Power/failsafe LED

James - I bow to your knowledge - and I never said he was a friend - more a freak who I happened to be crossing Warton site with one day :proud:

-- Kev

I suspect the Lightning may have been the *first* to be able to do this (at least in the RAF). Presumably whichever Mig (Foxbat?) was designed to go after U2s (and has the temporary height record) can do it too. I keep wanting to say either Mig 29 or Mig 31, but I think one of them was the Firefox...

It wouldnt surprise me to learn that a lot of military aircraft could do it, to be honest, although I suspect the Lightning (which is, after all, an engine with wing stubs on the side) probably has a better power-to-weight than most.

Mind you, if Typhoons claim to fame is the ability to cruise supersonically without afterburners (am I right in saying that the Raptor and JSF can as well?) it might be the first aircraft to be able to point straight up without afterburners running.

Is this thread going for the record as longest thread, most off-topic thread, most dragged-off-topic-after-attempts-to-return-to-toppic thread, or all of the above?

--
Fluppet

its the first aircraft that can accelerate vertically, without afterburner and go beyond mach 1.

Ive got to crawl around one of em :) and see the simualators where the pilots are trained, wouldve gotten a go but a typhoon was taking off in 5min time so that had to be skipped :sad:

Eh? the typhoon can accellerate to mach 1 vertically? Id be amazed if that were true!

if i remember correctly it can james, and if u seen one take off u wouldnt be surprised! :)

eh? Sorry, I am a bit confused now. A typhoon, can accellarate vertically, to over mach 1? That is, it can exceed the 9.81m/s2 of gravity, and whats more, reach 300m/s inside 10000m? that is accellerate at an average of about 17m/s2 or in excess of 3g total, vertically? This is what the space shuttle does.

I think the information you have is flawed there, as to my knowledge there are very few aircraft that can accellerate vertically at more than about 1.2g. This is because to accelerate upwards you need more thrust than weight, and for typhhon to do what you are saying, it must have at least 3:1 power to weight, before factoring drag, lets call it 6:1. if typhoon weights, I dont know, 21,000kg, it will need 126,000 kg of thrust. This is well beyond the 9000kg of thrust per engine it produces

So much urban legend gets thrown around the forces, believe me, the figures we were quoted years ago about Tornado and Jaguar were similarly unbelievable

You might get to see if its true at Cosford James :)

Since Typhoon proper couldnt come the RAF have invited their bigger brother instead.

Oops, am Im allowed to mention it!

Sam
http://www.robotcrusade.comwww.robotcrusade.com

Well James Storm II does have more acceleration than the space shuttle, but obviously not the speed.

btw, sorry to Gary.... it wasnt meant as a personal arguement with you, which is how the above reads in retrospect. Just that I know how much rubbish cadets are told, and its easy to believe if the source is supposedly reliable. I once had a techy at Cosford tell me so matter of factly that the Jaguar had a lazer ragefinder for air to air combat that had a computer database on board of all aircraft and compared their wingspan to the measured one to get their range. he didnt grasp how lazer range finding worked.

Hum.... Typhoons big brother? Tsunami? :)

Storm 2 accelerates at over 3g? interesting. so it gets to full speed in less than 0.33 seconds?

James,
I think some of your figures are a bit wrong. assuming constant acceleration (v^2=u^s+2as), the acceleration is, on average, 4.5m/s^2 upwards.
the thrust youve quoted is roughly per engine, and the weight you used is the maximum take off weight. Mimimum weight is 98kN, max thrust 206kN (from a quick google). This gives a maximum inital vertical acceleration of 10m/s^2 or 1.06g.
I dont know what the drag is for a fighter aircraft at mach 1. The typhoons max speed is mach 2 though. This implies the drag at 600m/s is 206kN. If you assume drag is proportional to the speed squared, the typhoon should still be accelerating at 6m/s^2 just before it reachs mach 1.

I accept Ive made some gross approximations but it seams a reasonable claim to me.
Anyway, its still a very impressive aircraft however you look at it.

Mark