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FAREWELL TO TANGIER01 sat on the hot runway being loaded to the eyebrows with ground equipment, spare wheels, large baskets of fruit, baggage, kaftans and test results. There was a problem with Air Traffic and as a result the take-of time had been delayed. The fruit was beginning to ripen Standing beside 01 was a twin engine Bulgarian Tupolev 134 (a copy of the BAC 111?) loaded with sweating passengers who were not allowed to get out to escape from the heat by stand-ing under the wing in what breeze there was. Further away a four engine Russian Illyushin 62 (a copy of the Vickers VC 10?) had just landed from Cuba in transit to Moscow. The passengers were being ushered in single file to the terminal building, stewardesses at the front and rear. Standing in front of the air stairs in an immaculate line, matched only by the sartorial perfection of their blue-grey uniforms was the aircrew. |
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Somehow the members of the Design team felt that they had to get inside the Russian aircraft to look at the standard of equipment, if only out of engineering interest. The Russians were obviously looking at Concorde and discussing it, so therein lay the answer. We walked across the baking tarmac and posed the question to the man with the thickest gold braid. “Would you like to look around Concorde?” “Is permitted?” “Is permitted!” In line astern and in step they moved across the tarmac to the steps up to the main entrance door to the Concorde. “Where did you buy your VC 10?” asked a grinning ground crew chief as they climbed into the aircraft. For a moment the Aeroflot captain looked puzzled until he remembered that the West felt with some justification that a lot of their aircraft had been copied by the Russians. It was a joke! He laughed and turned to the next in line. “Ruski, Ruski VC10!” The next in line hesitated, saw the captain laughing, laughed himself and passed the joke down the line. Each one slapped the chiefy on the shoulder as they passed. The chiefy was last seen walking away rubbing a sore shoulder as the Russians looked into the cock-pit. “Many instruments. Very small.” They looked at the passenger cabin with its many banks of test instruments and test positions for flight observers and relatively few passenger seats. ‘Very impressive! Few Passengers! Passengers are nuisance!” Explanations started about the fact that this was only a test aircraft and there would be no test instruments...“Russian joke!” he said. As they were escorted back he was asked about a tour of their aircraft. The answer was very short. “Is not permitted!” “Russian joke?” “No! Russian Orders. Sorry!” The Advanced Number One Ploy had failed. Walking back towards Concorde 01 it was not clear whether the reason was Cold War policy or the joke about the VC10. However there was always the Bulgarian aircraft. A man with very little braid stood at the bottom of the short array of steps up to the open door of this aircraft as they walked by. ”Would you and the crew like to look at Concorde?” It was clear that this crew had been looking at the goings on with interest as they were out of the aircraft before he had finished repeating the question to those inside. The passengers were still strapped into their seats looking hot and miserable. On the other hand the crew were a very cheerful lot as they boarded Concorde, looked around, probed into corners and made jokes about carrying spare tyres and equipment lashed inside the cabin. “That is not required, even in Russian aircraft! Would you like to see around ours?” They were nearly trodden in the rush. The first impression of the cockpit on the left of the entrance was that this was where a World War 2 Lancaster bomber pilot would have felt at home. At the centre of the cockpit, with just enough room for a man to pass between, two vertical one-inch tubes of square cross section reached from floor to ceiling. From these two another three similar tubes on each side stretched above knee height to the side panels. Between these three sets of tubes the pilot’s flying instruments were securely bolted. There were three seats in a row, one for each pilot in front of the instruments and one in the middle for the captain. Hunched in front in the “bomb-aimer’s” nose fitted to most Russian civil aircraft sat the navigator. With that amount of glass in front where was the weather radar? “What is the procedure in bad weather when approaching an air-field?” “Quite simple.” said the captain,” I tell him move out” - indicating the navigator - “and then I lie down, I am looking through the flat glass panel and tell the pilot on the left ‘up or down’ and the one on the right “left or right’” That was a conversation stopper if they were to remain polite. They were rescued by the steward who lifted up passenger’s legs (the passengers were still strapped in all this time!) to show the dinghies under the seats, showed them around the galley and offered several bottles of wine which were in crates in the gangways. The British airworthiness authorities would have had a fit. It looked as though some of the passengers might do so fairly soon as, in the stifling cabin heat they saw some of their booze going out of the door. A couple of months later when we met the CAA pilot again we told him about the bad weather procedure. “Rubbish! They were having you on!” He was probably still feeling the train of the Fixed Intake Emergency Procedures test. Some time later we met him again in the course of the certification process. “By the way, you were not far wrong with that description of bad weather procedure. I’ve just been to investigate a mid air collision over the Balkans and guess what? Amazing!” Take off clearance came soon after visiting the Bulgarian aircraft. Air Traffic was being a little difficult that day and insisted that they flew under the local air lane if they could not fly over it. Even though they knew that there were no aircraft in the air lane at that time they had set a task that they thought to be impossible. Brian Trubshaw, the Chief Test Pilot never suffered fools lightly. “Light the bangers” was the gist of his comment when he heard the post take-off instruction. The reheat came on and stayed on longer than usual. The aircraft made it and the Air traffic controllers were not to know with what accuracy. Of such incidents legends are made. The passengers sat back and waited for the cabaret. They knew what was about to happen, because they had been told and had the cameras ready concealed on their laps. The Star Performer didn’t know they knew. The first supersonic streaker undressed at the very back of the aircraft in the strictest secrecy (he thought) and ran up to the front of the aircraft followed by the cheers of the passengers as he passed. At the top he turned, which was a signal for all the concealed cameras to be raised and aimed. The flasher was flashed. After that incident there was nothing to do except have the first supersonic cricket match. Trubshaw’s comments were even more basic when he was told that it was his turn to bat. They arrived back home three weeks after setting out on a four day trip. Little information had filtered back via Flight Test to the Design Office wives about changes in program. Their lives had been made all the more difficult by this omission. Ted Talbot |