Ghost of a flea: Toys for boys

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July 31, 2006

Toys for boys

I felt a yearning for the days when airplanes were still piloted by people and we thought it would all end in nuclear fire and not the March of the Toasters.

MiG 25 Alert. I love the taking off in the snow. I also want to know if this is the original rockin' soundtrack. I figure there is a career for me in making music for these productions so if there are Flea-readers with connections in the corporate video market, please hook me up!

Tornado & Mig-29 & F-16 & Saab Draken flying along in the moutains of amity. Mainly interesting for the Saab Draken... I loved the Buck Rogers look of these when I was growing up

Michael Schumacher vs. Eurofighter. The world's most over-rated F1 driver and the world's most over-rated 4th generation fighter: Together at last!

This Eurofighter Typhoon promo moves away from the usual corporate video format. I appreciate what they are trying to do but it would help if "Nothing comes close" made any sense. This is the first defense procurement promo I have ever watched that cries out for a fisking.

On the other hand, "Gripen Success" shows what a defense procurement promotional should look like. I especially like the Harry Potter talking pamphlet effect.

There is some superior editing and Portasound action on this F-22 Raptor vid too. Sukhoi is also doing a good job representing its product now it has to sell the goods. Mmmm. Thrust vectoring.

I love the lines of the Dassault Rafal even though it has the mandatory canard wing that Typhoon, Gripen, etc. all lifted for this gen by preference to stealth. Plus, I think Dassault is blowing smoke with their active cancellation claims. It would help if these M-variants were not being flown off the non-functioning Charles de Gaulle.

Saving the best for last: An Israeli F-15 flying on one wing. Actually, the flying - or at least, hurtling - part is fairly straightforward. The landing part is tricky. (Video removed: Now looking for an alternate source...)

All weather radials Update: A Former Servant of Her Majesty was also impressed by the winter runway shots of the MiG 25. He forwards the following tidbits from Wikipedia. I knew about the vacuum tubes but the rest is an education:

* The majority of the on-board avionics were based on vacuum tube technology, not solid-state electronics. Seemingly obsolete, the use of vacuum tubes was ingenious because they were far less susceptible to EMP in case of nuclear warfare and were more tolerant of temperature extremes, obviating the need for complex environmental control inside the avionics bays. In addition, the vacuum tubes were easy to replace in remote northern airfields where sophisticated transistor parts may not have been readily available. As with all Soviet aircraft, the MiG-25 was designed to be as rugged as possible.

* Thanks to the use of vacuum tubes, the MiG-25P's original Smerch-A (Tornado, NATO reporting name 'Foxfire') radar had enormous power of about 500 kilowatts, rendering enemy ECM largely useless. Pilots were forbidden to engage the radar on the ground, and legend held that it was powerful enough to kill rabbits near runways.

* It is said that ground crews drank the plane's pure alcohol, used in the hydraulic fluid and for cooling the radar, causing the MiG-25 to be nicknamed the "Flying Restaurant".

Posted by Ghost of a flea at July 31, 2006 12:21 PM

Comments

All the best tubes for old electric guitar speakers come from Russia. That M-25 video is very Captain Scarlet.

Posted by: Alan McLeod at August 1, 2006 09:21 AM

"Captain Scarlet"? Er, not quite. The series was "I Serve the Soviet Union"; and the music was rather more turgid than that in the video clip above. And the -25 carried about 500L of alcohol according to V. Belenko, who also noted that there were a number of 'incidents' which occured when the aircraft 'inadvertently' flew without its required load of 'deicing fluid'.

And the MiG-31? HUGE!!!

Posted by: J.M. Heinrichs at August 3, 2006 05:22 PM