Re: Aircraft recognition


Message posted by Sundog on February 03, 2005 at 19:03:02 PST:

I would recommend going to airshows. When aircraft put on aerial displays, you get to see them from different angles and get a feel for how they look depending on how they are maneuvering/approaching.egressing. You will also get to hear them, which can be helpful in identifying them.

I would also recommend you look up various pictured for the aircraft you think you are seeing at http://www.airliners.net

You should also note, that aircraft with the canted out vertical tails (Not a V-tail) could also be F/A-18s. An aircraft with a V-Tail literally only has the V components for the entire tail. The F/A-22 and F/A-18 both have separate horizontal tails. The big give away between the two would be the postion of the intakes and the exhaust nozzles. The F/A-22's inlets are well forward on the fuselage, just behind the cockpit location. The F/A-18's have their inlets about midway back under the strakes near the leading edge of the wing. Early model F/A-18s have round pitot(perpendicular to the airflow) inlets and late model F/A-18's have three dimensional shock rectangular inlets, similar to the F/A-22's but under the leading edge of the wing as noted.

The exhaust nozzles on the F/A-22 are also two-dimensional thrust vectoring nozzles with a sort of flattened shape to them. The F/A-18s are round axisymmetric convergent/divergent nozzles.

From a wing planform, the F/A-18s is a trapezoidal shaped wing (Sort of rectangular with swept leading and trailing edges, where the trailing edge sweeps forward). The F/A-22s is sort of modified delta in planform, that is sort of kinked along the trailing edge.

Just look at alot of pictures and maybe have 3 view drawings handy and you'll develop a feel for it. :)


In Reply to: Aircraft recognition posted by Peter A. Forkes on February 01, 2005 at 11:27:03 PST:

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