[SOC] Concorde

[Ray Goff]

> Hi All,
>
> Today is a proud day for me tinged with sadness.
>
> Concorde's last commercial flight touched down at Heathrow around four
> o'clock this afternoon.
>

As well as the work at Filton, a lot of the airframe testing was carried out at
the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough, which is also famous for
its international airshow.

Growing up, I lived in Farnborough and my Dad work at the RAE on the airframe
testing. They built a huge building at the other end of the airfield from the
main buildings and installed most of the fuselage inside a huge chamber which
was used to simulate the heating and cooling effects of flying at supersonic
speeds. Some of the chemicals used were pretty obnoxious, I recall Dad talking
about liquid Ammonia.

Working at the RAE for a couple of summers during my university days, I was
lucky enough to get a look at the installation.

Unfortunately, the runway at Farnborough is too short for Concorde and so it
never landed there, but it used to fly over pretty regularly during airshow
week.

The RAE didn't last as long as Concorde, during the great government sell-offs,
the main building became DERA (full name unknown) and the airfield is now in
commercial hands and is home to lots of light aircraft.

I moved away from Farnborough to go the US at the beginning of the 1980's and
when I returned, I settled in Oxford as the Farnborough area had become to built
up for my liking!

A couple of years ago, I took the family to HMS Yeovilton where prototype 002 is
on display and you can walk through the aircraft and look at all the
instrumentation used for the flight trials. The overwhelming feelings are
twofold, first how small the aircraft is and secondly, how crude the
instrumentation was by present day standards!

I am sure that had he been alive, Dad would have wanted to see the last
commercial landing and while I still think that Concorde is a fantastic sight, I
didn't feel compelled to see the landing.

73

Ray, G4FON