Posts about: "Boeing 747" [Posts: 57 Page: 1 of 3]¶

M2dude

Thanks for the reply, Concorde expertise is always interesting. I should not have called the F-16 Emergency Power Unit a RAT, it is indeed not. The Concorde RAT was located aft between the engine pods, correct?

What I found interesting is that the AC generators would remain on-line at all; they drop instantaneously at subsonic speeds and the associated N2 rpm. I believe the hydraulics on the 747 will power flight controls down to a pretty low IAS.

Four engine flameout is a very unlikely event, unless one runs into a volcanic cloud.

Just a note from a mature Yank pilot. When I was first getting interested in commercial aviation around the middle Sixties, Flying magazine (US) had ads from most US carriers featuring the Concorde as the future of aviation. Best of all these were ads to hire pilots, along the lines of "this is your future as an airline pilot-supersonic flight. One offered, "we'll pay you over one million dollars over your career to fly for us." The carriers were TWA, Pan Am, American. The 747 was supposed to a passenger plane as an interim to supersonic flight, it would be a cargo plane. If can find an old magazine and figure out posting it here, I'll do so.

The other great Concorde fact was the variety of simple "rules of thumb" to deal with deceleration and descent over the alert areas off of NYC. CJ or M2, any comments?

With reference to the noise level in the Cockpit with the nose and visor up.


How do you think this compared with say a 747 or 777 at Mach 2 and normal cruise climb levels (500-600) ?


Thanks for the truly fascinating information.

I think you'll have to speak to the Chinese...They have experience of the 747 at supersonic speeds

i think it was mentioned before....however, I will add my own comment. One of my greatest regrets in life, was not being able to fly on Concorde. I grew up during a time when my father took me out to Cleveland Hopkins airport to see one of the very first United 747's. This was the epitome of U.S. aviation, and at the same time that Concorde was routinely flying across the Atlantic at Mach 2!

What an incredibly beautiful aircraft it was....and how sad I am that she is now gone.

Please continue posting your personal information about this incredible aircraft!

Nick Thomas

... My other query concerns the FE. I understand that he set take off power etc...

Actually the F/E didn’t set T/O power, but did set most of the other power settings.

Broadly speaking, taxy-out to gear up, and gear down to engine shut down, the handling pilot operated the throttles. At other times, it was (almost) always the F/E.

Bear in mind that several of the routine engine power changes were effected through controls other than the throttles. For instance, selection of the re-heats, engine control schedules, engine ratings and intake lanes were all switch selections.


... I also understand that he also checked the pilots inputs into the INS system...

Correct, using INS3.


...So was he/she also a qualified pilot?..

No, they were professional flight engineers, who held a Flight Engineers Licence; they were not pilots biding their time before moving to the right hand seat.

I believe one or two may have held a PPL, but that was purely incidental, not a requirement.

All of the Concorde FEs had spent years on the VC10, B707, DC10, L10-11 or B747 fleets before coming to Concorde.


Biggles78

...Am I right or even slightly so in thinking that cruise climb and cruise descent was the flight...

Cruise climb, yes. Cruise descent, no.


...and there was minimal actual level cruise in the "pond" crossing?..

Correct, any level flight in the “cruise”, was just coincidence, probably caused by the outside air temperature increasing very gradually. Typically, she drifted up at around 30 to 50 fpm, but, if encountering warmer air, she would start to drift back down, in order to maintain M2.0.


... As you have said, fuel flow was reduced the higher you got. I think it was 5T per powerplant at FL500 down to 4.1T at FL600...

Rather optimistic figures for FL500 I’d have said! 6,000kg/hr/engine would have been nearer the mark!


...I am curious to see how much less fuel would have been used at the higher FLs considering it was reduced by 900Kg/hr for just 10K feet...

The reason the fuel flows dropped so much at the higher altitudes was that the aircraft had to be a lot lighter before she would get up there. It was her lighter weight that was the primary reason for the reduced fuel flows, not the higher altitude.

Forgive me if I’ve misunderstood you, but in her cruise climb, Concorde was flown at her optimum speed (M2.00) with (constant) optimum power set (max cruise power) and so (assuming a constant OAT above the tropopause) the only thing which affected her cruising altitude was her weight.

So, in theory at least, in cruise climb, she was always at her optimum altitude.

Any variation from that optimum altitude, such as a premature climb to higher altitudes, would have cost fuel, not saved it.


... How much of the descent was carried out while supersonic...

At the decel point, the cruise climb ceased and she was flown level at constant altitude. The F/E partially throttled back the engines and she stayed in level flight until her speed reduced to 350kts IAS, typically M1.5.

This took about 50nm, and most of the passengers would have sworn that they were already descending.

She then descended at 350kts IAS, meaning the Mach number would reduce constantly. On a straight in approach to JFK, with no subsonic cruise section, she would become subsonic descending through (around) FL350.

For a straight in approach, in zero wind, on a standard day, from FL600 to touchdown, typical figures would be something like a track distance of around 200nm, flying time of 22 minutes and 3,500kg of fuel.

Into LHR, she had to be subsonic much further away from her destination, and then had a subsonic cruise section on airways, so a slightly different procedure was used, and approaching FL410 she was slowed still further, becoming subsonic around FL400.


Anonymous

In response to your PM, earlier posters were correct in what they posted, however the manual reversion they refer to is a reversion from electrical to mechanical signalling to the flying controls.

There was no way to operate the flying controls manually in the absence of hydraulic power.

Sorry Bellerophon, a badly worded question from me but you gave a really good analogy. Gonna remember that even though I don't like my Flight Plans have collagen filled lips. I will see if I can reword it to make it comprehensible.

Thank you for the Instrument Panel image that I have now added to my collection. What is the Yellow Arc on the Mach metre that starts at about M1.12?
Do you remember if you had a signifigant headwind at that stage? I notice that the G/S is 1,139kts was this fairly standard for an East-West flight? (DUH me. Just read the fastest crossing was an east-west direction. Winds must have been quite favorable) I am now guessing the displayed G/S would be fairly typical, plus or minus a bit.
The Glide Ratio, even if it is a highly educated guess, is impressive. I would not have expected it to have been about the same as a B747. How many more times is this Lady going to surprise me with her performance.

Also notice the ball is slightly off to the left even though it is still inside the lines. Was this normal or does it need a tad more rudder trim? Can't imagine it is really out of balance.

Was that because of the tight fit on the flight deck or because we really don't like others in our workspace?

ChristiaanJ thanks for the CoG diagram. That I am still getting my head around. There is a large range at the bottom and top of the speed range but fairly narrow in the mid speed range. Seems like 165T was a less complex balancing act than it was at 105T.

The center rear fuselage gear unit, what was that for? I have seen it deployed on many occasions but I can't for the life of me remember if it was during T/O or LDG however it didn't seem to be extended every time the aeroplane flew. Was this used during loading so she didn't accidently "rotate" at the ramp or to avoid a tailstrike during LDG? I can't imagine an over rotate during T/O.

And a big Thank You to Bellerophon for sharing his knowledge with this thread.

Galaxy flyer -

TO perf calcs were basically sinilar to a susonic type, which involved a tabulation for each runway in a manual and an A4 proforma.

It was no more complex than a 'Classic' 747, but with a slightly different emphasis - e.g. all take-offs at full, reheated thrust, calculation of fuel transfer or burn off during taxy to achieve TOCG, calculation of timings and thrust setting for runway-specific noise abatement procedures, calculation of theta 2, and planned fuel flow and P7 to set in the take-off monitor (A system designed to aid, but not substitute, the decision of the FE as to whether TO thrust had been achieved, as well as auto selection of contingency power if a failure was detected).

You'd also determine whether a single reheat failure was acceptable that day - the little '3' or '4' bug at the lower left of the engine instruments was set as a visual reminder.

Not sure what you mean by Vzf? No flaps on this machine, so no change. May be a difference of nomenclature. Since there is no defined stalling speed for a delta (by conventional standards we lifted off about 60kts below 'stalling speed') Vzrc was substitued. This is the speed at which full thrust would result in a zero rate of climb. On three engines, this was the basis of the perf calculation, but we also calculated 2-eng Vzrc's gear up and gear down. IIRC they would come out at about 250kts/300kts.

On a transatlantic sector you would do all this and the speeds would invariably be within 5 kts of 160/190/220kts. (V1,Vr,V2)......

In the end we had a little handheld computer which would perform take off calcs, but to be honest it was only a minute more effort to carry out a manual calc.

I know that other planes such as the 747 had INS; so in a way this question is not specifically related to Concorde. With the radio navigation update was the lat and long of appropiate radio beacons hard wired into the system and then based on the assumed position the nearest beacons would automatically be tuned or did the pilots enter the lat and long of the beacons that they would then manually tune?
I guess there were three INS units to allow for drift etc and it would be easier to spot if one unit was less accurate than the other two. So when radio updating was not possible ie over the atlantic was it possible for the automatics to weigh against one rouge reading
Finally as Concordes ground speed was over double that of other aeroplanes was there any need to take this into account when designing and building the INS system(other than the speed display that would have to show an extra digit)?
Thanks
Nick

Lurking SLF
An interesting post Darragh, but with the greatest respect I think that you may have missed the whole point of this thread. As wonderful as the Boeing 747 is (personally I think that the 744 is one of the finest commercial aircraft ever built), I think anyone would agree that there is no comparison at all, as far as technical achievement goes, between the 747 and Concorde. So many boundaries had to be crossed with the Concorde design, and technical problems were overcome that had defeated many of the world's leading designers. I do have a vague idea what I am talking about here; although I was directly involved with Concorde for 30 years, I am also licensed on both the 744 AND the 777, and although I hold Boeings with the greatest respecect and admiration, nothing so far in the realms of commercial aviation can really compare with the technological marvel that was Concorde.
I think that most of the posters here will be sorrry that you felt you wasted 2 hours reading through these pages, I feel most of us have thoroughly enjoyed reading each others posts.
The YouTube links were great though.
atakacs
To the best of my knowledge no. The original TU144 was an extremely crude attempt by the Soviets at commercial supersonic aviation, and the political climate at the time would not have permitted such a thing. The TU144D used in the 1990's as a joint NASA/Russian experiment was a different beast altogether however, with far better engines and systems, but as far as I am aware the only western pilots to fly it were American chaps.

Dude

Hi canuck, I must admit to being rather jealous that you flew on Concorde! Your questions are particularly interesting as they arise from personal experience. Then to discover that M2dude was involved in overcoming the problem and explains it all so clearly is a delight.
Landing Concorde must have been "quite interesting". When ever I see videos of it; I always wonder how high up the eyeline of the pilots are compared to other airlines and especially when compared to the eyeline of a 747 pilot?(when the main wheels touch) I guess this must change the view of the runway when crossing the threshold. If so was special training required to overcome this as I would have thought that it would initially be tempting(though ill advised) to cross the threshold at too low an altitude? I know that the FE would call out the radio altimeter heights on landing but it must at first be difficult to disbelive the evidence of your own eyes.
I think am right to assume there were no spoilers so on landing did the act of bring the nose down spoil the lift or is that the reason why the non flying pilot pushed the yolk forward once she was down?
Thanks
Nick

Nick

What we are looking for is "eye-to-wheel" for the Concorde v. The B747. My question is were there ever turbulence problems at Concorde levels and speeds? Also, did the Concorde crews ever have to deviate around weather or slow down?

GF

Yep I would be curious to know this too... from our FCTM for the B744, landing geometry on a 3˚ glideslope for a flap 30 landing at REF +5 and a 50' glideslope antenna TCH (Threshold Crossing Height): the pilot's eye should be at 66' with the main gear at 31'. Considering that during the flare the attitude will increase by 2˚-3˚ this distance can only increase, so I would hazard that a B744 pilot's eyes are in excess of 35' (10 metres) above the runway at touchdown (I wouldn't know, I usually shut my eyes at the 30' RA call-out, pull back a little and hope for the best ).

Any idea what it is on that splendid machine that is Concorde? (I refuse to speak of it in the past tense)

MD

Maindog

That sounds right for the B747, the eye-to-wheel height for the C-5 at the THR was 34 feet.

GF

Biggles,

The Braniff crews [ I think it was 5 sets of crew] were trained for Concorde with some of crews trained in France whilst the others were trained in the UK. Flying training was done using an Air France Concorde
F-BVFA with flying being at Shannon initially but when they ran out of fuel it was moved to Montpellier. As their operation was to be subsonic they were only trained to operate the aircraft subsonically, but they were given a supersonic trans Atlantic trip as an observer.

ChristiaanJ

If I remember correctly ground effect tended to force the aircraft nose down, so requiring the pilots to pull back on the stick as if they were flaring ,but in fact what they were doing was as you say maintaining the pitch attitude constant. I have to say that in the early days the landing could be a bit of a hit or miss affair with some being perfect and some less so. The crews were originally taught to pull the power off in one stroke at about 15ft, but later they used to bleed it off and in my opinion this improved the landings greatly.

The problem with landing Concorde was when it got into ground effect if you let the nose drop you lost a lot of lift and arrived somewhat heavily. However if you pulled too hard you could raise the nose too much and suffer a big loss of speed causing a subsequent un-attractive landing, and you could also touch the tail wheel. This touch would be noticed by the ground engineer after landing as a scuff mark on the tail gear tyres. Therefore your friendly F/E on his external check prior to departure would always check the tail wheel tyres for scuff marks and if there were any you could inform the engineers at the other end of the trip that they were there prior to you taking the aircraft, and they would have to go and find another crew to blame


At touch down the pilots eye height was similar to that of a 747 pilot at touch down. Below 800ft when the aircraft had slowed down to landing speed the pitch attitude was such that the F/E could not see the runway ahead

..........which was one reason it was so important to touch down with the wings level - even a very small angle of bank could result in bucket contact as they translated to the reverse position. It was a surprise coming to Concorde to find it was even more restrictive than the 747 in this respect.

ALPINE FLYER

Is it true that Concorde was always flown by the highest seniority BA captains, copilots and flight engineers? Would Concorde usually be the last rung on the ladder before retirement for Captains/FEs or was it usual to return to slower equipment after a stint on Concorde?



To answer your question fully the fleets history has to be broken into two halves, that is the first 10 years and then all the time after that

The first ten years

When the fleet was very new 1976 and crews were bidding for it you have to remember that it was a BOAC aircraft and only BOAC crews could bid onto it. Very few people saw a long future for the aircraft and so were reluctant to go through the long training if it was only going to last for a few years

Also because it always had a limited route net work then there was far more money to be made on say the B747 with it's large route network

Anyway this all opened up the fleet to the younger members of the flight crew fraternity, and indeed the youngest Captain on Concorde at that time was only 32 years old with the youngest F/E being 29 years old. Indeed most of the crews on joining the fleet were in their 30's or early 40's and nowhere near being the most senior. With the exception of the F/Os most of these crews stayed with the aircraft until retirement so in the end it became a senior fleet. Indeed 20 years and even up to 24 years was the term that some stayed on the fleet for.

After 1985 when cross bidding was allowed between the old BEA and BOAC
and Concorde started recruiting crews again then people had to be fairly senior to get onto the fleet as people could see a future for the aircraft and realized it looked exciting.

It was never really a fleet for the most senior as you could as a Captain or F/E only bid for the fleet if you had at least 7 years to go to retirement and the F/Os had to be willing to forgo their oppurtunity for cammand for at least 5 years although this was sometimes ignored

F/O had to leave the fleet to get their command, but many came back as soon as their new Captains seniority allowed them to

Some Captains and 2 F/Es did leave the fleet for another aircraft prior to retirement

Therefore you can see with crew numbers hovering around 20 sets and this was reduced near the end it was no wonder that Concorde was known as the Boys club and Barbara was one of the boys too

On Circuit training tyres were always our problem, especially when we could not have the spare hubs /tyres made up locally by a man from the tyre workshop. Instead we had to bring ready made up wheels with us and the rest delivered by truck. This was no real problem when we did our circuit training in the UK ,but when we moved it to France then the logistics became more difficult.
If I remember correctly you would be lucky to get more than 20 landings out of a tyre, with the rear mains taking the biggest hammering and often being changed quite a bit before 20 landings. With up to 6 details a day and each detail consisting of up to 10 landings you can see that tyre usage on training was heavy

Fingers tired now

Just to round up the braking issuue....
A fully laden Concorde had a V1 significantly higher than a fully laden 747. (A figure of about 50 MPH springs to mind; perhaps one of the 'flyers' will confirm this). Although the Jumbo is twice the take-off weight, the amount of kinetic energy present in Concorde was significantly higher, due to energy = Mass x the SQUARE of the velocity. Added to this, Concorde had only eight braked wheels compared to the Jumbo's SIXTEEN. This really is further testament to the Concorde braking system, that had to have an enormous amount of stopping power, particularly in the case of a near V1 RTO. And all of this achieved with just eight compact, extremely reliable and relatively light brake units.

Dude

Two names...

Barbara Harmer at British Airways.
The first female Concorde airline pilot.
She became F/O on Concorde in 1993.
After the end-of-service, she continued to fly 777s with BA.
.
B\xe9atrice Valle at Air France.
After a long career as a pilot, she finally was selected for Concorde... and then the Paris crash happened.
But she persisted, and in the end she did 35 return flights CDG-JFK before the final end-of-service.
She then became captain on 747s.

Apart from Jacqueline Auriol , well-known French 'aviatrice' and test pilot, who flew once on the Concorde prototype, I do not know of anybody else.

And no, there is no record of any female F/Es.

CJ

Hy guys,
I think this is really interesting for all of you!

From magazine "Airliner World":

- In June 1974 Air France pitted Concorde against the B747 in a direct race. The B747 departed Orly Airport in the French capital Paris at 08:22 on the morning of June 17 bound for Boston. At the same time one of the airline's Concorde fleet took off from Boston's Logan Airport bound for Paris. When Concorde passed the B747, albeit at twice the altitude and flying in the opposite direction, it had already covered 2400 miles (3862km), the B747 barely covering 600miles(966km). The Concorde landed at Paris, spent an hour on the ground while it was refuelled, and took off for its return flight to Boston, where it arrived eleven minutes before the B747. -

Those were the times!