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Concorde supersonic aeroplane, 1976-2003

I have worked out the museum you are at, A380 . Their website has some interesting images about how that Concorde made its way there, by road and river barge alike

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I appreciate the camouflage aspect of it might have been crucial for a spy plane, but how did the SR-71 cope with the pitfalls of painted black then? More so as it it was flying far faster than Concorde.
Most expensive component on Concorde was the paint. Pepsi didn't know that and used ordinary aviation paint , Skunk works wouldn't make that mistake
 
Finally visited the Concorde at the fleet air arm museum. I spent nearly 6 hours there, so you should definitely budget for a full day. There was a 30 minute talk on Concorde by a museum volunteer. Quite interesting - I learnt a fair amount, but knew some stuff already.

This was a test Concorde, so very different to those in commercial service. It was 6 metres shorter than the later ones due to the test results. Inside it is a mass of testing equipment and wires. A few pictures

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This last one was interesting - used to fine tune aircon systems to deal with the body heat passengers would produce! didn’t know about that!

Concorde is only really a small part of what’s there. It’s actually at the museum because the science museum didn’t have space for it. There is a lot of stuff about what the fleet air arm did in WW2, the Atlantic convoys, Pacific campaigns, the history of naval air support and the development of aircraft carriers (one hall is devoted to life on an aircraft carrier, the flight deck, the bits below decks and is very interesting). The falklands is covered with lots of personal testament from people involved which I find more interesting than a chronological listing.

The ticket is valid for a year and it’s just off the A303 near Yeovil so I may pop in again.
 

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I was watching Big Jet TV on YouTube today at lunchtime out of boredom, and directly in the line of sight from the position they were broadcasting from to the runway being shown was the Concorde that has sat outdoors at LHR for ages, probably since they were first retired.

What’s the bloody point of BA keeping that frame there? I don’t think it’s visitable by the public, so are they planning to just keep it parked there until inevitably it deteriorates to the point where they announce it’s too far gone and it’s sent for scrap? :confused:
 
Yeah, it’s just rotting there. Rumour has it that it is weighed down with 10’s of 1000’s of copies of High Life magazine to stop it blowing away…
 
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