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8 hours ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

 

 

Its looking like a buy, because typically fighters aren't "made to order" for a lease. they are leased when their is an excess in inventory, and Super Hornets are being used by the USN heavily so there is basically no excess. There is talk that they could "theoretically" sell them back to the USN "someday" but there is absolutely no agreement on such a thing. Nor is there an agreement for any future Super Hornets in the US to be bought for the purpose of leasing to Canada. 

 

Which is where all of this starts to graduate from ridiculous to absurd. Canada concluded as did others years and years ago that a mixed fleet is more expensive to operate. They are talking about spending billions of dollars on "interim fighters" from a CF-18 replacement budget allocated at 9 billion total, that will create a mixed fleet (as we all know Super Hornets and Legacy hornets have very little commonality.) They will also hold a competition in the future that could select the F-35 leading a a fleet of 3 different types, 2 of them in transition to full service as the last is retired. Not only are they spending more day to day, they are blowing the CF-18 replacement budget on a solution they themselves say is "temporary" and holding a competition that will cost tens of millions of dollars in the future, while SOLE SOURCING Super Hornets anyway. 

 

Bottom line? Canada pays more, and gets less.

You are attaching logic and experienced management techniques to a situation where those do not exist or are being asked for. I do not understand the strategy of politicising defence purchases but I guess that is why I scrape by in a silly job and build models in my spare time. 

 

 

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8 hours ago, gary1701 said:

Gents,

 

Here's some footage of the same sortie. Looking at the weather I would guess this was probably Thursday!

 

Gary

Thanks for the video.  Something I that caught my eye that I don't recall seeing on other aircraft is that the wing lights on the F-35s would light up with two levels of intensity.  Also, the lights on the two different aircraft seemed to be almost in sync with each other, which was a little surprising.

Edited by Ken Cartwright
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4 hours ago, Ken Cartwright said:

Thanks for the video.  Something I that caught my eye that I don't recall seeing on other aircraft is that the wing lights on the F-35s would light up with two levels of intensity.  Also, the lights on the two different aircraft seemed to be almost in sync with each other, which was a little surprising.

 

Ken,

 

I never noticed that before. They certainly have got powerful strobes, which tend to stand out against a dark sky, like the last few days!

 

Gary

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22 hours ago, CorsairMan said:

You are attaching logic and experienced management techniques to a situation where those do not exist or are being asked for. I do not understand the strategy of politicising defence purchases but I guess that is why I scrape by in a silly job and build models in my spare time. 

 

 

 

Point taken.  :thumbsup:

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Pics were from Beaufort Air Show this weekend.  I need to figure out how to post without it linking back to my album.  I will get them back up soon.

Edited by TMReich
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22 hours ago, Ken Cartwright said:

Something I that caught my eye that I don't recall seeing on other aircraft is that the wing lights on the F-35s would light up with two levels of intensity.  Also, the lights on the two different aircraft seemed to be almost in sync with each other, which was a little surprising.

 

Draw your own conclusions...

 

bt40kkI.jpg

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At Beaufort Marine Corps Air Station Air Show this past sunday

 

VM16 was on display

DSCN0309.jpg

 

VM14 Flew a demonstration

DSCN0330.jpg

 

The difference in the two grays didn't seem as strong as some others.  Both aircraft had these black sections above the starboard intake

DSCN0310.jpg

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14 hours ago, boom175 said:

That looks likes a real pain in the fool  to change that light bulb!

 

If by "rivets" you mean the tiny black dots, those were actually drawn on with what looked like a Sharpie pen.  I think they were contemplating modifying the masking pattern around the light, but that's just my theory.

 

And MarkW is right, they are LED assemblies.

 

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On April 30, 2017 at 3:50 PM, gary1701 said:

Gents,

 

Here's some footage of the same sortie. Looking at the weather I would guess this was probably Thursday!

 

 

Gary

Fake

 

My Prime Minister said these would never fly! Nice try.

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1 hour ago, CorsairMan said:

Fake

 

My Prime Minister said these would never fly! Nice try.

 

A clever variation of the compression lift theory from the XB-70 program.  The two F-35s are supported by the shock waves generated by the F-15s.  :)

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Gents,

 

They haven't flown today, and apparently there is a US bound NOTAM in the system for tomorrow that may be them, so that could be it this time around.

 

Gary

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This maybe belongs more in the Canadian Hornet Replacement thread, but there are several references to the F-35 in it, such as the US Navy cutting back on orders, seemingly in conjunction with more Super Hornet orders:

 

Under Trump, Super Hornet gets a boost: Production set to double

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/08/super-hornet-production-set-to-double-as-trump-gives-program-a-boost.html

 

Earlier this year, Navy officials disclosed that two out of every three F-18 fighter planes in its fleet are out of commission on any given day, awaiting repairs. They've been flown hard in a post-9-11 world, which coupled with maintenance backlogs tied to budget cuts, has resulted in a serious maintenance bottleneck for all planes.

 

That coupled with delays for the naval variant of the F-35, which is now expected to be operational in 2018, and the Navy faces a fighter jet shortfall. This is the reason, analysts point out, the service has been pursuing more Super Hornet purchases as it pairs back F-35C orders — even before Trump entered the Oval Office.

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Thanks for the info. The Canadian Hornet Replacement thread got gassed as it became too political. Could you possibly imagine such a thing? This seems to be the only thread left for this subject, so tread carefully. Here in Canada everybody has gone to sleep about this issue and nothing has happened. We are all dreaming about pot - much more important apparently.

Out

Paul

Edited by MacStingy
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46 minutes ago, MacStingy said:

We are all dreaming about pot - much more important apparently.

 

And don't forget about taking selfies while aiding the disaster relief efforts... very important too.

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Quote

 

“Even if you were in an Eagle or J-20... You felt the same thing,” a senior Air Force official with an air superiority background told me after my flight—referring to the feeling of utter helplessness of being attacked by an invisible enemy. “Because of the security cloak, it's just impossible to explain.  If everyone really knew and we asked to ‘choose their weapon’—there would be no doubt.”

Flying back to Langley, the experience was an eye-opener. I have been covering the Raptor and the F-35 since beginning of both programs. It is one thing to intellectually grasp the power of stealth, but seeing it in action makes one a believer—our flight had no idea, no warning from the AWACS or GCI that we were about to be hit until it was all over. It’s nearly impossible to fight an enemy you can’t see.

While the Raptor would be the most formidable fighter in the world due to its raw performance even without stealth, it’s now clear to me that even the F-35 with its mediocre kinematic performance will be an extremely dangerous foe in the air due to its low radar cross-section and sensors. “If the pilots of both could carry a 9mm and open the canopy inflight, they would have 15 more kills per sortie,” the senior Air Force official told me. “It's like fighting Mr. Invisible.”

 

 

Dave Majumdar breaks an ankle jumping back onto the F-35 band wagon, Learns what people in the know have been saying all along. still manages to get a dig in with "Mediocre".

 

Riddle me this Canada, IF the F-35 has "mediocre" performance but performs like a Hornet/viper, how Mediocre is the Super Hornet which is not as nimble as the original? 

 

 

 

 

Edited by TaiidanTomcat
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On 4/27/2017 at 1:29 PM, TaiidanTomcat said:

 

 

But they don't work and are terrible 

 

People forget, choose to ignore, or never knew that when the F-15A arrived at Langley in the 1970s, they would fly them down, pull the engines out, truck the engines back up to St Louis and put them in another airframe for delivery.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Langley had a huge portion of the fleet initially sitting there without engines.  Meanwhile the F-16 was earning the Lawn Dart nickname, and "One a day in Tampa Bay" was an often heard saying.  And no, that wasn't referring to the B-26.

 

Regards,

Murph

Edited by Murph
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