F-22 Raptor - is it real?

The flying around and incandescent exhaust during the demonstration flights settled any doubts though! I guess the one they had to cut the canopy on when the pilot couldn't get it to open was locked up in one of the hangers.

That JSF static display wasn't particularly convincing though. The "joints" on the vertical tails looked like black pin striping tape. I also noticed the canopy didn't have the amber coating the other stealth aircraft have. I'm thinking the coating probably keeps radar from getting reflections off the cockpit interior.

Yes, they are real. In fact, those shots are more "real" than the paste-ups of F/A-22s that have been floating around the net recently.

...and if you look closely at a couple of the shots, you can make out the ejection seat warning triangle at teh extreme aft corner of the caanopy sill, just below the sill. But you have to look close, and that's as it should be.

As far as I'm concerned, this is as "real" as a fighter can get. A pure, efficient, "simple" killing machine with nothing on it that isn't about the job - if it were any more "real", it would be invisible. It's not a toy.

Canopies are expensive - you don't waste money on a combat canopy for a test jet...and I'd wager that the "joints" you observed on the tails were probably external runs of instumentation wiring - strain gauges and such - which were covered with dental cement, epoxy or some such. Common practice.

Never make production assumptions from a test jet...unless you work on them.

Of course they are real and they are spec-tac-ular

Rufus wrote:

Re the JSF that's been on display- the one I saw at Miramar about 2 years ago was a replica. There was an actual X-35C at Edwards the last time I was there, but it was engineless. Last I heard, the first actual F-35 was due to be rolled out this month at Fort Worth.

Yes and worth every penny too, exactly what the Air Force needs.

(kim)

Jeff Barringer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

Boring boring boring... and ugly, too.

Rob

...until they shoot at you.

Confrontation can be ugly too. ;)

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

...winning ugly.

i haven't like any of them since the f-86. well, maybe the

Speaking of ugly, the Thunderbirds are at Willow Grove this weekend. I know it's just a personal thing but 30 years later and I still don't like the F-16 all that much. I can't figure why I took such a dislike to the thing but it's still there.

Out of all the kits I bought of it I still only ever built one and that was because I needed one for a hobby show display.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

I haven't liked any of them since the F4. I've seen both the T-Birds and the Blues shows flying the F4 - it was big, fast, smokey, loud airplane. Just the thing to impress at an airshow. Nothing since has impressed me as a display airframe...except maybe the F-15.

But I also think the F-16 makes a better show jet than the F/A-18. I think it's because of teh flexing of the wings on the Hornet...makes the diamond look sloppier. Neither show is as impressive as the Phantom shows were though.

First time I saw the Blue Angels was an F-4 show. Indeed, a very impressive beast! The A-4s were, um, cute and altogether a surprise. Who'd think the little bomber could be so maneuvrable, aside from their crews, I suppose.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

That's why they called it "Heinemann's Hotrod"...