Originally Posted by
Nick Thomas
I understand that before the first flights the test pilots had many sessions in the Concorde simulator. I have always wondered how before the first flight they decided to programme the flight enverlope into the simulator; especially as Concorde was so different to other jet transports?
From the thousands of hours of windtunnel tests, test flying with aircraft like the Mirage IV, HP 115, BAC221, etc. etc. they already had a pretty close idea of how the aircraft was going to fly.
IIRC, André Turcat remarked after the first flight of 001 it flew pretty well like the simulator, or if anything somewhat better!
I guess that as more information was gained during flight testing; that this was programmed into the simulator and therefore made it a more suitable machine for airline crew training.
There were two
development simulators, one at Toulouse and one at Filton, that were used by the test pilots and by the engineers. These were "tweaked" whenever more data became availble before the first flights, and then updated with flight test data.
For
airline crew training, two new simulators were built in the early seventies, again one in Toulouse (later moved to CDG) and one in Filton.
In the best Concorde style, they were designed and built by two different firms....
I don't believe anything of the development simulators has survived.
As you will know, the "cab" of the British Airways Filton simulator was salvaged and taken to Brooklands, where it's now slowly being brought back to life.
The Air France simulator at CDG, minus motion system and video display, was taken back to Toulouse, where it's slowly being restored, to go on display in the planned Museum at Toulouse.
CJ