Uh-Oh
Wasn't the Lightning one of the craft used by X-Com in UFO: enemy Unknown / X-Com: UFO defense.
*Runs in fear of the inevitable Sectoid/Muton horde*
Following yesterday's initial hover, the new F-35B Lightning II - world's first supersonic stealth jumpjet - has now made a vertical landing. British test pilot Graham Tomlinson said the aircraft is much easier to set down than today's Harrier. “Today’s vertical landing onto a 95-foot square pad showed that we have the …
Aah X-Com. Now I want to play it again. Goodbye, productivity.
IMO, the Lightning and Firestorm were both pants. Personally, I'd be happy with an X-Com Interceptor - they could VTOL, carry a full weapons load half way around the planet and back and do so at over Mach 3. And they were available in 1999 for $2M apiece. Our defense biz is failing us. What we need is a good old alien invasion and threat of global enslavement to get their arses into gear...
To land with more stores they'll need arrestor wires not catapults which just increase the take off mass.
Still 5000lbs isn't bad after all, that's about a quarter of the take off weight of a fully loaded Sea Harrier. Certainly you could RTB with some air-to-air stores a couple of 1000lb bombs and have enough fuel for recovery, it's not like STOVL aircraft need to make multiple attempts at landing!
Nah not a problem.. Well not for my Psi squad.. 4 60+ units (cant be psi-ched) 4 hover plasma tanks and 4 80+ Psi amp operators each with 75+ TU (thats 12 aliens to control) oh and two blaster launchers for fun and getting in through ship roofs..
have taken down several landed BS's in only 4 turns.
still playing... in dosbox.
The Harrier has a similar "Reaction control system", so the F35B is no different in this respect.
There is also a good chance that any non-VSTOL plane with similar damage would have have to ditch rather than risk a carrier landing. Possibly more so as a conventional aircraft is relying 100% on its wings to provide lift during landing, whereas an F35B doesn't.
It would still be more prudent to ditch the plane than risk pilot and carrier, however.
The Harrier uses a water cooling system. It carries enough water for a 90 second hover at full rate (in the tropics).
IIRC the problem is caused by hot exhaust gasses being drawn into the intakes during hover. I think F35B system (shaft driven lift fan blowing cold air) keeps the hot exhaust away from the engine intakes.
Am I the only one to think that video of the landing is CGI. The aircraft is too clean, the colours are too sharp for the rest of the scene, the landing was too quick, the sound didn't sound right, there are transparency issues around the edges of the aircraft especially around the open fan covers on the top of the plane . And that was what I picked up just off the 1st viewing!
*AC cos I don't want one of these prooving the video was real on top of my house!
"**Jet engines lose thrust when sucking hotter air."
I know that a degree of mixing will occur, but most engines have a problem when forced to suck their own exhaust - lack of oxygen tends to make them a tad less efficient., and as for heat, it is actually the density of the air that matters most, which actually brings me back to point (a) lack of oxygen to mix with the fuel.