Concorde AICU
Hi Christian,I was a development engineer at Filton working on the AICU at first but ending up in charge of avionics test.
So as far as your AICU is concerned - I have handled all the boards extensively.
I first worked on the "A" model - the first manufactured box, followed by "A bar" (logically, not "A").
These did not have the doghouse connector on the front, and in order to see what was going on in the program, we made a strobe unit hard wired to the digital boards, this was followed by the connector on the front and an AICU test box.
When first switched on the whole unit rattled at high speed as all the relays chattered.
I spent several days adding decoupling capacitors on all the boards.
The birds nest chassis wiring was chosen to prevent cross- talk.
This was at the start of 1972, but I can still remember a lot of it.
Someone mentioned a prom change at Casablanca, I carried out a prom change there just before the C of A flight.
I am a volunteer at the Bristol Aero Collection, and we have just received a drawing cupboard with the AICS drawings.
We are at the moment documenting archives. One of the volunteers is Ted Talbot who I used to work with, and has been mentioned in posts.
Feel free to ask questions, I may remember the answers!