Just questioning the exclusion of body lift in determining wing loading. Was not commenting on any other aspect.

I don’t exclude it.

But body lift does not provide a constant proportion of the total lift throughout the flight envelope.

Nor is the lift-dependant drag factor of body lift even close to a linear relationship with lift.

Well Dr. Song’s paper explained it all:)

Yes. At high angles of attack.

Read what I am saying; The use of LERX to generate lift is high drag – while you can pull better AoAs, you destroy your energy levels in the process.

A LERX is no substitute for a bigger wing. That J-20 wing looks around the same size as an EF-T wing, only the J-20 is a substantially bigger/heavier frame.

It’s not just about wing area, but lifting force.

The J-20 has a smallish wing, trying to use the lifting body to compensate will only result in high energy bleed rates [simply due to the different lift generation mechanisms].

What is the weather like? Is it damp?

Seems like the rejected air from the intake due to a compressor surge to me… If its damp or humid, the change in local pressure could be causing a change in local water saturation, so you see condensation in the air.

Burning fuel with a lack of oxygen will also produce that yellow (as opposed to blue) flame.

The intake is straight and it ain’t stealth

Since when did a straight intake automatically mean something had a high radar cross-section.

There was me thinking strong radar returns meant you’d a high radar cross-section.

One does not automatically equal the other. 🙂

Are you all forgetting the Russians did serious work on the fan/compressor faces of the Flankers to reduce radar return?

Tell me – what does a radar blocker look like? What does a fan and stator row look like? What are the main differences?

Nah, not really. The only real driver to the engine cover design (assuming they don’t become much bigger) would be when the plane is side-slipping – avoid having the corners too sharp and it’d be grand. 🙂

They’d also have to consider the area rule for high speed drag, but they are bright folks and will know what they are doing.

(Unless your referring to the nozzle itself, moving from a circular to a square nozzle can cost up to 9-10% in efficiency IIRC – that cannot be easily worked around as far as I am aware; maybe delaying the shape change from circular to rectangular to as late as possible would help, I’m not sure if the drop is due to extra internal pressure losses, or to reduced efficiency of the wake mixing phenomena – maybe both)

Cheaper alternative to F-22 lol? More like twin engine alternative to F-35. F-22 is pretty irrelevant in this case.

How do you figure that?

Lemme see. Does the PAK-FA:

Supercruise? Yep.
Have super-maneuverability (post-stalled)? Yep.
Have super-maneuverability (energy conservation)? Yep.
Have high combat persistence? Yep.

Those are four things that the F-35 does not have, the F-22 does have and the PAK-FA does or will have.

The only appreciable differences in the F-35’s favour may be low-observables and engine maintenance intervals.

I regard the almost complete focus on software integration (to the detriment of other areas) on the F-35 as a waste of time. If your separate sub-systems do the same, or >98% the job of this highly “optimised”, “fused”, “integrated” (and whatever other bullsh!t Lockheed words to describe it), then that same funding is better spent on improving weapons, or more importantly improving airframe performance.

IMHO, due to this accident, there has been a subtle simmering of tension between Airbus and Air France for quite some time. Now, the Pilots union is also entering the fray.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/08/12/360681/airbus-clashes-with-pilots-over-af447-alarm.html

Admittedly I’m somewhat biased towards the engineers side – but to me, it looks like the over-paid prima donnas in the cockpit f**ked up when asked to actually do their job (i.e. fly an aircraft).