Concorde

[West Aussie Glen]

For those aeronautical nuts on the site, Theresa and I came across a Concorde open for inspection in NewYork. It is the plane that holds the New York to London record of under 3hrs.

[STeveo]

Just look at all them switches and gauges!!   Good old sixties technology.

 

[West Aussie Glen]

Yep but it was actually Fly by Wire

[Whizz]

I remember going to the Filton assembly plant and seeing a Concord up close, and getting to look around it whilst it was being built. What a truly impressive piece of aviation hardware! I couldn't get over how thin the wings were, even at the wing-roots where aircraft wings get really thick. The cabin was small, narrow and only sat two either side...and the famous Mach Meter on the front cabin wall!! I wish I'd been able to afford to fly in this wonderful aircraft, but alas I missed out.

[Brock]

 

[West Aussie Glen]

There was more leg room than economy in a Jumbo. Given the reduced time in them it would have been excellent. If I had heard that that BA were given a stop fly by date I think I would have tried hard to have a flight in one.

[Biggles]

There was more leg room than economy in a Jumbo. Given the reduced time in them it would have been excellent. If I had heard that that BA were given a stop fly by date I think I would have tried hard to have a flight in one.

Not cheap by any measure.  Mainly used to ferry movie stars and politicians around.  That is, those who could afford it, and the others that we pay all the living expenses of.

[West Aussie Glen]

$6,000 a trip

[saaz]

I remember seeing the Concorde in action at Heathrow and Paris airports when I used to travel a fair bit over there for work.  Closest I got to travel on one was when I was upgraded to first class for the legs into London, and I got to sit in the Concorde lounge.

[STeveo]

Yep but it was actually Fly by Wire

Yep, real wire (cables)

 

[West Aussie Glen]

Yep but it was actually Fly by Wire

Yep, real wire (cables)

 

Not according to the guide

[STeveo]

Electric cables?

 

[West Aussie Glen]

Electric cables?

 

That was certainly what the guide implied. The air intakes for the engines were definitely computer controled to reduce the air speed from Mach 2 to I think closer to or under Mach 1 before it went into the engines.
Their design was well ahead of their time.

[STeveo]

I would not have thought that they would have had 'fly by wire' back then. I used to work on Fokker F28s (as well as others) in 1980's and they were billed as the newest thing around when they arrived with the tv screens in cockpit instead of instruments, but they still had control cables and hydrulics. DC3/C47s are still my favorites to work on, they were built by people and you can get at things to work on them.

 

[West Aussie Glen]

A few lines from Wikipedia about the Concorde:-

Fully electrically controlled analogue fly-by-wire flight controls systems[34]

Variable engine air intake system controlled by digital computers[36]

Thrust-by-wire engines, predecessor of today’s FADEC-controlled engines[36]

Fully electrically controlled analogue brake-by-wire system[44]

and so it goes on,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde
 an amazing aircraft.

The trouble with DC3's was just trying to walk up the cabin when it was on the ground, my father had licenses for both airfames and engines on DC3s (plus a stack of other commercial passenger aircraft to follow DC3s upto and incluidng 727s and DC9s.

[Brock]

I used to do Elec work on DC3s, old cotton wtrapped wire = 

[Diesel]

What a great thread - soooo jealous Glen. Thanks for posting.

Looks like Concorde is not the last of the supersonic transports though...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Supersonic_Transport


Cheers, Diesel

[Whizz]

Glen, I remember a grizzled old sooty (aka Engine repair tech) once telling me that the air entering the front of a jet engine cannot exceed the speed of sound because the engine cannot operate in that speed, and I've just found this quote from Wikipedia which says "... jet engines, deprived of their inlet systems can only accept air at around half the speed of sound. The inlet system's job for transonic and supersonic aircraft is to slow the air and perform some of the compression." In other words the inlet system is there to slow down the incoming air to subsonic, regardless of the aircraft's forward speed and it also starts the compression process that the remainder of the aircraft continues, so that air comes out the back much faster.

So you're right about the use of the engine inlets!!

[Diesel]

I saw that on a doco once and it concurred.


I guess the next step up is SCRAM Jet.

[Skip]

Serious Farkling in the cockpit. That's all I can say.

[Poppy Dave]

Serious Farkling in the cockpit. That's all I can say.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.............................. What could I connect all those switches too?


Poppy