Aircraft

This December, the newly received F-35s are facing winter conditions for the first time - the type has not yet been test flown in winter conditions. Hope there are no "easter eggs", those planes were bloody expensive and they'd better work!
 
Re: A380, it's a pre-handover test. Boeing is still unmatched :)

BOE004-Cover-1170x429.jpg
 
We're buying surplus Aussie F-18s. I'm sure they're in good shape, but I worry that they are jiggered to go up when you want to go down.
 
Wogmidget said:
That's your problem for living in the wrong hemisphere!
In all seriousness, I doubt our Hornets are in much better shape than yours, so I suspect some cannibalism will be in order
Click to expand...
From what I understand, ours have more air time on their frames due to the nature of patrolling northern Canada.
 
Every now and then over the past few months I've heard the low drone of a big turboprop heading out over the North Sea at night. It turns out there are occasional visits to Doncaster, East Midlands and Glasgow by Antonov An-12s, not a very common sight around here, in fact I don't think I've ever seen one.

Tonight it was the one in this video.
 
It's five years since Malaysian flight MH370 went missing. After massive amounts being spent on searching a huge area of the Indian Ocean, pressure is building on the (new) Malaysian government to support a new search effort. The last round of searching was done on a no-find-no-fee basis by the same seabed exploration company which found the wreck of Argentine navy sub ARA San Juan a few months ago (although they may have actually missed that first time around). Only about half of the potential area in which MH370 may have crashed has been searched to date, although Ocean Infinity's technique of using multiple state of the art autonomous underwater vehicles can cover a lot of ground more quickly than the ship-and-towfish method used in the earlier searches.
An air accident report released by the Malaysian authorities last year concluded that the aircraft was most likely intentionally diverted, possibly by one of the pilots, or by an unidentified third party, rather than the incident being down to a failure of some sort, which was once a popular theory about the crash. The government which ran Malaysia at the time of the disappearance has since lost power, with prominent politicians being accused of wholesale corruption. The whole affair is still giving conspiracy theorists a field day, while nobody is actually getting any answers.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...hope-remains-with-malaysia-open-to-fresh-hunt
 
When you fly a legendary plane

R0e4c125c3ae4516b9aa5e50d6b7ffb9d


Only the best can ever hope to replace it :)

R080f8fec5efbd708569a5c4a398f0b54


Prime Minister of Croatia Andrej Plenković announced the Croatian Government's decision to buy 12 used French Rafale F3R fighters, to replace the old MiG-21Bis fighters used by Croatian Air Force
Click to expand...

'Used' meaning actually made, tested and trialed by the French Air Force. Since our MiG's can't be maintained after 2024, it's impossible to buy 'new' planes because no-one is capable of assembling, integrating and trialing in 3 years.
 
Wonder if it's the same maintenance wise as French cars - i.e. a nightmare.

As I flew a French aircraft today I should know that the answer to that is no. The French are better at building aircraft than cars.
 
Mig-21s are a bit of a classic. Must still be in service with quite a few air forces I would have thought. Never seen one myself.
 
A lot of operators field 'advanced' types which have digital avionics in them. Ours are classic 70s thing, retrofitted only with NATO communications gear and GPS receiver. The way they're used is that pilot gets directions from someone else via radio, then goes there to acquire the target visually. The maximum range of firing solution is about 8 km best case scenario, via the same missile that's used as defensive measure on choppers. The MiG itself is completely oblivious to the armament apart from carrying it and having necessary wiring in around the cockpit, the pilot manuevers to have the target in front of him, turns the missile on, the missile head actually locks on to the target itself, and starts buzzing a sound when lock on is achieved, which means it's ready to fire. As you might've guessed, this missile (R-60) is not carried by platforms whose primary role is air to air combat, it's a small 'portable' missile that can be mounted on a cropduster if you really wanted it. In case target did not go down, MiG can fallback to gun fight with radar assisted gun sight, provided that the radar can actually lock on to the target, which is not guaranteed considering what radar we're talking about and how it performs under jamming.

Vietnam era tech, Vietnam era approach. Imagine what quantum leap pilots will experience flying in Rafale.

Btw, SFR Yugoslavia tried to develop 4th generation fighter. Actually some of the same MiG-29s Serbia operates today, were ordered as an interim measure and as a loan pay back from Soviets, until Yugo-fighter gets deployed sometime in the mid to late 90s. The first prototype was 30% complete when the war struck. The technology used, was French, as the plane design resembled a single engine version of Rafale :) So this historical fact connects a bit too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top