Posts by user "M2dude" [Posts: 257 Total up-votes: 1 Page: 13 of 13]¶

gordonroxborough
Speaking as someone who was actually THERE during the entirity of Concorde commercial operations (rather than just an amature outside observer), I can assure you that replacement doors were almost always painted when fitted to the aircraft, and NOT left in the green primer colour. Alpha Charlie was a bit of an exeption in that the door was never painted and THAT is the point being made here. No one is even suggesting a freak of nature for goodness sake, and no matter what you may have read etc, this was regular Concorde engineering practice.

whenrealityhurts
Wow, what total and absolute drivel. For a start it's CONCORDE and not that rather wonderful town in Middlesex County thank you very much. There was NEVER any 'operated using typical overweight RTO mentality' this side of the English' Channel EVER and anyway this had absolutely NOTHING to do with the assasination of the amazing aeroplane.. As far as being 'an accident waiting to happen', well you are obviously at best very poorly informed and at worst you are used to speaking out of an orifice diagonally opposite to your mouth sir.
Galaxy Flyer has made a large number of very valuable contributions to this thread and as an ex C5A pilot and highly experienced aviator deserves infinately more respect than you. As far as any bannings here, well look in the mirror fella, and I suggest that you restrict your postings to something that you maybe have some expertise. (Is there a section here on paper aeroplanes maybe?).

Regards (particularly to you GF) Dude

Yawn... For goodness sake let's not nit-pick here . If you'd been THERE Gordon you would know what I meant. I WAS refering to the inner side of the secondary door as it happens, any aircraft engineer would know that. (It is just slightly obvious that the outer skin would be painted you know).
The point here is that it is far better if you leave ANSWERS to technical and operational issues to pilots and enginers that were involved with Concorde development and operation and actually KNOW what happened in service. It can be infuriating to the extreme when people that had absolutely nothing to do with the Concorde operation, their entire repertoire of knowledge being based on reading all about in any publication that they could get their paws on or listening to any old nonsense being spurted about by goodness knows who, try and post replies to queries here as if they have set themselves up as a self-appointed 'Mr Concorde'. (Personally I'm happy and humble enough to admit that's certainly not me. Concorde was always a non stop learning process for me and I have never stopped learning to this very day).
Joining the cut up bits of 202 back together is not in the same universe I'm afraid, as living with the aeroplane day in and day out, year in, year out, as impressive as that feat may be to you.
Lesson ends.


Regards
Dude

hissinsid
I have to admit, this is one superb image (and a nice high resolution one also) of my old friend Alpha Alpha.

As far as the trip switches to the rear of the captain, not quite sure what you are refering to I'm afraid unless you mean the area on 213 circuit breaker panels? Also located here are the Audio Selector Panel, the emergency windshield de-ice switches (quite hairy really , 200 volts placed straight on the main windshield heating film with no temperature regulation or overheat protection). As well we also have the lighting controls for the panel and a fully deployed observer's coffee cup holder.
As far as the bits either side of the E/O's table, well there is a fair bit, but I'll do my best:
To the left we have the engine start panel, the air conditioning test panel (also encompassing the fuel vent suppression test and indication and gauge limit reset button) and door warning panel. Below these panels are the mode selector panels for the Inertial Navigation Systems and the artificial feel test and Ram Air Turbine control panels. At the very bottom we have the air intake test and diagnostic panels, as well as the anti ice indicator panel. The E/O's Audio Selector Panel and last of all we have the radiation meter and landing gear fault annunciator. (This item is not fitted to aircraft G-BOAG or any Air France aircraft).
To the right we have the Aircraft Integrated Data System panel and immediately below that the compass control panel. (Concorde was one of the very last aircraft to have a magnetic heading reference system, modern aircraft synthesise magnetic heading against true heading and geographic position). Below that we have the oxygen indication panel and to the top right of the section we have the engine and fire test panel. Immediately below this we have the automatic test panel for Automatic Flight Control System and below this the smoke detector test panel. Below this we have the cockpit voice recorder panel and last of all the current monitor panel for the intake secondary air doors.
WHEW!! I hope this helps but if not please ask away.

Regards
Dude

hissinsid
Really one for one of my pilot friends to answer, but there was the one issue where OAC had a heavier right hand wing than the left!! (Due to a major repair done in the early 1980's). And as you correctly point out, the last few aircraft built were indeed lighter than their earlier cousins.
speedbirdconcorde
Love the bit about the latte machine. An updated flight deck would indeed look radically different than our 'classic' Concorde office . Perchance to dream Personally I think this country needs to find a vision again, not just the money.
Reverserbucket
The hole you mention was a supersonic book stowage. Not very high tech I'm afraid.

Regards to all
Dude

I think we could all speculate until the cows come home just how many SSTs could be built. To put my own two penny worth in here, personally I tend to agree with Steve that to justify the huge capital investment required, a hypersonic aircraft with just about antipodal range would be required. Here in the UK, the Reaction Engines Lapcat A2 project seems to be the way to go. Fueled with liquid hydrogen, making London to Sydney in just around 3 hours carrying THREE HUNDRED passenger. All this using four Scimatar hybrid engines. Contrast this proposal with the clumsy Airbus ZEHST effort that has to use THREE different types of engine for the flight cycle, carries only 100 passengers and won't be around (acording to them) for FORTY YEARS!!. Both imagination and practicalilty seem to be totally absent here.
It seems that the technology required for an HST already exists in the UK (the Scimitar engine is a deritive of the engine originally designed for HOTOL, thanks to the genius of Alan Bond and Bob Parkinson) but we need partners for obvious economic reasons, (probably not European), the will, and most of all, as I mentioned before, the vision to do great things again. In my humble opinion Lapcat A2 should be the true successor to Concorde. If only......

Best regards
Dude

This is obviously a really emotional topic, we can only hope that good sense prevails and the AAH is preserved, along of course with our beautiful G-BOAF. (When I worked at Filton many moons ago it was the largest single span building in Europe, not sure if that is the case now or not).
It would be really nice if the SOUTH of the UK had a non-derilict 'proper' Concorde on display to the public, and good old Alpha Fox would be the ideal example, displayed inside the building where she was born).
There was so much activity in that hangar over the years, wouldn't it also be great if examples of as many as possible of the aircraft that were built, part built or modified there could be displayed too. Let's all keep our fingers crossed.

Best regards
Dude

As far as the SSBJ goes, there really does not seem to be sufficient demand by the corporations out there, although there have been several stabs at the idea, the most famous being the Sukhoi/Grumman S21. The problem now is, as has been laboured ad nauseam, that neither scarebus or boingo want to go down the road of a long and expensive R & D process without KNOWING whether there are lots of sales at the end of that tunnel. Basically neither of the world's only large aircraft manufacturers have any interest in such a gamble. (And without any serious competition out there they have no reason to either). But we still have the attraction of the HST, typically the Lapcat A2. Anyone who has flown out of Terminal 3 at Heathrow on one of the late night JSA Far East services would know that both First and Business class cabins are invariably bursting at the seams, the intrepid travellers knowing that anything up to the next 24 hours has to be completely written off to the journey. Anyone doing the round trip then has two days completely taken out, not counting those many sweet sweet hours of jet lag. It does not take a genius to work out that a journey time of only THREE hours would be incredibly attractive to a large number of these folks, the trick of course is that the ticket price has to be realistic. The West Coast of the USA is another plumb route, but of course the problem becomes supersonic flight over the continental USA. Polar flying, or over northern Canada is a rather long way round, but possible solution, but of course this whittles down some of the time saving and means we burn more fuel in the process, albeit cheap and very environmentally friendly hydrogen. (And we have of course to assume that a cost effective way of producing and storing large quantities of our liquid hydrogen can be found). It seems that the need for speed is not really out there right now, and to all of us in the world of aviation that has to be a bit of a shame. When Concorde was abandoned mankind took a giant stumble backwards, and for the very first time in history had to settle for far slower journey times. We can only guess I suppose what the future of air travel holds; maybe people are just resigned to being stuffed into bigger and bigger tin cans that go no faster than those cans that came before, who knows. All some of us can do I guess is HOPE that someone out there has just a little imagination.

Hey DunePrune don't go...... you voiced a perfectly valid point about that book, voiced from the point of view of a pilot too. I think I speak for the majority of posters when I say that you are most welcome here, please carry on posting.
As far as the book goes, well I suppose just like most books it's a rather subjective thing but PERSONALLY I think that book was total crap!! Apart from the old 'Concorde APU' side of things (and I still chuckle at the thought of a sizable pneumatic pipe, carrying HOT passing air through a large fuel tank trying to get certification) there were also several other goofs that gave one the idea that the author was, ahem... not very 'plane minded'. Placing the bomb inside Tank 11 'before it was welded shut' shows total ignorance as far as the way that aircraft are built. The other one was the description of locating a wire by it's colour and the colour of a tracer within that wire. Concorde, just like most aircraft used plain white Poly-X or yellow Kapton Liquid-H cable with circuit identification printed on the cable at regular lengths.
All you did was to voice your very valid opinion here, so don't stop posting DunePrune and stay around.

Nice one guys. I honestly is a pleasure to share my experiences (and feeble knowledge) of the aeroplane with so many wonderful people here, be they aviation professionals, former supersonic SLF or just inerested enthusiasts. Guys and gals, just keep posting away here and remember there is no such thing as a stupid question.
Unless of course it's from me. 'What pert of the aeroplane was manufactured by a division of General Motors in the USA?'.
Oh Shaggy, can't claim credit for the 3/4 flag, or reheat capability indicator', but I remember having a right chuckle when we fitted this highly comples piece of precision engineering ( ) in the early eighties. I thought it was some kind of belated April Fools's joke.

Hi Philflies
The 3/4 tab mounted by the #4 EGT indicator had in fact nothing to do with the EGT indication at all. It wasa reheat capability indicator and was set by the crew prior to take off. Set to 4 meant that all 4 reheats were required for take-off (and if one failed it then meant that the take-off should be rejected). Set to 3 it meant that a single reheat failure could be tolerated and the take-off could continue.
I hope this helps Philflies.
Oh and check out the website BRINGING CONCORDE G-BOAC BACK TO LIFE - Welcome The fat lady aint singing yet. Also check out the Concorde comes alive thread here too.

It seems that the Concorde comes alive thread has been deleted. This is such a shame, I tried as hard as I could to keep things civil but others hijacked it again, just as the original thread was. Perhaps we may be allowed to post points about G-BOAC in Manchester here, I do hope so because it is such a fascinating story and is a story still being told.

Humble aplogies to all, of course its mounted by the #1 EGT gauge (ANOTHER senior moment on my part). The RCICS, Reheat Capabilty Indication Control Sub-system (Oh OK then, I just made that up ) was fiitted in the very early days of Concorde operation. It looked at first sight a belated April Folls joke, but as was said (much) earlier prior to this amazing piece of technology the #3 INS CDU waypoint thumbwheel was used as the reheat GO/NO-GO indicator.
And NB2A, no apologies needed from you sir. A great link to the video starring Dave Rowland and Roger Bricknell (sorry Les).

Best regards to all
Dude

In actual fact BA looked very seriously in the mid 1980s at a limited glass cockpit, where the primary flight and engine instruments would be replaced by and EFIS/EICAS setup, ala Boeing 757. Studies were quite advanced, the main cited advantage was 'reduced cost of ownership.' It seems that the reason it never went any further was, now here's the irony, 'increased training costs. (You have to remember that the 757 was the only glass cockpit BA had at the time, with nothing much else on the horizon).
There would certainly needed to be other upgrades avionics wise, in the fullness of time, but the glass cockpit was not really top of the list. Glaring requirements were improved navigational accuracy, as well as EGPWS together with predictive and reactive windshear protection. (Although to really get the most out of this an EFIS type system is crucial). We (BA) were already looking at both EGPWS and the replacement of the DELCO Carousel 1VAC INS. The Litton 92 had been suggested early on, as it was the only laser INS available with a GPS card fitted, but it is possible that given time an IRS with separate MMR interface would have been used. (This of course now requires an FMC, with a potentially rather involved VNAV profile). As far as EGPWS (and GPS navigation), the main problem was going to be 'where to put the darned GPS antenna' up there on the fuselage crown, but this was being looked at right up to 2003. Providing there was an adequate way of displaying the warnings, predictive windshear protection would have been a breeze, as the Bendix RDR4B radar system (itself retrofitted in the mid 1990s) had the PWS capability merely disabled on Concorde). As Concorde was a highly profitable enterprise for BA during the vast majority of her service life, it is my view that natural avionics updates, such as those described, would have found their way onto Concorde given enough time. (EGPWS, GPS NAV as well as PWS protection would almost certainly have been on board by now).

Best regards
Dude

Actually NO CJ. The old steam powered analog electro-mechanical Air Data Computers met RVSM minima quite comfortably when trials were carried out, and that amazed the hell out of most of us. (But a Penny & Giles DADC was still being looked at in the early to mid 90s as a potential ADC replacement).
As far as the expansion joint question goes John, there were several expansion joints all over the aeroplane but I don't recall personally being able to see evidence of thermal expansion anywhere else than the aft flight engineers panel. Perhaps someone else here may know something?.

Best regards
Dude

TAT varies with the square of Mach Number and SAT, and although all temperatures for calculation purposes are obviously ABSOLUTE temperature, they are 'converted back' to \xb0 C here. So shown below are a range of TATs shown at four different Mach numbers and three specific SATs (or OAT if you prefer). Altitudes can be assumed as being in the lower stratosphere (ie. above tropopause) and ISA relates to International Standard Atmosphere. ISA is of course -56.25 \xb0 C, ISA -5 is -61.25 \xb0 C and ISA +5 is -51.25 \xb0 C.

MACH 0.5 . ISA -5: TAT = -50.6 \xb0 C . ISA: TAT = -45.3 \xb0 C. ISA +5 TAT = -40 \xb0 C
MACH 1.0 . ISA -5: TAT = -18.5 \xb0 C . ISA: TAT = -12.5 \xb0 C. ISA +5 TAT = -6.5 \xb0 C
MACH 1.5 . ISA -5: TAT = 34.8 \xb0 C . ISA: TAT = 42 \xb0 C. ISA +5 TAT = 49.3 \xb0 C
MACH 2.0 . ISA -5: TAT = 109.5 \xb0 C . ISA: TAT =118.6 \xb0 C. ISA +5 TAT = 127.6 \xb0 C

Hopefully it all makes a little more sense with some 'real' numbers. You can see that as Mach Number increases the gap between SAT and TAT increases hugely. The Mach 2, ISA +5 case was particularly significant for Concorde, as it breached the 127 \xb0 C/400 \xb0 K airframe temperature limit (TMO) and Mach Number would therefore be automatically reduced by the autopilot. (An overspeed warning would be generated at TMO +7 (134. \xb0 C). Fortunately sustained ISA +5 or above conditions were relatively rare over the North Atlantic but not unheard of either.

stilton

Actually not technically correct mate. The generation(s) of aircraft after Concorde does not use INS as such at all. They either use an Inertial REFERENCE System (IRS) or an Air Data and Inertial Reference System (ADIRS). In both cases inertial data, such as attitude, present position, heading (both true and SYNTHESISED magnetic) acceleration data etc. are output to various user systems. (eg. FMS, EFIS, Autopilot etc.). Wind data, being a function of True Air Speed (TAS) and Ground Speed (G/S)requires in the IRS case TAS data to be input into the IRS from an Air Data Compter, whereas in the ADIRS case we can have muliple ADCs/IRUs effectively crammed into one box, and so wind is kept 'in house'. In either case the autopilot steering signals (LNAV/VNAV) come from the FMS and NOT the IRS. (If you like you could say that an INS knows where it is and where it wants to go, where an IRS just knows where it is and hasn't a CLUEwhere it's going to. In all cases GPS data is fed into the FMS itself, as 'just another input'.
Although Concorde HAD no GPS, (The most difficult part was always finding a part of the upper fuselage where chunks could be cut out for locating antennae) it was coming! EGPWS was being mandated, which required a simplex GPS antenna mount, and GPS updating for the INS was being seriously looked at. In the first case, the EGPWS requires accurate present position to check agaings it's terrain database for known obstacles and the latter case was because the Concorde INS navigational accuracy fell outside of future (now actually) long range navigational accuracy requirements.
Sorry for such a long winded blurb, but I've been away for a while and am gradually looking back over our wonderful thread to see if there is anything I can contribute to/prattle on about.

Humble apologies stilton. (A definate case of RTFQ then). You are quite correct in your comment, inertial position is still the 'prime ' source of navigation, in modern aircraft with GPS etc being used to refine this position. GPS can never on it's own replace an INS/IRS, in fact at the moment it's difficult to imagine what ever could. (And after all an aeroplane is not an aeroplane without ATTITUDE ).

Best Regards
Dude