John McKeon did his apprenticeship at Brooklands, Surrey, working for Vickers in the 50's. He has always had a love for the place, and when they needed FS9 Brooklands scenery for their Concord simulator he obliged. He took up their offer of a visit to see it in action, and along with his wife, was kind enough to take me along today.

What a great day I had. They have the original professional simulator cockpit, and have arranged for much of the original instrumentation to be linked with FS9. The scenery is projected on a curved display covering the front and the first half of the side windows. Flight controls are all operational.

John had the first flight taking off smoothly from Heathrow with a 13 degree nose up AOA and full afterburners. He then buzzed Brooklands at 500 ft/250knots. He landed (little off the runway, but it was very small and short), but then turned for Heathrow and made a very smooth landing on 27L after a manual ILS approach Thankfully our instructor (the co-pilot) managed the throttles, droop nose and gear.

My flight was from JFK, out over central park, then down the Hudson (trying not to emulate an Airbus), past the Statue of Liberty (at torch level!) and then under the Hudson Bridge at 350ft I was then instructed on a long turn at 3000ft back to land safely at JFK

It was great fun, and we both learned a lot about the flying this amazing aircraft.

We were then treated to a trip around the original Delta Gulf Concord that has been reconstructed on site as a museum.

Not ending there John escorted me around the aircraft hangar with lots of original and replicas of the aircraft built at Brooklands. We also went around the vintage car sheds and watched Murray Walker filming a report on the Japanese Grand Prix. I also got to drive around the old Brooklands banked race track in a Mclaren F1 simulator. Rather a mediocre time I'm afraid, but at least I didn't crash, however when I was switched to a 1930s Talbot I spun off twice on the banking

What a great day, and many thanks to John for giving me the opportunity to go along, and also for giving me the benefit of his remarkable knowledge and insight.