LEGO's Concorde is the only supersonic jet you can build for the price of a fancy dinner Having admired the Concorde perched atop the Sinsheim Museum, we wanted one of our own but had to settle for the next best thing – the LEGO® Concorde. This set has been out for a while now, but it remains available and is one of the best aviation sets LEGO has ever made. Both detailed and with some thoughtful moving parts, the …
I understand why, the company that was the French side of it was absorbed into Airbus, but it is a little galling not to feature both companies names considering it was a joint venture.
Its funny they mention that it does not come with Air France and British Airways stickers though. I saw this set built about a week before this article and asked that exact question to the person showing it too, if it did come with them. Sad it didn't as they were the look.
And further, if they are going to go with the prototype livery, then it really should have the era appropriate company names on the prominent side of the box (Sud Aviation / British Aircraft Corporation), sure put the modern owners in the fine print on the back (Airbus / BAE)
Be aware the performance is adversely affected; specifically, maximum speed being significantly reduced. I'd want my model to be the M2+ variant.
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/heres-why-pepsi-blue-paint-limited-concorde-to-mach-1-7/
I did the same fag packet calculation, the resulting model wouldn’t end up that much bigger (about 50%). The real challenge is that minifigs aren’t really scalable, because while they’re 1:40 in height, the resulting Lego “human” would end up about 3ft wide at that ratio. Not unheard of, but probably not fitting comfortably in a Concorde seat..
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I heard/read somewhere that the reason the max skin temp of the real thing was 127℃ was because it made the maths easier for the engineers. Which makes sense after a little thinking.
I also heard about an SR-71 crew who were buzzing around the Caribbean being alerted to "Civilian traffic at your altitude" and being "WTF?"
No, they knew that the limit should be set between 120° and 130° and picked 127° for the ease of working before massive computerisation everywhere.
127+273 = 400° K.
Square 400 ==> 160 000
Square Root 400 ==> 20
All of which can be memorised and used easiily throughout the remaining design.
This was all discussed in a documentary some years back, the same question was asked and the original designers flagged the value as chosen for ease of work.
A tremendous amount of concorde design was drafted and calculated on paper, by hand.
They often referred to the fact SR71 pilots were in space suits with an oxygen supply, pissing into their own trousers, whereas Concorde passengers were wandering around in lounge suits with a glass of champagne - all at the same altitude and broadly speed.
No idea how authoritative, but according to this, Ryanair's fleet is currently not only all Boeing, but it's all 737, with the vast majority of those being 737-800 and the rest 737 Max 8.
M.
Maximum skin temperature of 127ºC was set by the properties of the aluminum alloy used on the Concorde. Sustained exposures to temperatures above that would weaken the alloy. Sustained Mach 3 flight requires use of Titanium or stainless steel.
IIRC, the SR-71's typical operating altitude was a few km higher than the Concorde.
Another alleged WTF moment for some SR-71 crew:
For whatever reason, someone at a civilian air traffic control knew when a Blackbird was due to fly over their patch.
So as it flew over, very high and fast, flying dark and essentially invisible, the crew were very surprised to hear a standard “good morning sr-71, welcome to xxx, please maintain FL and speed”.
That would be due to the transponder the SR-71 turns on when in friendly skies.... otherwise people tend to get a bit over excited.
Best part about concorde is on the last ever BA flight , the pilot put something between the cockpit console and the window..... when the plane cooled down from mach 2 flight, the gap closed trapping the paper there forever.
There's an interview with the SR71 pilot in the Omegatau podcast.
He was describing how he was pootling around over Cuba doing SR71 type things, when asked to look out for civilian traffic at his flight level
His observation was that he was wearing a space suit and peeing in a tube, while these businessmen flew past in shirt sleeves eating dinner and sipping champagne
That's the story I heard. What looked like a small storage area, was an expansion gap, at cruising speed and altitude he took off his hat and put it in the "storage space" but when they landed the storage space was a closed gap with a hat squished in it.
It was not an accident, they did that on purpose on the very last flight as a "lasting memorial" to the fact the aircraft would heat up enough to expand several inches and leave a gap there. And apparently some cheeky sod has already ripped it out. (Link to the story)
At the time I remember hearing that all Concorde flight engineers placed their caps in the expansion gap between an instrument panel and a bulkhead during the final flight of each aircraft. The best reference I can find is here, about half way down the page.
M.
It was the captain's hat and it was on one of the concordes that was sent to be on display in the US (in Seattle) ... within 2 days of it being in the US someone has nicked the hat (well half of it as they'd cut it out). It was anonymously returned after an appeal but clearly could not be replaceed in situ.
We don't like to admit it but the Concorde was way more advanced than a SR-71. It might not have been quite as fast or fly quite as high the operational imitations of the SR-71 made it effectively a flying prototype. There's not many spyplanes that serve (chilled) champagne during a mission!
This is, I suspect, why the US was never very keen on having the things fly into US airports. They outperformed most, if not all, of the USAF's inventory.
>They outperformed most, if not all, of the USAF's inventory.
Although to be fair you can fly subsonic bombers the size of a footballcricket pitch over the US capital (and capitol) quite easily.
I ended up in hospital last October having suffered endocarditis. It's life-threatening, and it resulted in me having an aortic heart valve replacement, 6 hours of surgery, over 200 IV antibiotics, and 30 days in hospital. My work colleagues bought me this as a gift for when I got home as they knew I was having three months off work and it would keep me occupied.
It was a bloody brilliant decision, and it kept me occupied for about three weeks; I could only manage about 30 minutes each day as I was totally knackered.
It now has pride of place on a cabinet behind our dining table.
Concorde was a princess, and whilst I never flew on her (my parents did) I remember seeing her several times, and also working in the buildings beside Heathrow 27R runway when she thundered past, and she was majestic. I now have my very own Concorde.
Thanks for that, and interesting read, and a very sad end to the entire project. The only flying example was shot at and used to asses shrapnel damage on modern aircraft... Shame.
The only 2 surviving ones are museum pieces that never fully functioned.
Apparently there were around 100 in various states of building planning and ordering, many of which were in assembly and then all destroyed along with the tooling just months after the project was canceled.
It certainly has an effect on the taste, which is why airline chefs and caterers have to select different wines than they would on the ground. One of the components there is indeed their relative pressure vs the outside world affecting how much gas escapes when the bottle is opened.
The same applies to food as your tastebuds are affected by the pressure difference too, hence foods are made more salty and flavours are increased to account for the relative dulling of your palate.
Even on the 90 minute round trips over the Bay of Biscay, there was *more* than enough time to down a few glasses of the bubbly stuff whilst also being treated to the rest of the inflight catering experience. And for anyone still craving a glass or several after they landed, the cabin crew were only too happy to dish out the unopened bottles to anyone who wanted one - god only knows how many bottles were stuffed into the galleys on those flights...
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Cobi Concorde yet, which has been available for quite some time: https://cobi.eu/product/concorde-g-bbdg,2615
It's not as sturdy and sophisticated as the Lego Concorde, but it does have its merits. The wings have two layers of plate bricks with slanted surfaces, while on the Lego Concorde, they're constructed from a flat wall.
Lego on the other hand gets extra points for the landing gear: On the Cobi, it can be folded, but not tucked away, and the mounting is quite fragile.
** !!! Nostalgia Alert !!! **
LEGO meant 'play well' accoding to the legend. The company has lost the plot in a lot of ways - other than financial, of course.
Before the rot set it, LEGO was unisex, uniform and required imagination - both because there were very few custom parts and because we had to imagine the people or creatures inhabiting our creations which was much more flexible. See this advert, for the orginal spirit.
Yes, there were some novelty parts in some of the later kits but once you'd built whatever it was it could be broken up, added to your collection and the funky bits could be repurposed. The challenge back then for enthusiasts was to build something novel that looked like an iconic building or vehicle but using mostly standard pieces with perhaps a few canibalized ones from kits. Or you could just create generic buildings and cars and so on and play with them in your own scenarios.
Now the kits are full of highly customised pieces moulded specifically for the target design, highly gender stereotyped, cynically co-marketted with TV & movie franchises and once built the kit is often never dismantled. You might as well buy a Revell or Airfix model and glue it together. At least painting the result and applying the decals takes some skill with those and the result really does look authentic.
I hated it when they brought out LEGO people as it seemed like a cop out and a cynical way to gatecrash Playmobil's turf. And yes, I was still a kid then!
Maybe you lost your imagination, but Lego is still everything you have said.
Just because you have instructions does not mean you have to follow them. And indeed the sets you use as example have set instructions
https://letsbuilditagain.com/instructions/0744/
So it was still a thing you could build and leave as is then, just as it is now.
But just as you could take them apart then, you can now.
And for all the talk of custom pieces, those are still fully compatible with all others sets. You can still use any piece you want to make whatever you want.
So none of your rant made any sense. Unless its self referential that *you* no longer play with Lego. But plenty still do. So this is a you problem.
All that's changed is we have far more choice and can make far more things in far more styles. Nothing has been lost.
Hehe. Flame war over LEGO, eh? I take it you missed the disclaimer and the icon?
You can indeed ignore the instructions and you can still buy brand new big boxes of generic bricks which contain suggestion leaflets to get you started, thankfully, although I tend to go to secondhand shops and then give 'em all a good wash once they're home as that's better for the environment and my bank balance to boot.
Originally the 'kits' were generic helecopters, racing cars, boats, houses and so on, not specific duplicates of characters and props from movies & TV or attempts at detailed copies of specific real-life vehicles. It was SOP that if we got a gift or saved up for a kit containing twenty or thirty pieces we'd build it to the instructions, play with it for a bit and then add the bits to the collection for less prescriptive use of the wheels, windscreens & windows. The generic blocks in the kits added incrementally to the scale of our subsequent creations.
But a £150 to £500 LEGO Concorde, Space Shuttle, R2D2, Millenium Falcon or whatever containing hundreds of pieces very specific to the instructions is not sold or purchased to be used as a generic set of parts. These are bought to be assembled and then displayed, most often by adults lacking the patience or skills for more realistic model-making. Essentially, they're just 3D jigsaw puzzles with a crib sheet. Once assembled, most of them are too fragile to play with unless the assembler glues them together which, guess what, means they're not going to be broken up and put in the bucket of bricks under the bed afterwards.
People are entitled to entertain themselves how the like, but that is not the original mindset that makes LEGO such a good toy for imaginative play for little kids as well as big kids like me. And yes, I still have LEGO without the tacky little people and Disney crap that I, my partner and - now she's old enough to migrate from Duplo - her granddaughter enjoy using.
The expensive and detailed "model" kits are specifically aimed at older audiences (Read, adults). They're a way for LEGO to remain relevant to older generations that grew up with it but that would not be interested in generic helicopters or race cars. They're also a good money maker for LEGO.
The generic kits are also still available. The majority of the LEGO you can still buy ARE generic kits with generic wheels, bricks plates, pins and bars (the line between what used to be Technic and "normal" LEGO has blurred a lot though). The reality is that there is demand for the "girly" things like LEGO Friends and they're selling well. Do I like these kits? No, but LEGO has to keep their operation going and one way of doing that is selling stuff people want. There is (large) demand for the detailed "adult" kits. So LEGO makes them.
"most often by adults lacking the patience or skills for more realistic model-making" And for this one you get the finger and a "kindly f*ck off". It has nothing to do with patience or skills. Some people just don't like "more realistic model-making". Or have other constraints that prevent them from doing those. Or they just enjoy the nostalgia of playing with LEGO and enjoy the process of building one of these kits. It's a hobby, get off of your high horse and allow people to enjoy whatever the frig they want. It's not on you to judge what that is.
She's mad nuts on Concorde ever since she first watched it land and take off at Heathrow back in the mid 1990s. She had the full MS flight sim with any Concorde planes and addons she could get so she could sim-fly it. Mental woman but I love 'er!
I do have the honour of having been on Concorde when I was 6 years old. My dad had a mate who did tours of Heathrow back in the 1970s, I got to go on Concorde while it was "in the shop" for check up. One of the work crew found me one of the exclusive passenger wallets with the brochures, sleep mask, postcards, etc. Sadly lost many years ago, shame as i can imagine it would be worth something now. The thing my Dad said though was spot on, "I was expecting Concorde to be luxurious inside, it was a bit shitty wasn't it? Built for speed, not comfort I guess." ha ha!!
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