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Old 30th Sep 2010, 14:03
  #500 (permalink)  
ChristiaanJ
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
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I copied this off M2dude's post a couple of days ago, and tried to answer it all offline without cheating by looking up the answers elsewhere.

1) How many fuel tanks were there on Concorde?
LOL... 13.
I suppose that, for the same reason there was no row 13 in the cabin, somebody decided to name two of the tanks "5A" and "7A", rather than call the tail trim tank (named no.11) number 13.
Yes, I forgot the scavenge tank.
And since it was "BA Concordes only" I didn't want to add the hydrazine tank on the two preprod and the two certification aircraft.


2) How many seats were there?
Good question.
As Nick asked, which seats?
Nominally there were 100 pax seats in the cabin, although originally up to 127 were certified.
Five (three plus two jump seats) in the cockpit.
Cabin seats for the cabin crew.... I honestly don't know. Seven?
Wrong twice... six cabin crew seats, AND I forgot to count the loos!

3) At what approximate altitude and KNOTS EAS was Mach 2 achieved?
Roughly, FL500 and 530 kts.
But not being a pilot I had to check an instant on my flight envelope crib sheet, which I have at hand all the time.....
It seemed pointless to be TOO precise, because that assumed ISA and creeping exactly up the right edge of the envelope.

4) Only one BA Concorde had three different registrations, what was it?
Without looking it up, no idea. My guess is G-BOAF, with a white-tail reg, a "British" reg, and a pseudo-American reg.
IIRC, G-BOAG never had a pseudo-American reg, but I'm not sure without looking it up.
Brain not completely addled, then.

5) What was the maximum permitted altitude in passenger service?
FL600, as certified.

6) How many wheels on the aircraft?
Twelve, if you count the two Spitfire wheels at the back

7) How many flying control modes were there?
Four. Blue, green, mechanical and ... what did we call it? Control jam, CWS?
Ah, thanks, Emergency Flight Control. I always considered it as a separate mode, even if it was virtually never used.

8) How many positions of nose droop were there?
Four. 0°, 5°, 12.5° and 17.5° (the latter only on the prototypes, and purely mechanically, after removing a stop, on the other aircraft).

9) What was the first microprocessor application on the aircraft?
No idea... you (M2dude) mentioned a Plessey data acquisition system?
It was after "my time"...

10) How many main electrical sources were there?
Again, not sure... You're presumably are talking about primary sources.
There was an AC constant-drive generator on each engine.
Then there were two DC batteries.
And IIRC there was an AC generator running off the RAT hydraulic generator when pillar came to post.
Reading M2dude's answer, I suppose the emergency generator just ran off the hydraulics, not specifically off the RAT. Far more logical.

Nice one, M2dude!
And certainly not all trivia!

CJ
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