http://www.tvdata.ru/video/22a.wmv?PHPSESSID=bea85b52ece128ae35c16aa8a3d1c084


Observe the VERY bumpy landing 

That's pretty cool!

Trent.

Anybody knows if the delta wing always causes rough landings like that?

Of course not...

On the final day of Concorde operations, I saw three near perfect, smooth landings in slightly challenging conditions.

Trent.

bump, bump, BUMP

that is one good looking plane.

The logos were interesting. Anybody know what the flight was testing?

Alberchico:

I'm not certain about larger aircraft, but for fighters/interceptors, delta wings tend to offer a rougher ride for low-level flying, which is why you tended to see it more in high-altitude stuff (eg. F-102/F-106/Valkyrie) and low-level stuff tended to be swing wing or have a conventional wing form.

It was part of a program in 1997 to test the properties of high speed aircraft.

High-Speed Research -- The Tu-144LL: A Supersonic Flying Laboratory

I believe some of their research was used to design the Sonic Cruiser.

Delta wings are VERY picky about attitude in the final stages of the approach. Bellerophon has written about the precision needed during Concorde landings: being less than a degree off the target pitch can cause excessively high or low sink rates.

Unless NASA's test pilots had trained on Concorde, the only other large delta-winged aircraft out there, they were probably not used to this behavior. Even then, the TU-144 has canards and a differently-shaped double delta, making it that much more of a challenge.

The original TU-144 had a reputation for extremely fast, brutally hard landings. In fact, when the first prototype arrived for the 1971 Paris Airshow, it blew tires on landing. The "production" TU-144 was completely redesigned: it was a significantly larger aircraft with very different wing geometry, different engine and gear configurations, longer and wider fuselage, and retractable canards just behind the cockpit. These last provide a nose-up force during approach, which allows the elevons to "droop" in response (in a nose-down configuration) and thereby act somewhat like flaps, as can be seen in the video. This supposedly mitigated the rough landings, but from the looks of it, they haven't been entirely successful....

--B2707SST

If anybody wants a history of the tupolev tu-144 go to www.tupolev.ru

On the final day of Concorde operations, I saw three near perfect, smooth landings in slightly challenging conditions

You appear to have missed the first landing which was erm, rather bouncy!

How many were manufactured.
regds
MEL

HAWK21M:

• This is what a question mark looks like: ? — I suggest you use it. It seems to have been a complication for you in the past


• Tupolev made 16 airworthy Tu-144s.


• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144

Here is the entire historyhttp://www.tupolev.ru/English/Show.asp?SectionID=148

Alberchico:

It's not the entire history. Missing is the theft of Concorde design by the Aeroflot regional manager in France.

well of course the russian version is slanted then the western one.When did you ever hear of the russians critizize their own products.Here is another one

http://perso.wanadoo.es/tu144sst/index.html

It's not the entire history. Missing is the theft of Concorde design by the Aeroflot regional manager in France.

Well if they used the european design .. not much in common apart from being a buig Mach aircraft... didn't it fly before concorde?

Please, we all laugh abouts these ("must be bad or stolen") cold war legends.. the russians had innovative, motivated & skilled engineers too you know..

didn't it fly before concorde?

About two months earlier: December 31, 1968, versus March 2, 1969. Concorde was originally scheduled to make its maiden flight in late February, 1968, but for reasons unknown to me, that was delayed by a year relatively late in the program.

Please, we all laugh abouts these ("must be bad or stolen") cold war legends

Actually, microfiche copies of Concorde blueprints were hidden in toothpaste tubes and smuggled into Eastern Europe on trains, and Soviet agents tried to recover tire debris samples from Toulouse runways to analyze the type of rubber being used. At this point, the French had broken the Soviet espionage ring and fed them the wrong kind of rubber, with the consistency of chewing gum. This was not a trivial issue; as I mentioned above, the TU-144 had a history of extremely hard landings and consequent tire problems.

Even with stolen Concorde plans, most of the TU-144 was original, if only because Western materials and technologies were unavailable or indecipherable to the Russians. For example, Tupolev was desperate to get their hands on Concorde's intricate air intake computer system, which manages the shock waves that decelerate incoming air at supersonic speeds. British Aerospace wouldn't deal because the system could also be used on high-Mach strategic bombers, so the Russians devised an alternative arrangement with simpler but less effective inlet ramps.

The larger "production" TU-144 in particular had a number of innovative if not entirely successful features. But on the whole, the TU-144 never approached Concorde in terms of sophistication. The NK-144 engines in particular were grossly inefficient compared to the Olympus 593, requiring continuous afterburner use to maintain Mach 2.

Howard Moon's Soviet SST: The Technopolitics of the TU-144 is probably the most authoritative source on the TU-144, but copies are hard to find. PBS' Nova episode Supersonic Spies is also a great look at the Concorde-Tupolev rivalry.

--B2707SST

Am I the only one that can't see the link to the video???

KEESJE

Dude, people (all Russians, and some were Aeroflot employees) were arrested, convicted, and imprisoned over the stolen design, and you shrug it off?

Wow, that is one of the most beautiful planes i've seen! Especially in video footage! Makes me feel sad to know it is gone      

Alberchico:
The comment about the Russians was totally unnecessary..

[Edited 2005-01-28 03:21:44]

Interesting video!

You'll notice that to compensate for the bounce on landing, the pilots should not have applied up elevator; this, as you can see, actually forced the rear of the plane (with the landing gear) onto the runway even harder, since the main gear is located behind the fulcrum/pivot point, if you think of the aircraft as a giant lever. Speaking purely from experience as an armchair simulator pilot , I have found through numerous cases of ballooning or hard landings that a large up elevator input is something you really want to avoid in the last few feet of the flare when landing the Concorde. It still amazes me how smoothly the BA and AF pilots were able to put her down nearly every time.

Talk about laying rubber! Thanks for the link, Alberchico!

-N243NW 

Thanks for supplying that link with some of the 144's background. And any passenger cabin shot always wins points with me. Have times changed. With "A & B" especially recently their cabin pictures have that glamour and panache of new car advertising copy. That old 144 interior looked a little like early DC-9 cabins or the later generic DC-8 interiors. I got that feeling that starting with us aviation nuts, the need for speed is again becoming fashionable. Let us hope that both A and B's more sundry new birds rake in the dough Rae me. The skywhale for hauling, the flying shark for its use of energy saving and efficient materials and technology. These two current projects just could be the basic training for that leap past Mach 1.  

Very impressive!

"Anybody knows if the delta wing always causes rough landings like that?" - well, on first of my two ever Concorde landings the descent was very shaky. Don't know if delta wing had anything to do with making it worse. But, in general, it is less stable in low speeds, isn't it? Still, the touch-down was not bumpy at all.

"When did you ever hear of the russians critizize their own products." - hmm, pretty interesting. It was quite a regular thing in the former USSR to discuss how "foreign" was "way better than domestic-made"... However, never to admit it talking to foreigners (which - talking to foreigners - absolute majority could never do anyway). It changed in late 80's - early 90's, when it became a "good tone" to almost happily to tell foreigners how crappy everything was in the USSR. Which, in turn, changed to chauvinism never seen in Soviet times - hysterical hatred to the West, to the US first of all... (as for the latter - am I still talking about former Soviets  ?)

"That old 144 interior looked a little like early DC-9 cabins or the later generic DC-8 interiors." - in service Tu144 was pretty cramped: 5 seats in a row, while only 40 cm wider than Concorde.

Anybody knows if the delta wing always causes rough landings like that?" - well, on first of my two ever Concorde landings the descent was very shaky. Don't know if delta wing had anything to do with making it worse. But, in general, it is less stable in low speeds, isn't it? Still, the touch-down was not bumpy at all

I remember seeing the artist impression of Boeing SST at landing approach where the main wings were swung out. Drawing could be seen in http://airlines.afriqonline.com/features/sst.htm

IIRC... Neither Concorde nor the Tu-144 has any spoilers on the tops of the wings. On jet transports spoilers are deployed on landing ( either manually or automatically ) and help keep the plane on the runway.
That "might" help explain the numerous landings on that video... it might also be the first landing of a Tu-144 during that program after the many years they were grounded.
The video also looks like it's being played back a bit too fast during the landing... maybe... something doesn't look quite right.

D~

Here is the "Fireflash" :



It flew at mach 6 yet was withdrawn from service following an attack from the mysterious "hood". Thankfully International Rescue were able to successfully assist the pilots to land the plane. Passenger Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward was said to be "quite pleased" with the aircraft's interior - complete with cocktail lounge and Dean Martinesque performance stage.

QFF

well, on first of my two ever Concorde landings the descent was very shaky. Don't know if delta wing had anything to do with making it worse.

The shakiness was probably a result of vortex lift, which is how Concorde generated lift at low speeds without flaps or slats. The airflow over the wing is allowed to separate ("stall") and swirl into a low-pressure vortex, generating excess lift. Vortex lift allows a light, thin, highly swept wing suitable for supersonic flight, but the consequences are tremendous drag, a relatively high landing attitude, and more turbulent airflow, hence the shaking sensation.

The TU-144 also used vortex lift, but the prototype's wing design was quite crude compared to Concorde's -- it was almost completely flat and heavily optimized for supersonic flight. The "production" version's revised wing design, which incorporated more twist and washout, and nose-mounted canards were an attempt to overcome this problem.

Boeing's SST design took the other route, using heavy and complex variable-sweep wings, flaps, and slats to achieve outstanding subsonic performance. The 675,000 lb. swing-wing design only needed 5,700 feet of runway to take off and 6,300 feet to land, which is about what a 155,000 lb. 737-700 needs. Its lift/drag ratio at cruise was also higher than Concorde's because the swing wing could be swept more sharply without sacrificing low-speed performance. Any fixed wing, especially a fixed delta, is a compromise between high-speed and low-speed flight. Theoretically, a swing wing lets you have the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, there were some structural effects tail that Boeing didn't anticipate, so the swing wing eventually had to be abandoned.

--B2707SST