Well, this last few days I've not had much to do so I've been on something of a Cold War British military aircraft binge. Anyways, I thought some of you might appreciate my efforts on youtube. So, without further adoo I gives thee...

Interesting clip with sound a commentry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-sDdVkGVDs

This clip I think has far better footage. However, no sound. I'm not 100% sure about the music but it grows on you. Still, as I said the footage is brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xcb29P_zuY


And now, the possibly the best... The TSR2. Flying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q_j1heMO2A

Ohhh, I though you meant THE Lightning....






Just kidding, I like the second one there, it was cool to see the vapor forming in the inlet when he throttled up.  The music was kind of weird though.

Mobius wrote on Feb 3^rd, 2007 at 12:08am:


I think they were a bit late naming the F-35. Just like the Typhoon, which people will always know as the Eurofighter as well, the F-35 will end up still being the JSF to a lot of people...

Woodlouse2002 wrote on Feb 3^rd, 2007 at 8:47am:



To be fair the F-35 has been named after two infinately superior aircraft!

Hmm, the F35 hasn't even entered service yet and already it's quite reviled.  Anti-American bias perhaps?

Still, I hope the F35 never gets the opportunity to earn the battle hardened devotion of planes like the original lightning and typhoon earned.

Charlie wrote on Feb 4^th, 2007 at 12:43am:


I think the fact that the F-35 is the only vertical take-off, supersonic stealthy fighter (among other things) counts for something.  Maybe not as much as the attributes of previous Lightnings, but still something.

Charlie wrote on Feb 5^th, 2007 at 7:11am:

Except we pretty well know it can't.

Chris_F wrote on Feb 5^th, 2007 at 9:53am:


[at this very moment L-M are on the hunt for very small people to go, armed with files, to file away and excess and surplus material they can find in the airframe!]

I'm sure it will be sorted. They could always take the sledgehammer approach - if the aeroplane's heavy a) build a more powerful engine combo, or b) remove superfluos weight, like the pilot...

Papa9571 wrote on Feb 5^th, 2007 at 10:45pm:


I'd never realised it was that overweight! 8%, blimey! I was expecting 2-3%...

Woodlouse2002 wrote on Feb 6^th, 2007 at 8:44am:

A shrunk weapons bay does not necessarily mean a payload reduction.  I don't know the story (I suspect you have more info than I about this smaller weapons bay) but I don't recall hearing a re-commit on the quantity of stores the bay can hold.  So if it's smaller and still holds the same stores does that matter?

Woodlouse2002 wrote on Feb 6^th, 2007 at 2:36pm:

It does.  Obviously this would impact radar cross section.  I believe the F-22 also has external stores provisions, but I'm not sure of that.  It does make the JSF a better "swiss army knife" kind of plane since it'll be able to load up on a wider array of stores on the external pylons.  For example I could forsee external drop tanks used to get to a conflict area, dropped to reduce RCS for entry in to hostile territory.  I could also forsee the plane being used in low RF threat environments (for example, Iraq or Afghanastan today) with external stores.

If you believe the buzz around this forum all that stealth stuff is useless technology anyways so why not just always use the external pylons?  Makes sense I guess, IF this community is correct and stealth is just another way of sucking tax payers' money out of their pockets.