Post amazingly cool pictures of aircraft (Volume 2)
Discussion
Eric Mc said:
onyx39 said:
2013BRM said:
I'd forgotten just how stunning the TU144 was, I think I even prefer it to the Concorde, flawed though it was
Was thinking the same. Particularly head on. Feel almost blasphemous saying it though.Also, I am sure I read somewhere it was made from stolen "unrefined" Concorde blueprints.
Could be total tosh though.
Concorde had that beautiful "S" shaped ogival wing with very sophisticated camber changes all along the wing. It was this complex wing shape that was Concorde's real secret - it allowed it to cruise at Mach 2 without reheat and also allowed it to slow down and land at reasonable speeds, without the need for any high lift devices such as flaps or leading edge slats or droops.
The 144 wing is much simpler - just a double delta. This allowed it to fly at Mach 2 (slightly faster than Concorde - in fact) but it needed reheat to maintain that and it did not allow good slow speed handling. The Tu144 was fitted with quite massive trailing edge flaps and was redesigned, as mentioned above, with foreplanes to further rectify its slow speed problems.
It was a bit of a mess really.
especially when driving past, window down, radio on and not hearing it until it roared overhead and only seeing those burners 
|http://thumbsnap.com/bjcKOoBY[/url]
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