Posts by user "Brit312" [Posts: 35 Total up-votes: 0 Page: 1 of 2]¶

A great thread and it only goes to show that you can always learn even about a subject that you thought you knew quite a lot about

As M2Dude described the rearwards transfer of fuel during acceleration was meant to be an automated process but in reality there was a lot of manual input. The first requirement of the F/E was to match the rearwards movement of the C of G to that of the ever increasing Mach number. If this was proving to be no problem he would take over the transfer manually by switching off the pumps on one side of tank 9 or 10 so as to pump only to either tank 5 or 7. This was because if you transferred evenly to these tanks due to their different shape size and position the aircraft would go out of trim laterally so the F/E would pump rearward just to one tank so as to keep the C of G going aft whilst maintaining lateral trim.

Being Concorde nothing was straight forward , which meant that when Tanks 5 and 7 ran out and you started using tanks 6 and 8, their size shape and position,was exactly opposite to that of tanks 5 and 7 so it now required the F/E to pump fuel the opposite way across the ship, using various valves and pumps, so as to keep the aircraft in trim laterally.

All the time he had to maintain the trim so as to keep an elevon trim of \xbd deg down, which as fuel was burnt required him to trickle fuel forward from tank 11. On the longer trips such as those to and from BGI the fuel towards the end of cruise became quite low and to stop fuel in the collectors from dropping below 1000kgs each, fuel would be transferred from tank 11 into the collectors until the
C of G had reached it's forward limit at Mach 2.0 of 57.5 %. If then the collectors dropped to 1000kgs the aircraft had to descend to subsonic heights and speed.

Surges

Surges were not an uncommon or common event on Concorde,but when they happened as they usually affected both engines on that side the aircraft would lurch /yaw and everybody on board would know about it as \x93Her In Doors\x94 would testify to that when glasses full and otherwise ended up in her lap during the meal service when a surge occurred.

The drill required all engines to be throttled to a predetermined position and the intake and engine control switches moved to their other position. If this stopped the surge then the throttles were restored to their cruise power a pair at a time and if no surge re-occured then the aircraft would return to cruise / climb

The crews post surge action was normally to have a cup of tea and light up a cigarette.

In the early days on a flight between London and Bahrain when the aircraft was in supersonic cruise the F/E who was a mature and refined gentleman, had to go to the toilet, which was just behind the front galley, and whilst there the engines surged. He was seen running from the toilet to the flight deck with his trousers around his ankles, which was a hell of shock to his refined nature

Enough for now sorry about the length

Yes we always started just the two inboard engines prior to push back and the outers when the push back was complete. This was for a number of reasons, but I do seem to remember it was not unheard of to break the tow bar shear pin on the initial push, so the less power the better

Remember that Concorde had no APU and no across the ship ducting for stating engines, therefore prior to push an air start unit was plugged into each pair of engines and the inboard engines would be started. This allowed, after push back, air from each inboard engine to be used to start it's outboard engine.

The other good reason for starting the inboards prior to push was that with no APU the cabin temp would rise quite quickly [specially in places like Bahrain in summer] and never mind the passengers
comfort, but some of M2dude and ChristiaanJ fancy electronic equipment was very temp sensitive , especially those intake control units down the rear galley. With Two engines running we could use their bleed air to at least try and hold the cabin air temp during the push back

When we first started LHR-IAD flights[ prior to thin lip///54% and other mods which improved our range] some thought was given to towing the aircraft to the taxi way near the end of the runway before starting engines so as to save fuel. I do not remember this actually ever being done though.

\

ChristiaanJ

The way I remember it was

"3-2-1 now" was to ensure that all 3 crew members started their stop watch at the same time i e on the call of NOW as that was the point the throttles were moved rapidy to the forward stops. In fact the noise abatement timing assumed the engines were allowed to accelerate at their own rate, rather than at a rate controlled by the crew

"Green lights" served two purposes
1] To allow the pilots to have a quick reference as to the state of the engines during the Take off

2] Prior to the nose gear mod ona rough runway [when it could be difficult to red the engine instruements] it did give the F/E an indication that the engines had reached the basic power required

3/4 tab. as different T/Os required diferent minimum reheats either 3 or 4
The small 3/4 tab was there just to visually remind crew as a back up to the briefing whether they were on a 3 or 4 reheat day

I have not I believe been on an aircraft where you run up to full power before releasing the brakes, but there again the memory could be fading, and I am sure the sudden release of brakes at full power would not do them any
good

Mind you I could be wrong

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

M2dude,

The Braniff crews were great characters and yes many did wear cowboy boats, but the story I like is the one that goes as follows

After hours of briefing prior to going on the simulator [for the first time] the Braniff crew got on the sim and went through all their checks, started the engines and taxied out to the end of the runway for their first Concorde sim take-off. Everybody was strapped in with seats in the correct position and all checks complete.

The Captain called out "3,2,1, now" and all the throttles were moved sharply to full power and away we went with the visual showing the runway passing by at an ever increasing rate. Now the F/E had a couple of calls to make prior to V1 relating to how good the engines were performing the most important being at 100 kts, however before we got that far the Braniff F/E stood up in his harness and let out the cry " Gee Whiz look at the son of a bitch go".

Needless to say that take off was stopped and we went back to start again at the end of the runway

db737,

I remember Jerry White, who did his Concorde training in Toulouse. He was a great bloke and and a good pilot. If you see him again send him by best wishes from the Brit F/E in Toulouse

Makes me wonder... In the event of a complete loss of thrust at Mach 2 (say fuel contamination) would the deceleration be significant ? If so I guess the fuel redistribution / pumping to maintain acceptable CG would become interesting...

Concorde did actually have a four engine failure drill, which covered it's complete speed rsnge including Mach 2.0. There was one assumption made in this drill and that the engines would continue to windmill which would allow them to give you full hydraulic pressure

As you could imagine, If all 4 engines cut at Mach 2.0 the F/E would be quite busy and so the the non flying pilot would use his fuel transfer switch to start the fuel moving forward. This was a pretty basic selection where fuel would be pumped out of Tank 11 using all 4 pumps [2 electrical and 2 hydraulic driven] and into the very forward tank which was no 9.

As a rule of thumb transferring 1000kgs from tank 11 to tank 9 moved the Cof G forward by 1%. Now with all 4 pumps in tank 11 running the tansfer forward was so quick that the pilot had to keep switching the transfer off and then on to stop the Cof G moving forward too quickly. It was usually to everybody's relief when the F/E could find the time to take over the fuel transfer as he had the selections to allow him to be more selective as to where the fuel went and so slow the rate down
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This was quite a neat system, as the gear was retracted, a SHORTENING LOCK valve was signalled, allowing a relatively tiny jack to pull the entire shock absorber body into the body of the oleo progressively as the gear retracted. So the shock

Forther to M2dude's explanation Concorde's main landing gear consisted of 3 seperate metal castings . there was the normal two for the oleo and these two were fitted inside the outer casting, which was the one you could see.
As the gear retracted a mechanical linkage , which was driven by the gear's retraction movement, would lift the oleo assembly up into the outer casing, so shortening the length of the leg . If I remember the shortening jack was just to assist in breking the geometric lock of the linkage
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The other difference between AF and BA aircraft was the DC electrical system

AF had Nickel cadmium batteries with an automatic charging system

BA had the good old lead acid battery sysytem, well except for AG where the DC system was one of the systems they never changed when AG was incorporated into the BA fleet

M2dude----- you might be correct in saying that the side strut was for space saving considerations. However in the design office old habits die hard and you will find that the support stay on the Bristol Britannia was very similar to Concordes main gear side strut, with locking fingers etc.and even looked similar

In fact quite a bit was transferred from previous aircraft designs to Concorde , such as the 4 fwd cabin door are very similar to that of the VC-10 as is the oxygen system.

Bellerophon

The Britannia and now you are talking about the love of my life and yes I do remember the story of the nose and visor selector, but we have forgotten the most abvious. Where do you think they got the idea for the conrol column from

Concorde
Photos: Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde 102 Aircraft Pictures | !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some other great aircraft

Photos: Bristol 175 Britannia 253F Aircraft Pictures | !!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Now must stop deviating from the topic

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

Hello Stilton,

Now you really have upset my Sunday as after many years being retired I have had to go up to my attic to get the Concorde books out so as to answer your question

Anyway as M2dude has said there were drills for everything on Concorde and if I remeber correctly the figure came to 194 seperate drills with 13 of them having a memory content. Never mind remembering the memory content it was hard enough sometimes to remember which drill had a memory content


Anyway I have found the drill for

"Landing with Nose gear not locked down "

To give just the essence of the drill you are asked to

Jettison as much fuel as possible

Set the C of G for landing to 53%--- sitting over main gear

After gear lowered select Standby lever to down position----- This ensures the gear jacks remain pressurized down on touch down

After lowering nose/visor on normal system seltct visor stby system to visor down---- this removes hyds from nose and visor system down jacks, so allowing nose/visor to raise if nose leg collapses

Brake lever to standby --- If nose leg collapse there is no ref anti skid signal and normal brakes would not work. Standby has no anti skid system and will work

Then on landing nose up attitude should be maintained and normal engine reverse selected as soon as possible remembering that engine reverse tries to pitch the aircraft nose up

Wheel brakes use gently and cease at 120kts

At 110 kts reduce attitude to touch nose wheel down gently

At 85 kts select engine reverse to idle power

At rest " Passenger Evacuation"

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So you can see this drill uses the nose up effect of engine revese to hold the nose gear off the ground for as long as possible.

I fear this explanation will gemerate more questios than it has answered, but
off for a cup of coffee now as grey cell are hurting

Blue Concorde

The logic of the C of G limit warnigs were

1st stage warning then the F/E rectifys it by moving the fuel

2nd stage warning was considered a more dangerous exceedence and would be remedied by the F/E moving fuel and the pilot slowing or speeding up the aircraft depending on which limit had been triggered

The aft limit second stage warning was a flashing light and a stick shaker to which the natural response from the pilot is to speed up Now you can see from your diagram that above M1.6 increasing will not improve the siuation if the aft boundry has been infringed. Therefore to prevent an auto response from the pilot to a stick shaker [ push the nose down and speed up] the 2nd stage aft warning was not available after M1.6


Tanks 5 and 7 were operated as a pair as were tanks 6 and 8
Because of the odd shapes of the tanks when you were transferring from the set 5 and 7 the F/E had to pump fuel across the ship to keep lateral trim.
Once they were empty and 6 and 8 were being used then again due to their shape the F/E had to transfer fuel across the aircraft to keep lateral trim ,but this time in the opposite direction . well it stopped him getting bored

Blue concorde
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Yes, so my not-so-trivial questions, aimed more for F/E and Ground Engineers are:
1) with the same quantity on tanks 6 and 8, for example, 10 tons, there would be a roll tendency? I suspect yes, but not sure.
2) Using valves 6/7 and 5/8 would make lateral unbalance gone or they just leveled the fuel height on each pair of tanks? (Assuming that all these 4 tanks had the same height, what sounds logical to me)
3) Is there any table with these tanks quantities to reach lateral balance or the F/E did fine tune just by making elevons level?

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In answer to your questions , unlike the chart for C of G purposes there was no such chart for lateral trim rreasons. We would just transfer fuel across the ship so as to keep the elevons level at between 0 and 1 degree down. However when transfering fuel across the ship as the paired tanks are fore and aft of the C of G then when getting lateral trim you also affect the
C of G.

It is along time ago now and I cannot recall actual figures but your suggestion of between 500 and 700 kgs is I think a good ball park figure

The interconnect valves were never used under normal circumstances, but give it a go it might just over come your problem.

Nick Thomas

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remember that around 1980 one Concorde was painted on one side in the Singapore livery. Obviously the flight to Singapore would need at least one fuel stop. What I have always wondered is which part of the route was flown supersonic? Was she granted any overland supersonic rights? Also was it feasible to have a short supersonic section followed by a subsonic bit and then back to supersonic? I guess that having to use reheat to accelerate
twice to mach 2 would use too much fuel.

It was actually G-BOAD that was 1/2 painted in Singapore Airlines colours in the last part of !977
For more info on this subject check out this web site

CONCORDE SST : Singapore Concorde Services

The original route LHR- Bahrain flew subsonic across Europe and then accelerated to supersonic just off the coast in the north of the Adriatric. It was Supersonic then all the way to Bahrain avoiding islands in the Med but crossing the coast of the Lebenon still at supersonic speeds. This sector even with the long subsonic period [0.95 Mach] still cut the journey time LHR to BAH by 2.5 hours. For the crews the return trip to LHR was more exciting as once the throttles were opened to full power their position never changed until TOD. Once airbourne ---- reheat off at----------------- 500 ft
climb rating[switches] at----1000ft
climb/accel at 0.95r/heats back on and
away you go

The Bahrain - Singapore sector were my favourite though with only a short delay after Take Off before being cleared supersonic and because of the cold air temps at 50000ft plus the old girl would go up to 60,000ft and cruise there at Mach 2.0 and we would roar just south of Sri Lanka north of Indonesia and down the Malacca Straits slowing down and trying to avoid all the thunder heads

Although nothing actually to stop accelerating twice in a sector the fuel use on a long trip would usually not make this viable

NOTE How do you get the posh blue quote inserts

Galaxy flyer

Absolutely correct the T-heads often went up past us at 60000ft, which is quite scarey when you think of the energy required to do that. Makes you as part of mankind seem somewhat insignificant.

Avoiding them as another problemas the Malacca Straits is quite narrow, well it is for Concorde trying hard not to boom the land on either side, but as I remember it there were two good points

The T-storms seemed to be normally over the land either side, but more important we would start to slow down shortly after entering the Malacca Straits and once subsonic we were in the same ball park as other aircraft , avoid them at all cost, and we could then fly over land without upsetting people

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bio161

No the crews flew just the one trans Atlantic sector and then got off for a rest. Well you could not have us boys working too hard now .

In fact it was just possible for the crews to do a return trip and indeed when there were crew problems this was indeed done.

Morning flight
The Concorde report time was 1.5 before departure and a turn around at JFK would have been about 1.5 hours so when all added up it could have just been done. However any delay to either service could result in the home bound flight being late or indeed cancelled due to flight time limitations. This the company deemed to be unacceptable risk on an aircraft which was sold as saving time.
In fact as the morning flight was on approach to JFK,the morning flight back to LHR was already taking off. For the crew to now wait for the late departure back to London would put them way over FTLimitations

That did not mean the crews only did one sector a day

LHR-IAD-MIA was a days work as was the return.
On some of the charter flights it was often a multi sector day such as

Sydney--Brisbane --Guam --Beijing

I was only doing the PR on that trip so I have not got the times but it did seem a long day's work

M2dude
It was now quite a long time ago, but looking at my log book I see that the flight was about 1hour 35mins chock to chock, so the fuel load would have been quite light. At subsonic speed the cruise height was determined like all other aircarft, in that the lighter you were the higher you could fly, and at those sort of light weights it was possible for Concorde to fly up to a subsonic cruise height of 39,000ft. From there at light weights the supersonic accel could be much quicker than what would be experienced on an Atlantic crossing at heavy weights.

In fact the aircraft would probably be lighter than a round the bay trip where we always had a 100 passengers. One problem with accel just off North Carolina's coast was that there was a north south airway right in our path and there always seemed to be a B757 at 41000ft which delayed our accel until he had passed. A cunning plot I think

Now you might ask if we did not have 100 passengers, then how many did we have between IAD and MIA well it is a secret, but I have to say we were normally lighty loaded. However the trip was very popular with the crews as it gave us a feel of the sun's warmth, which is hard to come by in New York in the winter

The Captain I believe you are thinking of, not only hand flew the aircraft for the entire sector, but also ate his meal, and talked to the passenger who visited the flightdeck whilst he was flying it

He was not unique,and many would hand fly it during climb/accel and for the descent but most pilots would engage the Autopliot especially for supersonic cruise

Well never having done this set of drills for real, I can only give the experience from the sim, which is never the same as the real aircraft, however with this set of problems there is a big difference between sim and aircraft and that is if for real on the aircraft you might have to cope with pressure breathing, whereas on the sim the mask was just on demand.

Pressure breathing we had to practise on a special little rig at the training base at Heathrow under medical supervision every two years {I think}. Even on this rig we did not get full pressure breathing but sufficient for us to experience what it would be like. Whilst we were on this rig they would ask us to read from a checklist, and it was then you realised how hard it would be in real life.

Normal breathing means you have to use muscle power to inhale and you relaxe to exhale, and luckily for most of us we do not have to think about doing it. However on pressure breathing you are blown up by the pressure and you have to concentrate to stop the pressure air coming in. To exhale you had to use muscle power to push the air out and whilst you were doing this you could speak. Normally a couple of you did it at a time so you could see the affect it had on your buddy who normally went red in the face and the veins started to show up.

All in all I found it quite a tiring experience

So, if the crew were in an emergency descent due to pressurization failure there would be the Depressurization drill, the emergency descent drill and the normal checklist to fit in, while trying to control your breathing and speak as you were trying to force the air out of your lungs. Along with this trying despaeratly to keep switching your intercom off so the pilots could use the R/T otherwise the sound of your breathing deafened everything

As checklist work was carried out by the F/E he could initially be quite busy so the pilots would start the fuel fwd transfer with a switch on the over head panel. However this was quite a rough and ready system so as soon as the F/E could find time he would use his panel switches to transfer the fuel. These switches allowed more flexibility as to where the fuel would go.

That is why it was mandatory for F/E to have two legs as if he only had one there would have been no where to rest all the checklist he might be running at the same time

Sorry about the length, and her in doors is now demanding my attention ,
{just to do some work or other } so I will come back to the subject of the course later

Concorde was exactly the same as any other aircraft in that it would be loaded in such a manner that with zero fuel the aircraft's C of G would be within the landing limits.. If this was not possible then ballast fuel has to be loaded[ or any other form of ballast] so as to achieve this C of G. This ballast fuel however must not form part of the fuel burn or diversion fuel

With the above in mind all fuel on Concorde was useable fuel but during some part of the flight prior to being burnt it it would be used for varying inflight regime trimming.

Now prior to landing the F/E would pump a predetermined amount into tank 9 so as to achieve a C of G fwd of 53.5 % for landing. This was only required because there was still fuel on board. If the aircraft was held before landing and the fuel QTY dropped he would pump this fuel out of tank 9 and into the engine feed tanks as it was no longer required for C of G purposes

Therefore yes Concorde could safely land from a C of G point of view with no fuel.

There was nothing magical about 4 Tonnes in tank 9, and in fact it usually was too much for stability reasons, but for simplicity a single big figure was used. In fact if it was not possible to put 4000kgs in tank 9 [due to lack of fuel]then the flight deck crew were instructed to remain on the flight deck until the passengers had got off and the rear hold had been emptied. Now some of us flight deck crew helped more than others in this

The first two sets of BA crews did their circuit flying at Fairford, and the crews after that went to all sorts of different airfields in the UK , France and Portugal

Now as far as take-off is concerned

27 left and right
09 right

Landing 27 L & R----- 09 L & R---- 23 and 05 [ but not in the later years]

Now I cannot remember if you could take off on 23

Dixi, You are absolutely correct, so I have corrected my posting, and glad to see that someone actually reads my postings

My only excuse is age, phew what would I do without that excuse


My only excuse for not knowing that was it was after my time with the old girl, but now you mention it I seem to remember that previous to 2003 we might have been able to use 09L again due to work on 09R , but if I remember correctly we had to ask for special permission.

Mind you as I said above the memory is fading with age