David Kemp in the Sunday Telegraph made some interesting observations about Concorde at the weekend:

“The grounding of the world’s sole supersonic passenger jet represents something truly perverse: a technological retrenchment. “Its almost Luddite that something like this is coming to an end, a bit like making the wheel square”, says Sir David Frost….. Even Lord marshall seems shaken by it’s implications. “it’s really very very sad, a huge backwards step for technology”, he says. “My personal guess is that, in the lifetimes of at least the adult community in the world today, they probably won’t see another supersonic commercial aircraft”.

Concorde is a stolen glimpse of the future. Imagine if Nokia had distributed mobile phones to a select few in 1932 but withdrawn them in 1959 because they proved to be commercially unviable – and then re-introduced then phones successfully in the 1990’s when most of the original customers were dead. Thats what the history and future of the supersonic civil transport looks like. No one doubts that supersonic commercial flights will happen again one day, but Concorde’s successor is decades away”.

Very nice Dan,

I have always liked the later camouflage in combnation with the early roundels.

Nope, just guessed ’em 😀 !

It depends on the job. MJ730 was ‘mocked up’ with the paper codes Mikesh style but really to make sure the codes were symetrical and true before spraying. Period photos were used though.

For a picture of the finished job see:

http://www.angelfire.com/hi5/spitfiremk2a/mj730_gallery1.html

Only the last (air to air) photo shows the current paint.

She was in Suffolk, Virginia the whole time. As you say, just the wing came over here for repair. The re-paint team (myself and a friend) went over to the USA to do the job. The paint and materials traveled ahead with the wing in the container. We got there a month or so later later to give the owners team time to get the wing back on, paint strip the airframe and prime it ready for us to do the fun bit!

Hi all,

MH434 has (or very recently had) a similar problem and would often be seen taxiing back with one flap lowered, after the pilot had selected flaps up. In the air they were both down for landing but the return spring one one side was clearly not doing its job after the switch was selected to up on the ground. Obviously this has no adverse affect on the handling/operation of the aircraft, just looked a little odd!

There goes the forum naughty word spotter again!