Jubilee Flypast - The real story

[Lima Juliet]

Just read the whole Jubilee Flypast Thread and noticed an unanswered question:

Q. Why no Harriers?

A. A single engine Harrier with those ridiculous intakes glides like a brick after losing a donk at the 280kts IAS the flypast was flown at. I believe that the Big Cheese quite correctly assessed the risk too high especially after the GR7's engine failure record.

Point of interest: Eurofighter had to rely on an F3 to get him to the correct 2nm spacing due to no RADAR and A/A TACAN. British Waste-a-space wasted a massive PR opportunity to try to "impress" any interested customers by putting up the untidy black jet with a 43 Sqn emblem on the fin, a Spin-Chute attached to the back and a couple of nasty Sidewinders (Even the F3s were carrying ASRAAM when they took off from Coningsby).
A good job it's supposed to be replacing the F3 at Coningsby in a year's time?! I sense another "Blue Circle Radar" fiasco , anyone got any griff on the progress of ECR90?

LJ

[Man-on-the-fence]

As I understand it the "Black Jet" was never supposed to have a Radar installed as it is the aerodynamic test aircrat. Its also one of the first Prototypes, how many of those have you seen with Radar?

Happy to be corrected though.

[wub]

LJ

I believe BWOS has taken delivery of around 20 production radars, now called CAPTOR and not ECR-90. So there are actually more radars than aircraft at the moment