Originally Posted by
Shaggy Sheep Driver
Static ports are by no means unique to Concorde; all aeroplanes have them. They measure the air pressure around the aeroplane, and this value is used in various aspects of aircraft instrumentation. In particular, it is used (together with the dynamic pressure value) to display indicated air speed.
To complement
SSD's answer, those 'static ports' are located on the fuselage at the location where the local pressure is as near as possibile to the actual outside pressure, which in turn is equivalent to the 'pressure altitude', or, near enough, to the altitude the aircraft is flying at, so it it used to display altitude, and its rate of change is used to calculate and display vertical speed.
When passing Mach 1, the nose shock wave moves rearwards, and passes over the static ports.
As a result, there is a "twitch" on both the altimeter (barely visible) and on the VSI (verical speed indicator, very visible) when exceeding Mach 1.
By the way - engine bay doors; we open one on OAC for our Technical Tours (not the shorter, 'Classic', tours where there wouldn't be time) so we can show the 593 Olympus and tell our visitors about it. Those doors certainly are heavy!
Any pics,
SSD?
People on another (French) forum were asking about the engines on G-BOAC...
Are they still all in place? Or were any dropped for display outside the aircraft?
CJ