tbzz, what can you tell us about the Czech ML with a Magic2 in post #676?
AFAIK the Czechs never had the Magic, nor did they upgrade their 23s in any wway.
Maybe a photoshopped R-13M?

The Czechs tried the Magic once on a friendship excercise in France. They attached a training version of MATRA MAGIC-2 on the Mig-23ML and flew some sorties against the Mirage-2000. No life fire tests have ever been carried out, nor were they ever interested to buy an upgrade for existing R-60,R-13. IIRC, there was also an article in the Czech aviation magazine L+K covering the exercise almost 12 years ago. I hope this has helped you somehow.

Unfortunately, it is not easy to take such picture, because before that you have to close the door. 🙂

Jesús Maria….Piotr where haven`t you been yet??? 😀 😀 Anyway does the cockpit look different now compared to those photos posted here?? I suppose your picture was taken at Maks05. Thanks
Martinez, Slovakia

Su-27 and it’s derivatives are very draggy aircrafts (their design was optimized for good manuverability at subsonice speeds) and it is doubtful that they can supercruise even with AlL-41F, as drag has a more pronounced effect than power in supersonic region.

Bingo , DITTO with the F-15 class although i believe the f-15 might do a little better , it isnt about Thrust or T2W ratio when in dry but what the resultant NET value is for the Thrust to weight – drag as you need proportionately less thrust increase in DRY form if you have favourable DRAG ( and weight) then when you have a draggy airframe coupled with weapons hanging down !!

Guys your comments are really marvellous, 😀 LOL . The F-22 is the same class as the F-15, even bigger aircraft with larger twisted downwards camber wings and even worser sweep angle 42degree than F-15. Remember, generally smaller aicrafts have less drag. They may have very similar Cd, the Su-27 wing profile even better due to simplier supersonic non-cambered airfoil. The problem of the Flanker is its huge centroplane causing more drag due to lift at supersonic when compared to US counterparts. Nevertheless, the differences in the supercruise would not be that big, although I think the Flanker will have a bit smaller radius at supersonic cruising. As I said the main factor are the engines and after installing the AL-41 the Flanker joins the supercruise class. After all the Flanker can fly Mach2.35 at 15km altitude for several minutes, where each Al-31 engine is giving misserable 60KN of thrust, then why bother with supercruising w/o ABs at 1.5Mach??? 😉

That isnt a big deal anyway !! The AVEN for the F-110 was an operational standard 3 D Multi AXIS nozzle , it was just not ordered because the USAF didnt want a new F-15 or F-16 varient but wanted a new series of stealth aircraft in the F-22 and F-35 !! The AVEN i believe was offered to the UAE in the shape of the original more radical Delta set up for the Blk60 which the UAE refused due to cost and the fact that they wanted to stick to lower risk and stay close to the original configuration of the F-16 !!

OK, maybe it is a bit weird but why could not they make from the AVEN a good selling article? What I`ve heard long time ago was that when the F-16 fitted with AVEN, they were dealing with a persistent stability problems at high AOA, what is obvious when looking at the F-16 one tail design and insufficient wing area. Interesting that there was a proposal fitting the AVEN nozzle onto delta wing F-16. Well, extra wing area could possible solve those stability problems and I`m not surprised that Arabs dropped that offer. Who would pay costs for all testing. Really sad that AVEN nozzle hasnt seen operational service.

The HiMAT was the 70’s and only tested certain aspects of manuverability rather then put up the whole kitchen sink as they say , DITTO with the X-31 and X-36 , they were GOAL specific as they were never intended to be put into service just like say the S-37 which didnt have a fighter representative Fuel fraction for RuAF as it want meant to be operational fighter but one that explores FSW for application into 5th gen PAKFA !! They were simply much simplified and specialized test platforms , like the BOP which brought stealth to levels which were previously unatainable nothing more and nothing less heck the BOP didnt even use FBW simply because it was not needed !!

Are you really believing that the S-37 has never been intended to be put into service? Consider that the country has been economically ruined and not funding its military designer bureaus, e.g. OKB Sukhoi certainly droped dozen of perspective future projects in favour on one big FSW aicraft which should be at the end a test platform for PAK-FA only. Were they designing a totally new aircraft just to be a FSW demonstrator? That`s crazy, isn`t it? The truth is that they`ve changed the PAK-FA requirements, then suddenly both S-37 and the Mig1.44 were considered as a test platforms. These both aircrafts had to be rivals in the PAK-FA competition.

Not to mention that at least two US aircrafts have a far better solution to reduce airspeed than the Cobra: the Raptor and the superHornet. They both havre the “virtual speedbrake”. Instead the clasical speedbrake mounted behind the cockpit, the superb digital flight controls of these two planes, allow the “breaking” to be performed by simultanously raising ailerons, lowering trailing flaps, and splaying out rudders. In this way these fighters can lose speed without any change in pitch. So, if a Su-whatever is in front of such fighters and the pilot is dumb enought o perform Cobra, the US pilot will “breake” and he will have a big, fat target for a few good seconds…

How can be someone so dumb and say that braking with a 15 square meter plate is more effective solution compared to a 80 m2 plate? By doing cobra you reduce airspeed drastically, while you can point your nose anywhere you wanted to by scissor moving stabs and aim your weapons. The maneuver as you have seen it many times on airshows is a controllable one, the issue is that the pilot has to level the aircraft back to horizontal flight. In a combat the aircraft performing cobra would flip its nose down immediately and regain speed. Guess how much time it takes to regain speed for the F-22 when heading down and engines set to full afterburner. The reason of performing cobra on airshows is not to show a questionable combat maneuver only, but what`s more important to show the inability to stall, carefree handling, not worrying about speed anymore or retaining nose point capability at stall speeds. The “speed is life” is an old and rusty statement which no longer apply to this generation of thrust vectored fighters, you should agree at least with that one. The F-22 is proving that on any occasion too.

I think you told us all you really needed to with that statement.

I`m sorry,but you’ve been doing the same…putting sarcasm.
Merely, I was pointing out the ball screw actuator which drives the canopy, do not understand why not using a simple pneumatic valve. They have a kind of six sense making things even more comlicated. When the canopy frame is damaged to blow it up might be risky for pilot anyway, so in case of emergency situation firemen should be able to cut it within a few minutes. I`m aware that the F-22 canopy incident was a special occasion, there was nothing to worry about, therefore they`ve taken time to open it. After they tried everything but failed ,they called for firemen.

Again nothing has surfaced about the maintaince being a pain in the A$$ for the raptor other then maintaince integration issues which exist for almost all new jets….other then that the F-22 costs less to maintain per hour then the F-15 it is supposed to replace even with the added stealth airframe .

I`m not expecting “pain in the A$$” kind of problem, who would dare to come out with one? 😀

….other then that the F-22 costs less to maintain per hour then the F-15 it is supposed to replace even with the added stealth airframe .

How much is less? It takes some time to build up a operational wing, as I remember the first squadron reached IOC just couple of months ago, the second one is being retrained/implemented, so it is a bit early to judge cost per maintenance from a few operational Raptors do not you think?

They seem to work okay in B-52s, B-1s, B-2s, F-106s, F-102s, F-111s etc.

…and did they experience loads up to 9 g when launching A2A missiles?