If you’re feeling nostalgic over the Golden Era of Concorde, you’ll love to know that one giant handbuilt RC version is still sporadically taking the skies.
That RC Concorde was seen doing a loop and roll at Airmeet 2023, an event where RC aircraft enthusiasts gathered in Donauwörth in mid-August last year.
The to-scale RC Concorde was built by RC designer, builder, and pilot, Otto Widlroither, over the course of three years.
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Despite not taking passengers, this indisputable masterpiece is the biggest flying Concorde still in service.
As Widlroither told Horizon Hobby at Airmeet 2023, not one piece of the hand-built Concorde is commercially made and is ‘homebuilt’.
“The aircraft is made of 100% carbon fiber, sandwiched with honeycomb inside,” he said.
“Even the pneumatic cylinders are made from carbon fiber.”
And the RC aircraft enthusiast invested a great deal of his time into the project.
“The computer design took me one year and the production took two years,” he explained.
Europe rules and regulations state that RC aircraft have a maximum weight of 150kg – anything above that becomes a static piece that can’t be flown.
This epic homage to the supersonic aircraft weighs in at a close-to-the-bone 142kg.
This gave Widlroither just 8kg of wiggle room for the smoke system, burner lights, and other finishing touches. stuff.
And the airborne acrobatics were always his intention.
“The aircraft was never built for flying circles. Never,” Widlroither admitted.
“The official approval was 8G positive and 4G negative.”
“This is the only airliner in the world with aerobatic approval.
“It is built for flying and took me three years, but now I can enjoy every minute.”
And he makes the most of every moment.
“There are only two times a year I can fly the aircraft on big air shows because it’s a lot of effort to get approvals and the license to fly it,” Otto explained.
The real Concorde had a maximum speed of Mach 2.04 (1,354 mph or 2,180 km/h) at cruise altitude, over twice the speed of sound.
Despite being retired in 2003, its iconic status remains intact.
It was the only commercial aircraft capable of supersonic flight, enabling passengers to travel at twice the speed of sound and get to their destination faster than ever before.
The first commercial supersonic jet, reaching New York from London in under four hours, it was most popular with business travelers.
But several factors, from ticket prices to a catastrophic crash in 2000, led to the plane’s demise.
The cost of a ticket was astronomically high, costing about $12,000 in today’s money for a round trip across the Atlantic.
Fortunately, after two decades, several companies have entered the supersonic race.
In fact, NASA just unveiled a revolutionary ‘quiet’ jet set for commercial supersonic flights.
The typically loud supersonic boom is reduced
Rather than the typical jarring sound, the sound of NASA X-59 is reduced to a ‘neighbor’s car door down the street being closed’ – making the US Federal Aviation Administration more likely to approve it for flights over populated areas
