J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread V
- Thread starter Deino
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Extremely detailed image of J-20's back.
Canards and Main wing appear to be large panel carbon fibre construction with the skin bonded to the spars and ribs, very clean, small riveted sections behind the leading edge slat/flap to support that structure, and also ahead of elavons at the trailing edge of main wing. Does appear much cleaner that lots of former Soviet block aircraft, the Mig 29s I observed up close where somewhat more crude and construction wasn't very slik?
This appears to be a very "slik" airframe, very clean and robust, I would love to see it "beat on at Zuhai or somewhere similar, not necessarily the way the Russians beat on Flankers, but just flown approaching her limits?
Lightning protection, position light, fuel tank vent???? ya got me there, almost looks as if the metal skin riveted around it is brass?? that's why maybe lightning protection?
Carbon fibre aircraft need some external lightning protection in order to conduct the lightning away from the airframe which could be easily be damaged..
I believe the old man had a hole burnt into the skin on a C-19, "flying boxcar" in the 50s, but metal aircraft usually dissipate the electrical charge fairly simply and almost always had "static wicks" across the trailing edge of the wing.
Actually it appears the quality of the Chinese 5th gen is very good, the panels all appear uniform, riveting is nice, and its on top of the fuselage where it would have a minimal signature if at all.
foxmulder_ms
Junior Member
Housing for navigation light.
That thing is on both top and bottom of the wing, hope that helps
This is probably off topic but this kind of smearing has to be refuted.
Chinese have been making products for some of the high end premier brands for years. We haven't heard many complaints on QA for those products. China wouldn't have become the No. 1 manufacturer in the world simply by being cheap. Many of the top 500 companies wouldn't have had their products made in China either.
The low quality Chinese products that many are making fuss about are, in fact, "by design". These products are meant for the lower end market. No denying that some of them are too cheap to be usable. But one gets what he pays for. Expecting high quality from such products is just absurd.
How much an end user gets from QA is proportional to how much he pays for the final product. That's the same in any step of making a product, be it a phone, a car or a kettle.
Now back to airplanes. The Chinese aviation industry was so out-of-date until only two decades or so ago. The crude finishes we saw in J-7, J-8 and even in J-10A were just showing the industry's technological capability of the time being. As the industry is catching up, we now see dramatically better finishes in J-10B, J-20, etc.
Last but not the least, such crude finishes in miltary airplanes might have been partly due to design specs. When radar stealthness wasn't a hard requirement, having pretty skins were probably not a priority to the designers and workers.
kwaigonegin
Colonel
Looks fine to me lol certainly much better workmanship than the Flankers whom I've seen up close and personal.
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