Did The Avro 730 Concept Contribute To Concordes Design?

wow! thanks for all that 🙂 certainly an odd design for a MLG a single bogey, (with what i presume to be a single shock absorber) wierd! shame about the technical archives being destroyed 🙁 i love the hint at the end 😉 ill have to find a copy of that book now

thanks a lot, helped fill a gap in my research

Ben

MLG Arrangement
From the very rudimentary drawings I saw some time ago, the MLG was a single 8 wheeled bogie, with two axles, 4 wheels per axle in two pairs on each side, and a bogie trim/shock absorber arrangement very reminisent of the Vulcan MLG. It was attached to the gear bay forward(?) fuse frame, itself part of the wing spar carry through structure and it appeared to have a retraction/extension component arrangement as per the Vulcan NLG. The outer four wheels & brakes were jettison-able just after take off and prior to gear retraction….. not a greatly practical idea. I was once verbally told that the MLG development contract was awarded to Electro-Hydraulics just a few weeks prior to project cancellation.

Rejecting a take off in a 730 would have been a real challenge;- +50% more mass than a Vulcan together with +50% more speed at V1…. but only half the number of wheel brakes ! (okay so they would have been larger brakes than the Vulcan but)……..with Carbon brakes 15 -20 years in the future and the failure rate of tail chutes, there would have been a few 730 shaped holes in the airfield perimeter fences.

Mock Up
As for pictures if the Mock up, unfortunately most of the Avro photographic record from that period was lost in a fire. Additionally I understand that the Chadderton chief archivist in the 1970’s was particularly paranoid about loosing secret documents, so he destroyed pretty much all of the 730 technical archive. However one picture, which is in D Woods book “Project Cancelled”, interests me. I think it’s heavily airbrushed to remove the background and in the book its perhaps a 3rd or 4th generation copy, all of which may have given it a two tone in appearance. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not just a small scale model or illustration.

just out of interest, does anyone know what the MLG would have looked like for the 730? ive heard it was going to be a single 8 wheel MLG i just cant see how this would have worked, cheers:)

Ben

again what i meant, is that concorde looks awfully similar (sorry jon just not with it)

to be honest i can see what you’re getting at, both designs are as streamlined as possible but the similarities are awfully similar to just be co-incidence is my feeling.

From memory (been 6 years since I finished my aero eng degree!) the challenge would actually be to take the design criteria and NOT to end up with something that bore a resemblence to Concorde!

haha would have been a winner 😉 just out of interest, the handley page aircraft that was deisgned to meet the same operational requirement of the avro 730, the HP.100, apparently was fully mocked up, does anyone have any pictures of the mockup??? could be interesting 🙂

I would’ve liked to have owned a replacement window company if that beast went ahead!

to be honest i can see what you’re getting at, both designs are as streamlined as possible but the similarities are awfully similar to just be co-incidence is my feeling. i only wish id flown on concorde, imagine concorde with 8 oympus engines!!! two below and two above the wing, in identical nacelles! that would have been a monstrous aircraft, definitely a rocket :diablo:

I suppose they would all adopt a similar fuse profile in the early stages from pure streamlining

The wing was were the real differences would show as the different designers tried to find the ideal compromises for the particular need.

Concorde was a great achievement as the various difficulties were overcome despite additional barriers. The British imperial measurement system and the French using metric added to the fun

As one of the Concorde team once put it…….”We had to defeat Sir Isaac Newton in two languages”:eek:

Garry

cheers garry, i added some more to the initial post, as i also meant to include fuselage profile too, the 730 was a very interesting project, can you imagine and airforce of TSR.2’s Avro 730’s and the supersonic hawker interceptor, oh my days what could have been… *dreams wistfully*

The fin shape is a very basic shape so it would be easy to be a co-incidence

The Concorde stemmed from designs by Sud Aviation and Bristol which were quite similar in overall concept.

Garry