5/20/2023 0 Comments Concorde cockpitSo only when they were flying the aircraft below 250 kt, did they keep the visor down, during the rest of the flight with the nose and visor fully up, it was a deathly quiet on the flight deck. It gave a great feeling of confidence and comfort to the pilots.With the nose and visor down the flight deck environment was quite noisy. We’re not going to accept the aircraft if it can’t have better forward vision than that.” That was the spur to getting the gazed visor which, of course, was an enormous advantage. To give them credit, it was the American Federal Aviation Administration, when first came into Concorde, who said: “No way. But the pilots believed that the aircraft would not be certified with a visor of this type. The whole set-up was rather claustrophobic in the old prototypes, but it did allow sufficient visibility to be able to fly Concorde. Next a longer, highly cambered nose was tried, to improve the downward vision.īasically the metal visor with its internal periscope through which the pilots viewed the outside world, was a metal cover with a very narrow kidney-shaped slot on each side. Next, a small window was to be inserted in the visor (not so much to improve visibility as to ‘minimise claustrophobic effects’). For take-off and landing the visor would be lowered. To give a smooth line to the nose and to protect the windscreen from kinetic heating during cruise, the first Concorde nose design featured a metal, two-piece visor which would be raised in front of a normal type of windscreen. Since pilots have an old-fashioned desire to look out of the aircraft they are flying and to see where it is going (and observe what else is going on out there) there was clearly going to be a problem, both in cruise – although it was argued by many at that time that forward visibility in cruise was not needed – and during take-off and landing. Ideally from the aerodynamic viewpoint the front fuselage would taper smoothly to a point anything resembling a conventional flight-deck windscreen would impose a drastic penalty in drag at supersonic cruise, even if such a windscreen could be built to withstand the kenetic heat, which it could not. The Radical approach to the Pilots VisionĪs already stated the radical approach to nose geometry and pilots visibility was forced on the Concorde designers by the general aerodynamic problems of supersonic flight and the nose-high approach and landing of the slender delta. The aircraft would never have been certified if such a system was not included!Ĭoncorde’s droop nose and retracting visor were designed and manufactured under sub contract by Marshall Aerospace, at Cambridge Airport, UK, on behalf of the British Aircraft Corporation. This was seen as acceptable for a landing). (the normal position for take-off, as opposed to the normal 12 deg, also as the nose lowered, the visor uplock would be automatically released to allow it to lower too. In the event of a total hydraulic failure (If the yellow system was also to fail) or electrical failure, the nose uplocks could be released mechanically, allowing a nose free-fall to 5 deg. The visor will be hydraulically retracted, but the nose will only be unlocked hydraulically, with its downward movement occurring under gravity or aerodynamic forces. During the flight test program of Concorde, 350 kts and Mach 0.8 had been achieved before the visor was raised for the very first time on flight number 11.Initially 17.5 degrees was evaluated as the full down position, although this was later rejected as there was an apparently strong visual sensation of there being nothing ahead of the pilots as the nose then disappeared completely from their view.Ī back up control is available on the centre pedestal that allows the nose and visor to be lowered using the yellow hydraulic systems if the green were to fail. Total thickness is about 1.5 inch of heat-proof, very tough, impact-resistant glass.Although flights up to 325kts and Mach 0.8 were authorised with the visor down, anything above 270kts was very noisy. The interlock always released, and it never interfered with normal ‘gear down’ selection.The visor glass panels are laminations of two plies plus a thin non-stressed interlayer gold film heating is applied to the inner surface of the outer panel. However, should one consider an approach and landing with nose/visor up, then firstly, 25ft of nose would give a distinctly poor view of the runway and secondly, the wheels wouldn’t come down! When the visor is raised up, an interlock isolates the ‘landing gear down’ circuits – which was a positive preclusion to inadvertent gear deployment at Mach 2: for thesake of a few feet of wire, probably worthwhile. While it was normal practice to perform a take-off with the visor/nose down at 5 degrees, the aircraft can, and has, made take-offs with them both ‘up’, quite satisfactorily.
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