Oh God Buster, don't say that.

We wouldn't miss it... :E

I watched the film of this on al jazeera last night and according to the lady commentator the J15 can carry a wide range of weapons including Surface to Air Missiles!

Just means they don't need to take off AGS Man. That's probably linked to its stealth capability too...

WOD and Alpha
 

The ski jump has an extra advantage with WOD as during the take off run you are in the lee of the ramp so drag is reduced on the take off run and thereby increasing you speed at the top of the ramp After take off not having any lift may also have the advantage in that you don't have the induced drag to reduce you acceleration during the ballistic phase of "flight" after take off.

When the USN experimented with the Ski Jump they bought from the Farnborough airshow in the 70's I think they launched F14's and F-18s off it and there was some thought to using the ramp on land to enable short field take-offs.

There has only been one accident with the Ski Launch to date when a Sea Harrier FRS1 at Yeovilton inadvertently had a large fuel asymmetry during some rushed trials in '82 and rolled over on leaving the ramp due to insufficient control power for the situation or the asymmetry was outside of limits depending on your perspective. The pilot survived.

Didn't they have one that started the run from too far back and broke the nose leg when it hit the ramp? (or something along those lines)

There is a video on youtube of an su33 taking off from the Russian carrier with its brakes on. That suggests decent margins!

nice landing as well... but lets not get too excited eh guys?

This is a very very long way from a fully functioning carrier and air group........

Yes, but every journey....

Thin end of a very long wedge then ?

Perhaps long enough to foster a overdose of complacency ?

10-15 years I guess

but they are entitled to build what they like after all they have serious international trade to protect (that's the excuse that we all use of course....) :cool::cool:

I see a trend of analysts downplaying and underestimating everything from China.

They were wrong on the J20, J31, Z-10 and other platforms, claiming it might be mock-ups days before take-off..

If these aircraft are close to the Su30 MKI the Chinese bought yrs ago, the Super Hornet Pilots will need their unique skills a lot. Specially if the J31s follow up the J-15s..

Plastic Bonsai:

There was a T8 that flopped off the end of the ramp at Yeovilton too. It lost power during the run up but couldn't stop and had nowhere to go. Both aircrew survived but with injuries.

Not sure if the Chinese (and Russians) will go for catapults over STOBAR in the future, they're expensive :E. If the fighters only need to be short range to defend your fleet of missile cruisers then maybe a heavy fuel load is not an issue. The Mig 29 has a pretty small fuel load as well. It's the missiles on the ships that do the striking rather than the jets on the carrier.

I hadn't heard of the T8 incident. Did the crew eject?

I do recall Kingston spent some time fine tuning the end of the ramp in simulations to get a smooth extension of the nose-wheel leg. Don#t know about breaking it off though.

I suppose the USN didn't adopt the idea as they didn't need too but there are several Harrier carriers around and the (ex) Soviet carriers have launched Flanker, Fulcrum and even Frogfoot (T/W < 1.0?) derivatives showing it's a generally workable idea.

Do our forthcoming carriers have this at the minute?

Yes, both ejected successfully, should be plenty of pics and info online if you go looking.

Never saw any ski jump related issues onboard the Incincible class carriers I served on with FA2, GR7/9, AV8B etc.

Yes, our new carriers will have ski jumps.

Interesting article and Chinese TV news video ( >8mins) on FlightGlobal on the operation of the carrier, aircraft and aircraft handling.

Very disciplined FOD PLOD and 2 x FDO's / launch - wow !!

"There has only been one accident with the Ski Launch to date when a Sea Harrier FRS1 at Yeovilton inadvertently had a large fuel asymmetry during some rushed trials in '82 and rolled over on leaving the ramp due to insufficient control power for the situation or the asymmetry was outside of limits depending on your perspective."

I understood it was deliberate asymmetry:
cut down ex-Hunter drop tank on one wing, with a brace of Sidewinders and a photo (?) pod on the other. If memory serves correctly they cut a couple of feet out of the middle of the tank and then welded it back together.
I can remember seeing a navy lorry trucking a batch of them down the A303 from wherever they had been in store

Interesting snippet from the Flight Global article about the Indian carrier having it's boilers on bricks...makes a change to anti-vibration mounts I suppose!

Milo, 82 was a bit before my time but the Vinten recce pods were normally mounted on the centreline. The baggage pods were pretty much cut down drop tanks for when we went on dets etc.

WhiteOvies

the story in the press was that they were trying to expand the Harrier range and also up the payload, and someone had the idea of an aymmetric fit using a Hunter tank on one wing and weapons on the other. From a very vague memory a 230 gallon tank cust down to 200 sounds like what was tried

However you do find posts on the web stating it was an inadvertent error - so maybe another case of a press story being made up to hide the facts?