We are talking about the same guy. I was on his last trip, it was 'stacks' of fun. He is one great guy and wonderful pilot.

Dude:O

Not sure all of them are pure trivia!
Even myself, who supposedly knows the aircraft fairly well, is hesitating on several!
Give us a couple of days at least, Dude!

CJ

ChristiaanJ
Wow, you surprise me my friend. OK, answeres on Thursday then. :ok:
(I used to do regular quizes for the aircrews, you should hear what THEY said about me :mad:)

Dude :*

It was a delight to hand fly supersonic. With autostabs working it was a pleasure to fly through the whole regime, although from M0.95 to about M1.3 it was a bit squirmy - as though someone kept playing with the trims.

Take-off was flown without flight directors as there was no AFDS mode which suited the juggling of roc vs acceleration. If the AP was going to be used them one Usually hand-flew without fly director until you got to the barbers pole when Max Clb could be engaged on FD and AP. mostly we'd just use the FD and hand fly to the subsonic crz.

It really was a very hands on aeroplane - probably the last type out of LHR where one routinely tracked NDBs and VORs every departure (via CPT) without the aid of a flt director let alone a moving map!

Which is one of the many reasons we all loved flying it!

PS pls excuse all the shpelling mishtooks - am using a tiny touchscreen keyboard.....

ChristiaanJ
Your quote from memory is correct, although Land PRIME only was required for the second autopilot to be engaged.
Autopilot disengagememnts in Land mode werer in fact extremely rare. (Love the 'oh merde'bit though). The most comon autoland problems were the loss of Warning and Landing Display LAND 3 annunciation. Most problems were due to a failed flare test in the Pitch Computers at G/S capture and failures in the BCII inertial comparator.

Dude :O

My question concerns lighting. Not many decent pictures showing landing lights etc being used in anger.

Concorde appears to have a much reduced frontal area for the housing of such lighting.

There is also the question of lenses having to withstand supersonic flow.

And also the angle of attack on landing (hope I have the right terminology there) seemingly pointing any lighting into the sky.

Cron

Thanks, EXWOK.
I was involved with tweaking the autostabs in those very earliest days... and it's still satisfying to this day to hear from the "users" we got it right! :8

NDBs? You're kidding, no?

CJ

EXWOK
This is the Mach Trimming that was incorporated into the Electric Trom Computers for certification purposes, that I mentioned in a post here about a million years ago (same thread though). With the CG being controlled correctly you'd always notice it of course when you were hand flying, and would get a sore thumb winding the trim down to fight off the nose up Mach trim demand.
And you a steely eyed supersonic jet pilot too :p

Dude :O

Thanks everyone for such interesting replies. Yet again Concorde suprises me!
M2dude am looking forward to your answers on Thursday especially Q2!
Regards
Nick

Christiaan - yep, NDBs.

There are several SIDs ex-LHR based on NDBs if some kind of RNAV isn't available. Relevant to conc ops was the CPT SID in which one tracked in and out of WOD NDB.

Seems a bit passé now.....

Autostabs
 

PS I can confirm you definitely got the autostabs right!

Quite right!
Nevertheless there were three separate sets of landing/taxi lights there.

Quoting from the manual:

Two main landing lamps, one mounted in each wing root leading
edge, have retractable/extensible mountings and when not in
use are retracted in the lamp housing.
Two land/taxi lamps, similar to the main landing lamps, are attached to the
nose landing gear bay doors. The land/taxi lamps extend to
an intermediate position for landing, upon which they
automatically extend to the full position for taxiing, thus
changing the beam angle to compensate for the attitude change.
Two taxi/turn-off lamps, one mounted on each side of the
forward fuselage, provide ground illumination to identify
runway turn-off points.


These are the 'main' lights in the wing leading edge (600W each).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...33-43-00-2.gif



These are the lights in the nosewheel doors ("only" 450W each).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...33-44-00-2.gif



All three of the sets of lights had a cover to blend them in smoothly with the structure, much like the cabin windows.

The heat was less of a problem, actually.
The lights themselves were high-power sealed-beam units, the main units were 600W each, and the ones in the nosewheel doors were 450W ... nothing like your car headlights.
As a matter of fact, on the ground you were not suppossed to turn them on any more than 5 minutes in any 10 minutes.... they got a lot hotter when switched on, than they did in supersonic flight.

Good point!
What happened was that the main landing lamps in the wing roots were angled such, that they pointed straight ahead at the right angle to "hit" the runway during the landing itself.
Once the aircraft touched down, the land/taxi lights in the nose gear door extended further and lit a wider expanse of the runway ahead (see the earlier quote from the manual).
And then the third set of lights in the nose helped you to find the turn-off to the taxiway.

One nice little detail.... on F-BTSD, the Concorde at the French Le Bourget museum, those lights still work, and on G-BBDG, the Concorde at the Brooklands museum that was saved from the scrapheap, they brought those lights back to life, too.

CJ

In service we tended to use only the wing-mounted main landing lights, as the nosegear door-mounted lights caused light buffeting which could be felt in the cabin.

They would, however, be pressed into service in really skanky conditions, or if it was felt they would help the aesthetics when a photographic detail was arranged.

CONCORDE SST : INSIDE CONCORDE ITEMS 30-41

the last photo in the series should show the 4 lights in use as described

A memory which really stuck re. hand flying supersonic was how solid it felt - and how the extreme TAS (about 1200kts) vividly demonstrated the relationship between TAS / angle of bank and turn rate: you rolled on 15 degrees of bank and it seemed like the HSI heading reference had stuck - it just didn't turn. From memory turn radius with 30 degrees AOB at M2 was about 50nms...

Re the autostabs: it felt like the puppet's strings were cut with them off, but switching to Mechanical Signalling as well made it truly horrible. I only ever flew the sim in this config, I understood they used to do it at base but stopped it because they feared lives would be lost. A pal once memorably described it as like trying to fly a dustbin lid around. And so it was! Plug it all back in (Electrical Signalling and Autostabs) and it all snapped back into shape beautifully. So ahead of its time...

There were no doubt pitch trim changes transonic due to the mach trim system, but a more obvious effect in the 0.99-1.3 range was due to shockwaves forming and fading assymetrically causing minor oscillations in all axes: if you watched out front while hand flying the accel or decel you could make out the nose descibing what felt like figures of eight as the trim changed in pitch and yaw. Roll too, and gentle pressure was required on the cc to avoid overcontrolling and PIO - a bigger problem with the Conc than some other types...

Memory lane - this is fun!

Interesting.
Judging by the picture from the maintenance manual below, once the nosewheel was down, the main landing lights just lit up the ground below the nose, but not ahead.
Did you just rely on the runway lighting plus the ambient light (town lights reflected by the clouds, etc.) or did you usually extend the nosewheel door lights once you were down?


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...-43-11-504.gif


CJ

We either switched to the taxy lights or just carried on with the taxy/turn lights which were often ample.

1) How many fuel tanks werer there on Concorde? - Lots
2) How many seats were there? - 12, the rest were freight bays
3) At what approximate altitude and KNOTS EAS was Mach 2 achieved? - Very high and very fast but NOT very very fast
4) Only one BA Concorde had three different registrations, what was it? - The one that was made at Filton
5) What was the maximum permitted altitude in passenger service? - Feet, metres or FL?
6) How many wheels on the aircraft - Just enough
7) How many flying control modes were there? - Fast, very fast and very very fast
8) How many positions of nose droop were there? - With the STOP or without? :p
9) What was the first microprocessor application on the aircraft? - Pacman (wild guess)
10) How many main electrical sources were there? - Tomato and BBQ

So what do I win? :uhoh:

Concorde Trivia Quiz.. The Answers
 

As promised here are the answers to our trivia quiz.
Actually there were 14 (but if you are not necessarily a Concorde person, 13 is acceptable). There were '13 fuel tanks, numbered 1 - 11' as we used to tell all the visitors to the aircraft, (The wingtip tanks 5A & 7A making up the extra 2) PLUS a single small scavenge tank at the rear of the aircraft that was used to remove fuel from the vent lines and return this fuel via a transfer pump back to tank 3. (A fuel level sensor would trigger the pump with only 1 US Gallon of fuel in the tank). If the trim gallery became over-pressurised (ie tank 3 already full to the brim) an overflow relief valve (ORV) underneath the rear of the aircraft would open and dump the contents of the tank overboard. There was a flight deck indication if the scavenge pump was running in flight to give the crew an indication that a tank somewhere was probably over-filling and to take the appropriate action. There was one added goody about the ORV; If you were on the ground with the refuel door open and due to a refuelling overfill anywhere, fuel entered the scavenge tank, at 7 gallons the ORV would open and rapidly dump the fuel on the floor. For this reason a vent pipe and fuel drum was often placed underneath the ORV during high load refuels. If this was not fitted and you just happened to walk underneath the aircraft at the wrong moment during fuelling........ :{
As a total aside to all this (or me going off on a tangent yet again) the fuel tanks themselves were gently air pressurised above 44,000' to around 2.2 PSIA. This was to prevent the beginnings of any boiling of the fuel in the tanks, due to the low ambient pressure/high fuel temperatures, causing pump cavitation. (Boiling itself could not occur much below 65,000'). A small NACA duct at the right side of the fin was used to supply the ram air for tank pressurisation, the two vent valves in the tail cone, one per trim gallery, closing off automatically at around 44,000', the pressure being controlled by a pneumatic valve, with full automatic over-pressure protection. OK sorry guys and gals, back to the answers::ugh:
This is the stinker.... there were 114 (although at entry into service there were 115!!). 100 passenger seats + 6 cabin crew seats + 5 flight deck seats (including the fold up seat in the aisle at the rear) PLUS 3 LOO SEATS (Originally 4 loos, the fourth loo being removed in the early 1980's). :}
50,189' and 530 KEAS, but we'll settle for anything around FL500 being correct. :ok:
Aircraft 216, G-BOAF, the last Concorde ever built. When 216 first flew in 1979 she was a variant 192 'British Unsold Aircraft' and was registered as G-BFKX. In late 1979, BA purchased the aircraft and it was subsequently converted to a Type 102 British Airways variant, and after modifications were complete, test flights were carried out from Filton under the registration of G-N94AF. This registration was to enable the aircraft to participate in the Braniff interchange between IAD and DFW, but when the Braniff Concorde adventure unfortunately ended in 1980, she was again re-registered to G-BOAF, this is how she was delivered to BA later that year. :O
Easy one this I hope; 60.000'. (As we've said before this limitation was imposed because of the dual window failure / emergency descent time consideration, not as a performance issue. On test flights 63,000' was routinely attained, and altitudes of up to 68,000' were achieved during development flying. (On her maiden flight, G-BOAB achieved 65,000' and Mach 2.04; the first British constructed Concorde to achieve Mach 2 on her maiden flight, and the ONLY one of the original five BA aircraft to achieve this). :ok:
Hopefully an easy one... there were TWELVE: 2 nose wheels, 8 main wheels and 2 tail wheels. (No, even I'm not nasty enough to include the wheels on the bar trolleys :mad:). Oh, and there were 9 wheel brakes, one for each main wheel and as was mentioned in a previous post, a single steel disc brake for the nose wheels (the nose having a live axle), for automatic use during gear retraction only. :eek:
Three modes; Blue electronic signalling, green electronic signalling and mechanical signalling. I suppose we COULD be pedantic here and include the Emergency Flight Control mode where even with a jammed control column/control wheel, strain gauges (and Safety Flight Control Computers of course) would still enable you to control the elevons.:ok:
OK, three basically. Up (Duh!), 5 degrees for taxi/take off and low speed flight and 12.5 degrees for landing. As ChristiaanJ quite rightly pointed out in an earlier post, the prototype (and pre-production) aircraft landing position was 17.5 degrees of droop. (In my view the nose of the aircraft looked a little like an armadillo in this extreme configuration).:confused:
In 1977 the new digital Plessey PVS 1580 Aircraft Integrated Data System was progressively fitted to the BA fleet, this being the first microprocessor application on Concorde, this application being followed in several other systems during the life of the aircraft. The 'final' applications being TCAS and the superb retrofitted Bendix RDR-4A weather radar system.:D
No we are not including torch batteries and emergency lights etc.:p There were a total of seven main power sources: 4 x 60KVA AC generators, one per engine, a single 40KVA hydraulically powered emergency generator and 2 lead acid (or ni-cad in the case of G-BOAG) main aircraft batteries. (Not a terribly Re-Volting question I hope).:cool:

I hope this quiz was fun and not too perplexing to any of you guys.

Dude :O

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

Happy Birthday!
 

October 1st 1969 - Concorde's first supersonic flight.

Happy Birthday to a lovely lady, provider of wonderful memories.

Wow!! So it is Landlady. Yes a happy birthday indeed. Well spotted:D
A provider of so many happy memories to so many people. :)

Dude :O

Landlady.
 

Seconded Landlady, but the traditional; 'Many Happy Returns' is sadly no longer possible. :sad: Also, its quite extraordinary that more than forty years have passed since that date - that's a whole grown up person!

Perhaps 'Happy Anniversary' to all the thousands of people who made Concorde what she is, would be more appropriate? :)

Roger.

It has been mentioned that to 'train for Concorde flying' a lengthy course was required with exams. My question concerns these exams: were the applicants expected to know every system on the a/c inside and out? - a seemingly impossible task.

The reason for asking is that even a cursory read of this thread leads to much mind boggle with the sheer complexity of the a/c.

If I may ask - and folk can recall - what would a sample question look like from these exams?

From this sentimental old fool.....

I've always felt their 'Birthday' was their very first flight.... when from a huge collection of bits and pieces of aluminium and steel and titanium and plastic and electronics and whatever.... they each became an 'individual' of their own right, doing what all of us had worked so long and hard for her/him to achieve. They flew!

So today, to me, is a day to wish 001 "Happy Anniversary".
And I hope somebody today at Le Bourget sneaked in a bottle of champagne to share that anniversary with him.

CJ

Hi everyone
Earlier in this thread there was an interesting discussion on emergency depressurisation. During the rapid descent I would guess that the FE would be very busy find out "what was what" etc.

So I have been wondering if there were any special procedures for managing the CofG in a rapid descent especially as there could also be many other factors needing the crews attention?

BTW it only seems like yesterday when I was sat in front of my parents TV watching Concorde take off for the first time from Filton and in fact it's now nearly 42 years ago. I like most people watched the event in black and white which just goes to prove how far ahead of her time she was.
Regards
Nick

Are there any concorde simulators that are still working and retain their certification?

Regarding LHR JFK routes.

What was the avarage fuel load and how close to full tanks was it.

At FL500-600 what sort of wind was usually encountered. So high above the tropopause I would think very little.

Flying magazine from the US did a spread on the concorde many years ago. Theye stated that the wind component was such a little percentage of TAS that the block times rarely differed by more then 10 mins. True or false.

They also said that the type rating course was so hard that only the top performers (pilots) were selected for the training and even then there was a 50% washout rate. True or false.

Does anyone still have a complete set of ground school notes?

CRON
I can only speak here from the Concorde ground engineering school that I attended over a total of 13 weeks at Filton in 1980 and 1981; the pilot/flight engineer questions there were I'm sure FAR nastier (and also more operationally specific); we did get to share simulator time though, which was really useful. Like the aircrews, we stayed up in a hotel in Bristol during the week. (I personally had only left BAC, as it was then, for BA at Heathrow in late July 1977, so I was returning to familiar pastures). The exam format would be several dozen multi-choice questions per week/phase; a typical question would go something like:

The Inner Elevon Light, plus 'PFC' red Master Warning is triggered by:
a) The Green Flying ControlComparator
b) The Blue Flying Control Comparator
c) Either Comparator
The correct answer is (b).

Another flying controls question I can remember is:

Outer Elevon Neutralisation is triggered at:
a)Vmo + 10 KTS
b)Vmo + 15 KTS
c)Vmo + 25 KTS
The correct answer here is (c).

The pass mark in these exams was 75%, with penalty marking applied for any wrong answers. I always found the worst part was the fact that the exams were on a Friday afternoon after lunch :\

Nick Thomas
Hi again Nick, one really for the likes of BRIT312, EXWOK etc, but there was, as was mentioned before, an emergency forward transfer switch in the roof panel above the pilots (F/O's side if I remember correctly). When placed to the emergency poition two electric and two hydraulic fuel pumps for the rear trim tank #11 would start up automatically, as well as the forward tank inlet valves being opened also.
From what you said about the 'lady' being ahead of her time, I would certainly agree with you here; in my view she was generations ahead of everything else.:)

nomorecatering
The BA simulator that resided at Filton has been re-located to Brooklands Museum, and has been re-activated, but without motion and I'm not sure about full visuals either. I've not seen it myself yet, but I'm told that things have progressed really well with the operation. Obviously it is no longer certified as an active simulator; I'm not sure about the situation in France, perhaps my friend ChristiaanJ can answer that one.
I seem to remember typical loads for LHR-JFK being around 93-96 tonnes, depending on the passenger load and en-route conditions. Full tanks, depending on the SG was around 96 Tonnes. High fuel temperatures in the summer were a major pain; restricting maximum onload due to the low SG.

As far as ground school notes, mine are all out on long term loan (MUST get them back). The ground school are totally priceless and I am sure that there are many complete sets lying around in atticks/bedrooms/garages/loos etc.

Dude :O

Well never having done this set of drills for real, I can only give the experience from the sim, which is never the same as the real aircraft, however with this set of problems there is a big difference between sim and aircraft and that is if for real on the aircraft you might have to cope with pressure breathing, whereas on the sim the mask was just on demand.

Pressure breathing we had to practise on a special little rig at the training base at Heathrow under medical supervision every two years {I think}. Even on this rig we did not get full pressure breathing but sufficient for us to experience what it would be like. Whilst we were on this rig they would ask us to read from a checklist, and it was then you realised how hard it would be in real life.

Normal breathing means you have to use muscle power to inhale and you relaxe to exhale, and luckily for most of us we do not have to think about doing it. However on pressure breathing you are blown up by the pressure and you have to concentrate to stop the pressure air coming in. To exhale you had to use muscle power to push the air out and whilst you were doing this you could speak. Normally a couple of you did it at a time so you could see the affect it had on your buddy who normally went red in the face and the veins started to show up.

All in all I found it quite a tiring experience

So, if the crew were in an emergency descent due to pressurization failure there would be the Depressurization drill, the emergency descent drill and the normal checklist to fit in, while trying to control your breathing and speak as you were trying to force the air out of your lungs. Along with this trying despaeratly to keep switching your intercom off so the pilots could use the R/T otherwise the sound of your breathing deafened everything

As checklist work was carried out by the F/E he could initially be quite busy so the pilots would start the fuel fwd transfer with a switch on the over head panel. However this was quite a rough and ready system so as soon as the F/E could find time he would use his panel switches to transfer the fuel. These switches allowed more flexibility as to where the fuel would go.

That is why it was mandatory for F/E to have two legs as if he only had one there would have been no where to rest all the checklist he might be running at the same time

Sorry about the length, and her in doors is now demanding my attention ,
{just to do some work or other } so I will come back to the subject of the course later

nomorecatering asked:M2dude answered:
The BA simulator, now at Brooklands, is a long story.
For various reasons, only the simulator 'cab' could be salvaged. It was taken to Brooklands to be used as a static exhibit of what the Concorde cockpit looked like.
It was only well after its arrival at Brooklands that people started to think about bringing it back to life.... a huge piece of work, since about all that was left was the 'cab' itself, with the instruments and controls... the computers and interface circuits, needed to make them work, were all gone.
A team of volunteers, a simulator firm and university students have now brought it back to a state where it can be 'flown'. Even if not everything works yet, ex-Concorde pilots who've 'flown' it were already full of praise.
As to the visuals, the original visual system was taken back by BA, since it was recent and the same as used on other BA simulators.
It's been replaced by a specialised video projector and a wide screen, which appears quite satisfactory, although I 've heard rumours about plans to replace it with a three-projector system.

The story of the Air France simulator, that was located at CDG, is very different.
After the end-of-service it was moved almost in its entirety to Toulouse (Airbus), minus only the visual display system and the motion platform.
A small team of volunteers (mostly Airbus engineers) are slowly bringing that one 'back to life' as well, but (contrary to Brooklands) using most of the original electronics.
The intention is to have it ready for display (and use) at the Toulouse 'Aéroscopia' museum, which hopefully will open within a few years.
Unfortunately, until then the sim is not accessible to the public, since it's inside one of the Airbus site buildings.
And no, of course that one isn't certified either....

One small bit of trivia... the BA and AF simulators were NOT built by the same firm. The BA one was built by, IIRC, Singer-Redifon, and the French one by LMT.
Today that's a pity, really, because the Brooklands and Toulouse teams have very little technical information they can exchange.

Oh and, yes, I've visited and sat in both of them, but so far I haven't flown either of them yet.

CJ

I stumbled upon this thread late last night and thought "26 pages, I'll have to read that in the morning".

Well, I did read it in the morning, it's just that I did so before I took myself off to bed at shortly after 5am.

It's simply wonderful to read all of this information, anecdotes and see the sheer delight and fascination that flows from those associated with the aeroplane.

To the comment about having Concorde pass by twice daily and always looking up, I can only say that I've never been within sight of a Concorde in flight where everyone else as well as me have not been looking up! How many aircraft can you say that about?

Please keep the thread rolling, it's truly fascinating. And to Landlady, I was watching a recent programme about Concorde's life and operation and the ladies of the cabin crew commented that almost everyone that they had on board had a smile on their face for pretty much the whole flight. Again, how many other aircraft can do that? Thank you for your anecdotes, they're priceless.

Ah, the legendary "Concorde grin"...... :ok:

CJ

FeathersMcGraw
Humble apologies from all of us, Feathers; I hope we never gave you nightmares. In my opinion all aircraft are special and all aircraft have their own particular magic, but Concorde really had it all; she was absolutely amazing. The number of people who have commented here in this thread is a true testament to how she is still perceived by the aviation world in general. Every technical (or nostalgic) query that is posted gets a fair smattering of retorts from our little community of Concorde nut jobs here.

Dude :O

Some Snippets To Start The Week
 

On one occasion, the lady occupying 1A was causing some consternation amongst the crew. She was wearing a threadbare camel coat, really scruffy shoes and wore a headscarf on her head, probably to disguise her somewhat bedraggled appearance. She was clutching a shopping basket and seemed totally out of place – she just had an air of bewilderment about her. (I realise that this may sound a little class-ist, but 99.9% of our lovely passengers would pull out all the stops when it came to dressing for the journey.) Even the flight deck were known to polish their shoes. (Honestly, I’m not exaggerating at all.)
We knew that this lady couldn’t have boarded without the correct checks to her boarding card, (although it has been known….), and according to the manifest, 1A should have been unoccupied. This obviously needed to be sorted before the door was closed.
It was down to me to find out if she had taken the wrong turning somewhere and had ended taking a seat on Concorde by mistake……. an aircraft door is just that when approached from the finger.
I asked her for her boarding card, and then I asked her if I could take her coat…(we kept the boarding cards with the coats for obvious reasons.) She was, in fact, sitting in the wrong seat, but this lady was actually the mother of a very, VERY, famous celebrity and was used to travelling in 1A and had, out of habit, just taken her usual seat instead of 10A which she had been allocated this time.
I have never judged a book by its cover since! (I did actually mention the name of the celebrity at one point in this paragraph, but I doubt if they would want their mother to be portrayed as ‘down at heel’!!)

Another time, Elizabeth Taylor was travelling with us to JFK and I couldn’t take my eyes off her, she was just jaw-droppingly beautiful. She came to the front door to ask me for a glass of champagne, (no ringing the call bell, quite happy to stretch her legs and come to the galley). As I poured it for her I said how much I had admired her from being a small girl, and, as I handed her to drink to her, I commented on her fabulous diamond ring. (The Richard Burton ring…ENORMOUS!!!!!) She put her glass down on the galley top, took the ring off and handed it to me to try on!!!! In all my life I am sure that I will never come as close to a diamond that big again. I was truly honoured and she spent another ten minutes or so chatting with me in the forward galley. She was just one of the girls, really enjoying a joke with the crew, and I was star-struck. Of all the hundreds of famous names that I have had the privilege of looking after, she is in my top three for all-round gorgeousness.

On another occasion, on the evening departure out of JFK we were ready to go but missing one passenger. She was, (and still is), a very famous American film star and with the help of several ground crew eventually made her way down the finger to the aircraft, in a wheelchair, a little worse for wear after what must have been a very good lunch indeed. We helped her to her seat and she apologised profusely, explaining that she was ‘over emotional’ due to being pregnant.
"Gosh," says I, wondering about the wisdom of having a little drink or two when expecting a baby but saying nothing of the sort, "how far along are you?"
"About 20 minutes," came the reply in a low southern drawl.
I have reflected upon this episode a few times since then.
It must have been a truely earth-moving experience, requiring the assistance of a wheelchair afterwards. ;)

Warm regards,
LL x

　
　
　

I sort of have a galley story if you'll forgive the intrusion from a non crew member.

My routine was out on the 8pm LHR subby into JFK around 11pm and taxi down to stay in the Marriott World Trade Centre (I didn't take BA3 as you'd just end up sitting in the traffic on the Belt or Van W). Wake up early, take either the Path train to Exchange Plaza or (if weather nice) Ferry to Colgate Clock and in to the office for 8am. Whistle stop tour round all the staff I was supposed to see and out to the airport to catch the 1345 BA4. Land at 2225 and home by midnight.

Once Robert Ludlum was in the (JFK) Lounge with his new(ish) wife. I used to smoke so we were in the smoking section discussing various things. The Pilot (Terry someone I think), came to say hi and to see if My Ludlum wanted to be up front for take off. Needless to say he didn't although I would have liked to take his place.

Concorde had just gone non-smoking but this was obviously a hard habit for Mr Ludlum to break. There were only about 5 of us in the rear section (quite normal for BA4) and Mr Ludlum disappeared into the un-occupied rear galley and motioned to me to join him. A crew member noticed us and came down to see what we were after. Needless to say Mr Ludlum asked if there was anything he could use as an ashtray causing the now nervous stewardess to peer into the cabin, close the curtain and supervise us having a crafty smoke. I think as it was so soon after the ban we got away with it, that and the fact it was Mr Ludlum asking.

Other than that, I always enjoyed what I called the most expensive lucky dip in the sky, which was when we were handed our little thank you. If you were lucky, you got something useful or unique (pen, Concorde paper weight etc). If you were not you got a writing set (blue paper and envelopes) or decanter labels (yuk). I was very annoyed with the penny pinchers who removed these little gifts on Concorde’s return to service as it was another part of the experience not found anywhere else.

Many years ago Barnes Wallis gave a talk at my school, some of which I still remember. I recall his comments about hypersonics being dependant on materials technology that could withstand the stagnation temperatures involved.
He mentioned Concorde, almost with a regret that the aluminium derivative chosen automatically set the operating limit of the airframe. Even if the Olympus engines were improved it would be of no advantage. Limit would also be around 60,000 ft as altitude temperate starts to rise again above that.

There was also a comment about US plans for M3+ airliner with a small joke about having to use heavier alloys for the higher temperatures and what with overpressure being proportional to mass, not many greenhouses would survive.

It feels strange now having sat through his comments at the birth of supersonic commercial aviation to think that it is possibly already over :sad:

Concorde gifts
 

Following up on the comment by norodnik re gifts.
On my only trip in 1979 we were given a cassette tape. One "side" had some Concorde specific comedy routines, I remember a Tony Hancock skit and I think a Robert Morley talk. However the other "side" had various people from the design team talking about the technical challenges involved. Fascinating stuff. I always remember the comment that one of the controlling design factors was the thermal limits on the various materials. My copy was borrowed permanently and I now regret not taking better care of it at the time.
I wondered if any one here remembers contributing to the technical talk, or if anyone has a copy of the tape which could be made available? Would BA have an archived copy?

Fascinating thread. Thanks to all.

Upgraded a few weeks ago to be 3072 X 768 pixel 3 channel HD display :O

80% of the main dash gauges are now restored to working condition and most of the control inputs work.

The AF simulator was regarded as a sub standard machine, never had the required interface or processing power compared the the UK machine that was built as a joint effort by Sinker-Link Miles (structure and motion) and Redifon simulation (interface and computers), with a view that the developed product would be offered to the option holding airlines.

A key failing of the AF machine was that it could not correctly simulate an engine failure on take off without going off the runway.

So what happened when AF had an apparent engine failure/fire after V1 in 2000? The crew made a right hash of the procedures....Nuff said really.

This thread is so good because of the interesting way that all the Concorde experts from both sides of the channel have answered the many questions posted. So I was a little surprised to read the last post which in my humble view breaks the "harmony" of this thread!
Regards
Nick