Posts by user "EXWOK" [Posts: 111 Total up-votes: 0 Page: 2 of 6]¶

Extended leave doesn't happen so much in this very commercial world.......

To start with we stayed current in the sim. After a month or so it was obvious that this was a long term event and the company would find something for us to do in return for our salary.

A minor complication was that we knew we were going to need fewer pilots as the decision had already been made to reduce the charter programme, so we weren't all coming back. There were no other FE positions in BA so that was a further issue.

At least one Captain retired during the grounding, which was a sad way to finish. Others who had been on the fleet for less than 5 years went back to their previous fleet (old rating only needing revalidation). Others had the opportunity to bid for positions elsewhere in the normal annual conversion process; some used the tactical skills required to fly Concorde to great effect, and evaded capture for a long time....

For SFOs one was allowed to bid in the normal process or be directed to another fleet. The rules didn't allow direction to the Left Seat, so most bid off to various command positions - the most senior (who would have the seniority to return) and the most junior (who were pretty much doomed to leave the fleet as it shrank). Those in the middle (2 of us!)stuck it out and were directed to the RHS of other fleets, but at least with the knowledge that if the bird flew again we were guaranteed to get back (Quite a gamble at this stage).

I'm ashamed to say I can't remember where all the SFEs went, but they were spread in a diaspora through various departments.

Most unfortunate of all crews were those on the very last Concorde conversion course (No. 30, I think) who finished after the grounding and never got to fly the thing. All that work..................

Also, regarding the practicalities of flying LHR-JFK-LHR, one has to remember that there were two airframes involved - the first return flight having nightstopped JFK. So the early JFK-LHR service was just taxying out as the morning LHR-JFK landed.

It was possible to operate the early JFK-LHR (BA002) and then turn round at LHR to operate the late LHR-JFK (BA003) and this was done occasionally, generally at short notice to cover illness or crew shortages.

I only did it once and you certainly knew you'd done it afterwards....

And it also gives a nice demonstration of the 'milled from solid' skins.

(The beige-coloured areas in this pic)

I don't think you'll be finding hydrazine on a pax-carrying aircraft anytime soon! And it wasn't an APU as such, but a source of power for non-normals potentially found in the flight test programme. M2D and ChristiaanJwill know far more.

The charter flights were different insofar as they often went to non-BA stations, so there was a bit more donkeywork to be done to get all the paperwork organised, but nothing a regular charter pilot won't be used to. Generally one would get a fuel plan/flight plan filed from Ops at LHR, but apart from LHR/JFK/BGI/IAD (and presumably MIA/BAH/SIN in earlier days) we produced our own loadsheet. I only once had to produce a fuel plan/route plan from scratch and that was at Sondrestrom (as it was) with a dodgy fax line. You'd have to file a flight plan occasionally.

We carried a ' PR ' on most of them - a line pilot or FE - to carry out a running PA and do general liaison. They were volunteered to do the loadsheet.

The atmosphere on board was very different - these were pleasure flights and so were the opposite of the JFK business run. Landlady may be able to elaborate on this.

The round-the-worlds were just a big charter in this respect. As you note we carried a 'flying spanner', since Concorde-qualified LAEs are hard to come by downroute. It looked like a great job on paper, but they were often at the airport for many hours before or after the sectors carrying out routine maintenance or dealing with snags.

I enjoyed the charters a lot - everyone was geared up for a good time and in general the flight had something different for us, too: Whether a lightweight departure on a 'round-the-bay', squeezing into a short runway (e.g. Bournemouth), visiting SFJ or Rovaniemi, or setting off around the world, predominantly to non-BA destinations. My favourites, though, were the RTBs out of Filton - EVERYONE was either connected to Conc development or manufacture, or was related to someone who was. Fantastic atmosphere. Shame the runway wasn't a bit longer........

Anecdotal rther than aerodynamic evidence here - but there was a noticable buffet as one decelerated, accompanied by a significant step in thrust requirement. That point was where we (flight crew) decided we were in vortex lift.

Typical speeds would be 270-280 kts at TO mass and about 230-250kts at landing mass.

I'm not naive enough to believe that it was a 'switch' in aerodynamic modes, but the outcome felt like one.

I'd be slightly surprised if there was much of a vortex at M0.95 since the alpha was fairly low here and I would expect there to be plenty of shockwave activity on the upper surfaces which would suggest that a standing vortex would be likely to be badly disrupted.

Anyone know some definite answers?

M2Dude and I seem to be forever crossing posts!

The only time I recall that we consistently had a stby aircraft nearby was Saturday morning, when the BA001 machine would be parked next to the BA273 (BGI) machine. The BA001 could theoretically stand in but I doubt we'd have done it.

I have done a ship change when we found a problem with the front-runner (can't remember what it was but it was one of those 'hard to determine an exact cause' issues found in flight-crew pre-flight checks) and even though the spare was on an adjacent stand, as M2D says, it still took an hour. (The delay, of course, was less than this as we found it early enough).

Yep - IAS. (or technically, CAS before I'm corrected!)

IIRC 400kts IAS was approximately best L/D at departure weights. (Low-level, obviously).

I've been driving to Hatton Cross past TBA recently. AB has been released from the engine run pen and parked outside what was, in the past, the Conc maintenance hangar. I have to say that she's a credit to whoever is looking after her - considerably cleaner than the blunties I now fly for a day-job.

And it still looks like the future, not the past.

I must say it makes getting into Mr Boeing's (admittedly very nice) aeroplane seem deadly dull in comparison. Ah well........

The rudder failures weren't really down to a fault with the original design, here's the story as I remember it:

The ctrl surfaces are made of a honeycomb-core bonded to the skins, essentially. They originally had a blunt trailing-edge, as was then de-rigeur with supersonic design. At some stage it was decided that a sharp trailing edge was actually beneficial so they had an extension fitted, which had the unfortunate effect of allowing a certain amount of water ingress to the core. Heating and expansion of this lead to disbonding and ultimately failure of the surfaces. (I suspect my engineering colleagues will have a much better and more accurate explanation).

Now - here's the important bit, and another example of this aeroplane's excellent failsafe engineering; Concorde had two rudders, one above the other (same as the 747). Each is driven by one dual-bodied PFCU. You ABSOLUTELY don't want a PFCU endangered by ctrl surface damage so each surface is divided in two, either side of the PFCU control horn.

Visualise the PFCU attached to the centre of two surfaces with an end rib on each, but skinned to look like one surface. Therefore, in the case of the surface suffering damage, it can only spread to a point short of the all-important PFCU. Look at the rudder-failure pictures and you'll see what I mean.

So - far from the 'rudder' breaking up, the reality is that half of one of the rudders had failed.

It was somewhat inevitable that Concorde's control sfcs would suffer, given the horrific loads they endured, and this was dealt with at the design stage. The elevons had the same sort of design.

It does of course look bad when you land with bits missing and this, plus the Regulators and company safety depts ensured that eventually some HUGELY expensive replacements were built.

Cron -

One of the downsides to flying a pointy aeroplane is that the front is somewhat narrow, as you have identified. It wasn't too bad getting in and out, but it was easier for the pilots to get in before the FE was in situ.

Once in, it was fine. The roof and especially the side window was much closer than one finds in other types, but there was adequate space. It helped to be less than 6' tall (I'm not.....)

As for the engineer's space being 'spacious', well that's relative. It was a bigger space than the pilots'; however a few of the FEs were quite .....spacious .......themselves so they had the same problems as us.

Nick Thomas -

There were, as you say, baggage holds under the cabin at the front, and one aft of the cabin (the bigger one).

One would try to distribute the load to minimise any pre-take off fuel txfr, and especially to minimise any burn reqd (we're getting into a new subject here....).

Having done this one knew the empty CG and then managed the fuel accordingly. Min reserve fuel was 6500kgs and that was more than enough to manage landing and taxying CG. After landing a chunk of fuel was pumped forward for taxying purposes and there would always be ample for this unless one was seriously low on fuel (low enough for a 'Mayday' to be mandatory rather than just a bit tight).

It was a loooong course!

In essence -

6 weeks groundschool, then type technical exam
Long sim course (lots to learn!)
Base flying
The usual SEP days
20 sectors of line training

In total - a shade under 6 months beginning to end.

You had to do a couple of months online before being released to charter flying and lightweight take-offs.

The sim was great, but couldn't quite replicate the unusual handling in the flare so, yes, we did circuits.

More fun it is almost impossible to have in a commercial jet!

It was, of course, eye-wateringly expensive in fuel, tyres and engineering time which was why one had to commit to a large number of years on type if one got a course.

And it was worth every second.

You're about right with the downwind speed - 250kts was standard.

Speed would be reduced to 190kts at the end of the leg, and then back to final speed on final approach.

Final speed would be one of the following:

Vref (not that often used, and not the nicest speed)
Vref+5 (one engine out)
Vref+7 (at the end of a fuel-saving ILS approach. Nicer to land off than Vref and the most common speed)
Vref+10 (as above in winds above 25kts?? Minimal flare off this one)

Round about the 155-165kt mark in normal ops.

Health warning - all the above from memory, NW1 will correct me if I'm wrong. (My manuals are stashed in the loft).

The pattern was flown at 250kts and 1500ft. The trouble is, you lift off at 210ish kts, not climbing that fast as you're way down the drag curve. Over the next thousand feet you steadily accelerate, and at the same time the RoC goes waaaay up as the drag reduces. This is fine - so long as you spot it and deal with it pronto.

It was quite easy to find oneself at 1000' flying at, say, 260kts. So you raise the nose a bit, to find you're still just creeping above 260kts passing 1300' (drag still reducing)....... and climbing at 5000fpm. And accelerating.

I'm told the record was 300kts and 3000' and I believe it!

Luckily we arrived on the scene armed with this story. I have to say the first thing I did passing 800' was roll on 30 degs of bank which calmed things down nicely.

Awesome fun.

Sorry - missed the second half of your question.

We didn't have any trouble flying procedures drawn at 185kts. If necessary you could fly and manoeuvre at 190kts IAS, it was just very thirsty and noisy like that. We wouldn't manage 10miles out at 210kts on a SID, but I didn't ever encounter a SID like that. In the case of terrain-constrained ops (which may cause the above) we would have to come up with some usable aternative.

The 'tightest' destination I recall was Sondrestrom (as it was still called then). Although noone in their right mind would land a heavy on RW28 (as it was) we had to demonstrate it in the sim. It really wasn't an issue in terms of turn radius, the trouble was the radalt ramping caused by terrain combined with our higher speed. It was just possible to avoid the dreaded GPWS.

Of course when you took the real thing there we just landed staright in on 10.

Yep,that sounds about right - no reason to leave easy access to an aeroplane you don't want anybody on board.

It was a delight to hand fly supersonic. With autostabs working it was a pleasure to fly through the whole regime, although from M0.95 to about M1.3 it was a bit squirmy - as though someone kept playing with the trims.

Take-off was flown without flight directors as there was no AFDS mode which suited the juggling of roc vs acceleration. If the AP was going to be used them one Usually hand-flew without fly director until you got to the barbers pole when Max Clb could be engaged on FD and AP. mostly we'd just use the FD and hand fly to the subsonic crz.

It really was a very hands on aeroplane - probably the last type out of LHR where one routinely tracked NDBs and VORs every departure (via CPT) without the aid of a flt director let alone a moving map!

Which is one of the many reasons we all loved flying it!

PS pls excuse all the shpelling mishtooks - am using a tiny touchscreen keyboard.....

Christiaan - yep, NDBs.

There are several SIDs ex-LHR based on NDBs if some kind of RNAV isn't available. Relevant to conc ops was the CPT SID in which one tracked in and out of WOD NDB.

Seems a bit pass\xe9 now.....

PS I can confirm you definitely got the autostabs right!

In service we tended to use only the wing-mounted main landing lights, as the nosegear door-mounted lights caused light buffeting which could be felt in the cabin.

They would, however, be pressed into service in really skanky conditions, or if it was felt they would help the aesthetics when a photographic detail was arranged.

We either switched to the taxy lights or just carried on with the taxy/turn lights which were often ample.

I can't give you much of the background but can remember the bare bones - here they are, without the benefit of manuals so subject to the usual caveats:

A large proportion of the take-off mass consisted of fuel on this machine, hence an early return would require a lot of fuel to be jettisonned to get down to Max Landing Weight.

Obviously it would be nice not have to lose all this fuel, partly to save fuel and partly to save time.

A higher Max Landing Weight (130T) was made permissable for airborne returns given certain caveats - I can't remember all of them, but obviously a decent length of runway (to avoid caning the brakes), no braking unserviceabilities, and the brakes had to be cool and the gear lowered early amongst other considerations. Go-around performance had to be considered if hot-and-high. That's a fuel-saving landing, and it was worth about 20T of gas.

I only did a couple and it was a non-event.

It has to be remembered that certificated MLW is predicated on many factors, and some fairly high Rates of Descent at touchdown, and on any aircraft one may be faced with a siruation that requires an immdeiate landing, possibly at Max TOW. MLW is a conservative figure.

I don't recall any specific required inspections, the whole point of justifying this procedure would be to obviate that requirement, but it's fair to say that the type of issues that would precipitate a fuel-saving landing would ensure the airframe wouldn't be flying again that day anyway. Both of mine earned themselves a bit of time off.

Now, one of the gentlemen with manuals to hand (or better memories) will, I hope, fill in the inevitable gaps.......