Posts by user "ChristiaanJ" [Posts: 266 Total up-votes: 0 Page: 6 of 14]¶

From this sentimental old fool.....

I've always felt their 'Birthday' was their very first flight.... when from a huge collection of bits and pieces of aluminium and steel and titanium and plastic and electronics and whatever.... they each became an 'individual' of their own right, doing what all of us had worked so long and hard for her/him to achieve. They flew!

So today, to me, is a day to wish 001 "Happy Anniversary ".
And I hope somebody today at Le Bourget sneaked in a bottle of champagne to share that anniversary with him.

CJ

nomorecatering asked: M2dude answered:
The BA simulator, now at Brooklands, is a long story.
For various reasons, only the simulator 'cab' could be salvaged. It was taken to Brooklands to be used as a static exhibit of what the Concorde cockpit looked like.
It was only well after its arrival at Brooklands that people started to think about bringing it back to life.... a huge piece of work, since about all that was left was the 'cab' itself, with the instruments and controls... the computers and interface circuits, needed to make them work, were all gone.
A team of volunteers, a simulator firm and university students have now brought it back to a state where it can be 'flown'. Even if not everything works yet, ex-Concorde pilots who've 'flown' it were already full of praise.
As to the visuals, the original visual system was taken back by BA, since it was recent and the same as used on other BA simulators.
It's been replaced by a specialised video projector and a wide screen, which appears quite satisfactory, although I 've heard rumours about plans to replace it with a three-projector system.

The story of the Air France simulator, that was located at CDG, is very different.
After the end-of-service it was moved almost in its entirety to Toulouse (Airbus), minus only the visual display system and the motion platform.
A small team of volunteers (mostly Airbus engineers) are slowly bringing that one 'back to life' as well, but (contrary to Brooklands) using most of the original electronics.
The intention is to have it ready for display (and use) at the Toulouse 'A\xe9roscopia' museum, which hopefully will open within a few years.
Unfortunately, until then the sim is not accessible to the public, since it's inside one of the Airbus site buildings.
And no, of course that one isn't certified either....

One small bit of trivia... the BA and AF simulators were NOT built by the same firm. The BA one was built by, IIRC, Singer-Redifon, and the French one by LMT.
Today that's a pity, really, because the Brooklands and Toulouse teams have very little technical information they can exchange.

Oh and, yes, I've visited and sat in both of them, but so far I haven't flown either of them yet.

CJ

Ah, the legendary "Concorde grin"......

CJ

Gordon should have more details, but on at least one (and probably both) of the sims there was a nifty arrangement at the front, of flat "masks" that limited the view in the same way as the real thing, and that moved up and down controlled by the nose/visor lever.

CJ

(PS: I've seen it on at least one of them, but have forgotten which...)

From what I know (mostly quoting fromTrubshaw's book), things would have been even better than that.

Reheat on the existing aircraft supplied about 25% extra "wet" thrust.

The Olympus 593 "B" engine was going to have about 25% more "dry" thrust, so the reheat could most likely have been deleted altogether.
This was achieved mostly by increasing the diameter of the LP compressor, hence increasing the mass flow, and adding a second LP turbine stage.

The "B" engine was destined for the "B" Concorde which, thanks to several aerodynamic improvements, would have had increased performance and more range, allowing direct flights from Frankfurt and Rome to New York.

Concorde #17 would have been the "prototype" for the "B" model... sadly, as M2dude says, it was not to be.

CJ

DavvaP ,
No I would not say you're "far too dumb".... yours are valid questions.

You're right, "it would have been too big an undertaking for too little benefit".

Don't forget the history... it was the governments that financed development, manufacture and (initially) operations.
By the time the last few aircraft came off the production line they were already unsaleable 'white tails'.

Now, the "B" modifications to the wing were quite major (droop leading edge, extended wingtip, other tweaks) and to reftrofit them would have been difficult and costly.

The "B" engine had a larger frontal diameter, so the engine nacelles would have had to be redesigned and re-manufactured.

All those modifications would then have to have been revalidated and recertified, then applied to each of the aircraft, plus the manufacture of new spares, etc.

Still saddled with five unsold aircraft at the time, there was no way the governments were going to finance such a major upgrade.

As to G-BOAG...
Applying some or all of the modifications to G-BOAG only would have been pure folly, because it would have meant a large separate spares store, revalidation and recertification, separate documentation, etc. etc. all for one aircraft.

Finally, the story doesn't tell if Rolls Royce ever got as far as running a prototype "B" type engine on a test bed. Certainly, none were ever manufactured.

CJ

Out of pure curiosity... any chance of finding that chart still?
Did it refer to dose rate or accumulated dose?
As M2dude already said, the dose rate was roughly twice that for a subsonic crew, but because of the shorter flight duration, the accumulated dose was no different from the large majority of crews in general.

CJ

A small add-on to the earlier posts about the simulators.

Brooklands sim video

Brief video, taken yesterday (Oct 9, 2010) of a landing on LHR 27L, with the new three-projector visual display.

Also a couple of photosets of the new projectors being installed on the top of the 'cab' and the three overlapping images being aligned. As the photographer (friend of mine) noted , he had to leave before the final tweaks... the borders (overlaps) are now virtually invisible.

Concorde Photos Gallery - 21st September 2010

Concorde Photos Gallery - 25th September 2010

CJ

Dave ,
I was looking to confirm my own memory on the matter and found this quote, from a personal friend, on another aviation forum. Knowing him, and knowing where he worked, I would trust that statement implicitly!
The "blips" on the radiation meter over certain "hot spots", in the UK, the US and the Middle East, are well-known bits of Concorde folklore.

CJ

You got me thinking too... equally dangerous, since it's not my 'subject'
First simplistic answer...
If the charter flight did not involve a supersonic flight, then of course it wouldn't have been a problem, you would just have loaded enough fuel into that vast collection of tanks to maintain a 'subsonic' CG.

So, second answer, which is what I think you're thinking of: the case of a short charter with a supersonic "loop" over the Bay of Biscay, as both BA and AF did quite a number of times, with less fuel.
This is where I start thinking... and I admit I may be wrong.

Take a normal transatlantic flight, with all the tanks full at take-off.
By the time you started the supersonic acceleration (so with still a lot of fuel forward, only the fuel used in take-off and subsonic climb no longer there) the 10-odd tons in tank 11 (the trim tank in the tail) were already enough to shift the CG backwards to what was needed when supersonic.

So, with a smaller fuel load, getting the CG backwards to the right position would already be easier, even without fully filling tank 11. And of course no problem returning to the 'subsonic' CG.... plenty of space in the already partly empty tanks..

So I think the answer to your question is "no".

CJ

Thanks Bellerophon , I was hoping somebody would come up with the right answer!

And sorry, Nick , indeed I was wrong!

CJ

I'll have to be careful after my previous bludner...
But I seem to remember there were several occasions, where the rear cabin (about 3 tons when full, after all ...) was asked to disembark first, for the same reasons as mentioned above.

CJ

Mike ,
No, sadly there is no known footage of a real Concorde barrel roll.

But it's been done.... repeatedly.
Confirmed not only by Brian Wadpole, but even by Andr\xe9 Turcat himself.

Who, by the way, stated that "what annoyed me the most about it all.... was that I never had an occasion to do it myself....".

CJ

Nice one, M2dude

I've saved the questions, and again same deal... I'll try to answer as many as possible without cheating.

But I will have to look up a few things.... I have no idea which airport is SNN without looking it up!

CJ

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

Dave ,
From all the disparate reports I've seen over the years from "usually reliable sources", it does seem indeed nobody ever experienced it.
The suspicious "blips" on the indicator over "suspicious sites" were never long enough to initiate an emergency descent.
And that radiation always came from below, not from outer space....

CJ

I'd never seen those either.... I was convinced the static test speciment had been scrapped a very long time ago.
The entire collection of "Ailes Anciennes Toulouse" has been moved to a different location only very recently... one can merely hope that at least some of the bits and pieces of "0001" have survived...
Maybe VOLUME can tell us more?

CJ

I'll leave it to M2dude to answer this fully and properly..
But... yes and no....
Whether you could actually continue the take-off, if one reheat didn't light, depended on several factors, such as t/o weight, runway length, ambient temperature, and suchlike. This was all calculated before take-off, and there was a little tab on the forward panel (I'll have to find a photo), which you would flip to either "3" or "4" as an instant reminder.
If the little tab said "4" and you got only three reheats coming on, you didn't have to think or go through a checklist... you rejected the takeoff.
M2dude probably can quote the speed.... but it was still well below V1, so such a RTO was not nearly as spectacular as a really nasty one around V1.

CJ

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

Mike, there are already a couple of sites on the internet dealing with this particular pipe-dream, such as SaveConcordeGroup in the UK.
So, please , could you address your questions there?

Or start a separate thread in the JetBlast forum... I'll be only too happy to answer you there, and yes, I have answers to your questions.

Just don't pollute this particular thread with this nonsense... please?

CJ