Cover story in Aviation Week. The F-35 A (the Air Force model, no V/STOL) made it to the Paris Air Show this week. Le Bourget outside of Paris. It flew, showed off some really impressive low and slow manuvering close to the ground. With 40,000 pounds of thrust, it's hard to stall this baby, just pull the stick way back, shove the throttle all the way forward, and the engine will make the plane go up, even if the wing isn't doing much in the lift dept. Apparently they have done some work in the engine, the plane is now certified for 7 G. Used to be limited to 5 G (not much) because any more G caused the engine rotor to rub on the engine casing, which caused a fire, resulting in the total loss of one F35. They have done something about the problem, and 9G is promised in the future.
Up beat article. No talk about lack of software, horrible costs, ridiculously long development cycle.
No comments:
Post a Comment