Re: Remember the VLJ 'sky-flooding' hysteria of the mid 2000
Well fly you may not, but hear one roar back to life you will (you'll have to come to Paris for that).
A crew of Air France mechanic led by the former head of Concorde maintenance dept has taken the challenge (on their free time) of restarting F-BVSD that is located at the Bourget Air Museum.
SD was the last Concorde built, and it was flewn to the museum from CDG (only a few miles apart) with a fresh annual and fresh engines. It was carefully stored in a heated building, and when the president of the museum gave the go-ahead, they went for it.
The hyd circuit have always been energized to allow for nose movement.
An engine inspection showed that all the engine stages are in perfect condition, and Rolls Royce, Shell, and Virgin Atlantic (who got two Concorde and all spares from BA) have offered unconditional support, free-of-charge.
In september, dry starts will be attemtped to see how everything behaves after 7 years of inaction.
All the gaskets are being replaced, and it's a huge task.
Concorde is an incredibly complex machine, and to make things harder it is the first fly-by-wire, throttle-by-wire civilian airplane. Yes, digital technology with 70's computer technology.
It has a lot of analog-digital calculators (and the fuel computers are incredibly complex) and those don't necessarily age very well. Fortunately, all the spares that had been thrown out by Air France were carefully recovered by the mechanics at night from the dumpsters
Now it will no fly again, but it'll be able to taxi around the airport on its engines and that is huge.
I'm taking part of the project, and if you guys'd like I can keep you up to date on that fantastically challenging and basically awesome project. :rawk:
