On Mon, 10 May 2004 21:25:00 +1000, John Cook
wrote:

On Mon, 10 May 2004 05:08:51 -0600, Scott Ferrin
wrote:

On Mon, 10 May 2004 20:16:55 +1000, John Cook
wrote:

On 09 May 2004 17:00:58 GMT, (IanDTurner) wrote:

Anyone know a figure as to max payload weight?

It can carry 7500Kg + of weapons etc, the Max takeoff weight is
23,000Kg or more..

Cheers


John Cook

23,000kg seems a bit low. The latest F-16s top out hgiher than that
and they're a smaller aircraft. I guess if they say 23k then it's
23k. I'd have guessed something more like 26k or 27k,

There really funny like that, they said for years the internal fuel
load was 4000Kg, turns out its 4996Kg (at least on the development
aircraft), The data they usually give is sometimes a bit dated, or
they could just be a bit secretive.

The strange thing is the fuel loads and other parameters should be
reasonally easy for an aircraft design team to work out.

The other factor is the Typhoon is just entering service, it needs
to complete its basic testing and evaluation first, perhaps then the
overload conditions could be explored later on.

Look at the Raptor, they said for ages the MTOW was 50000lbs, if you
added the weights bandied around then the fuel load was a lot smaller
than a few 'commentators' were estimating.......


The 50k figure was the original ATF spec in the 80's. I think it was
even before they decided on Lockheed and Northrop that they figured
squeezing everything they wanted into 50k wasn't going to happen so
they bumped it to 60k. ISTR that the F119s as flown in the YF-22 and
YF-23 were designed for the 50k figure. GE had bumped the power of
the 120 to deal with the extra weight but P&W figured they'd press on
as-is. That was the reason for the 120 being more powerful than the
119 back then. Also the most common figure for the fuel load for the
YF-22 was 25k. If you compare the aft fuselage of the YF-22 to the
F-22A you can see they slimmed it down quite a bit. As the current
figure for the internal fuel of the F-22A is 18,700lbs my guess is
they lost some fuel volume when they did that. As for today's
Raptor's weight who knows? I've seen 34k but it's hard to believe the
F-35 is as heavy as the F-22 when the F-22 is much larger (then again
I'm trying to figure out why an F-35 is as heavy as an empty Tomcat.)
If you go with the F-22A having the SAME empty weight as the F-35 (34k
last I heard) Then 34k + 18,700 fuel + ~2000 for the eight missiles +
200 for the pilot you get. . .about 55k. If you then add external
stores you could bump that to almost 75k.