Concorde announced by Aeroplane Heaven

[trumpetfrazz1 89]

4 hours ago, IanHarrison said:

Just my "747 afficianado" input. I am still on 4.5 HF2 and fly exclusively long distance (10 hours +). Yes, I fly overnight. I get established at the cruise FL, then go to bed and come back in the morning to land. I set about 250 nm on Radar Contact as the pause distance, so I can see what is going on and handle the descent procedure.

Ian

Each to their own, not for me though. 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Here are some flight times for my recent Concorde flights. Timed from throttles forward to wheels down.

KJFK - KMCO. 1h 16m. Highest altitude, 54,700ft.

GCLP - EGCC. 2hr 7m. 58,300ft

GCTS - KMCO. 3h 32m. 58,500ft.

All noise abatement rules observed. Imagine what you could do with all that saved time. Your wives would be delighted. 😁

[mwa05 108]

Hello Ray,

Could you not offer to help Aeroplane Heaven, given your experience and expertise to assist in getting the best outcome possible within their parameters? 

Reading your contributions you seem to have accepted limitations with the FSLabs 32 bit version. Can you do the same in reverse to get the best within the parameters of what Aeroplane Heaven is offering?

FSLabs can’t even talk to their customers (I have been asking for a fix for a simple A320  sound problem for 6, yes 6 months and no one will answer) so never mind committing to a Concorde 64 bit version... I will be pushing up daisies before that happens, but can you help Aeroplane Heaven turn a little bit of coal into a diamond notwithstanding you and I would like a better diamond?

I quite enjoy their products which otherwise would not exist to enjoy. I flew in the RW one of their offerings and it brings a smile although I could not do a yearly renewal on the desktop as it is missing a few bits that one only sees when in the CAE sim!

Just a thought.

Kind regards,

Mark

Edited May 11, 2020 by mwa05

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Mark, don’t confuse love for knowledge.  I have a reasonable knowledge on how to fly her and how the many systems work but there are far better equipped people than I to assist them.

@trumpetfrazz1has the knowledge as you can see from his earlier posts. As to whether he would be willing to offer his help is a question only he can answer.

Theres a long way to go before they get close to completing the work and I am watching them on FB.

[HighBypass 2,339]

15 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Subsonic long haul would be too heavy on fuel and the aircraft was never designed for  those type of flights.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I meant carrying out long haul flights with subsonic airliners not Concorde herself. 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

18 minutes ago, HighBypass said:

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I meant carrying out long haul flights with subsonic airliners not Concorde herself. 

😄 Understood. Flying Concorde subsonically is like tying an anvil to the legs of a greyhound.

[HighBypass 2,339]

Pure speculation here of course. I wonder if this is what we can expect from AH, given their reply to Ray. This is not meant as a disservice to AH either BTW>

Accurate flight dynamics (hopefully!) even if the procedures to get there are abridged and automated.

Fully functional INS - present in other aircraft types already I believe.

Visual representation of CG shift with fuel to give the impression of a virtual flight engineer doing their job correctly. A bit like A2A's FE in some respects maybe?

Reheat managed by the 4 "piano keys" - each Olympus gives all or nothing. Dry throttle is managed by the user's setup.

Correct numbers used in the sim for take off, acceleration to trans-sonic, deceleration etc.

All in all a "lite" representation, probably very short on procedures but good on the numbers - she gets up there, cruises at M2.0 and then comes back down.

Disappointing to those after a study level SST, but still a saleable item to a wider niche possibly.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Mark, at the very least all 13 fuel tanks need modelling with the ability to pump fuel from any tank to any other tank. Without that, CG cannot successfully be set for each stage of a flight. 53% for takeoff; 55% for subsonic legs; 59% for supersonic flight and then 53% for landing. Moving fuel across the aircraft is also essential for correct balance.

Concorde has no elevator - therefore no elevator trim. Trim was achieved by moving fuel.

There is a 64-bit CIVA INS already available. How this project progresses is anyone’s guess until AH release more info.

[Alan_A 1,650]

For what it's worth, Aeroplane Heaven has posted something similar about the scope of their DC-3 project: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php/119098-Aeroplane-Heaven-C-47-DC-3-is-out!?p=1221941&viewfull=1#post1221941

For good or ill, this is simply who they are.

Just as you guys are waiting for the FSL Concorde, I'll be waiting for the PMDG DC-3.

[trumpetfrazz1 89]

7 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Mark, don’t confuse love for knowledge.  I have a reasonable knowledge on how to fly her and how the many systems work but there are far better equipped people than I to assist them.

@trumpetfrazz1has the knowledge as you can see from his earlier posts. As to whether he would be willing to offer his help is a question only he can answer.

Theres a long way to go before they get close to completing the work and I am watching them on FB.

Thanks for the compliment Ray, I'm just very fortunate to have all the books and a strange affinity with Concorde in a way that it just makes sense to me.  I miss my flight engineer contact that I could email if required but he was kind enough to say "you don't need me for information, you already know her".  Load of nonsense but it shows what a nice bunch (in general) the guys are and they love meeting people who want to talk Concorde. 

I would help out when and if I could, as long as it didn't interfere with the day job.  Although, I suspect even if I suggested things there would still be a limit as to what they would want to code. 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Frazz, we both know you have enough knowledge of the FE system and much else that would be very valuable to any developer. But, they have to have both the desire and skill to write the code. I’m not sure AH want to develop to this level which is a shame.

As you have alluded to people have to have a love of the aircraft to build a worthwhile model. I suspect not all at FSL have that love which is why perhaps development is being pushed back and pushed back.

[trumpetfrazz1 89]

10 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Frazz, we both know you have enough knowledge of the FE system and much else that would be very valuable to any developer. But, they have to have both the desire and skill to write the code. I’m not sure AH want to develop to this level which is a shame.

As you have alluded to people have to have a love of the aircraft to build a worthwhile model. I suspect not all at FSL have that love which is why perhaps development is being pushed back and pushed back.

I can't comment on the people within as I don't know them all.  What makes me wonder is how close to real life it all is...Concorde was destroyed by a manufacturer (and an airline) to release resources to work on a modern aircraft - one that is ironically now in trouble commercially. Within BA the energy had gone as the experienced crews and management retired - and it took a lot of energy and drive by those people to make it work - but critically there were a few people within BA who I'm obviously not going to name, that just wanted rid of Concorde even though loads were beginning to recover.  I could go into great detail with all this but I won't bore you with it.

In some ways, it may be art imitating life - I only hope it can be saved before being ditched because if not, the version we have now will be it, full stop - I don't believe in down-grading to a less detailed simulation, we already down-graded technically in 2003.

As a quick aside, I remember hearing a former crew member saying he thought right up until the last flight to Filton: "someone will make an announcement tomorrow that they won't end Concorde after all, as every seat was sold" but sadly, that  never happened.  

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

I think it was Lord King and Colin Marshall who saw the improvement in Concorde ticket sales with a great promotion to businesses. After that it seems subsequent chairmen never had the same desire. Ironically it was never more popular than in its last 9 months of service.

[trumpetfrazz1 89]

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I think it was Lord King and Colin Marshall who saw the improvement in Concorde ticket sales with a great promotion to businesses. After that it seems subsequent chairmen never had the same desire. Ironically it was never more popular than in its last 9 months of service.

Not quite... Captain Brian Walpole kept sending letters to John King making suggestions to make Concorde successful in the early days (it was loosing a lot of money).  Eventually, King called Walpole into his office and said he was going to form Concorde division, (a business within the business effectively) Walpole was to manage it and form a team to make Concorde work.  He gave him two years to turn it round or Concorde would be cancelled.  Walpole then asked Jock Lowe (Senior First Officer at the time but ended up being chief pilot of the whole airline and in charge of operations for a while) to come on board and between the two of them, they cut costs, increased revenue but most importantly, changed the image of Concorde making it the icon it now is. 

Walpole retired under a slight airmanship cloud which is a shame because without him and Lowe, Concorde would have ended around 1981.

While I take your point that King and Marshall allowed this to happen, it was the knowledge of the people on the ground that made it work, and it was more on the engineering team management with a younger generation coming in that it was murdered in the end.  I think even Eddington would have kept it going if he could have but the case made to the board by engineering management sided with the French side of the channel.  

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

Frazz, I knew you would know the full story. It should also be remembered that once AF decided to withdraw Concorde from service and thus their half of all maintenance costs the load on BA became unsustainable.

The offer to buy the aircraft by Richard Branson's Virgin was never going to be acceptable to BA even though the public would probably have welcomed it.