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Building Concorde - the prototype days - 2

This is a personal memoire of some of my early experiences in Toulouse.

March, 1969, I am 23 years old. The youngest of the 3 member UK electrical/electronics engineering team. Our nominal working hours are 07.30 - 17.30, with a 2 hour lunch break at midday. 

I soon notice that my boss has his own idea of the hours. If I get in at 07.15, his car is not here, but his jacket is on the back of his chair. He will appear at around 8.30, and tell me he has been here since 7.30, but has spent an hour in the hangar! I have already been there, and he was nowhere to be seen.

Fortunately he is atypical, almost all of the UK engineers work hard, work well, and don’t leave until the job is done - and noted.

Concorde is the most complex aircraft ever built. Practically nothing works without electrics, so the task in front of us is huge. The early test flights are simply intended to prove it can fly, and that the flying control surfaces work as intended. Our task now is to integrate all the electronics systems to ensure the aircraft can fly at Mach 2 and beyond - safely.

The picture illustrates the task, we are looking towards the flight deck from the rear of the forward electronics racks, which have yet to be installed. The wiring on the inside walls of the fuselage will all be routed into the electronics “black boxes”. Everything has to be interconnected, and then it has to work as a single system. Even on the prototypes every essential function is duplicated, sometimes triplicated, so there is a lot to do, and a lot of room for error!

To be continued..

Picture credit Sud Aviation.