gambit
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Airshow maneuvers are tightly planned.Thank you for detailed reply. However if you look at JF-17 airshow in China, it did put a sharp turn after take off with landing wheels extended. That seem to be a thing that they want to show off may be!? If it indeed was a mistake then we got really lucky there as you suggest. Truth will be out there however. In its routines today onwards, we will see and know if it was intentional. Videos will surely be out of real show.
Think about this for a moment. In Red Flag and Top Gun, the altitude limit, aka 'hard deck', is 10,000 ft. That mean you do not descend below that safety altitude. Airshow maneuvers are especially dangerous in the sense that not only is the pilot at increased risk of losing his life because he must perform at an altitude where human eyes must be able to see unassisted, but also if anything happens, the audience is also at risk.
If the maneuver requires gear extension, that maneuver is also planned months in advanced and relentless rehearsed by the lead and back up pilots. An airshow maneuver is also examined for safe execution, meaning can the pilot do it and can he recover if anything unplanned does happen.
In an airshow vertical takeoff climb, engine thrust is the largest contributor to altitude gain. Any ground school student will learn on the first day that drag should be minimized at any point in flight, from takeoff to cruise. So where there is a maneuver that will make engine thrust that largest contributor to altitude gain, drag should be minimized as soon as possible, and that mean, in my opinion, gear retraction should have occurred at timestamp 1:19 or 1:20 at the latest. Perhaps a vertical climb with full gear extension was planned, but a near vertical climb is usually performed to illustrate engine power, whereas a sharp horizontal turn is usually to illustrate maneuverability so such a maneuver with full gear extension would make more logical sense.
If it was me, I would have slapped the gear handle up at the same time I initiate full pitch up. I am already at an altitude where recovery from departure of controlled flight is near impossible so I want as little drag as possible.