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Heritage Concorde - Project Refresh
Report on how the Heritage Concorde engineers have been working with DAS to improve the display of
Concorde G-AXDN at Duxford
DAS had asked us if we had any ideas to help them improve the displays on G-AXDN, after some consultation we suggested bringing the displays to life by using some of the vast collection of clips the DAS has access to and has permission to display.
It occurred to us that many schools visit Duxford on a yearly basis and many if not all of these young visitors had never seen the aircraft fly. After further discussion with DAS, Heritage Concorde donated the following items.Five PC’s, Five LCD screens, Two plasma screens, Two heavy duty Brackets for Plasma all the required leads to operate the equipment.
(All items were PAT tested prior to being installed)
This project is purely experimental and if successful the DAS will upgrade the equipment as required.Four of the screens and two PC’s were to be used in the cabin of the aircraft to display footage of Concorde flying. DAS constructed the brackets to support the five monitors and this part of the display was installed on our fifth visit(30th July 2013)
New monitors display video footage of Concorde flying
New monitors display video footage of Concorde flying
New monitors display video footage of Concorde flying
New monitors display video footage of Concorde flying
One of the screens and a PC was to be positioned at the entrance to the aircraft displaying a 360 degree shot of the cockpit. this was also installed on the 30th July 2013.
Above : - Cockpit tour monitor
Right top : - One of the PC's
Right Bottom : - Take a tour control (not currently used)
We did not have the facilities to produce a 360 degree photograph of the cockpit. We asked many companies to take the cockpit photograph but most let us down and the remaining companies wanted too much money to take the photograph (over £1000!).
Heritage Concorde purchased the basic equipment to take the photograph late October and we constructed a special mouse control so visitors could move around the cockpit virtually (The tour control is not currently used except on special occasions)
One of the plasmas was to be used at shows to promote DAS in the future. The remaining PC and plasma could be used at the entrance to the stairs of the aircraft displaying further footage of Concorde in flight and promoting donation to the museum.This was a nice little project and it should help DAS to improve the displays for the future.
This is an ongoing project and for an experiment it has been a success DAS are currently working on further improvements to the displays and have asked for further help which we will provide.
What happened next!
DAS (Duxford Aviation Society) Have really got behind this and have completely revamped the display of G-AXDN at Duxford, Below you can see images of before and after.
Some History, DAS were one of the first groups to obtain a Concorde, G-AXDN arrived at Duxford in 1977 having completed its part of the test program, because Concorde was a unique display in those days DAS decided to install seats from a Production aircraft to make her look more like an airliner and less like a test aircraft, in 2003 when Concorde was retired other museums were able to display Concorde as it looked in service leaving the Duxford Concorde looking neither like a test aircraft nor a Passenger aircraft. This all changed in 2014 when DAS decided to display the aircraft as it would have looked in the test era. Between 2014 and 2018 the displays have been completely changed to reflect the important status Concorde G-AXDN has in the test era.
Heritage Concorde are really pleased to have contributed input into the content of the displays and got involved with showing off the Concorde at Duxford.
Above, photo taken in 2012 shows the old passenger seats fitted to make the airliner look like a production aircraft
Right, picture shows the original test seats reinstated along with John Dunlevy test engineer
Below, picture shows the same seats and John Dunlevy during the test period onboard G-AXDN
