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Sturgeon's House

Aerospace Pictures and Art Thread


LostCosmonaut

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Not strictly a pic, but didn't want to start a new thread for it.

 

Country is in chaos?  No generals around?  No safety regulations to weigh you down?  How about an INSANELY low pass at very high speed.

 

Fuck buzzing the tower, it's time to clean the barnacles off the bottom of the jet.

 

Followed shortly by this..

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It's to reduce radar cross section.  For the teensy-weensy RCS they wanted on the raptor and the JSF, the signal returns of the gun barrel were significant, so they are covered by a flap until they need to be used.

 

Still seems silly, like one more thing on the aircraft that could go wrong 

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A picture of an unpainted PAK-FA:

pak-fa-hi-res-15.jpg

 

This picture shows a few of the unusual design features of the type.

 

Note that the engines are mounted high above the location of the air intakes.  The air intakes are not straight as in previous generation types, although they are not as aggressively curved as the intakes in the F-22.

 

This also supports the idea that the compressor blades of the PAK-FA's engine are not visible from the front through the inlets, and instead what is visible is some sort of inlet guide vane or blocker or something.

 

As this prototype is not painted, it's easy to see the composites used in the design.  Most of the leading edges of the aircraft are composite, which likely helps further reduce RCS.  The fact that the leading edge slats are composite lends credence to the early reports that there are supposed to be some sort of antenna on the leading edges of the wings.  Many composites are radar-transparent, which would be necessary for such antenna to function.

 

This picture also gives a good view of the traditional inlet diverters used on the PAK-FA.  The F-35 uses newer, diverterless supersonic inlets, and all new Chinese designs have these advanced inlets as well.

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F-22_supersonic_090622-N-7780S-014.jpg

 

Water vapor in the air condenses into droplets as an F-22 supercruises.

 

Just in front of the shockwaves, air is accelerated to just under the speed of sound.  This large acceleration decreases the static pressure of the air, which also decreases its temperature.  The water vapor in the air condenses into droplets, which then re-evaporate as they enter the area behind the shockwave where there is a sudden increase in pressure and temperature.

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