Nied

At least they didn't cast Jay Leno.

I don't get people hating on the F-35's looks. Sure the X-35 was ugly but how can you look at this and not say it's beautiful. On a different note maybe living in Boston wont be that bad, I'm about 20 blocks from Fenway park and I just got to watch the B-2 that made the flyover for the Winter Classic make a long beautiful turn over my apartment. If I hadn't been as hungover as I am I might have thought ahead enough to have my camera ready. ::Edit:: and the Bruins win to top everything off. Nice!

Interrupting the Ace Combat talk again. Having watched this video of the first flight, I have to say with it's big oversized engines, gently curved wings, and weirdly shaped tail: the 787 is one odd looking duck. I still maintain it must be some kind of forgery though

This looks shopped. I can tell by the pixels and having seen quite a few 787 first flights canceled in my time.

Last airshow I'm going to this year, and likely the last San Francisco Fleet Week I'll make it to for a while as my wife and I are moving back to Boston at the end of the month. I am glad I could get a good picture of the sneak pass over the bay, who's jelous of the GIB (guy in back) getting the incentive ride? Had some others admiring the show as well (one of the other great little touches about Fleet Week in San Francisco):

I can cover that one, or at least half of it. I have not seen any information on how the NATF would overcome the RCS concerns of a swing wing, there's very little detailed info on Lockheed's NATF proposal (and if you think that's bad just try finding info on the F-23N). It's even possible the info you want is classified. As for why a swing wing was used in the first place, your surmise is pretty much correct. The only way to meet the Navy's landing speed, weight, and top speed requirements was to use a swing wing. The standard F-22 wing is fine for the speeds the Air Force lands at, but to get it on a carrier you need to go much slower which either requires adding various high lift devices (big flaps etc) or a swing wing. When you add those high lift devices to a folding mechanism for a fixed wing and you end up with a pretty heavy plane that likely would have too much drag to reach the speeds the Navy wanted.

MOAR!!! Both, the two part harmony of those twin engines is one of the sweetest things I've ever heard, and as you can see I had a P-51 on hand to compare it to.

I went to the Sacramento Capitol Airshow this past Sunday, and I realized that I'm getting incredibly spoiled as 5 out of the last 8 air shows I've been to have had the Raptor performing. It's almost becoming routine! This is the first time I've tried shooting in RAW mode on my camera and I have to say the effect is subtle but the pictures are noticeably better looking. P.S. Mustangs and Corsairs don't got nothin on the sound of a P-38.

1. You're greatly overestimating the amount of body lift the VF-1 could get, almost every area that creates lift on the F-14 hos something in the way or something to spoil the airflow on the VF-1 (the arms sit in the fuselage "tunnel" the wing gloves have their airflow disrupted by the upper intakes and the abrupt end they come to). 2. Even if they created any lift they would create the most at or near the lift for the wings so they couldn't provide any kind of stabilization. 3. And this is key: If it needs fly by wire to keep it in the air then it's not a stable design!

It's not a matter of having enough lift it's a matter of where it's distributed. On the VF-1 nearly all the lift of the aircraft is concentrated on the wings, with no other surfaces to counter balance them, that means the slightest gust would send it flipping end over end if left to it's own devices. The only way for it to maintain level flight would be for the pilot, or a fly-by-wire flight control system, to constantly make control inputs to counter the natural instability of the design.

The tails on the VF-1 are canted out but not enough to create anything more than a negligible amount of lift (for reference the canted tails on the new Silent Eagle mod of the F-15 create a few hundred pounds of lift on a 44,000 pound aircraft) and certainly not enough to allow for stable flight. The aircraft you mention (the F-14 and F/A-18) both have fairly large horizontal stabs to balance their CG (although the Hornet is still tail heavy enough that in needs a fly-by wire system for stability). Since the VF-1 lacks any kind of horizontal stabilizer (besides the very small of lift from the vertical tails and ventral fins) it would have to rely on a fly-by-wire system to maintain level flight.

I heard that the US successfully tested both the F-14 and Baby Hornet on ski ramps (the E-2 as well) and the F-35 has a more favorable thrust to weight ratio, so I don't see why it shouldn't be possible. I'm fairly certain the UK is looking at doing the same thing if they purchase the F-35C.

The Vikrant is STOBAR too.

In addition to the five you mentioned the Australian Canberra class LHDs are going to have a ski ramp to support VTOL aircraft and the RAN has put in a (currently unfunded) request for a small number of F-35Bs for those ships. Given that they have a pretty firm order for 100 F-35As already it seems like a no-brainer to me. India isn't as likely a customer for the F-35B though, they seem to want to move to STOBAR or CTOL aircraft for their carriers, I would think the C model or Super Hornets would be more likely purchases for their carrier air groups if they were looking to buy American.

It's a fake, but it's a fake straight from NASA who were going to fly the X-31 in that configuration before the funding fell through. The VF-1 would probably be unflyable without a good fly by wire system and thrust vectoring, but with those it shouldn't have much trouble (and the instability would make it incredibly manoeuvrable to boot).

RE: F-14 vs F-22 noise: In 2001 the Andrews Airforce base show had both a Super Hornet and a Tomcat performing (unfortunately it was an ugly day so all we got was a few high speed passes from each) and I remember both planes being roughly as loud as each other. The Tomcat definitely had a deeper throatier note, while as David mentioned the Rhino makes a higher pitched ripping sound. Having said that the Raptor beats the Super Hornet (and by extension the F-14) in terms decibels hands down. I'd say it's near the B-1 in terms of noise. As for the whooping noise David described, it's most noticeable when it's on the ground taxiing. The F-104 makes the same exact whooping sound when blipping the throttles, though the sound they make in the air is unlike any plane I've heard (the closest thing I can compare it to are the Alien fighters from Independence Day).

Gives new credence to my remanufacture theory. It's interesting that they list block 6 production starting in 2009 rather than later. I had always assumed that those models went into production after the events shown in the TV show (to explain their absence). I gotta say they're explanation works pretty well too (most of the Block 6 and later models were assigned to ARMD platforms and other space installations, far away from the Macross's airgroup which was the focus of the show).

Nice shot of what an F-35B (I think this is BF-1) looks like with a full external load.

God damn that was a good movie! That bugged me too but as my wife pointed out

I went to the Kinokuniya in SF's Japan town yesterday and didn't see it there. Has anyone seen copies in SF?

Well after three days of no issues I just experienced another outage. Same behavior as before, it didn't seem to last nearly as long as previous slowdowns though (that's a subjective impression though).

Well the French are buying the same design and their carriers will have catapults so I doubt the UK will have much trouble adding the same thing to theirs.

My understanding is that they're looking at installing EM catapults and buying the F-35C instead of the B. That's more of an asymmetrical stall leading to a spin. The_Woz's explanation is pretty spot on.

Well I knew that the 1J was built in Japan, and as you pointed out the greater QC is likely BS (especially with the level of automation in production that we see in Macross). That just leaves the upgraded software and controls and as has already been mentioned the head. All of those are things that could be added to an existing fighter pretty easy outside of a factory.

Lockheed did one better on Boeing by identifying this in wind tunnel testing instead of just before service entry. From what Aviation Week is reporting Lockheed thinks they may be able to solve the wing drop problem using nothing but tweaks to the flight control software. They added the spoilers to CF-1 (and likely 2) as an extra safety margin, and they think it's likely production models will remove the hydraulics and bolt the spoiler in place.