That RV6 is gonna get pwned

[parin]

Rudders look bigger than the wings!

[RAIDER14]

they are gonna put missiles on that thing what are they gonna shoot down birds?

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by eagl
furby,

Without an all-movable tailplane it'll be limited to subsonic speeds.  My guess is approx .93 mach unless it has a flutter issue prior to that.  All movable horizontal stabs are complex, typically require some sort of pitch stability augmentation to prevent over-controlling at various speeds, and if they fail then the stab tends to move to a "flat plate" position instead of to a streamlined position like you get when a normal elevator control rod fails.

It's MUCH easier to just go with a conventional elevator and give up high transsonic or supersonic speeds.  It makes engine inlet design simpler too.

FWIW, the BD-10 crashed because the horiz stab suffered flutter at high speed and ripped the back of the plane off.  Bad thing to happen IMHO, and I suspect that if they'd had a subsonic target top speed, it may not have happened.

Yea, it does look like a modified T-38 to me too.  But there have been a lot of people saying that the T-38 modified with a new, slightly larger wing, would be a better trainer than the current model.  Most front line military aircraft are waaaay easier to land than the T-38 so I personally think that a T-38 with 10-20%ish greater wing area and limited to .95ish mach would make for a fine next-generation advanced trainer or even a civilian hotrod.  But that's just my opinion.

Regarding the twin tails, the T-38 gets away with only 1 tail because it has an active yaw damper system.  The yaw damper is disabled/non-functional in many USAF T-38s but those specific aircraft have operational limits placed on them to avoid problems that the yaw damper was supposed to fix.  My guess is that the javelin team found that they needed the twin tails to avoid having to go with a complex yaw damper system.  The T-38 without the yaw damper probably couldn't pass current FAA certification requirements.

(Sticking to what I know)

Eagl did ya hear that the USAF fleet of T38s are being upgraded to Martin Baker seats.  We have a couple of NASA birds here that allready have the mod.  The current 38 seats has one of the worst survivability rates in the entire fleet so this comes as pretty good news.  

It looks to me that this thing has an MB in it as well


Do non ejection seated air craft seats have Inertia reels and straps?  Just asking cause I saw them in the video.

[eagl]

I've heard rumors that the T-38C will get an upgraded seat, but every time the rumor comes up it's followed by the hard fact that trainer upgrade dollars are hard to come by, and that particular upgrade keeps getting pushed off to "later".

The T-38 seat is just fine if it's used "in the envelope" and the envelope is fairly good for a 30 year old design, but it's undeniable that there are some T-38 fatalities in the last decade or two that may have been survivable if the seat had been more capable.

I don't think it's a particularly BAD seat though...  It just has a limited envelope.  Remember that I've spent around 700 hours in the T-37 and it's seat is pitifully weak compared to the T-38 so my pity factor is pretty low.  The main issue I have against the T-38 seat is that pilots on the heavy or light side of the envelope may have serious problems during ejection...

There's no reason why any non-ejection seat aircraft shouldn't have inertial reels...  They're just heavier, more expensive, and more maintenance intensive than fixed-length shoulder harnesses.  Serious acro pilots want harnesses you can snug down really tight, but someone flying a high performance plane could conceiveably want inertial shoulder harnesses for the added comfort.

[OOZ662]

Originally posted by RightF00T
Whats with the baby wings?  That thing probably climbs/turns like a well-guided rock.

The Yak-9 has stubs for wings too and it'll turn with most things.

[Furball]

Originally posted by eagl
furby,

Thanks Eagl!