“i have not seen any reports that stated that the RSAF preferred the Typhoon.”

I have, both open source (see AFM) and closed.

I’d would be very interested if you could flesh this out a bit, I had heard the Singaporeans were impressed, especially with the radar, flight dynamics and serviceability issues.

The french are pushing the Rafale Very very hard, and they may drop the price by an extreme amount to get this order.

As EADS/BAE can offer access to several areas of Tech transfer, France will certainly have to pull out all the stops to get the ‘orphan’ adopted ;-).

The F-15 will have the advantage of political clout, but Singaporeans are quite well respected for clever buyers, so this competition is very interesting to observers!!, and is still wide open, Hmmm – what are the bookmakers saying???

So please Jackonicko give us some hints on the RSAF’s thinking ….

Cheers

Seahawk wrote:- Like What?

Like the Radar, Pirate, Dass, each test aircraft only had subsets of the final configuration, the rest of the bays had test equipment crammed in, data recorders, sensors, comms, the test equipment weighed considerable more, than production equipment, remember the bays are only half full on a production machine to fulfil its contracted upgrade potential.

If you mean software then the latest addition is ALSR – Automatic low speed recovery, in the Flight control software,This was one of the problems that qinetiq highlighted in its infamous ‘don’t release to service’ report

One of the key features of the Eurofighter aircraft is the quadruplex fly-by-wire Flight Control System (FCS), which provides the aircraft its outstanding manoeuverability. FCS is also an important prerequisite for the Eurofighter’s unique carefreehandling qualities, enabling the pilot to concentrate on his mission rather than on basic airwork. With the first flights of GS002, the first flown production single-seater for the German Air
Force, a new and important feature of the overall carefree handling functionalities was flight-tested at the EADS Military Aircraft Flight Test Center at Manching in late October 2004: the Automatic Low-Speed Recovery
system (ALSR).
ALSR prevents the Eurofighter aircraft from departing from controlled flight at very low speeds and high angles of attack. To achieve this, the ALSR, being an element of the overall FCS system, is able to detect a developing
low-speed situation and to raise an audible and visual low-speed warning. Thus, the pilot will have sufficient time to react and to recover the aircraft manually. If the pilot doesn’t react or ignores the warning, the ALSR will actively take control of the aircraft, select maximum dry power for the engines and return the aircraft to a safe flight condition depending on the attitude by either using an ALSR “push”, “pull” or a “knife-over” manoeuvre.
The first pilot ever who fully exploited the ALSR capabilities in flight, doing this on Eurofighter production aircraft GS002, was EADS test pilot Karl-Heinz Mai, who described his experience with the new system: “It worked tremendously well – ALSR is a real confidencemaker in the low-speed area of the carefree handling envelope. I’m convinced this is one of the most impressive features of this aircraft!” “After making a cautious approach to a few low-speed recovery corner points, I’ve gained confidence in the system so rapidly that I was able to enter the extreme low-speed recovery set-up with 70 degrees nose-up attitude and power idle without any hesitation”, said Mai.
“The system then worked as described –without any pilot action. Impressive!” Mai congratulated in particular the FCS engineers, who work in an area where EADS has overall design responsibility. He also praised both the ground- and flight test teams as well as the qualification and certification staff, who had
made the ALSR and its proof of functionality for the production flight cceptance test of the single-seater aircraft such a success.

cheers

That ‘bit more than mach 1’ was actually M1.21.

Source AFM:-
And its reported that one Rafale programme insider grudging said about the supercruise “they didn’t wait for a cool of the evening, they didn’t wait for a cooler day, – they just went out and did it in a hot daytime tropical environment” .

The Typhoons apparently flew 28 missions totalling 35 hours,

reported quotes :-
“The Singaporeans are over the moon”
“Typhoon exceeded all expectations and blew their f-16’s out of the sky”

So it looks like the Typhoon is in with a chance.

Cheers

In the RAF they are called Eurofighter ‘Typhoon’s’

The company Eurofighter GmbH make the Typhoon and they are furthur identified by numbers:-

There are twin seat Typhoon T.1’s (12 x batch 1 trainers) or twin seat Typhoon T.1A’s(batch 2 Trainers), it really depends on the fuel guage thingies in the wings!!!. the batch 1 trainers didn’t have the fuel guage modification that the batch 2 have, AFAIK they will stay as T.1’s and will not be upgraded to batch 2 T.1A status.

The single seaters will be Typhoon F.2’s.

I would imagine these designations should hold together as tranche 2 come along, because as tranche 1 aircraft are upgraded to the next tranche level, all aircraft should be at the same level.

BTW it looks like the Typhoon can supercruise at 36k at M1.2 with full AAM load and fuel tanks… thats about what I thought it could do clean, but someone said they got an answer from Eurofighter saying it could do it in this config, exceptional eh…

Cheers

Adrian_44 Just out of interest, where did _you_ look to get those RCS figures, where there any conditions put on those figures, such as freq, aspect etc?.

or are we talking about some the (hmmm… whats a polite way of saying this) ‘less credable’ resources on the web!.

Cheers 😉

Yet another optomistic news snippet:-

Finmeccanica: ‘optimistic’ on II tranche orders for Eurofighter, We are moderately optimistic that the thing can happen shortly ‘. Cosi ‘ the president and a.d. of Finmeccanica has said: ‘ We are to the final phase ‘ of negotiatation even if there still exists a small resistance in the English Government ‘.

Source http://www.ilsole24ore.com/fc?cmd=news_sez&chId=30&radioId=6319179&sezId=8722

Its in Italian, so any better translation into English would be greatly appreciated.

Could something be moving?.

Cheers

I’ve been a little pessimistic about the signing for a while, but recents snippets like this http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8211-1294304,00.html
seem to indicate that something is moving, there have been several little bits of news that may point to an imminent signature.
I usually rely more on what the stockmarket is saying as they have money tied up in the Business and so have a vested interest.

Lets wait and see if anything happens in the next two weeks……

BTW Hoons off to India!!!, they could be an export possiblility! $$$.

Cheers

Not being party to the negotiations or having access to anyone that is, I would’nt begin to guess the stage negotiations are at.

The program looks like having to renegotiate prices on parts a second time due to the UK’s delay in signing, some manufacturers are producing parts out of their own funds (while not having a contract). others are on go slow manufacturing or switching to other work in the meanwhile(layoffs have been mentioned)

The UK is causing all sorts of problems with its ‘delay’, the Four partners have until now agreed to share the cost increases, this looks like an increasingly fragile arrangement with the germans in particular getting a bit upset(quite bloody rightly IMHO).

Signature by the 15th?, I don’t know, its possible I assume, Bridging contract for long lead items may be an option!!.

I don’t quite understand it, the UK MoD have said they are commited to the Jets, the long lead items are not going to change specification, Bridge the gap with long lead contracts!!, its not that hard to do (except they may have already done this, so it might be a bit hard:-)).

Someone has to get a move on..

Cheers