M2dude,
Yes you are correct about the the runway but I thought the aircraft was taking off with a tail wind which in itself was not unusual but not at MTOW I have to say.
As I remember it the the aircraft was 1000 kgs estimated over weight which I know sounds a lot, but at the rate Concorde used fuel during the takeoff
[ 100,000 kgs/hr/ac] that excess would have been not considered too much of a performance problem.
You are correct though that one of the problems with a 54% take off was light nosewheel steering control,and yes especially if the runway was bumpy but when runway directional control became a problem wasn't the aircraft approaching V1 when rudder would have been the principal control.
Concorde was extremely sensitive to high nose up attitudes because of the extremely rapid increase in drag so any un intended increase in attitude would cause a rapid loss of airspeed. Without hydraulic all the automatic high incidence protection devices were useless and there was nothing they could do to stop it increasing, even more power would not have helped
You have to wonder why if the aircraft was indeed heavy and they were faced with a tail wind for takeoff , why they did not opt for a different runway, but I am sure if they were alive today they would be asking themselves the same questions.
Brit312
Last edited by Brit312; 2nd Feb 2010 at 18:53.