stiletto:

no sweat, hope u liked the info. anyway, as far as Albania's enemies, right now it technically has none. however, Greece and Serbia have a history of trying to carve Albania up amongst themselves, and the Ottomans and Romans also prized the territory.

Currently there is a small but potent movement in Greece to annex Southern Albania, which they call "Northern Epirus"...they believe that Southern Albanians ("Tosks") are truly 'Epirotic" Greeks because of their Orthodox Christian religion. also, Albanians in Greece include the native "Chams" (of "Chameria", aka "Southern Epirus" in Greek parlance) as well as a great many Albanian immigrant workers, and I read that they all experience various forms of bigotry. Apparently Greece refuses to acknowledge the existence of ethnic minorities, probably because they feel they have too many...

sirjonnyinla: Togo or Ghana would also have to produce top notch pilots, costing millions of dollars in training not to mention maintenance support.

The first gulf war and the Isreali wars proved you needed efficient personnel. Simply having planes isn't good enough.

Well, the two wrs you mentioned they were fighting/whupped up by ajor armies. If Togo has two planes and Ghana has Albanian garage sale material, that sounds like easy pickings.

What do you mean pilots nad support? What is it that costs the millions (specifically). I am guessing they can't pop in Flight Simulator on the PC, but what is it that costs millions?

Would togo need top notch pilots to stomp Ghana, or just someone who cna fly, land and press buttons?

the A-10's gun is f'ing badass!

7 barrel, 30mm gattling cannon
5 tons of recoil force
4,200 rounds per minute fire rate

factsheet (pops)

imagine flying along... you hit the firing button and your plane gets hit with 10,000 pounds of reverse thrust. each engine produces 9,065 pounds of thrust at full throttle

erire13: The MiG came free with the wiring!

Honestly, I thought it had been done. East German, maybe?

Someone should remember?

Smart Ass: Groud

Ground. When you gonna learn to spell?

cot: I'm American. And it's not Canada that's special, it's us. People WOULD like to kick us in the nuts, moreso than most other western nations.

I thought the US was Canada's nuts?

And Kingston is their asshole.

Pxtl: Damn, I feel stupid. I'm a Canadian, and I didn't even know Avro made anything other than the Arrow.

They made a bunch of stuff other than the Arrow. They built Lancasters during the war. They designed the first North American Jetliner (Aptly name the Avro Jetliner.... Only missing being the world's first by only a couple of weeks, beaten by the British DeHavilland Comet) Their engines (Well, their subsidiary, Orenda) were considered the best engines that could be put in an F-86 Sabre.

And the American CIA was funding this:

The Avrocar.

Of course, the Arrow Ended all that. But the company was quite innovative an successful until then.

Smart Ass: Honestly, I thought it had been done. East German, maybe?

Polish it seems

Mosey: Smart Ass: Honestly, I thought it had been done. East German, maybe?

Polish it seems

*cough

BTW the Russians have had a plane capable of decoupled flight, the Su-27, for how many years now? And the F-22 is just now coming into service? Yeah, we're really ahead on all front. Oh and the original paper outlining how to make a stealth plane was written by a Russian. Just that the Soviets had no idea what to make of it so they let him publish it in an aerodynamics journal.

/still thinks the DoD blew it not taking the F-23

The_Original_Roxtar: imagine flying along...

by far my favorite flight sim/ air combat game is an OLD one: "A-10 attack"...

and yes, the gun in the game sounded like the hand of an angry god.
one of the neatest things about the game was hearing the plink plink of bullets hitting my warthog. no damage whatsoever.

PC LOAD LETTER

Try the F-16. The F-16 was the first totally fly by wire combat aircraft, and for a reason. Fighter aircraft are supposed to be maneuverable. Maneuverability does not come along with aerodynamically stability, rather the opposite. In fact if you try to outfit an F-16 with a purely mechanical (ie hydraulic) control system connected to the pilots yoke, it would crash as soon as it got off the ground. Only with very tiny control surface adjustments, carried out at a high rate (60x a second), does the plane become able to fly.

The same applies to the F117, B2, F15, F18, F22, JSF, etc.
This is not over engineering, its required to meet performance specs.

But anyways, my favorite airplane is the F16. It has the most drag free airframe of any US fighter. In fact a full weapons load DOUBLES the amount of drag on the airplane. No other fight comes close to that.

Mosey

Well take into account the fuel costs, maintanence costs and personnel costs for maintaining a training fleet and it gets pricey. Also fighter pilot training takes a while. Have to make sure you don't end up with someone in a fighter who should be flying cargo. Every pilot starts off in a single piston engined airplane, just like every civilian pilot. Just that they move up to bigger planes, more engines and then jets faster. But all that doesn't come without a price tag. And a lot of support staff.

That new weird looking Russian jet...
Can it supercruise? Meaning, can it fly supersonic velocities with the engines at 1/2 throttle? Does going full throttle look like something from Star Wars going into warp speed? No?
The F-22 does.

/Doesn't need to go into the F-22's afterburners.

MP3Phile

The F-15 has standard controls, not fly by wire. A pilot can at any time pull him or herself right into a stall and nothing will stop them. Then they can pull back on the throttles and light the afterburners and have the engines literally push them out of the stall.

Leonard_Cohen: Meanwhile my wife gets 12 months paid maternity leave, I get 8 months paid leave for taking care of my elderly parents, 5 weeks paid vacation and of course my free healthcare.


So how much do you pay for all those free benefits, and how much do you pay so everyone else gets them?

Mosey: Polish it seems

Outstanding! Another confirmation that I may NOT be 'dreaming this stuff up'!

/If only I was playing hand grenades...or horseshoes..

Mad Ogre

It's a bad idea to put anything beyond the Russians. They got to vectored thrust aircraft before anyone else did. The Mig-25 could, albeit at most for 15 minutes, cruise at Mach 3 at over 65k feet. Their engineers are as good as anyone else's, their knowledgebase is just as good too. For supersonic flight it may be better. Also they tend to get stuff done faster, going from a blank sheet to production a lil quicker than the US does.

i miss HA-HA guy

Wow, when I clicked to read the thread about Albanian planes I was not expecting a U.S. - Canada flamewar, how unexpected.

/Canada sucks

seal614

According to Col. Richard Graham, "veteran of 15 years of assignments within the SR-71 community" and author of two books on the Blackbird, as well as Maj. Lars Hoffman (wife's link), executive officer to the Air Force Flight Test Center commander, U-2 and SR-71 pilot, the term "sled" and "sled-driver" is a deragatory term used by pilot who either rarely flew or washed out of the SR-71 programs.

I learned this when I mistakenly used the term with Col. Graham while interviewing him at EAA Airventure in 2004 and confirmed it with his protege, Maj. Hoffman.

/just letting you know, so you don't slip up when talking to one of the pilots

PS: Col. Graham prefers to call it the "Habu" (the Vietnamese term for a demon) instead of "Blackbird", as its what the NVA called it, since they could never catch it.

blatant1: "i miss HA-HA guy"

You and me both, baby. You and me both.

Also, I would sooo love to fly a Spitfire.

SVenus, they copied the engine design from the british in the 50's. As they did for half their shiat. Or the germans/US.

/the more you know

mpmalj: So how much do you pay for all those free benefits, and how much do you pay so everyone else gets them?

Look up above you. See that spec that's barely visible? That, my friend, was the point. It seems to have gone a little over your head.

Yes, Canadians pay for our "free" medical care through our taxes, consequently our government can't afford such neat things as F-22s. On the other hand, the F-22s aren't free to you and consequently...

I think the F-22 and a most of the American military toys are remarkably impressive and very cool, sort of in the same way I think Ferraris are cool. Overkill for most uses and expensive as hell but very cool. I'm just glad I'm not the one paying.

Oh, and Mosey, Kingston's not the arsehole, Windsor is.

cargrrl82

MP3Phile

The F-15 has standard controls, not fly by wire. A pilot can at any time pull him or herself right into a stall and nothing will stop them. Then they can pull back on the throttles and light the afterburners and have the engines literally push them out of the stall.

Just an FYI: The F-15 also has a computer onboard that limits the movement of the flight controls based on speed to prevent the aircraft from "over-G." Although, yes, it is a hydraulic-based flight control system. Most modern (late 70's or newer) aircraft have these systems.

/used to be an F-15 crew chief

Fnord:

According to Wikipedia, there were 51 flyable aircraft at the end of 2004. ISTR a production rate of 1-2 per month, so that would mean around 70 aircraft now. But I found another page with an AP story from this month about the AF just recieving the 50th aircraft... I suppose the difference could be with including test aircraft, and the lag between "start of production" and "accepted by AF."


Generally on large projects like that, there are a fair number of "pre-production" engineering models that are "basically" the end result, with varying degrees of "correctness"... So the early test beds, where they are still tweaking the design count, but aren't ever delivered to the AF

Well..if we're gonna talk cool planes...




and



annnnd



ok..and.

Reeve: (Re. the F-15)

Explain this then:

Scotsman article

LoonieCobber

that's weird, I read "The Untouchables" (great SR-71 book) and don't recall seeing that.

Will keep that in mind!

Have worked on sr-71 and u-2..... Neither are all that agile and both are fairly large planes. The SR was decent manuvering wise for its size, but mainly relied on low radar profile, height and speed. U-2 just relies on height I swear the thing can fly backwards though it takes no groundpeed to get off and has to be strapped down in any type of wind. As a personal note I really liked the f-5/t-38 line and successor tiger II. They are comparatively inexpensive (1/3rd the cost of our current jets) and fitted with the right missle & avoinics package are a world class jet fighter. While not as dominate as the current jets it'd be much more usefull to have 3x the jets and take minor losses every once in awhile. They are currently used by the us in dissimilar forces training and average a kill rate of 1.4 to 1 of current US jets.

wolfzr 2

hehe.

P38
Black Widow
a6
crusader

:)
nice list

germaniac

Any fighter buff will tell you, pilot skill matters far more than the aircraft involved.

Number 2, it was a training mission, F-15 holds the record for live combat missions.

Number 3, American pilots in F-16's, F-18's, F-14's have all bested an F-15 pilot in a training mission at some time or another. (not talkin all pilots, just airframe v. airframe)

But still impressive of the Brit in the Typhoon. From the way it sounds, F-15 pilots were being arrogant.

germaniac

Lol, just re-read the article. The F-15's there were the E models, not optimized for air superiority. Not to mention the fact that all the E's fly w/ Conformal Fuel Tanks (CFT's) installed. Cuts down on manuverability drastically. Tis why the F-15E's look fatter than the F-15C's.

/still impressive for the Typhoon tho.

germaniac: Explain this then:

Scotsman article

I've never understood why anyone would think that story is a big deal... The Typhoon is an exceptional aircraft and the E model is the bomber version of the F-15, known in some circles as the "Mud hen"... It's decent at air to air, but not the specialist the C model is. That a state of the art fighter could best the E model should be a non-story...

...heres the 21 they have at pima

/on one of those crap ass micro digital cameras

Smart Ass
Hollywood makes people forget that 'out-slowing' can be as much of an advantage as 'out-running'.

Maverick pulls that off in Top Gun. Too bad Maverick turned out to be a psycho in real life.

btw...this thread kicks ass.

afxjzs, Topper Harley did it a little better though in Hot Shots with the in air skid.

LincolnLogolas:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who loved the A-10. Back in high school I gave serious thought to the Air Force Academy just because I wanted to fly one.

Didn't the A10 not even have a real computer in it's earlier versions. i remember hearing something like that. it was basically a pilot, an engine, some wings and a bfg.

/totally fuzzy recollection

If we are talking about nifty airplanes, how about the xb-70.

I have a lack of html skills.

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/modern_flight/mf37.htm

Also feel the need to mention the ABL. Energy weapons are the future, and it's coming sooner than most people think.

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/flash.html

I saw the F-22 at edwards air force show, just 2 weekends ago.

Needless to say I was impressed.

afxjzs: btw...this thread kicks ass.

You got that right.

I've heard 'OutSlow' from British Air Crew (HMS Hermies) shooting Argintina's helo's, and one of my old squadrons use to bring back Aircraft 'over stressed' from the Landing Gear/Flap trick.
We had a pilot 'black-out' for a couple mins after getting away from a F-15A (Air Guard) once.

When an A-7's AOA reaches a 'stall' point, the rudder peddles would shake to, hopefully, awaken the pilot. It worked for him.

We used to get the 'Boots into the cockpit and tell them if the peddles shook, the Seat was about to blow-while reaching around and moveing the AOA Transducer suddenly to the 'stall' position. I quit doing it after a guy almost knocked me off the side trying to escape.

So I went with the "pilot to PC" radio trick. "OK, now you speak into this part and I'll go down and see if I can hear you" and then "Hey man! Speak up! hold it over your lips closer-back ground noise-Louder!"

Much safer til the New Guy realized he was speaking into the "Pilot Relief Tube". (Piss Tube)

afxjzs

It's probable. Although the F-15 had computers in 1972, the A-10 didn't preceed it by much.

Question. MiG-31? Is this some sort of interceptor successor? It sure as hell looks like one, but I've never heard of it until now. Is it a MiG-25 replacement, i.e. the fast piece of shiat that one guy flew to Japan?

I'll take 'em all on
[img src=http://www.chicagocentennialofflight.org/images/images_aircraft/SopwithTr iplane_Shuttlew.jpg]

Sweaty Jerry

Question. MiG-31? Is this some sort of interceptor successor? It sure as hell looks like one, but I've never heard of it until now. Is it a MiG-25 replacement, i.e. the fast piece of shiat that one guy flew to Japan?

From the way it operates, that'd be my guess. MiG-31 was another straight-line, boom 'n' zoom type interceptor. Although I don't believe it was as fast as the MiG-25. Run a quick Google search on MiG-31 and you'll probably find a stat sheet for one, along w/ a fairly thorough descip on it's mission capabilites.

impaler: We all know of the F-22, and it isn't even in production yet.

As I watch F-22's take off daily from my office...