Aaaaaaaaah...
I'm the French chap in the party !
Hi Jack !
Originally Posted by Archimedes
1. Shortly after about this point in the thread a rabidly nationalist French loon materialises to explain that the Typhoon is utterly, utterly rubbish and that the Rafale (and for that matter anything French) is vastly superior to the appalling anglo-saxon rubbish the RAF is buying.
No... The guy you were talking about is no more. He's banned nearly every time he appears on a forum.
Low Observable : your summary is really funny and interesting !
Originally Posted by Low Observable
The French tried to get cute with the radar and backed a dead-end idea, especially combined with the restricted nose volume that is characteristic of most non-huge carrier jets. They need an AESA.
The Typhoon's radar reminds me of the $6000 turntables that you find in audiophile stores because some people don't trust CDs yet. But if it works as well as they say, it does some things better than an AESA, and does a lot better than the sort of AESA you could have baselined in 1996-98.
Originally Posted by Jackonicko
But that turntable has provision for a plug in CD player, with all the buttons, all the software in place, and the makers have demonstrated the ability to plug the CD player in and play CDs in moments.
Well... The RBE-2 is not a dead end. It was developped, with in mind the active array coming after. The passive antenna is working well (requirement to detect a 0.1m2 target at 35Nm, according to "Air & Cosmos"), and all the softwares are ready for use with the active antenna (already demonstrated).
Of course, the improved performance of the array will allow to use improved softwares, as well as "advanced modes" currently in development. DRAAMA should fly in 2007.
The first Rafale with an active antenna will leave the plant in January 2012.
But I'm told that the switches are not likely to last like the Typhoon's more agricultural tested-to-death items, and that once you want to actually operate the systems in the Typhoon's visually less appealing cockpit it's an intuitive joy, but in the better looking Rafale you're working like a one armed paper hangar, with less intuitive modings and with nothing quite falling to hand.
Well... Not a single source in France isn't counterdicting you.
Using the Rafale HMI need training, because it's really different. But once it's ok, from every comment's I've read, and even in a report written in french (La polyvalence du Rafale, ou l'objet total, by the "Centre d'études en sciences sociales de la défense"), the systems is clearly very efficient and revoltionary ( "an intuitive joy" ). There's no doubt on that.
« Il y a beaucoup d’informations sur cet avion mais c’est un avion relativement naturel, tu comprends vite où tout se trouve. Tout tombe sous la main. »
=
There are a lot of information in this aircraft, but it's a relatively natural plane, you quickly understand where to find everything. All is falling to hand
Sorry for my english skills... I did my best to translate it the more accurately.
In this report, the author also said that when the pilots says that the Rafale is "high tec", they actually refer to the cockpit (HMI -switches, HOTAS, screens and interface readability-, and ergonomics).
For the switches, the requirements are the same (this is what i was told by a man who have worked on both pits, and he also added that the Rafale's cockpit was more innovative, but the two used different philosophies, and so, weren't not comparable).
They only lack DVI for frequency changing.
The design phase of the cockpit came after a comprehensive study on the human body feelings and on cognition, on the body strenghs and weaknesses (resistance under high G, wrong sensations...). This is how they designed the switches (with different shapes and pressures according to the function), this is what they took under consideration for the symbology and colors on the screens... They tested all of this during years to improve it, for all the 3 standards (F1, F2, F3).
The PDF from the MoD site Sorry it's in french...
I hope this helped.