Aircraft

You may have been calm, but both some JAS representatives and your minister of foreign affairs were quite fired up, accusing our government of having decided long time ago and just used JAS to put pressure on the Americans for a better deal ... maybe it didn't get as much attention in Sweden as it did in Norway.

By the way, do you remember "Jag er inte besviken, jag er förbannad"?
 
Talking about that bell - are Östersund going to apply for the 2018 Winter Olympics? Tromsø decided not to apply after a lot of back and forth, I think it was a good decision. And to be honest, I think it's your turn now  :)
 
Eddies Wingman said:
Talking about that bell - are Östersund going to apply for the 2018 Winter Olympics? Tromsø decided not to apply after a lot of back and forth, I think it was a good decision. And to be honest, I think it's your turn now  :)
*goes googleing*

Yeah, they want to anyway, that's for sure. They are working on it, but the government and the parliment are the ones that'll make the decision.
 
Yesterday I saw a 7 minute item on TV about Dutch MPs visiting Sweden's Saab factory. The Swedes are willing to make a very attractive offer by offering the Gripen for one fixed full life cycle price, including acquisition support and maintenance over the entire life.

Link Click on the airplane, not the guy's face.

It's in Dutch, but the Swedes talk English, promoting the fighter, so it's good to follow what they say.
In a few weeks the MPs will go to Lockheed Martin, checking out the JSF. It's hard to imagine for them that they will have such an offer and such transparance like they got presented by Saab.

The MPs were very positive about the Swedes being so transparant, willing to make a clear offer.


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India has chosen for the Saab Gripen. Here a 2 minute promo film about it.
 
Well, well. Our Minister of Defense went to the American Embassy in an angry mood. Reason:
The JSF will be 20% more expensive.

Read article here

Dutch Defence Minister Hans Hillen has expressed his dismay at a price increase for the purchase of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) plane. He told the US ambassador, he has "great difficulty" with the increase.... continued
 
Foro, i just saw your previous post (one year old), and i need to correct; India has not chosen Gripen, Gripen is just one of the contenders.

Recently, Eurofighter has been crowned as best in technical terms, while MiG-35 still has several technical advantages. The largest being optoelectronic sensors which cover all four quadrants and can detect enemy aircraft from 45 km's apart (head on!). The sensors are designed by Russian engineering bureau which normally works with space equipment and does stuff on space stations. 

In any case, Gripen's chances are low, a lot of analysts predict finals between EF2000 and MiG-35. EF2000 is 4.5 generation plane while MiG-35 is an heavily upgraded 4th generation. But that's just technical part of it. India operates MiG-29K, thus it already has facilities to maintain and support Fulcrum airframes. A lot of pilots can fly Fulcrum. It's a familiar plane.

Oh, and MiG-35 can be equiped with all-axis thrust vectoring pads, from MiG-29OVT technology demonstrator. Check it out;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai7eaDeRlDs
 
Originally this topic was only about (next generation) fighters, but I made it broader for other stuff as well.


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An MD-11, the 'Audrey Hepburn', KL 672 from Montreal, landed at 06.24 o'clock at Schiphol Airport. This last flight ended 80(!) years of collaboration between KLM and McDonnell-Douglas. Typical for this plane was the third engine at the base of the vertical stabilizer.

KLM was the only company that flew with all types of McDonnell-Douglas.

Douglas DC-2 PH-AJU Uiver at Schiphol, 1934.

Douglas_DC-2.jpg

Most popular plane in the history of KLM. Especially because of its parttaking in the MacRobertson Trophy Air Race (also known as the London to Melbourne Air Race).
Airace.jpg


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The most dramatic part of the race was when the Uiver, hopelessly lost after becoming caught in a thunderstorm, ended up over Albury, New South Wales. The townsfolk responded magnificently - Lyle Ferris, the chief electrical engineer of the post office, went to the power station and signalled "Albury" to the plane by turning the town lights on and off, and Arthur Newnham, the announcer on radio station 2CO Corowa, appealed for cars to line up on the racecourse to light up a runway for the plane. The plane landed, and next morning was pulled out of the mud by locals to fly on and win the handicap section of the race.
COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Een_grote_groep_mannen_trekt_aan_een_touw_het_vliegtuig_De_Uiver_uit_de_modder%2C_Albury_TMnr_60033431.jpg


More about this race: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacRobertson_Air_Race

Unfortunately the plane crashed later in the same year, one month after the race. It was an extra flight to bring Christmas mail to Batavia. After the plane made a stop in Cairo, the pilot didn't want to leave because of bad weather, but KLM boss Albert Plesman threatened to fire him if he didn't. The plane crashed in the Syrian Desert.
 
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If you know the planes, the only one you could possibly mix up would be the Mig 29 with the F15 considering that the alternatives you got was of vastly different aircraft.
 
There were two I wasn't 100% about, and I did indeed mix up the MiG and the F15.
 
I thought the F-35 was an F-22 (although when I saw the actual F-22 I recognised it at once). Worse still, I thought the F-14 was a MiG. 18/20.
 
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