Posted on 11/03/2014 6:49:41 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
The U.S. Navy conducted the first arrested landing of an F-35C Joint Strike Fighter carrier variant on November 3. Cmdr. Tony Wilson, a Navy test pilot, landed test aircraft CF-03 on the flight deck of the carrier USS Nimitz off the coast of San Diego after flying from Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Ariz.
The first arrested landing came at the start of initial at-sea developmental testing of the F-35C, which is expected to last for two weeks. The carrier testing involves test aircraft CF-03 and CF-05, both fitted with a redesigned tail hook after problems with the initial design delayed carrier testing. This is the first of three at-sea test phases planned for the F-35C.
In May 2013, the Navy said it planned to declare initial operational capability of the carrier variant by February 2019. The F-35 Joint Program Office said the first arrested landing reinforces Navy-industry partnership goals to deliver the operational aircraft to the fleet in 2018.
Today is a landmark event in the development of the F-35C, said Wilson, who is attached to the Navys VX-23 Air Test and Evaluation Squadron based at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. It is the culmination of many years of hard work by a talented team of thousands. I'm very excited to see Americas newest aircraft on the flight deck of her oldest aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz.
The antennas mounted on the front of the mid-level catwalks?
Arraying them like that can increase gain, but without modeling that particular type of circular polarized antenna, cannot say what it would produce.
I did cheat once when I needed a high gain linear polarization directional antenna and had no design facility. Knew how to make a helical antenna from scratch, made one left hand CP, one right hand CP, arrayed them together(parallel, not pointed in), and had my high gain linear antenna that I knew would work without testing.
From the angle they are set at, I suspect they are for the air boss to burn through to departing or incoming pilots over any other transmissions.
There must be some carrier swabbies her that know of this stuff better than me.
The new Ford class carriers, along with the USS Ronald Reagan and G.W Bush use three arresting wires.
Arrested upon landing? Did Holder decide the pilot broke a law while flying it?
Normally it doesn't need to perform an arrested landing but for the times it must it is comforting to know it can.
The Naval Air Test Center, Aircraft Division at Patuxent River is in Maryland, which has no deserts but they do have carrier decks, as does Lakehurst, New Jersey.
So they finally got rid of the 1 wire... good.
Waste of space as it was
The F-35A has an arresting hook that is rated for end of runway use, and the F-35C has a much beefier arresting hook for use on carriers, but I don't believe that the F-35B has any arresting hook because of the articulating tail cone.
My guess is you don’t really want to do VTOL unless you have to, because it probably sucks a lot of fuel and places different stresses on the engine and airframe.
Naval aviation might be different, because using VTOL in rough weather might present an advantage to a conventional landing or takeoff.
But I would think that the USMC would mostly use a runway for many operations, unless they were close to the front, and even then. It would make a lot more sense if there were a short stretch of road you could STOL from, rather than VTOL.
Thanks for the ping, bud!
There are a lot of detractors that make sense, and it is difficult to understand just how one of those things is going to replace an A-10 in the ground support role, but I don’t discount the possibility of this actually turning out to be a good platform.
I remember back in the Seventies and Eighties, the howling, screaming and yelling about the M-1 Abrams, and how it was the biggest boondoggle, was prohibitively expensive, way too complicated, and so on.
Hands down one of the best armored vehicles ever made. We are going down this road, and we aren’t going back, so we better MAKE it work. We’ll have to see how this turns out.
LOL, I wonder why...
That said, I do give Boeing high marks for trying to think outside the box on it...
If we told you, we would have to kill you.
I hope the price mentioned includes a car cover. Gawd, even a fox tail or baby shoes on the rear-view mirror would help. BTW, I always did wonder what happen to the tire molds for the original Mini Cooper 12-inchers.
Obviously, when Pontiac fired the Aztec designer, the guy went into aviation?
Didn’t Cheney kill the F-22?
NO. That is a lot too long ago.
You are right. I looked it up. It was SecDef Gates, Obama and Dem Senate who killed the Raptor.
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