Sometimes with your comments I really have the impression of being in a simulator
Outstanding Forbin, my long love for everything with wings is due to my Daddy likely thinking about flying as I was being "conceived"???? He was a pilots pilot, squadron Check Pilot in the C-130, all business and no nonsense, even as he was teaching me the basics of real airmanship. I read the Dash-One for the C-130 as my reading primer, and was likely the only first grader who knew how to "pull the fire handles on those Allisons, and if the fire didn't go out, twist the handle and hit it again! LOL
I hated reading, and cried every night as my MOM, made me read, pretty soon it clicked, I found flying and flying magazines, I can still remember reading one of the first articles about the new "Cessna Aerobat" and being so excited, around 1969 or so??? I later spent a LOT of time in a C-150 Aerobat with the checkerboard paint on the wings. NO real aerobatics, but LOTS and LOTS of very steep turns, hard pulls, low level passes, and ONE fuel starvation incident at 300 ft going straight up! LOL
One thing my Dad drilled into me, "ALL airplanes fly alike", and its true, just have to change the numbers, and the scale, it has been something of an adjustment for me to fly the 1946 Ercoupe 415C as there is only one brake pedal on the floor, and it is under the "rudder pedals", most Ercoupes were built without rudder pedals as the Ercoupe interconnects the rudder and ailerons. You "steer" the aircraft on the ground with the yoke, as the nose gear is also interconnected to the rudder and ailerons, very different, but I was able to get in the Ercoupe and fly-it safely with just a brief check flight, in spite of some fairly heavy cross-winds.
So your pictures make it quite obvious that the F-35 is a "heavy hitter", as is the F-22, and I would remind everyone, that the F-35 is a "much safer" aircraft in the low speed regime than the F-16. The F-35 is designed to be very "departure resistant" and that picture is testament, that even below its happy airspeeds, the pilot is able to form up and hold formation on the lead F-16, due to that very user friendly and safe airframe and flight control system. The F-22 will fly even slower, at around 85 knts indicated, but it takes a LOT of thrust, and that is the secret to that LockMart sweetness, well designed lifting body fuselage and wing, and LOTS of thrust.
