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ITALERI F-35


thewizardofaz

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Guest Smitty44

Coolest thing has to be that the airframe has a whole bunch of cameras and sensors on the fuselage so the pilot can flip a switch and essentially make the aircraft dissapear around him so he can "see" right through it.

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I used to be a flight instructor in the civilian world (sadly not a fighter or bomber pilot) :-(.  One of my favorite things was when I student would bring along one of those really nice garmin color GPS with all the bells and whistles to boot.  We'd start flying somewhere and they'd start calling out their arrival times, staying on course very nicely....then I would reach over and press the power button and say,  your GPS just malfunctioned or ran out of power, and lets say storm clouds are building along our initial route I want you to take us to airport XYZ." Usually the first time around they had a hard time finding where I wanted them to go.  I used it as an object lesson that technology should be used a tool to help you improve your navigation and dead-reckoning skills (and if you use a GPS to help identify landmarks, roads, terrain etc and improve your depth perception/distance visualizing its great).  But using an E6B might seem tricky at first but its actually much easier and quicker to use than trying to type in a bunch of tiny numbers on a small screen when you should be looking outside.  In regards to the F-35 I'm worried the technology MIGHT not always work properly and we could become overly reliant on it, and flying straight and level relying on computers to see and avoid SAMs and threats might be a bad idea.  Don't get me wrong, a system that can identify and detect a launch is great and even indicate the general direction is a good thing.  But I worry this plane could really get a lot of pilots in trouble.  (Ducks for cover)

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Guest Smitty44

I used to be a flight instructor in the civilian world (sadly not a fighter or bomber pilot) :-(.  One of my favorite things was when I student would bring along one of those really nice garmin color GPS with all the bells and whistles to boot.  We'd start flying somewhere and they'd start calling out their arrival times, staying on course very nicely....then I would reach over and press the power button and say,  your GPS just malfunctioned or ran out of power, and lets say storm clouds are building along our initial route I want you to take us to airport XYZ." Usually the first time around they had a hard time finding where I wanted them to go.  I used it as an object lesson that technology should be used a tool to help you improve your navigation and dead-reckoning skills (and if you use a GPS to help identify landmarks, roads, terrain etc and improve your depth perception/distance visualizing its great).  But using an E6B might seem tricky at first but its actually much easier and quicker to use than trying to type in a bunch of tiny numbers on a small screen when you should be looking outside.  In regards to the F-35 I'm worried the technology MIGHT not always work properly and we could become overly reliant on it, and flying straight and level relying on computers to see and avoid SAMs and threats might be a bad idea.  Don't get me wrong, a system that can identify and detect a launch is great and even indicate the general direction is a good thing.  But I worry this plane could really get a lot of pilots in trouble.  (Ducks for cover)

One would hope people in the program would think of this as well.

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I used to be a flight instructor in the civilian world (sadly not a fighter or bomber pilot) :-(.  One of my favorite things was when I student would bring along one of those really nice garmin color GPS with all the bells and whistles to boot.  We'd start flying somewhere and they'd start calling out their arrival times, staying on course very nicely....then I would reach over and press the power button and say,  your GPS just malfunctioned or ran out of power, and lets say storm clouds are building along our initial route I want you to take us to airport XYZ." Usually the first time around they had a hard time finding where I wanted them to go.  I used it as an object lesson that technology should be used a tool to help you improve your navigation and dead-reckoning skills (and if you use a GPS to help identify landmarks, roads, terrain etc and improve your depth perception/distance visualizing its great).  But using an E6B might seem tricky at first but its actually much easier and quicker to use than trying to type in a bunch of tiny numbers on a small screen when you should be looking outside.  In regards to the F-35 I'm worried the technology MIGHT not always work properly and we could become overly reliant on it, and flying straight and level relying on computers to see and avoid SAMs and threats might be a bad idea.  Don't get me wrong, a system that can identify and detect a launch is great and even indicate the general direction is a good thing.  But I worry this plane could really get a lot of pilots in trouble.  (Ducks for cover)

 

You make some great points regarding the reliance to technology. So agree with your instructing technique regarding GPS. Even in something like a Pitts or Laser, using a E6B is pretty impossible - the time old method of sticking to the red line on a map marked off with 10 nm increments, wet compass and watch has to do. I've friends who do of course swear by iPad flight planning software like "OzRunways", which gives one a moving map plus all the other benefits. One must be prepared though for when this tech fails, weather forces a divert at low altitude as per your example. Also interesting your point regarding the tech in the F-35. The very first generation jammers (QRC-160) used by F-105 crews over North Vietnam required pretty tight formations to ensure proper coverage. These pods were practically hand made and rushed into combat. It must have taken massive brass ones to fly the jamming profile correctly for these pods to have a chance of working, then the dreaded MiG warnings would have broken up these tight jamming formations, etc and that jamming formation would go to ****. Of course this technology along with the tactics have evolved enormously over the last 50 years. Exercises like Red Flag are there to find holes in tactics and technology - hopefully. The "Wests" potential adversaries have nothing like Red Flag and are generally regarded to be way behind (as much as 10 years) in a number of key technologies (stealth, AESA radar, jet engine, sensor fusion), nor are there the shear weight of numbers to counter more advanced tech like in the Soviet era (thousands of MiG-21s). Red Flag did prove that it's possible for adversaries to get lucky and get through to F-35s, but it took a very very large number of adversaries to do this - probably way more than would ever be possible in real life. The adversaries were able to regenerate a number of times and were able to get lucky and visually acquire F-35s on a very few occasions. Once the F-35 will be able to carry more AIM-120s internally (currently 2 and will go up to 4, then 6) and use the AIM-9X & AIM-132 ASRAAMs, this will make it pretty well impossible to take out any meaningful number of F-35s in a strike group. All these assets are networked together - from AEW&C, jammer/SEAD fighters like E-18Gs, 5th gen fighters, other 4th Gen fighters and bombers, other space, air and ground based ISR assets - this makes it very very hard for any potential adversaries. The users themselves seem very happy with the F-35 so far. All of we on the outside of this program can do is either accept or reject this, but this changes nothing of course to we the "great unwashed"!. Service chiefs and the air & ground crews appear very happy with the F-35 so far and that's good enough for me.

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Guest Peterpools

Since we're off topic a bit anyway; I learned to fly in the days before GPS, before PC's, before iPads and cell phones. Matter of fact even before calculators. My first cross countries were in a J3: no radios of any sort - just a few steam driven gauges, a mag compass, a sectional and maybe a road map. We learned the ways of the E6B and while it took a while, we always showed up. Moving up to high tech in Piper Cherokees, and Cessna C150's and Skyhawks: the beauty of the VORs and learning to use the navcoms from NARCO and ARC. Now that was living. Even with those marvels of navigation, loads of short XC's  were by dead reckoning and pilotage. Of course, navcoms of even that age will and did fail and it's nice to know how to read a map and fly a mag compass.

Peter

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Since we're off topic a bit anyway; I learned to fly in the days before GPS, before PC's, before iPads and cell phones. Matter of fact even before calculators. My first cross countries were in a J3: no radios of any sort - just a few steam driven gauges, a mag compass, a sectional and maybe a road map. We learned the ways of the E6B and while it took a while, we always showed up. Moving up to high tech in Piper Cherokees, and Cessna C150's and Skyhawks: the beauty of the VORs and learning to use the navcoms from NARCO and ARC. Now that was living. Even with those marvels of navigation, loads of short XC's  were by dead reckoning and pilotage. Of course, navcoms of even that age will and did fail and it's nice to know how to read a map and fly a mag compass.

Peter

 

We sometimes used to do "IFR"..... "I follow roads"  :-)

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F35-comp-3.jpg

 

First impressions of the new Italeri F-35A in 1/32 scale can be seen at my webpages here:

 

https://designer.home.xs4all.nl/models/f35-32/f35-32-1.htm

 

I also checked with photos the shapes and looks of the kit and I am impressed. So nothing to stop building this model!

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F35-comp-3.jpg

 

First impressions of the new Italeri F-35A in 1/32 scale can be seen at my webpages here:

 

https://designer.home.xs4all.nl/models/f35-32/f35-32-1.htm

 

I also checked with photos the shapes and looks of the kit and I am impressed. So nothing to stop building this model!

 

 

Thanks for that!  It does appear to be of acceptable proportions, although I am NO expert by any means.   Id REALLY love to see what if anything Italeri can do with the STOL B model.  Which I sincerely hope they come out with. 

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F35-comp-3.jpg

 

First impressions of the new Italeri F-35A in 1/32 scale can be seen at my webpages here:

 

https://designer.home.xs4all.nl/models/f35-32/f35-32-1.htm

 

I also checked with photos the shapes and looks of the kit and I am impressed. So nothing to stop building this model!

Nice review. Small note, the RAAF marked aircraft has been delivered, not on order. It was here last month.

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Picked mine up from the PO this afternoon. It seems a decent enough kit (and has the advantage of being the only 1/32 F-35A out there). Even though it's basically a single color paint scheme, masking all of the ram panels will probably be a challenge. The kit does scream for new not-flat wheels and a resin exhaust without all of the thick knock out pins that Italeri seems to like putting in among the interior detail.

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