Touch and goes in the F-35B

[Lionheart]

Hey all,

Some fun this evening in the F-35B (STOVL).

New cammo skin, Israeli AirForce, thanks to LeTourn for the location; Flightsim.com.

Learning to do touch and goes in the STOVL mode of the B series. I kept crashing and found that you actually fly it straight into the deck, like an Airbus airliner. When you try to land it like a Cessna in STOVL mode, she plants the nose gear into the pavement every time. Keeping the nose barely under the horizon and above 75 knots will give you a nice touch down in STOVL with heavy loads onboard.

Man, this thing flies smooth. Once you are airborn, flying it manually is pretty easy.


Shots taken around Israel at Ben Gurion and Jerusalem airports; LLBG and LLJR. I did also make a fast, low to the ground recon run across the valley to the other side, skimming the ground and palm trees. Unfortunately, while doing a victory roll next to the tower, I made a BIG swimming pool, lol... oops.



Bill

[Lionheart]

Some shots with the doors all open.

Cool how the thrust section at the back rotates and swivels.



Bill

[Dino Cattaneo]

Nice pictures, Bill...

However, I believe that repaint was for the F-35A (hence the mismatch of some features and reflections)...

I wonder if we will ever see in real life such camos: I am afraid that the F-35 employs radar absorbing paint (which is also robot-applied) that so far has been only seen in shades of gray...

[Lionheart]

Hey Dino,

Roger that on the paint scheme. I finally figured out how to get it to work for the B series, renaming the texture. I didnt notice any mis-matches.

I agree on the radar absorbent paint. Probably very far off. Sure looks great in the sim though.

Nice bird...

[Dino Cattaneo]

Well, I hope I am wrong and we'll see many colorful schemes on the real Lightning II.... but once again, in the virtual world we have much more freedom.

As for the mismatches, you can see the refuel receptacle doors texture on the top of the fuselage which (refuel receptacle is unique to the -A) and mismatches in the auxiliary air intake (which has a different shape between A and B) for example... Anyway, it is indeed a nice repaint.

[hairyspin]

...Cool how the thrust section at the back rotates and swivels.

You're not kidding. I saw the LM demonstrator of this five years ago and the mechanism was very impressive as the nozzle smoothly swivelled from full aft to full down. Then someone on the stand said it reacted WAY faster in actual use, something I see in the LM promo videos recently posted. Incredible machine! And a fabulous model...

[rcbarend]

Hey all,

I kept crashing and found that you actually fly it straight into the deck, like an Airbus airliner. When you try to land it like a Cessna in STOVL mode, she plants the nose gear into the pavement every time. Keeping the nose barely under the horizon and above 75 knots will give you a nice touch down in STOVL with heavy loads onboard.

...

Bill
Are you sure you aren't crashing the nosewheel ? (it's pretty tight, see contact points)

Touchdown in a Short Landing with the F35B is best at around 70 Knots, and slight pitch-up.
Although I doubt real F35B's will so short landings on a Carrier deck :)

Cheers, Rob

[Lionheart]

Are you sure you aren't crashing the nosewheel ? (it's pretty tight, see contact points)

Touchdown in a Short Landing with the F35B is best at around 70 Knots, and slight pitch-up.
Although I doubt real F35B's will so short landings on a Carrier deck :)

Cheers, Rob


Hey Rob,

Thats what I thought. If I touched down on the backs first, the nose slammed down and I was crashed. So I changed it to continuous angle down and made it in fine every single time. I couldnt keep her stable in speed around 70 and would creep under and stall down. So I started doing approaches for touch downs with 80 knots over the fence and touched down fine.

I even cheated and raised the nose gear max hit from 1000 to 1800 or something and that didnt cure my nose crash problem. I was just hitting too hard. If I had STOVL off, it would have reacted normally.

Its fine! I am not accustomed to flying the newest heavy fighters. I was out experimenting with it. I really appreciate something so totally new and alien to the regular ways of aviation. Nice to have a radical change for once.

[mfitch]

My first attempts were crashes as well. Higher airspeed helped. Of course I usually don't adjust the fuel load first. With the heavy fuel loads higher speed is of course required.