It's been a long time coming, but the first F-35 JSF Lightening II (also known as AA-1, F-35 Junior and X-35D to some of us in cubeville) had it's first flight earlier today. About 12:40pm (central time), to the cheers of the assembled employees (and many others lining the road outside of the plant, I'm sure) took to the air for the first time. It was a beautiful sight to see the aircraft, flanked by two F-16 chase aircraft climb into the sky and begin the next stage of this phase of the JSF program.
It's hard to believe it was just over six years ago that I stood with a similar group of people (in fact, some of the same people) and watched the X-35A (Lockheed Martin's JSF concept demonstrator aircraft) take off from Palmdale, California. And then, five years ago that I was sitting in a cubicle out at Edwards Air Force Base (in California) watching the streaming video of the JSF contract award announcement. And now we've come to first flight. This event marks pretty much the halfway point of this phase of the F-35 program. We've come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. There's still a lot of work to be done. We haven't even finished all of the wind tunnel testing for the CV (Navy) variant. And today's flight is only the first of what will be hundreds of flights over the course of the next 6+years.
The company should release the official video of the event sometime later today and I expect all of the major news outlets to pick up the story by this evening.
There's already some videos relating to the first flight and tests leading up to it at http://cbs11tv.com/watercooler/local_st ... 92409.html
There's the story that the local CBS affiliate ran on the local news Thursday night. Next is an extended interview with Jon Beesley (chief test pilot) and a video of Thursday's high speed taxi test (although it says "first taxi", but that's incorrect).
Finally, the F-35 Tests video was also taken Thursday, by a helicopter hovering on the other side of the Joint Reserve Base (which is on the other side of the runway from us. They had a good zoom lens. Of note in this video, just after the airplane leaves the hanger and the camera shifts position to wait for it to come out the other side, you can see a white semi truck trailer. That's where the control room is. It's the same trailer we used for X-35 flight test. I spent a lot of hours in there during that program. As the airplane continues to roll out towards the runway, it goes past some F-18. This gives you a feel for the size of the aircraft. It's a good bit bigger than the 18. As it continues to roll and pass some large hangers, you see a helicopter fly just overhead. It really was off axis a bit and not directly overhead. That's the helicopter that shot all the official footage for taxi test and will be used for first flight. You also see a white minivan following the plane. That was "chase" for the taxi tests. Once we get into the air, we'll chase with F-16s and probably some F-18s on some flights (which are two seaters, so there will be a photographer in the back seat. What an amazing job that would be.) Chase aircraft are used on all test flights. They are there for a variety of safety regions. They can be used for visual inspections of the aircraft; to check to see if the airspeed, altitude and other flight conditions are registering correctly on the test aircraft; as a lead aircraft for formation flying maneuvers and, in the case of bad things happening on the test aircraft, to help guide the aircraft back to the ground.
In the video, when you see a side or profile shot of the aircraft, with the massive nose landing gear door, I think it looks like the aircraft is smiling.
Today's a good day.
Ruth Ann
F-35 Lightening II Joint Strike Fighter First Flight!
Moderator: Vincent