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PDF THINK TANK: ANALYST
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This is video is a professionaly made sales pitch by Boeing and not an airshow regime. It has been edited and could have been from different sorties, which have been put together. It starts by saying that there are no limitations on performance whereas in airshows, with a lot of public is attendence, there are very clearly defined limitation on what a plane can do. Whatever we have seen of the JF17 from Zuhai are amateur videos. Also Black Spiders are not a demonstration team. Its an operational ground attack squadron. So you are basically comparing oranges and apples.
The routine you saw the F/A-18 E/F test pilot describe is the standard demonstration of a fully loaded F/A-18 E/F. Typically air show demonstration starts with short take off - a Super Hornet in air combat configuration can get air borne in under 432 meters. The ability to STOL is important to customers, while I believe the JF-17 has STOL capability this was not demonstrated -why? Standard demonstration for the Rhino includes pirouette, hammer head, low speed high alpha hover, cuban eights, half clover and low speed extended gear approach. All combat pilots are able to perform the above maneuvers, however; it takes practice to weave these maneuvers and time its execution in a fluent composition for the purposes of an air demonstration.
With one or two exceptions most of maneuvers described by the Boeing test pilot in the first video was also performed at Farnborough in 2010.
Finally, the Thunder is the new kid on the block it should have displayed its full repertoire, taken a few risks and dazzled spectators - how else do you expect to displace established players and create a market?
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