Pilots

[Bibs]

They've found it. 2 hours North Eas of the base they said. Is that 2 hours on foot, in a car, in an F35? 

[yeller77]

Just announced: from now on, all F35s will come equipped with one of these:

[pete]

[Bibs]

[Bibs]

[pete]

[ChrisJ]

and

 

 

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

Used to enjoy watching the Sea Vixen displays. This was the view from our balcony of it performing at Southend 20 odd years ago.

 

[Gjk]

BAC 1-11 with a difference….

 

[Sparky]

Wow, had no idea that one flew until 2012!

[Gjk]

 

It was a high speed test bed for the “Defence Research Agency”.

the lower radome only had about 6 inches of ground clearance! The pilots had to be very gentle when it came to touchdown.

[Gjk]

[Bravo73]

Woah. She's a looker. 🤢

[Gjk]

🤣 to be fair @Bravo73, most, if not all experimental aircraft look ugly. She was a high speed test bed for the Eurofighter radar system.

[Gjk]

[Gjk]

Hawker Hunter that held the world speed record for a jet - back in the day…

[MPx]

The Hunter was one of the prettiest of the fighters, but my schoolboy top trumps favourite was the English Electric Lightening - Mach 2+ (Mach 1 vertical climb!) and >60k ft ceiling.  Awesome for the period, and the only thing that could catch Concorde in tests.

 

[exeterjeep]

When I worked at Rolls Royce near Watford, one of the senior systems analysts was an ex Lightening pilot.  He brought in a few films to show us at lunchtimes. He drove his maxi 1750hl with after burners on (well that's what he said..)

Awesome seeing them take off and such a vertical rate of climb.

[Gjk]

Love the “halo’s” the reheat made on the EJ200

[Chillidoggy]

16 hours ago, exeterjeep said:

When I worked at Rolls Royce near Watford, one of the senior systems analysts was an ex Lightening pilot.  He brought in a few films to show us at lunchtimes. He drove his maxi 1750hl with after burners on (well that's what he said..)

Awesome seeing them take off and such a vertical rate of climb.

I read that although it looked spectacular, they couldn’t keep up a vertical climb for long. Instead, the fastest way to their service ceiling was at something like a 30 degree angle.

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

Just reading that British Airways offered Concorde to NATO for supersonic interception trials (I guess like a Soviet bomber). From an assortment of F14, F15, F16, Starfighters and Mirages, only the Lightning managed to overtake it from behind. Concorde was travelling at Mach 2.2 at 57,000ft. Mind you the Lightning probably ran out of fuel before getting back to base!

This led me to a link to this. Never heard of it before. Like something out of Thunderbirds.

https://www.airdatanews.com/sukhoi-t-4-the-russian-valkyrie/
 

[Gjk]

15 minutes ago, LotusLeftLotusRight said:

This led me to a link to this. Never heard of it before. Like something out of Thunderbirds.

https://www.airdatanews.com/sukhoi-t-4-the-russian-valkyrie/
 

Isn’t that “Concordski” ? The Russia copy

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

Nope this is a prototype Sukhoi bomber, not the Tupelov airliner.

[C8RKH]

Yeah, both were good at making the ground explode if I recall right.

[Sparky]

The TU-144 might have had a little help from the French.