Concorde question
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( guessing you meant "Cross talk was not even considered"
The inter board (backplane I surmise) random wiring may be what allowed it to work.
"Way back when" I used wire wrap proto boards (socket for each IC) and found out the hard way that neatly bundled routing, Manhattan no direct cross country, greatly increased crosstalk compared to random 'rats nest' routing.
I once made everything start working by dropping a single ferrite bead over the clock driver pin (before adding the wires) to slow edge rate enough to damp reflections.
This was with a 66Mhz clock which is the upper limit for wire wrap.
The inter board (backplane I surmise) random wiring may be what allowed it to work.
"Way back when" I used wire wrap proto boards (socket for each IC) and found out the hard way that neatly bundled routing, Manhattan no direct cross country, greatly increased crosstalk compared to random 'rats nest' routing.
I once made everything start working by dropping a single ferrite bead over the clock driver pin (before adding the wires) to slow edge rate enough to damp reflections.
This was with a 66Mhz clock which is the upper limit for wire wrap.
I carried out a prom change at Cassablanca just days before the C of A flight, and used a prom blower that I carried out from Filton in my hand baggage together with boxes of proms, i remember the strange reaction by the customs man , until someone rescued me by telling him that I was taking them straight through to air side for Concorde. I programmed the proms by selecting the switches for the 8 bits of the line in the program for that particular prom, and then pressing the "blow" button that destroyed the fusible links in the input circuits of the prom. Of course all 64 lines of program in the prom that was changing had to be blown, even if only one line of program was changing. I carried out the programming on all 8 AICUs in 201, and the prom boards were laid out on a desk in the Air France office. Andre Turcat popped in to see what I was doing.
Last edited by consub; 17th May 2018 at 20:27. Reason: ommission
AF had a similar sized fleet, though I think their utilisation was a bit less.
About Concorde
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Hopefully this falls within the limits on commercial activity on PPRune, I have no connection with this other than being a satisfied customer a few years ago. If not, mods please be gentle with me...
The Concorde flight deck DVD produced by ITVV featuring Senior Flight Engineer Roger Bricknell, who also gave a fascinating talk on Concorde at the RAeS a few years ago, is soon going out of "print". So if you want a copy, you'll need to get an order in soon, or get a copy at an air show. I doubt anyone else will reproduce it soon.
It's an excellent and in-depth video, well worth it if you didn't manage to fly in her and interesting even if you did.
The Concorde flight deck DVD produced by ITVV featuring Senior Flight Engineer Roger Bricknell, who also gave a fascinating talk on Concorde at the RAeS a few years ago, is soon going out of "print". So if you want a copy, you'll need to get an order in soon, or get a copy at an air show. I doubt anyone else will reproduce it soon.
It's an excellent and in-depth video, well worth it if you didn't manage to fly in her and interesting even if you did.
I may have missed this over the thread, so apologies, but...
Given today's advances in technology. Could a replacement Concorde be built (better engines, better/lighter software/computers, redundant F/E
) from the original plans to actually make it a viable success.
Given today's advances in technology. Could a replacement Concorde be built (better engines, better/lighter software/computers, redundant F/E
) from the original plans to actually make it a viable success.
Further, changes in the regulations/cert requirements would make it very difficult (if not impossible) to certify not just a Concorde clone but any future SST. I honestly don't know how any aircraft can meet the existing Part 25 depressurization requirements when operating at SST altitudes.
It takes a confluence of technologies and market structure to make something viable.
Concorde could not fly as anything but a very expensive subsonic aircraft over populated land, due to sonic-boom noise pollution - ruling out a lot of the marketplace. London-Africa/South Asia, for example, or Paris-Beijing. Or even NY-LA.
Flying the Pacific non-stop requires a doubling or even tripling of range to avoid refuel stops (sitting on the ground once or twice part-way, for 90 minutes or so, plus acceleration/deceleration time, defeats a lot of the speed advantage). Technology has advanced a lot, but nowhere near doubling/tripling the efficiency/range of an Olympus-type turbojet (which, counting the thrust recovery from the brilliant nacelle designs, was already amazingly efficient).
That's why regular Concorde service (and thus aircraft sales) was, practically speaking, limited to trans-Atlantic routes only.
Work is being done on shockwave/boom attentuation, which might open up far more markets. But it is still small-scale experimental.
Airbus recently proposed - on paper - a boom-defeating flight profile: rocket-assisted vertical acceleration to supersonic (boom travels sideways rather than towards the ground) combined with Mach-4.5 cruise at 104-115,000 feet (30-35km altitude attenuates the boom effects at ground level) and near-vertical descent while passing back to subsonic. Quite a roller-coaster ride!
Using liquid H2 fuel that gets it range from London-LAX at Mach 4.5 - but carrying only a dozen or so pax (hydrogen tank fills the rest of the fuselage).
Concorde could not fly as anything but a very expensive subsonic aircraft over populated land, due to sonic-boom noise pollution - ruling out a lot of the marketplace. London-Africa/South Asia, for example, or Paris-Beijing. Or even NY-LA.
Flying the Pacific non-stop requires a doubling or even tripling of range to avoid refuel stops (sitting on the ground once or twice part-way, for 90 minutes or so, plus acceleration/deceleration time, defeats a lot of the speed advantage). Technology has advanced a lot, but nowhere near doubling/tripling the efficiency/range of an Olympus-type turbojet (which, counting the thrust recovery from the brilliant nacelle designs, was already amazingly efficient).
That's why regular Concorde service (and thus aircraft sales) was, practically speaking, limited to trans-Atlantic routes only.
Work is being done on shockwave/boom attentuation, which might open up far more markets. But it is still small-scale experimental.
Airbus recently proposed - on paper - a boom-defeating flight profile: rocket-assisted vertical acceleration to supersonic (boom travels sideways rather than towards the ground) combined with Mach-4.5 cruise at 104-115,000 feet (30-35km altitude attenuates the boom effects at ground level) and near-vertical descent while passing back to subsonic. Quite a roller-coaster ride!
Using liquid H2 fuel that gets it range from London-LAX at Mach 4.5 - but carrying only a dozen or so pax (hydrogen tank fills the rest of the fuselage).
Pattern, I didn't bother to address the viability question, but unless there is a massive technological breakthrough we're not going to see another commercial SST. The costs and fuel burn of an SST compared to a conventional subsonic airliner make the potential number of paying passengers too small for it to be economically viable. There simply are not that many people who are willing and able to pay a massive price premium to save a couple hours of flight time. No matter how efficient the engines and the airframe, fuel burn is always going to be much higher going supersonic (as one of my college professors put it, 'it takes a lot of energy to break windows ten miles below'), and the stresses of supersonic flight mean high maintenance costs.
The one possibility for a future supersonic passenger aircraft is for a (relatively) small biz jet. Something targeted for the super rich who are willing and able to pay a huge premium to save a few hours (I'm talking about the sort of people who have a 747 as their private jet). The business case would have to assume a small production run (less than 100 aircraft) meaning the massive nonrecurring development and certification costs would need to be spread over a correspondingly small number of sales. On the plus side, the biz jet regulations are somewhat more forgiving than those for large commercial aircraft (i.e. Part 25).
The one possibility for a future supersonic passenger aircraft is for a (relatively) small biz jet. Something targeted for the super rich who are willing and able to pay a huge premium to save a few hours (I'm talking about the sort of people who have a 747 as their private jet). The business case would have to assume a small production run (less than 100 aircraft) meaning the massive nonrecurring development and certification costs would need to be spread over a correspondingly small number of sales. On the plus side, the biz jet regulations are somewhat more forgiving than those for large commercial aircraft (i.e. Part 25).
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M2dude,
Re the MEPU at the Le Bourget museum...
The story I just got was that it was taken off F-WTSA or F-WTSB at Roissy for a fault and replaced (both 'SA and 'SB operated out of Roissy around '74 / '75 for things like route proving, etc.).
It got left on a shelf in a store, and was only discovered again in 2003 during the "big clean-out" and was saved 'in extremis' by somebody who recognised it for what it was, stopped it from being 'binned' and took it over to the museum.
Initially of couse it was. It was not until the return to subsonic, towards the end of the flight, that the contents of the n° 11 trim tank were moved forward again to the other tanks.
So yes, you're right, essentially all of it was "useable" fuel, it did not serve only for the trim.
Don't we all....
Jock Lowe seems to have stated there is a photo.... and we all still wonder if there is some footage taken from the Lear Jet during the filming of "Airport 79". But none is publicly known to exist ... we just know it's been done!
Re the MEPU at the Le Bourget museum...
The story I just got was that it was taken off F-WTSA or F-WTSB at Roissy for a fault and replaced (both 'SA and 'SB operated out of Roissy around '74 / '75 for things like route proving, etc.).
It got left on a shelf in a store, and was only discovered again in 2003 during the "big clean-out" and was saved 'in extremis' by somebody who recognised it for what it was, stopped it from being 'binned' and took it over to the museum.
Initially of couse it was. It was not until the return to subsonic, towards the end of the flight, that the contents of the n° 11 trim tank were moved forward again to the other tanks.
So yes, you're right, essentially all of it was "useable" fuel, it did not serve only for the trim.
Don't we all....
Jock Lowe seems to have stated there is a photo.... and we all still wonder if there is some footage taken from the Lear Jet during the filming of "Airport 79". But none is publicly known to exist ... we just know it's been done!
Thread Starter
If you value technical accuracy and a well written book on Concorde avoid ‘last days of the Concorde’ by Samme Chittum
Its about the Air France crash and has an accompanying short history of the program
it’s riddled with historical, factual and technical errors however, for instance ‘Concorde commercial service was inaugurated with a BA flight from London to Rio while AF operated from Paris to Bahrain’
Who knew ?
Best avoided
Its about the Air France crash and has an accompanying short history of the program
it’s riddled with historical, factual and technical errors however, for instance ‘Concorde commercial service was inaugurated with a BA flight from London to Rio while AF operated from Paris to Bahrain’
Who knew ?
Best avoided
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Mr Vortex
Finally as promised, here is a schematic of the AFT part of the fuel vent system. As you can tsee the fin intake pressurises the air space above tank 11, and hence, via the Scavenge Tank air-space, the remaining tanks. (Also you can see the Trim Pipe Drain Vaves you were asking about.
Regards Dude
Finally as promised, here is a schematic of the AFT part of the fuel vent system. As you can tsee the fin intake pressurises the air space above tank 11, and hence, via the Scavenge Tank air-space, the remaining tanks. (Also you can see the Trim Pipe Drain Vaves you were asking about.
Regards Dude
hi! I know I may be super late to the party here, wondering if you have another picture of that fuel vent schematic? I can’t seem to see that one, maybe it’s been too long. Anyway it’d be much appreciated. Thank you!
There have been many books written about Concorde. Here is an excellent one by Mike Riley, a Concorde training captain, who not only flew Concorde, but also a large number of other types as well. In his book A Concorde in my Toy Box this unashamed flying enthusiast describes his airline career with BEA and BOAC, as well as taking part in international aerobatice contests with the likes of Neil Williams. His descriptions of the challenges of flying Concorde and the handling qualities of the many aircraft he has flown, including the Antanov An-2, are both analytical and amusing.
His writing contains pearls of aeronautical wisdom that bear comparison with those to be found in John Farley's book, A View from the Hover.
You can find it here on Amazon:-
His writing contains pearls of aeronautical wisdom that bear comparison with those to be found in John Farley's book, A View from the Hover.
You can find it here on Amazon:-
Concorde at JFK
I've attached a couple of photos of Concorde at JFK in 1992.
If anyone would like full size copies (2,240x1,488 - ~3MB) PM me and I'll gladly send them.
If anyone thinks this post shouldn't be here, let me know and I'll delete it.
If anyone would like full size copies (2,240x1,488 - ~3MB) PM me and I'll gladly send them.
If anyone thinks this post shouldn't be here, let me know and I'll delete it.
For those of you who are interested in Concorde, may I recommend Mike Riley's blog in which he writes about Concorde and many other aircraft too:-
https://www.flyingthings.org/
https://www.flyingthings.org/
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Mike Riley wrote: "On June 18th, 2020, the President of France and PM of Britain celebrated the 60 years since President de Gaulle gave his speech from 10 Downing Street to encourage his countrymen to maintain heart and resist all attempts to extinguish the character of their country"
1960?
1960?