Concorde question

[ChristiaanJ]

Thanks, Dude,

I've seen her only a few times.... first when she was parked close to the "crossing", then at the location where she's now back again.

What's struck me every time was seeing the elevons "up", rather than drooping.... makes her look as if she's ready to taxy.....

CJ

[flying lid]

A snippet of information from Concorde's past, from an unlikely source.

I recently read a book entitled "The Somerset & Dorset Railway, Then and Now" by Mac Hawkins. An interesting comment is made regarding Winsor Hill Tunnel (Near Shepton Mallet), which was used, in 1968, after the line was closed and lines lifted, by Rolls Royce for destructive tests on the Olympus engine destined for Concorde.

To quote the book, "Up to the late 1980's the tunnel's portals were obscured by massive steel doors, built a little in front of the stonework and supported by a frame. These where constructed as an anti-blast measure by Rolls Royce in 1968, who used the tunnel for destructive tests on the Olympus engine for Concorde. They ran an engine without oil, expecting it to blow up within 20 minutes or so, but in the event it laster for well over two hours !. The tunnel's use for this purpose was only over a few days, planning permission having been sought from Shepton Mallet RDC as a matter of course, in case an explosion caused a change in the local topography"

I originally posted the above in the Qantas A380 thread, as that seems to be all about RR trent engines & lubricating oil matters. Perhaps it's better here as a testiment to the technical savvy of RR many years ago. Anyone remember these tests ?.

Quite a good thread this. Sadly I've never flown Concorde, but have visited her at Manchester, Duxford & Yeovilton. The one at Yeovilton had the engine access door open, allowing one to gaze up into the technical wizardry of the engine. The access door itself amazed me, doubles as some sort of oil tank, complete with heavy, precision made piano type hinges !!

A model of Concorde graces the family mantelpiece.

Edited to add link regarding above story

Windsor Hill Tunnel

Lid

[artee]

SLFConcordeBore

Please please please let me be a SLFConcordeBore - 1 post, then I’ll shut up.

2 items that I had on my “Do before I die” list were “Sail into New York on QE2” (sadly, didn’t happen, now obviously won’t), and “Fly on Concorde”.

Part of the enthusiasm for Concorde came from a friend in the Middle East, who worked for Airwork, who did contract maintenance for your air force. He was based in Saudi Arabia IIRC, working on Lightnings. As an expat in Saudi (good pay + no tax = high disposable), when he had some leave available at one point he took Concorde from Bahrein - London - Bahrein. Loved every moment.

He told the lovely story of his first day back after his hols, when a Lightning pilot came in in his G-suit, saying “I’ve just done Mach 2” (you know where this is going...) to which Slim was able to reply “I did that yesterday - and I was drinking champagne at the time”. What an astonishing aeroplane Concorde was.

I got to fly Concorde courtesy of BA - they called one day and asked if I’d like to fly Concorde LHR - JFK - LHR, out one day, back the next, put up overnight at the Waldorf Astoria - all courtesy of BA. After the “is this a practical joke?”, and “what’s the catch?”, it transpired that they did invite people from time to time for this type of trip, and somehow my name came out of the hat.

A truly memorable trip - the acceleration, the hot windows, the fantastic service (and excellent food & wine), trip to cockpit, and the “Concorde grin”. Memorable guests on the way out were Paul & Linda McCartney, with children and minder. I seem to recall that the takeoff from JFK was even more spectacular than the one from LHR. It just seemed to jump out of the blocks and keep going.

Also notable were how much of a private club it was - the crew were welcoming passengers to New York, and saying to various passengers things like “I didn’t see you last week”, with the passenger replying ‘Oh no, I couldn’t make it last week, but I’ll see you again next week” etc.

Thanks to everyone, ChristiaanJ, M2dude, Bellerophon, EXWOK, Brit123, landlady and stilton and all the others for a wonderful thread about a wonderful plane.

[Massey1Bravo]

I don't know if this was mentioned before but I just read an article here about Concorde having an engine failure during certification testing for ice buildup. Perhaps someone here in pprune can shed some more light into what happened and what was done to fix the problem?

[M2dude]

flying lid
What a fascinating story. I'd not heard about these tests before I have to admit, but the results would be quite typical of the tough old lump that was the OLY593.
As far as the engine bay doors go, well they were tough as old boots and weighed a ton (literally ) but had no integral oil tanks or anything. (Although in airline service the Olympus being a leaky old girl you could happily have an oil bath IN the doors once you opened them for access. (It was messy stuff too and it just LOVED to decorate white shirts ). The engine bay doors you mention in Yeovilton of course belong to prototype 002 and may well have some flight test gear attached. (Popping down there to take some photos in a few weeks, so I'll have another look too).

artee
You are most welcome here, and your story is anything BUT a bore. Passenger reactions to flying on our lady are always great to read. The likes of Bellerophon, EXWOK, NW1 and of course landlady would always go out of their way to make every passenger feel special. (And as you found out in the pre 9-11 days passengers were also invited up for flight deck visits after the meal service was finished).

Best regards
Dude

[Shanewhite]

It seems to have gone a bit quiet on here, so here's another question from an ignorant bystander. Having just got hold of the ITVV DVD, I noticed reference during the FE's walk-round to areas of unpainted aluminium below the front door referred to as Static Ports. What are these?

[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.

Dynamic pressure is what the pitot heads produce - those forward-pointing tubes either under the wings or (as in the case of Concorde) alongside and on the nose which simply measure the pressure of the air generated by the aircraft's forward movement through the air.

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!

[ChristiaanJ]

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

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

All 4 engines (and indeed everything else that BA left untouched on de-commission) are still in the airframe. She is pretty much as she was when she flew in on 31st October 2003.

Here is the only OAC engine bay pic I have. Must remember to take my camera next time I do a tour!

G-BOAC engine no. 1.

[Pen Pusher]

I don't normally frequent this part of PPRune but it has been suggested to me that I should post this image of mine of Concorde G-AXDN in AirSpace at Duxford - 08Jan11


Brian

[galaxy flyer]

Just visited F-BVFA at the Udvar-Hazy Museum near Dulles airport. In nice condition, indoors but sadly, no interior viewing. The Conc at Boeing's Museum in Seattle allows interior tour, but sadly again, didn't look in very good shape.

GF

[CliveL]

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.

To further complement the answer, Concorde's static ports are mounted on much bigger plates than usually seen. This is because in supersonic flight the static pressure is peculiarly sensitive to the actual angle of the skin around the 'hole' relative to freestream. Consequently the ports are set in plates that have been machined flat. These plates were then jig-set to accurate angles relative to body datum.

CL

[M2dude]

Static Ports

CliveL

To further complement the answer, Concorde's static ports are mounted on much bigger plates than usually seen. This is because in supersonic flight the static pressure is peculiarly sensitive to the actual angle of the skin around the 'hole' relative to freestream. Consequently the ports are set in plates that have been machined flat. These plates were then jig-set to accurate angles relative to body datum.

It was found that the relatively miniscule differences in plate alignment produced errors in true Ps measurement and so individual corrections had to be applied to each aircraft. No big deal with a digital ADC of course but not so clever when you are dealing with steam driven analog as we were. (Bearing in mind that any analog ADC is an electro-mechanical device). To give identical Mach 2 cruise readings between ADC 1 & 2 a plug in resistor/diode module was hooked into the respective ADC circuit, and this module stayed with the aircraft always. If we'd ever had to replace a static plate in service (and at BA we never did) we'd have had to have done an in-flight pressure survey in order to calculate the required resistors and altered the module accordingly.
The air intake system, although it used Ps from THREE sources (the side static ports and the static ports built into the nose probe; this being a pressure head and not just a pitot as were the side probes) did not apply any individual aircraft corrections, it just made different corrections between side and nose pressure sources (Ps and Pt). Having a digital processor at it's heart, these corrections were signalled by using 'program pins' at the rear of the AICU rack.
As steam driven as the Concorde ADC was, when it came to RVSM implementation in the late 1990s we found that the air data system was in fact superbly accurate, and no modifications to the computers themselves were required. Such a testament to the original superb design.

Best regards
Dude

[M2dude]

Engine Bay

Pen Pusher
That really is a superb photo and shows just what a large but cramped affair the Concorde engine bay was. Although a pre-producion example, the picture generally shows what the production aircraft looked like inside the chasm. In the picture you can see the titanium roof of the engine bay that did such a good job in protecting the wing above (as was the case with the OAF engine failure in 1980 mentioned previously in this thread). What is missing from the 101s engine bay shown here are the air conditioning primary and secondary heat exchangers that were fitted above the engines. (The large trunking you can see coming forward from the jet pipes are the exhausts for the ram air from the exchangers). On a blunty, the heat exhangers are mounted in the belly of the aircraft, in what is generally known as a pack. But there was no room in Concorde for such lumpy bits, and so the only alternative was to mount them above the engine. The remainder of the equipment, the Cold Air Unit (or Air Cycle Machine as the blunties call them) as well as the, unique to Concorde, Fuel heat exchanger were mounted in the wings. With everything so sprawled about it could not really be called a 'pack' and so in Concorde we refered to an air conditioning GROUP.
The wiring you can see on the lower parts of the engine doors is generally Graviner fire wire, used for engine fire and nacelle overheat detection. At the forward part of the 2 doors (shown most clearly on the #4 engine) are two orange 'boxes. These are the engine bay ventilation 'ground running flap' electrical actuators (the flaps themselves being shown shut). Normally these spring loaded flaps would be open on the ground, being progreesively closed with increasing speed as engine bay pressure increased. The actuator would only run when the engine fire handle was pulled, to help seal off the bay. All the other orange stuff you can see is FTD, or flight teast wiring and equiment. (We used to not very kindly refer to it as 'orange s--t' ).

With regard to aircraft 204, G-BOAC I think you will find that all the engines are still installed. I took this photo (oops sorry, my wife did ) when we had a function in Manchester about 18 months ago. You can see what a wonderful job the folk up there are doing taking care of her, and as for dining under the wing.. it was truly a memorable experience indeed.



Best regards
Dude

[Landroger]

M2Dude.

Ahah! Got you! Reference my original question about calibrating so many vital analogue systems.

No big deal with a digital ADC of course but not so clever when you are dealing with steam driven analog as we were. (Bearing in mind that any analog ADC is an electro-mechanical device). To give identical Mach 2 cruise readings between ADC 1 & 2 a plug in resistor/diode module was hooked into the respective ADC circuit, and this module stayed with the aircraft always.

I knew there would have to be something somewhere. However, I have to agree that it only goes to demonstrate yet again, just how good were the original systems and the engineers who designed them.

Nice picture from you too Dude, which raises a couple of questions for me. Why the blind window nearest your wife's camera? And I'm not sure why I've never been aware of it before, but this view shows up some sort of tube mounted atop the fuselage, just in front of the fin. What is that please?

Oh and something that your photograph put in mind. It must be very seldom that even a parked aircraft is actually quiet. Being under AC like that must have been a bit un-nerving for someone so used to being next to Concorde, because she must be virtually silent?

Roger.

[EXWOK]

Landroger - the 'tube' houses various nav antennae - can't remember offhand which - it's less obvious than it appears in this pic which is at just the right angle to accentuate it.

It was always impressive how similar the ADCs' outputs were compared to the 747 of the same era, and M2Dude has mentioned how the RVSM trials showed their accuracy.

Of course there was always the infamous OAF 'glitch' which threw up false ADS warnings accelerating through M1 which happened regularly during my time on the fleet and was subject to a tech log supplement. It never seemed to affect the machine in any other way. I dunno if she did this from new or it was a result of her nosejob.

[Flying Lawyer]

Concorde Lecture

Tuesday 8th March 2011
18:00 - 19:30
Royal Aeronautical Society


No charge to attend. Non-members welcome.
Booking is not essential (you can just turn up) but the RAeS would appreciate an rsvp if possible.
Email (without the spaces): conferences @ aerosociety .com
More info about the lecture and the speakers here: LECTURE: Training Aircrew for Concorde

The RAeS is next door to the InterContinental Hotel.

Nearest tube stations -
Hyde Park Corner 3 mins.
Green Park 5-6 mins.

Perhaps a good opportunity for the Concorde enthusiasts here to meet?
The RAF Club is only a minute away from the RAeS - a very pleasant and interesting venue for a post-lecture drink and chat, and much cheaper than the Mayfair hostelries. There's a good chance of meeting a member of the Club who will be able to sign in guests. (If I'm able to attend the lecture I'd be happy to do so.)


Tudor Owen

[howiehowie93]

Olympus Picture

SSD wrote:

G-BOAC engine no. 1.

is there something missing dead centre of the picture ?? to the Left of what I presume is a an FCU on the Gearbox? Looks to be a V-Band clamp still there hanging on the pad ??

Also I heard of a similar test on the RB199; ran it up on a test bed to full power and let it stabilise for a few minutes, drain the Lube Oil Tank and stand back to see what happens - 24 hours later they gave up as it was still running !!
Possibly a standard RR development test ?

regards
Howie

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

The 'blind' window is where the wardrobes are - no seats there. Also just about visible in that picture is the 'area ruling' of the rear fuselage where the fin starts - the fuselage is noticeably 'waisted' there.

Glad you enjoyed the event at 204, Dude. I have a lovely painting on my wall of G-BOAC on the roll-out on her last ever landing at EGCC 31st October 2003. It was signed all around the border by all the Concorde crews present that evening that I could cajole into signing, then I got it framed!

[ChristiaanJ]

Originally Posted by EXWOK

Landroger - the 'tube' houses various nav antennae - can't remember offhand which - it's less obvious than it appears in this pic which is at just the right angle to accentuate it.

The 'tubes' (there are two, side by side) are the fairings for the ADF (automatic direction finder) aerials. And IIRC, the magnetic compass sensors ('flux-valves') are under there as well.

Oh, and.. Landroger, the blank window you mentioned is that of the forward wardrobe.

Of course there was always the infamous OAF 'glitch' which threw up false ADS warnings accelerating through M1 which happened regularly during my time on the fleet and was subject to a tech log supplement. It never seemed to affect the machine in any other way. I dunno if she did this from new or it was a result of her nosejob.

I'd heard about that 'glitch'... Having seen the amplitude of the VSI 'twitch' on video, I can well imagine that if port and starboard weren't totally synchronous, you would get a ADS warning.
Did that knock out the A/P and A/S as well?

BTW, the VSI 'twitch' is now implemented on the Brooklands simulator, but not the OAF 'glitch'....

CJ