18-11-2008, 12:05
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חבר מתאריך: 11.02.08
הודעות: 771
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אפ - 35 עבר לראשונה את מהירות הקול
F-35 test aircraft breaks sound barrier for first time
By BOB COX
If you thought you heard a sonic boom Thursday afternoon, you probably did.
Lockheed Martin’s F-35 test aircraft broke the sound barrier for the first time, topping out at Mach 1.05 — about 680 miles per hour — during a test flight.
Lockheed test pilot Jon Beesley was at the controls for the one-hour test flight, which occurred between 2 and 3 p.m. at 30,000 feet over the range between Fort Worth and Wichita Falls. "The airplane performed pretty much like we thought it would," Beesley said in a brief interview afterward.
The sound barrier was broken on the aircraft’s 69th test flight and the second one of the day Thursday.
The first time, in the morning, the plane was taken up to just below the speed of sound to check for handling qualities.
After lunch and a full tank of gas, Beesley returned to the sky and punched through the sound barrier four times, for two to three minutes each, while engineers on the ground monitored the airplane’s handling, systems and structure through telemetry data.
"The indications are that everything worked about as expected," Beesley said.
The airplane was flying with a full load, about 5,400 pounds of mock weapons representing two 2,000-pound precision-guided bombs and two air-to-air missiles.
The aircraft, AA-1 in program parlance, was the first and only one built before a major redesign to cut the aircraft’s weight.
Although it looks and flies like the rest of the aircraft should, on the inside much of the structure is different, Beesley said.
But the test flights are allowing Lockheed to gradually check out the flight controls and other systems in a variety of conditions, proving the design and predicted performance of the aircraft now being built.
Lockheed is the lead contractor on the F-35 de- velopment program, which is expected to cost U.S. taxpayers more than $300 billion for design, testing and production of 2,500 aircraft for the Air Force, Navy and Marines.
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