Anyone here flown on the Concorde?

[Seahawk]

There are "Aircraft Capability Wheels of Misfortune". I used them a lot when explaining design trades, propulsion upgrades, aero, etc.

This one is for VSTOL:



There are others that specifically address DoD and civilian fixed-wing aircraft.

BTW, fun stuff those "steam-gauge" cockpits

[t6dpilot]

I did back in the late 80's. LHR-JFK 3:19 at FL570 and Mach 2+. You can see the curvature of the earth up there and the windows and fuselage were warm to the touch. As others have said, they are narrow body, single aisle aircraft. Seats are the size of a standard coach seat.

I also witnessed a low flyby and approach into Rochester, NY after the Europeans won the Ryder Cup. I had flown there to attend the event and was waiting at the departure end of the runway when tower cleared me for takeoff. I could see the Concorde circling the golf course and said I would wait for their approach. Sat there and watched the flyby and landing from less than 50 feet away. Pretty amazing.

[NY65912]

The Concorde shook my house and neighborhood every Sunday morning at 8:45 am taking off from JFK. Absolutely hated it.
The closest I came to it was when we had a job at the airport and I was on an access road about 75 ft away from the runway where it was staging to take off. The escort car stopped and it started to take off. OMG, the sound was deafening!

Please DO NOT bring it back!

[porsche tech]

Off subject but one of the most awesome aviation things I ever witnessed was back in the ‘80s when my daughters were little. The space shuttle made a loop around the DC beltway on a Sunday morning on the back of a 747. There is a bike trail that bridges the Washington beltway very near where we lived. The whole fam went up there but the bike bridge was too crowded so we stood on a hillside next to a soccer field. Soon it came out from behind the trees, so big, so low, so slow and so quiet that it gave me goose bumps. Didn’t take a picture but years later they were transporting one of the shuttles to its final resting place at Dulles and it flew right over where I worked (very near National Airport). Did get a picture that day but for some reason it wasn’t near as impressive that time.

[Steve Carlton]

I was rooting for the Boeing 2707 when I was a kid. Bigger, faster (Mach 2.7 vs Mach 2.02), no need for the nose to tip down. It was cancelled, probably wisely. This article said it needed to be made of titanium to work, and that was too expensive and the economy wasn't great. The Russian Tu-144 was a turd and didn't go far, but it did make it into production.



https://simpleflying.com/boeing-2707-cancelled/

[GH85Carrera]

I see occasional post on other sites about "nearly ready" supersonic aircraft flights that will be at Mach 4 or 5. Yea, right. The SR71 was made of titanium, had a fuselage that had gaps to allow for thermal expansion so large the fuel leaked on the ground, and a special tanker with special fuel to get to the speeds it was capable of 2,193.2 MPH. It is still the record holder.

Brian Shul claimed in The Untouchables that he flew in excess of Mach 3.5 on 15 April 1986, over Libya, in order to avoid a missile, but no official speed was recorded.

[javadog]

Top speed of the SR71 was limited by engine temp, measured at a certain point.

You wanna go much faster, you'll need a different type of engine. They have them, they are just not useful for things like airliners. Outside of a few experimental designs, they aren't useful for military aircraft, either.

Fuel consumption will always be a problem. Modern jets like the F22 can consume fuel at an incredible rate, when pushed.

[Bob Kontak]

Concord came to Anchorage in July, 1988 for a promotional tour and flew customers Mach 2.0, 65,000 feet and half way to Hawaii and back in two hours for $1,000.

I got my nerd on and went to Point Waronzof and took a video and had a decibel meter to record the moment. I'm thinking 122 or 127db I read. Not a big aircraft.

It was there for a couple days and I found it parked nose bent down right in front of of a tall chain link fence which I had access to from the outside.



This is where I stood as it came down the main runway they are expanding in this photo. I spent a lot of time there across the years I lived there as 747's took off all the time. They can make it all the way from Europe without refueling now to the contiguous US. I think that has been for a long time. 25+ years.


This is cool.....

https://www.alamy.com/360-degree-panoramic-view-of-point-woronzof-bluffs-anchorage-alaska-image219139927.html

[LEAKYSEALS951]

120 db? That's as loud as my dad's garden tractor!

That's a cool place you posted. My first wife grew up a little south in Kenai/Soldotna

[stevej37]