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JF-17 at Zuhai Air Show 2010

This is video is a professionaly made sales pitch by Boeing and not an airshow regime. It has been edited and could have been from different sorties, which have been put together. It starts by saying that there are no limitations on performance whereas in airshows, with a lot of public is attendence, there are very clearly defined limitation on what a plane can do. Whatever we have seen of the JF17 from Zuhai are amateur videos. Also Black Spiders are not a demonstration team. Its an operational ground attack squadron. So you are basically comparing oranges and apples.

The routine you saw the F/A-18 E/F test pilot describe is the standard demonstration of a fully loaded F/A-18 E/F. Typically air show demonstration starts with short take off - a Super Hornet in air combat configuration can get air borne in under 432 meters. The ability to STOL is important to customers, while I believe the JF-17 has STOL capability this was not demonstrated -why? Standard demonstration for the Rhino includes pirouette, hammer head, low speed high alpha hover, cuban eights, half clover and low speed extended gear approach. All combat pilots are able to perform the above maneuvers, however; it takes practice to weave these maneuvers and time its execution in a fluent composition for the purposes of an air demonstration.

With one or two exceptions most of maneuvers described by the Boeing test pilot in the first video was also performed at Farnborough in 2010.

Finally, the Thunder is the new kid on the block it should have displayed its full repertoire, taken a few risks and dazzled spectators - how else do you expect to displace established players and create a market?
 
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K8

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Thanks for the links.. but there is a sticky for these videos..
best to put it there.. more organized.
 
To do such maneuvers JF-17 TWR looks ok only needs better FBW controls. :oops:



help me to understand
how can you look thrust to weight ratio is that what you meant by TWR
? What do you mean by “TWR looks ok?”

are you pointing out about its manoeuvres that seem to be restricted? (i.e plane able to do more but pilot chooses not to?)
to me it looks like that the plane can pull off a lot more steep angle manoeuvres but maybe the planned display was decided to be kept well under its max performance. Playing it safe and not showing everything it can do.

since it is always presented as a close match to F-16, I was really looking forward to one of the F-16s signature take offs.
the ones we are used to see in our PAF tribute songs where the pilot pulls the stick back making the F-16 take a vertical lift off from the runway the moment its tyres leave the tarmac.

I must say that the steep left turn it took immediately after the take off was also very good but that was about it.

There were some vertical climbs but they were short and ended in a loop without straining the aircraft. All in all the flight was very controlled and the pilot seemed to be more capable than what he actually did with the plane.

I would really love to see what our pilot members have to say about my observations and maybe correct me or explain a bit.
 
This is video is a professionaly made sales pitch by Boeing and not an airshow regime. It has been edited and could have been from different sorties, which have been put together. It starts by saying that there are no limitations on performance whereas in airshows, with a lot of public is attendence, there are very clearly defined limitation on what a plane can do. Whatever we have seen of the JF17 from Zuhai are amateur videos. Also Black Spiders are not a demonstration team. Its an operational ground attack squadron. So you are basically comparing oranges and apples.

thanks for answering one of my questions
indeed the flight display at a public airshow is very restricted and controlled which even an untrained person like my self could see
hence I raised few questions in my earlier post
having said that I could see that the plane was able to do lot more because whatever maneuvers it performed, they looked very smooth and sleek
 
help me to understand
how can you look thrust to weight ratio is that what you meant by TWR
? What do you mean by “TWR looks ok?”

are you pointing out about its manoeuvres that seem to be restricted? (i.e plane able to do more but pilot chooses not to?)
to me it looks like that the plane can pull off a lot more steep angle manoeuvres but maybe the planned display was decided to be kept well under its max performance. Playing it safe and not showing everything it can do.

since it is always presented as a close match to F-16, I was really looking forward to one of the F-16s signature take offs.
the ones we are used to see in our PAF tribute songs where the pilot pulls the stick back making the F-16 take a vertical lift off from the runway the moment its tyres leave the tarmac.

I must say that the steep left turn it took immediately after the take off was also very good but that was about it.

There were some vertical climbs but they were short and ended in a loop without straining the aircraft. All in all the flight was very controlled and the pilot seemed to be more capable than what he actually did with the plane.

I would really love to see what our pilot members have to say about my observations and maybe correct me or explain a bit.

wrong bro....haven't u seen the end of display. Thunder climbed vertically making several rolls, just like PAF pilot do with f-16 in air shows. Even after climbing it was hard to see Thunder in video, nearly disappeared.
So it got good TWR, that showed excellent result on empty bird even at Farnborough air show. it took of so quickly with three (nearly 300 gal each) fuel tanks.

plus i ve seen in a news channel video, where thunder was ready to take off. pilot was shaking its Horizontal stabilators just like F-16. fully FBW control for pitch axis. hope so that they make Thunder fully controlled by FBW from next Block.
 
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wrong bro....haven't u seen the end of display. Thunder climbed vertically making several rolls, just like PAF pilot do with f-16 in air shows. Even after climbing it was hard to see Thunder in video, nearly disappeared.
So it got good TWR, that showed excellent result on empty bird even at Farnborough air show. it took of so quickly with three (nearly 300 gal each) fuel tanks.

plus i ve seen in a news channel video, where thunder was ready to take off. pilot was shaking its Horizontal stabilators just like F-16. fully FBW control for pitch axis. hope so that they make Thunder fully controlled by FBW from next Block.


I already mentioned those vertical climbs but they were not sustained (long enough as the plane takes an inverted loop or circle)
and I agree in few cases the jet simply disappeared from the view due to the fog
I just sensed that the plane was doing much less than it can actually do and as Fox so nicely explained that it was a public display, there must have been clear guidelines to stay within certain limits.

to me it was more of a teaser of what this fighter jet can do. Specially the sudden left turn it took right after take off can result into a stall if I am not mistaken.

what I am saying is that there was not much "wow factor" maybe looking at top end Western fighter jets our expectations get a bit higher.
given the amount of unit cost this indeed is a good show.

Just thinking loud now and would welcome some comments please. I also know after a reaching a certain point. Every small fraction of improvement requires a lot more effort and resources so the designers & planners do the cost/ benefit analysis.
one last thing. can anyone comment on possibility or need for going beyond 0.99 trust to weight ratio? I can think of 4 things that can make it possible

. improved Engine
. light weight composite materials
. aerodynamic design
. a bit more money than 20M per unit

or be content with 0.99 TWR and look at other areas of improvements?
discuss
 
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