X-31

[DFC5343]

New one...

[DFC5343]

And...

[DFC5343]

Basic...

[Huey One Four]

Looks like a Eurofighter rip off to me.

[CPTAUSRET]

DFC:

I always liked the Delta wing concept:

Terry

[DFC5343]

Yeah...look badass. F-102, 106, B-58.

[CPTAUSRET]

Originally posted by DFC5343
Yeah...look badass. F-102, 106, B-58.

"Look badass", and function extremely well:

Terry

[specwarnet]

Not a Euro fighter Rip off Huey One-Four. A totally bad ass maneuvering aircraft. They built two to test concepts for highly maneuverable aircraft. One crashed due to pitot icing and the other was put into storage until Recently. Boeing's using it to test using thrust-vectoring during landing; mainly to decrease landing loads. As a sort of final test they did dog fights against F-18's and it just wiped the deck with it. Not really a good "test" but it did illustrate some of the amazing manuevers it could pull off.


NASA's X-31 photo album (http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/X-31/)
NASA's X-31 Fact Sheet (http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/FactSheets/FS-009-DFRC.html)
Boeing's X-31 Page (http://www.boeing.com/phantom/x31.html)

[DFC5343]

Hence the "X" designator...like all...experimental.

[Diamond Dave]

Plus the old intake under the nose. The F-16 is the latest in the inventory for that config. I still think the F-100 is a beautiful aircraft.

[specwarnet]

The under-the-nose intake was also on the Boeing X-32 JSF candidate.

Anyone here ever hear of the
F-107 Ultra-sabre (http://venus.ci.uw.edu.pl/~animal/military.pl/samoloty/f-107_ultra_sabre/)?

[FITTER]

Yeah, the F-107 had the intake on the dorsal side, IIRC. Not the best spot for high A.O.A. flight attitudes, but it sure did help prevent F.O.D. on the ground!

FITTER

[KJ]

Originally posted by specwarnet
One crashed due to pitot icing


I am no mechanic, and because of this, I thought the pitot tube measured the air intake to tell the airspeed indicator how fast the aircraft was flying. How could not having an airspeed indicator cause a crash? Forgive my ignorance, but please help educate a "wrench idiot" like me.

[Xdeth]

Pitot tube is used to determine airspeed through pressure differential, once iced over the fly by wire software which is necessary for a human to control this plane failed, in a sense. The software relies on the inputs from instruments to make the necessary inputs over the pilots so when it fails basically the plane is unflyable.

It makes a great example for pointing out the importance of software and systems engineering quality/testing, which is my business.
:)

[bitburger]

The X-31 isn't really new, it been been tested since the early 1990's as a thrust vectoring technology testbed. Originaly developed by MBB of Germany along with the now defunct Rockwell. This aircraft was one of the first to use the paddle form of thrust vectoring, hence the three paddles at the end of the aircraft to vector thrust in several directions. It was a really an unstable aircraft, it required several flight computers to maintain flyablity just like the X-29 of the late 1980's. It's now being tested as an extreme short landing technology testbed. Using its thrust vectoring ability plus a combination of many flight computers, it is possible to perform a very short landing in several hundred feet.