The 9,500 kg weight for Rafale C comes from the AdA :
Poids à vide : inférieure à 10 tonnes
It has nothing to do with test configuration.
As the weight matter has been raised several time here, i did some research, and found those standard definitions in a French DGAC (Délégation Générale pour l’Aviation Civile) document :
“Masse à vide” can be translated as being “Basic Mass”, “Basic Weight”, “Empty Weight” or “Empty Mass”. And so, the “Empty Weight” is defined as being the weight of the aircraft with only fluids contained in different circuits, and also the small quantity of fuel (so small quantity that it can’t run the engine) remaining in the tanks.
“Masse à vide équipée” can be translated as “Basic Empty Weight”, “Basic Empty Mass”, or “Empty Weight Equipped”. This is defined as being the Empty Mass plus standing equipments.
AS WE CAN READ it, French document about Rafale usually gives “Masse à vide” (9,500kg for the Rafale C). To me, it means that we could find higher figures, and this could match with the Jane’s figure (as far as i remember “empty weight equipped : 9,850kg for the Rafale C).
But keep cautious with those figures, i’m not sure at all, i don’t know if AdA and Dassault use the same words as DGAC, for example… !
In addition, i looked after figures for Typhoon…
The eurofighter gives “Basic Mass (empty) : 11,000kg”.
So, if both use the DGAC definitions, “Masse à vide” and “Basic Mass” are the same, and we have to compare the 9,500kg figure with the 11,000kg.
http://img168.imageshack.us/my.php?image=massetypxt3.png
This link (in a 2002 document, correct me if i’m wrong) provide us with a “Basic Mass Empty” of 11,150kg.:confused:
I’m confused about this expression : Basic Mass Empty. The words aren’t in the same order as in my DGAC document, in addition, they are in the same order than on the eurofighter website, except that on the website, the last word (Empty) is written between brackets.
My english isn’t good enough to help me here. Is “Basic Mass Empty” is the same as “Basic Empty Weight” ? 😀 There’s only a 150kg difference, and i wonder if there’s only 150kg of “standing equipments” on Typhoon…
About Dassault website :
“masse à vide de la classe………… 10 tonnes” doesn’t mean “Masse à vide supérieur à 10 tonnes”. It just means that Rafale C, B, M are around 10 tons… Which is true since Rafale M is 10,2 tons approximately. Writing “9 tons class” would have been a lie since one of them is heavier than 10 tons. But we shouldn’t care, since we have more accurate data.
Toan wrote “empty weight”, so no problem with him.
I hope it can help…:o
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