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Posted (edited)

So as I mentioned I went to the Andrews Air Force Base Open house last month with my brand new Camera and telephoto lens. Most of my shots ended up being of the aerial performers as there were both slim pickens in the static display area and it was overcast during the first half of the day when I normally walk about the tarmac looking at planes. Here's what I've cropped and edited so far: (click to enlarge)

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This one's my new desktop background:

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Edited by Nied
Posted
With memories of playing SWOTL and regularly wiping out swarms of B-17s at close range with my overloaded wing-tub cannon Bf-109G or Me262, it was a heck of a big change when I started playing Il-2 Sturmovik and it appeared as if the 8th AF had clones of Alvin York and Carlos Hathcock manning all the .50s

Ain't that the truth

Posted

Another round of pictures from Andrews:

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This last one is Dale Snodgrass, he put on a great show as always and I got a lot of great pictures of him in part because he flew so close to the crowd. I thought this one was sort of indicative of his whole display, shades of that famous shot of him in the F-14 doing a knife edge pass in front of the carrier deck crew.

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Posted

Very nice shot of that Thunderbird's F-16.

Posted (edited)
Do you like visible shockwaves? Do you like the F-22?

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Hey, I just noticed - the F-22 has decided that the Typhoon is so awesome it wants to change its shape into one too! :p

Edited by F-ZeroOne
Posted
heh, that last one looks like its wearing a bra.

hehe, jet boobies. :D

Posted
hehe, jet boobies. :D

It's probably some engineer's idea of a joke. An awesome joke. The "bra" probably "falls off" as the plane goes faster.

Posted

First Australian Super Hornet to be handed over Jul 8 in St Louis. Not sure when it'll actually be delivered to Australia (or even how)----it's quite possible it'll be disassembled and flown over in a C-17 or something.

Posted
First Australian Super Hornet to be handed over Jul 8 in St Louis. Not sure when it'll actually be delivered to Australia (or even how)----it's quite possible it'll be disassembled and flown over in a C-17 or something.

It could be "dragged" over by a tanker.

Posted (edited)

The Sukhoi Pak FA. To compete directly with F-22's and F-35's. Look's pretty badass if I do say so myself. Couple of pics look like the SU-47 with the forward swept wings and canards.

It also reminds me a lot of the older "tear drop" F-19 Stealth fighter models that were out in the 80's.

Edited by Fatalist
Posted

If they don't even know what the overall configuration is, then it's a LONG way from flying. It'll be another MiG 1.44......

Posted

As the link itself says those are conjectural designs from some Russian industrial designer. As far as I know this is the only known official design taken from an NPO-Saturn (maker of the PAK-FA's engines) press release.

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Posted (edited)

Like Nied said those designs are not by Sukhoi, but an outside industrial designer, I have only seen a couple images released by Sukhoi that are mostly smoke and mirrors, but the plane is suppossed to make first flight this year so the design is built, just not revealed to the public. Hey Nied can you host that image here so I can see if it is the one I have seen before? So far the only "official" image that been released is of the aircraft under a camo net.

Something else to keep in mind is that there is conjecture that Sukhoi is making that Pak-Fa in multiple configurations, ala the F-35, but to a greater extreme. Some of the images from more reliable sources I have seen show aircraft with a fairly common fuselage but different wing structures, some delta, some FSW, etc... Those images posted on Gizmodo almost go along with that.

Edited by Knight26
Posted
Like Nied said those designs are not by Sukhoi, but an outside industrial designer, I have only seen a couple images released by Sukhoi that are mostly smoke and mirrors, but the plane is suppossed to make first flight this year so the design is built, just not revealed to the public. Hey Nied can you host that image here so I can see if it is the one I have seen before? So far the only "official" image that been released is of the aircraft under a camo net.

Durn gubmint servers not allowing you to see outside linked images! ;) I don't believe I've seen the picture of the PAK-FA under a camo net, I'd love to see it if you could post it.

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Posted

Pavel Bulat (a professor of aerodynamics, regularly writing on paralay.com)

put out an image of the thing masked with scrim in his may article.

It looks like the photos were taken before the recent visit of the government

delegation to KNAAPO.

Of course the pics are heavily edited.

http://www.paralay.com/stat/Bulat_12.pdf (in russian)

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Posted

If they REALLY wanted to hide the shape, they'd have built some "misleading shapes" with plywood and cardboard around the edges, THEN draped it. This was done for the F-117 during moves IIRC.

Posted

The translation on the images, and the article I pulled them from stated that the pictures were real, but heavily editted afterwards. I am inclined to agree with, obviously the background and floor were messed with, but modelling the scrim like that would a serious pain.

Posted

Yeah, but the scrim itself looks really fake...

Anyways---I hope Australia does a more interesting paint job than this when it's actually on their soil:

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(I hate to link off someone else's photobucket, but Boeing recently changed things and made it impossible to link and hard to download media pics)

Posted

Nice pic. Are the Aussie F18s able to land on carriers?

Posted

Land--yeah. Catapult off of--maybe. Launch-bars are a weird issue with the Hornet--there's "working, non-working, and non-existant" options.

Posted

IIRC part of the RAAF's lease deal is the option to give the planes to the US Navy once the lease is up. I don't know what kind of modifications would be involved though. Also I thought the non-existent option was eliminated after it was found to cause all sorts of unexpected vibrations while taxiing.

Posted

I thought only Aussie ones had problems with non-existant, and were retrofitted to non-functional. AFAIK Spanish etc ones still have none.

Posted
RAAF Super Hornet time-lapse construction video: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=be5_1247196550

They sure seem to attach and re-attach the canopy a lot.

Fit checks perhaps (or we're seeing another hornet being built)? I attach and re-attach a canopy on a model just as much. It would be quite a gaff if the hornet is on the flightline, ready for it's first flight, and it turns out the seats were 2 cm too high, and the canopy wouldn't close.

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