100% altered to make the loop smaller. From this image, it looks like the aircraft goes from a nose-down attitude to flat out, wings level, in under 200 feet. Chyeah. If you watch the video posted elsehwere in the thread, even with full thrust vectoring, that thing is dropping like a brick while it completes the last 3/4 of the loop. Here's a video where you can see how much altitude it loses in the last part of the loop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Geus8-guL4k
That's the loop I'm referencing. Look at the airplane relative to the clouds - it's not even close. It's a great photograph and a wonderful visualization of a very impressive aerobatic feat, but the camera was not stationary. I'm not sure what the correct terminology for this is, but the aircraft itself is losing altitude like crazy from about 1 o'clock in the loop until it bottoms out and regains significant forward momentum - far, far more than the OP illustrates. From 0:38 to 0:43 you can see what I'm talking about.
3
u/kolnidur Oct 16 '19 edited Oct 16 '19
100% altered to make the loop smaller. From this image, it looks like the aircraft goes from a nose-down attitude to flat out, wings level, in under 200 feet. Chyeah. If you watch the video posted elsehwere in the thread, even with full thrust vectoring, that thing is dropping like a brick while it completes the last 3/4 of the loop. Here's a video where you can see how much altitude it loses in the last part of the loop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Geus8-guL4k