Is 59.3 the ideal CG before descent?

[Fraser Gale 297]

1 hour ago, Andrew Marshall said:

Ah ok! Do you have any recommendations for sourcing the CD/real manuals? I’ve looked at why is on offer at eBay but what I’ve seen is incomplete at best. I’ve also come across the Air France version which seems more complete, but my French is not up to the task!

On eBay there are CDs for sale from the widow of a former flight engineer, I think they are around £20 each and one CD has nearly all the manuals you can get.  They were blue in colour the last I saw and the seller name I think is concorde001003.  

1 hour ago, Andrew Marshall said:

[Andrew Marshall 0]

great, found it, thank you very much!

[Andrew Marshall 0]

Hi Fraser, looking through my collection of manuals I am unable to find the "Cruise Control Manual" (sorry if title not quite right) for BA e.g. the documentation providing fuel burn for for various combinations of airplane weight, ISA and FL. I do have the equivalent for AF, but je ne parle pas français, and as good as Google translate is (or not), it can be difficult sometimes to interpret what is happening.

So, can you recommend any source(s) for obtaining a copy of the BA Cruise Control Manual?

For reference, what I currently have for BA is:

• Flying Manual Volume I (v 2001)
• Flying Manual Volume II(a) (v 2002)
• Flying Manual Volume II(b) (v 2002)
• Flying Training Manual
• Load & Balance Manual
• Operations Navigation Manual
• Performance Manual

[Fraser Gale 297]

7 minutes ago, Andrew Marshall said:

Hi Fraser, looking through my collection of manuals I am unable to find the "Cruise Control Manual" (sorry if title not quite right) for BA e.g. the documentation providing fuel burn for for various combinations of airplane weight, ISA and FL. I do have the equivalent for AF, but je ne parle pas français, and as good as Google translate is (or not), it can be difficult sometimes to interpret what is happening.

So, can you recommend any source(s) for obtaining a copy of the BA Cruise Control Manual?

For reference, what I currently have for BA is:

• Flying Manual Volume I (v 2001)
• Flying Manual Volume II(a) (v 2002)
• Flying Manual Volume II(b) (v 2002)
• Flying Training Manual
• Load & Balance Manual
• Operations Navigation Manual
• Performance Manual

Hi, is there a particular piece of information or reason you need the Cruise Control Manual, or is it just to complete your collection?

I have to say I had to wait several years before I could find all the manuals and it really is luck...

 

[Steve Prowse 71]

19 hours ago, Fraser Gale said:

Hi, is there a particular piece of information or reason you need the Cruise Control Manual, or is it just to complete your collection?

I have to say I had to wait several years before I could find all the manuals and it really is luck...

 

I too have been trying to get my hands on the cruise control manual.  I wrote to BA but didn’t have much luck.  I thought you obtained your manuals etc from a friend, a former pilot/engineer....now that’s the sort of luck to have.  Anyway the search goes on.....

All the best 

keep safe and well

Steve

 

[Fraser Gale 297]

41 minutes ago, Steve Prowse said:

I too have been trying to get my hands on the cruise control manual.  I wrote to BA but didn’t have much luck.  I thought you obtained your manuals etc from a friend, a former pilot/engineer....now that’s the sort of luck to have.  Anyway the search goes on.....

All the best 

keep safe and well

Steve

 

BA have no interest in Concorde and frankly, I doubt they would even have copies of the manuals now. 

I had bought some before I got to know the flight engineer, and yes, I have a few of his now - including his cruise manual.  In fact he had been tasked with re-writing it in modern typeface during the grounding after the accident, so I have his original manual plus the work he had done on the re-writes.  Once they began flying again he didn't get the time to finish the re-writing so it wasn't completed. 

The manuals are a grey area when it comes to copyright which is why I'm wary of people selling the PDF's on that well known auction site - especially people who had nothing to do with the Concorde project and are trying to make a quick buck!

Personal view only... I only ever bought the hard copies of manuals etc. and have been gradually scanning them over the years purely as a safety backup. 

[Andrew Marshall 0]

Thank you for providing additional context on your manuals Fraser. I understand the potential issue of copyright - looks to be a minimum of 70 years in the UK from date of publish...so at least 2071!. Everyone should be aware of the risk of enforcement by BA or whomever they may potentially licence/sell the copyright to. I may be completely remembering this wrong, but I thought I heard/read a rumour that BA may have given some Concorde related documentation to a library in the UK? Not sure if anyone has heard about this?

Fraser, to your earlier question, my reason for trying to find a copy of the cruise manual is to:

• Verify CPS calculations
• Have another source in case CPS is no longer available/doesn't work
• Perform my own calculations/flight planning for situations where I find CPS doesn't work well

[Fraser Gale 297]

1 hour ago, Andrew Marshall said:

Thank you for providing additional context on your manuals Fraser. I understand the potential issue of copyright - looks to be a minimum of 70 years in the UK from date of publish...so at least 2071!. Everyone should be aware of the risk of enforcement by BA or whomever they may potentially licence/sell the copyright to. I may be completely remembering this wrong, but I thought I heard/read a rumour that BA may have given some Concorde related documentation to a library in the UK? Not sure if anyone has heard about this?

Fraser, to your earlier question, my reason for trying to find a copy of the cruise manual is to:

• Verify CPS calculations
• Have another source in case CPS is no longer available/doesn't work
• Perform my own calculations/flight planning for situations where I find CPS doesn't work well

I would guess that a copy MIGHT have been placed in the national archives or with the science museum in London, but I don’t think (conjecture only on my part) that BA were overly bothered about that sort of thing.  The only reason I say this is that there were three sort of “sets” of manuals - the manufacturer operating manual from which BA derived their own set of manuals, leaving out things or adding things as they wished; the aircraft sets where each aircraft had a set of them and the crew issue set, where each crew member was given a set for study purposes prior to starting the conversion course.  

The ones that come up on auction sites are usually the crew issue ones, as lofts are cleared out or as they pass away.  I have a couple of the manufacturer volumes that come up rarely but they are around and the rest would have all been crew issue - it is a waiting game really. 

What happened to the aircraft sets and any spare copies in the BA stores/fleet office is anyone’s guess but probably people connected to the project had first option then they might have gone to auction.  A lot of crew still have their copies - even though technically they were meant to hand them back when moving to another fleet. 

They might not even have copyright on them due to the continual updating that naturally happens in the life of an aircraft, they certainly aren’t marked as being so and I highly doubt BA cares about it now.  I just don’t like people making money out of them - but then I have them for the information and not as a collectors item. 
 

Now, for what you need - the takeoff performance calculations for CPS can be verified from your performance manual section 1.10 and manual (by hand) fuel planning details are repeated in the Navigation manual section 6.  So in actual fact for what you want, you already have the information!

[Fraser Gale 297]

Oh, and somebody not to far away also made a Concorde profile for PFPX that was reasonably accurate.... so even if CPS does become unusable at some point, we will survive!

[Andrew Marshall 0]

It does look like Aerospace Bristol (via the National Archives) holds a collection of Concorde manuals including a Cruise Control Manual. The catalogue entry (Concorde Cruise Control Manual | The National Archives) is undated though, so unclear if it is an earlier version from the mid-1970's when Concorde was introduced into service or a later/latest version from the early 2000's.

Thank you for the direction for take-off and landing calculations which I do see in the manuals I have. I however do not see the relevant information for flight planning/fuel planning e.g. for a cargo weight of x, distance y, the fuel required will be z along with the distance to altitude and so forth.

Nonetheless will continue with CPS, PFPX and practicing my French!

[Fraser Gale 297]

1 hour ago, Andrew Marshall said:

 

Thank you for the direction for take-off and landing calculations which I do see in the manuals I have. I however do not see the relevant information for flight planning/fuel planning e.g. for a cargo weight of x, distance y, the fuel required will be z along with the distance to altitude and so forth.

I’m afraid you won’t find an accurate document that works like that anywhere!!

Fuel planning (especially on Concorde) is too complex to have one chart like that.  The flight planning I directed you to is how it had to be done - an amount of fuel for takeoff to 1 min into the flight (dependant on weight and temperature) then an amount for climb to subsonic cruise, then an amount for subsonic cruise, then an amount for the accel to FL440, then an amount for the super cruise calculated in 30 minute segments, then the descent and landing fuel.  The weight at the start of each of these segments effects the fuel burn, as does the temperature, which then affects the weight at the start of the next segment, then the next and so on...

Everything works by time in the air in this case and you calculate how long it will take you to get from one point to another then use the method above.

Even the figures in the manuals were only accurate to within a ballpark and one clever flight engineer wasn’t happy with that, and spent time writing a little computer program using his own figures to help with the planning.  I have been writing a simulation of this program for a while but I don’t have time to be at it constantly. 
 

Now there are tables to check fuel to destination once you are en route but they are no use when planning - the idea being you know your weight (from the fuel panel) and you know the temperature and wind because you are up there in it.  At the planning stage you have to calculate what weight you will be at a given point. 
 

Hope this explains it...?!
 

 

[AdrianSmith 37]

and you have to work on weather "forecasts" otherwise known as "guesses"!

I've just been looking at the original thread title, no way is 54.3 a suitable CofG to start descent.
Supersonic the aircraft would tumble out of the sky at 54.3 (forward limit at Mach 2 is 58), even subsonic descent (e.g. into London where you have had a short subsonic cruise at circa FL390) would need a CofG way rearward of that at FL390 and 300 KIAS.

[Ray Proudfoot 536]

@AdrianSmith, that was a typo on my part as the discussion states 59.3. Now corrected.

Edited February 17 by Ray Proudfoot
Typo on topic title

[Fraser Gale 297]

1 hour ago, AdrianSmith said:

and you have to work on weather "forecasts" otherwise known as "guesses"!

I've just been looking at the original thread title, no way is 54.3 a suitable CofG to start descent.
Supersonic the aircraft would tumble out of the sky at 54.3 (forward limit at Mach 2 is 58), even subsonic descent (e.g. into London where you have had a short subsonic cruise at circa FL390) would need a CofG way rearward of that at FL390 and 300 KIAS.

Forward limit when heavy at Mach 2 is 57.7 moving forward to 57.2 as the aircraft gets lighter.  At FL390 CG should be 55% and I would hope to be flying faster than 300kts. 

[Andrew Wilson 7394]

Not by much though. 350kts is M1 at FL350. So on a subsonic cruise FL390/M0.95 you'd not be going much faster than 300 indicated.

I'll check on my next descent 

[Fraser Gale 297]

You are quite correct, I stand (well sit actually) corrected.  It’s been a while...