they would get it from . (I used this particular ditty in a 2003 Concorde BBC TV documentary we did, but my cover is blown here anyway, so what the hell .

EXWOK
I went over base for a meeting last week and saw OAB parked at the side of the apron. I had several lumps in my throat as I drove past too I have to admit. To think that the last time OAB flew was in August 2000. when Les and the boys brought her back empty from JFK after the CAA pulled the Concorde C of A.
Hopefully she will get a fitting 'home' soon so that more people can marvel at our absolutely beautiful and truly timeless aviation icon

Best regards
Dude

Please please please let me be a SLFConcordeBore - 1 post, then I\x92ll shut up.

2 items that I had on my \x93Do before I die\x94 list were \x93Sail into New York on QE2\x94 (sadly, didn\x92t happen, now obviously won\x92t), and \x93Fly on Concorde\x94.

Part of the enthusiasm for Concorde came from a friend in the Middle East, who worked for Airwork, who did contract maintenance for your air force. He was based in Saudi Arabia IIRC, working on Lightnings. As an expat in Saudi (good pay + no tax = high disposable), when he had some leave available at one point he took Concorde from Bahrein - London - Bahrein. Loved every moment.

He told the lovely story of his first day back after his hols, when a Lightning pilot came in in his G-suit, saying \x93I\x92ve just done Mach 2\x94 (you know where this is going...) to which Slim was able to reply \x93I did that yesterday - and I was drinking champagne at the time\x94. What an astonishing aeroplane Concorde was.

I got to fly Concorde courtesy of BA - they called one day and asked if I\x92d like to fly Concorde LHR - JFK - LHR, out one day, back the next, put up overnight at the Waldorf Astoria - all courtesy of BA. After the \x93is this a practical joke?\x94, and \x93what\x92s the catch?\x94, it transpired that they did invite people from time to time for this type of trip, and somehow my name came out of the hat.

A truly memorable trip - the acceleration, the hot windows, the fantastic service (and excellent food & wine), trip to cockpit, and the \x93Concorde grin\x94. Memorable guests on the way out were Paul & Linda McCartney, with children and minder. I seem to recall that the takeoff from JFK was even more spectacular than the one from LHR. It just seemed to jump out of the blocks and keep going.

Also notable were how much of a private club it was - the crew were welcoming passengers to New York, and saying to various passengers things like \x93I didn\x92t see you last week\x94, with the passenger replying \x91Oh no, I couldn\x92t make it last week, but I\x92ll see you again next week\x94 etc.

Thanks to everyone, ChristiaanJ, M2dude, Bellerophon, EXWOK, Brit123, landlady and stilton and all the others for a wonderful thread about a wonderful plane.

Gentlemen (and ladies) on this superb thread. I hope this question isn't too "spotterish" but I'm sure it can be answered here. I've learned sooooo much about this gorgeous aircraft reading these pages.

I was listening to this radio dialogue between the last Concorde to leave JFK on Youtube here: YouTube - Last concorde communication with JFK.wmv

It's actually a very lovely (well to me it is) almost 7 minutes, with the very final sentences spoken each way - such a nice touch. Just being humble SLF though, I can't work out what "Mike" means in the dialogue i.e.

For the last time, Speedbird Concorde 2 IFR London Heathrow with Mike requesting a Canarsie climb.

Also

... expect FL290 10 minutes after, Squawk 1136 and Mike is the ####

What's Mike and also the #### term?

Thanks. CD

Let's be clear folks, Concorde would have never operated to JFK without a very generous interpretation of the applicable noise abatement rules by the FAA/PoNYA guys who signed it off. Who else has ever approved a 30 degree banked turn initiated at 100' on departure as an SOP on a heavy aircraft??

Concorde had that 'je ne sais quoi' that encouraged airplane people everywhere to think big and ask themselves 'what can be done?'.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not remember anybody ever whining (at least in print) about the significant premium revenue traffic diverted from the competing US airlines!

Of course, if the Yanks had actually produced an SST, things might have been very different.

<< I'm guessing you mean rate of climb rather than IAS? >>
<<No, I meant the airspeed you'd be flying at while climbing (post takeoff)>>

OK, then the answer to your Q's:
Also what was the typical climb speed
- At lift-off? About 200kts
- Once 240 kts is achieved? 240kts
- At minimum maneuvering speed at typical takeoff weight? Vla after takeoff was V2 until 15,000'. I.E. about 220kts
- At MTOGW? V2 didn't vary much by weight

Out of JFK we flew at Vmo once further than 12nms from the coast. Vmo=400kts IAS at low level.

Out of LHR overland the IAS restriction was 300kts until past the speed limit point early in the SID - much less draggy than 250kts and hence better climb rates. But you'd quickly be released to get to 400kts (barder's pole) where it was designed to be flown.

<<Why higher speed? That have to do with shockwaves and the resulting pressure distribution differences?>>
The flight envelope was bigger and more complex than subsonic types: it was developed in flight test and probably had many considerations involved. I think someone posted it earlier in this thread in graphical form (from the flight manual) if you want to see it. In practice, you had to be aware of three basic parameters - IAS, Mach and CG position (the CG "corridor"). Once understood, it wasn't that difficult to keep up with it...and the IAS and Machmeters had barber's poles handily programmed to show the limiting values (including, cleverly, max temp on the nose Tmo=127 degrees celcius).

Regarding climb rates - best ROC was at 400kts (MTOW) or 380kts (MLW). As speed reduced below that, drag increased and ROC reduced. At MTOW and 400kts you'd get about 4000fpm max dry power. At 250kts it was all noise and very few feet per minute - after noise abate procedures you had to lower the nose, just barely climb, and get IAS up toward min drag as soon as possible. With an engine failed go for 300kts minimum - Vmo as soon as you can.

<<shockwaves and the resulting pressure distribution differences>>
You had to avoid the "transonic" region due to these effects: maximum subsonic cruise was 0.95M due to the auto-stabilised flying controls become over-active as shockwaves started to "dance" around the airframe (usually asymmetrically). This calmed down by about 1.3M in the acceleration (when the intake ramps started to do their thing). To accelerate to 2.0M you needed reheat until 1.7M so you didn't hang around between 0.95M and 1.7M. FL260 was best for subsonic cruise because at that level 400kts IAS = 0.95M...

Could I ask a performance question of you folks?

I was watching the ITVV Concorde program the other day and a couple of things really stood out. The noise abatement take off from JFK looked pretty alarming from a climb rate point of view, looked like the aircraft tottered over the coastline with a pretty low rate of climb compared to the subsonic stuff. That being said she was supersonic 12 minutes after the thrust levers were advanced so she could certainly pick up her heels.

So the question is, if you were operating the aircraft out of somewhere with no climb or noise abatement restrictions (BGI?) on an average day with make take off weight what would be the typical time to M1? Course the 7 year old in me also want to know what the fastest time was that you saw on a revenue trip.

Time for a foodie slot..

way way back in the T3 days, catering ex JFK.. does the term "Hero Roll" ring bells with anyone here?

GB.

Re : 9min to mach 2.

Not sure you can get CG back that quickly.

In the (restored) Sim with a lightweight fuel load that will not get you anywhere and not bothering about the CG, the absolute minimum time to Mach 2 at 50,000ft on a pretty constant VMO chase is just over 15mins, so really unlikely that this was possible in real life....but will stand corrected if someone says other wise.

The A/C had diverted to cardiff as they had suffered a engine surge due to a double intake lane failure and had to slow to subsonic early. That coupled with additional time with engines running at JFK meant they were just not comfortable about coming to London and possibly declaring a fuel emergency.

In the ITVV documentary, the SFE Roger Bricknell mentioned the selection of debow of #3 engine upon startup on the JFK to LHR leg, due to the downtime of the engine. This essentially delays the heat-up of the turbine shaft in favor of a more evenly temperature distribution.

Why wasn't the debow selected for all the other engine? (Roger explicitly mentioned to not needing to select the other engines for debow)

Forgive me, I'm probably missing something that was mentioned earlier in this great thread.

the best thread ever on the net and so polite.

all those technicals and in deep infos.

i never flown myself the Concorde but my dad made one CDG DKR RIO and one CDG JFK and as others mention he was smiling back from those flights even the flights were for work.

i had the chance to see the Concorde at night in the AF maintenance at CDG it was called Airbus-Concorde division and despite i was more on the other side : the 747 division i loved to stay around and just watching that wonderful Bird waiting to fly the next morning.

alas when moving to Canada we lost all the pictures and souvenirs of those days but they re back with you.

thank you Lady and Gentlemen.

and Bravo, merci.

Wow, what an amazing thread which I have only recently found.

Congratulations to all for a fascinating read

Although I never got the opportunity to fly on Concorde, I will never forget seeing her fly some charters from Filton in the late 1990's. On one occasion I was stood at the wire fence at the end of runway 27 and watched Concorde taxi directly towards me, do a 360 degree turn and line up for takeoff. Concorde was only around 100ft-150ft away from me when the throttles were opened. Luckily I was holding tightly onto the fence and got a face full of dust as the reheats kicked in! The noise, power and heat I felt from those Olympus engines was phenomenal. She looked stunning as she rotated amongst the heat haze and the slender delta climbed steeply away towards the Bristol Channel. What an aircraft!

My grandfather worked on the Olympus 593 engines at Rolls Royce in Filton, so I will always hold Concorde close to my heart. I have been onboard Foxy at Filton when she was open to the public and I have visited 002 at Yeovilton and 101 at Duxford. I live quite close to Delta Golf at Brooklands and have been onboard her about 4 times now (including a sit in the cockpit) and recently flew the fantastic Concorde simulator with Captain John Eames and First Officer Ian Smith which is a day I will treasure. Opening up the throttles for take-off on 31L at JFK and tackling the checkerboard landing at Kai Tak were experiences I will never forget.

Keep up the great postings everyone!

Green bean
Remember the Heros well, one of the pleasures of JFK especially having grown up on spam.....

Sonic booms
Experienced the trials in the sixties over East Anglia, one rogue one over Berkshire in the 70s, three or four from the French concorde whilst sailing across the channel and latterly annual ones from the French airforce.
The Concorde ones seemed much louder and frightening - first time I thought we had hit a mine (wouldn't be the first time although fortunately it didn't explode).
And contrary to a previous opinion they did do damage - odd window and a vase.

Many years ago, I'd flown into Heathrow (after a horrible flight - a 6+ hour delay after pushback at JFK due to weather). I was in line to pick up my rental car when suddenly there was this horrendous noise - a "can't hear yourself think" noise. The strange part was no one else even seemed to notice . I turned and looked outside, and there was a Concord on it's takeoff run in full afterburner . It was the only time I was able to see a Concord moving under it's own power .

No idea what tail number it is, but there is a Concord at the Seattle Museum of Flight. First time I walked inside I was stunned at how small it was. The windows are tiny, and the seats would not appear out-of-place in economy on todays international flights. The cockpit is blocked off with clear Plexiglas, but looked decidedly primitive by todays (or even 1980's) standards. No doubt the cabin service was top notch, and there is definitely a luxury in making a six hour flight in two hours. But it's also not hard to understand why it wasn't a commercial success .

But I sure wish I'd had the opportunity to fly on one

G-BOAG lives in Seattle now. And so you know it's Concorde with an " e". Very important.

I flew on G-BOAG, BA 2 JFK- LHR, 6 months before the program was shut down in 2003. The experience is hard to describe and only a Concorde fan would appreciate it anyway.

Nice to see this thread still active!

I wonder is there is a Concorde expert who could help me with a question please. I have booked some time in the Concorde simulator at brooklands in September and was wondering how I should best use the time I have (30 mins). What do you think would be the most interesting and enjoyable use of my time? I have read most of this thread, and gather that the JFK departures were spectacular. Is that what you think I should try?

I have spent a bit of time in other simulators (purely for fun), so what I am hoping to try in the Concorde simulator is something unique to Concorde.

I think you should try an outside loop, I'm sure Kennedy One departure, CRI climb will pale in comparison.

NineEighteen -

9mins brake release to M1.0 sounds about right from SNN; out of JFK we consistently achieved M1.0 10mins after brake release and that was with a noise-abatement departure which added a little time.