I remember hearing the Concordes when I used to travel to London… they were outrageously loud… many magnitudes louder than other commercial aircraft… the air used to crack with thunderous explosive sounds when taking off over west London. and had operational constraints limiting its route effectiveness due its significant sonic boom … it had over £3.4 billion (in current money value) of tax payers subsidy to develop it … which was mostly written off.
A great technical achievement but ultimately a political folly by French and British governments.
Looks graceful on TV with a music sound track … and inside apparently it was smooth and relatively quiet albeit a little cramped but definitely exclusive. My grandparents flew on it a few times on the London New York run.
The question is, does the 1/6th scale RC model do Mach 2? Or at least the scale equivalent, 250mph (400km/h)?
I remember Concorde well: when it started commercial operations I was living 3 mikes from Heathrow Airport directly under the flightpath. We were east of the airport: with the prevailing westerly wind planes were most noisy when an easterly wind had them taking off over us, when the most common jets of the day (Boeing 707, Douglas DC10) with their high pitched screams loud and often painful, and caused breaks in conversation for 10 seconds a minute. Concorde was a welcome change, a deep roar, and if anything quieter than the others.
At that time I didn’t understand why there were reports of people in Reading, 25 miles west of the airport, in which direction it took off most days, were apparently complaining about the noise. A decade later, working in Reading, I understood why: Concorde was audible even indoors, whereas other planes were only audible outdoors. Certainly not loud, but noticeable. IIUC by the time they reached Reading they turned on the afterburners to start their boost towards supersonic.
Such a beautiful, graceful, amazing plane - a real pity it ended the way it did, and a real pity it was so uneconomical (and polluting).
Being French, this is what I used to say too, American protectionism, wounded pride they couldn’t come up themselves with something like this, etc.
And then I lived for a few years in Vauxhall, south London, directly below the Heathrow flight path. That’s when I realised how loud that bloody thing is! Like earth shattering noisy, conversations stopping noisy.
While I quickly stopped paying attention to any plane above, Concorde was the only plane which noise I never managed to get used to. Deafening.
From an era when the focus was on speed and time-saving, disregarding and/or not identifying the impacts of such a 'plane, wonderful that it was as a technological tour de force, which the US and Russians couldn’t match.
…kinda resonates with HS2 (this is a factual not political comment BTW).
In 2021/22, NASA announced the first commercial flight of their “Son of Concorde “. They choosed that name.
The speed will be 1700 km/h. Less than 3 hours for Paris- New York.
4k the first tickets.
You can’t buy these things; I’ve tried. The turbines sell for up to $60k usd each and have to be completely rebuilt every 25 hours of use. Years ago I tried to commission a sr-71 rc jet but didn’t get very far.
When I was a nipper, at secondary school, the school took a load of us to a lecture given by one of the BAC Concorde engineers; fascinating. We had two big BAC factories within a few miles. In fact our house was only about 500 yards from the runway at BAC (BAE) Warton and us kids used to sit in the trees beside the airfield fence and watch the prototype Jaguars and then MRCA (Tornado).
