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I love those. Fantastic when they fly a couple of hundred feet over your head and you get a real idea of size.
Didnt really compare to standing by a runway while Tornado took off tho. One minute fairly quiet, then the sound hits you, then its quiet again except for the car alarms going off all around :proud:
-- Kev
lol i know what u mean kev. I was shooting on a range right next to where some tornado F3s were taking off, it was awesome.
Then again ive stood next to a runway when one of the only two typhoons in the RAF was taking off, once again, awesome! :proud:
Then you should hear the sound of a RM12 jet engine in a JAS 39 Gripen, now thats awesome!
Not as bad as innocently driving home when 3 whatevers came inland screaming over the cliffs flying about 300ft above sea level but only about 50ft above the road........I very nearly pood :sad:
Theres a valley - somewhere in wales i think? where you can drive along and fighters scream past BELOW you, further down the valley.
Not seen it myself but know someone who has. Was a good few years ago tho and I think they might have stopped using it.
Wouldnt have fancied being in a boat near where that Tornado ditched in the sea at blackpool a few years back either.
-- Kev
Its somewhere near Betws-y-Coed (I think thats how its spelt) on the way to Mt Snowdon. I remember it too from many many years ago.
The USAF also has a bad reputation for rattling the windowframes too as I found out around 6am one morning when I was staying in Brandon, Suffolk (near Lakenheath).
suppose nobody remembers the Vulcan taking off then?
Nobody ever forgets the Vulcan ;)
Ive not seen/heard one taking off, but to see one pull out of a steep dive and climb steeply away from very near ground level is a truly unforgettable experience. It must be well over 25 years ago but I still vividly remember the noise ;)
Last ever flight at Fariford..... all the car alarms went off and apparently a window or two cracked/broke.... dunno for sure though.
Ah, those were the days
Is that the one with the pointy ears? Goes by the name of TPlane or something? :proud:
Has LED changed its meaning to Light Entertainment Discussion?
We have digressed - sorry
Karoline - only when based in Yorkshire, otherwise, its the plane :)
hehe sorry to continue the off topic conversation but I usually manage to get into airshows for nothing because we do robot displays at a lot of them!
Well be at farnborough this year, so anyone that wants to have a go of the feather, come along!
These very noisy jets are very impressive to watch close up, but a word of warning, they are not good for your health.
I spent 14 years in the RAF, most of them working on Lightings, Vulcans and other equally impressive and noisy beasts.
111 Squadron, AKA the Black Arrows aerobatic display team, practiced their displays and tried new manoeuvres often directly over my head, not more than 50 feet away and flying at Mach .99, once at Mach 1 plus.
As a souvenir of those otherwise enjoyable days, I have had severe tinitus in both ears for the last 20 years.
Far be it from me to miss an off-topic conversation...
Kev/Karoline (sorry to be a bit belated - fast moving thread, appropriately): The same happens on the hills near Bath, which is an interesting thing by which to be distracted when youre trying to take the bend with a large drop behind it should it go wrong.
Mind you, its distracting enough to have a 747 coming in what Im sure was a tad low to land at Heathrow. Just what you need when youre in stop/start roadworks - a 747 appearing from behind a sun visor and filling the windscreen. Im astonished I couldnt hear it, although I guess the engines werent doing much other than being prepared for braking.
btw, does Duxford really have an SR71? Theyve got one on the poster, but it certainly wasnt there many moons ago when I last visited. You have to approve of the strategy of stealing an aircraft by letting it land and then building a motorway over the run-off zone needed to let it take off again, too. :-)
--
Fluppet
Not as intrested in Aircraft as I used to be, the noise does get on my nerves at work. Working in Lytham, half a mile from Warton we regually get LFO (Low-flying-objects) and in a meeting you just have to wait until its gone before continuing. Having said that the first time I saw the Euro-fighter as it was called then take off it just looked like a normal take off until it was a 100 or so feet in the air and then it seemed to go to near vertical and dissapear into the clouds, that was impressive.
Fluppet, I went to Duxford a few years ago just after they opened the new building with all the American stuff in there and was quite impressed when I found out they had built it around the plane. Wasnt there for the aircraft though. I was there for the AGM for the Ford Anglia 105E club. We all parked just across the road and got free entry. During the day an AA van stopped just around the corner and asked me if I had seen an Anglia. I laughed and said its probably in the car park over there with over 100 others. He didnt even know what colour it was, he said he thought it would be easy to find!
Ive yet to see a Eurofighter/typhoon in flight, tho Ive seen one being towed. It was at Warton that I saw the Tornado - I work for the IT company that look after BAEs IT systems so occasionally I get an excuse to spend a week or two working there.
Oh and on a related note - the Typhoon is (according to some bloke who claims to know) only the second fighter plane which can accelerate vertically upwards, the other being the Lightning. That sounds wrong to me tho, as *strictly* speaking, the Harrier can take off vertically, which is of course a vertical acceleration. Think he meant with the nose pointing upwards tho i.e. main engine thrust weight.
What sort of LEDs do they use for the port/starboard lights on fighter planes then? Are they so you know whether theyre turned on (ooer) or not? :proud:
And on another random note - the rule that allows flying robots (at the discretion of the event organiser) - how would you failsafe something like that? Some sort of passive magnetic field to make it hover in place? :proud:
-- Kev
not true. F15, F16 (block 15-20 strugled but the later block 30s and onward ahve more than enough power), to name but a few. depends on what they are carrying at the time. Think your friend is making it up to make his fave plane sound more impressive. As for the lightening being the only other plane.... there really have been better aircraft since so its a stretch to suggest we never surpassed it.
Back to LEDs, they are used on F1 cars too :)
The first time I saw a blue LED was on an F1 cars instrumentation - this was back when they were very expensive, not a barrier to many F1 teams though :)
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
you forgot to subtract the 9.81m/s2 of gravity, the figure you have is for straight line acceleration.
minimum (empty) weight is 9998kg, or something like that, Newtons is a force not a weight, so in theory, and empty eurofighter accelerates upwards at 2 g, but its never empty, and furthermore, the rated thrust is at maximum speed, the static thrust is nowhere near the 206kN
I dont really want to agrue figures with you as I very quickly worked out the above in my head, but until someone is able to explain to me why an aircraft twice the weight of an F16, with only marginally more power, is able to accellerate at twice its rate, Ill stick to the no way can it accelerate to supersonic vertiaclly
figures from Bae systems
Thrust - maximum, dry 60kN 13500lbs stat
Thrust - with reheat 90kN 20000lbs stat
I think 206Kn is a misprint.
o i love starting debates :proud:
its cool James, no offense taken
little off the LED subject dont you think?
true
so back to LEDs, which is everyones favourite colour? :)
Please keep discussion in regards to safety...
Alternativly start a thread in general chit chat.
ok, safety. has anyone looked at the possibility of tech crew being colourblind, or the local lighting negating the leds as they no longer appear? this is especially likely in the multi coloured lights we are sometimes fighting in
I have, and personally i do not agree with the LEDs as i think the benifits of them do not overcome the danger aspect i.e people becoming slightly complacent and light colours as james rightly said, and things of the like!
One other thing i noticed, it may be me just miss interpreting things, so please excuse me if im being a little silly here, but as people keep on saying, that if the LEDS get damaged in battle, or stop working, etc, then still expect the robot to still be live? I personally think that disregards the need for an LED, because regardless of whether the LED is off, the robot may still be live.
This is my opinion, and i dont think the benifits out weigh the hazards :S
Please excuse this if it sounds rather ridiculous.
Thanks
Grant
Weve had this discussion before. Lets not start it again (although IMHO youre right)
Current colour scheme ive got in mind:
Red is power, green is failsafe (a bit contradictory) and blue is wheapon.
Youre looking at it the wrong way around. People arent suggesting that the LED tells you if a robot is SAFE. People are suggesting that an LED that is on means the robot is most certainly DANGEROUS.
Very useful if someones left their link in while theyre in the pits, or not taken their link out.
Everyone is getting this the wrong way round.
Its not Light Off = Safe Robot
its
Light ON = Dangerous robot.
Simple really ? Dont see all the confusion.
Ed
http://www.teamstorm.comhttp://www.teamstorm.com