Chapter 164 Thunderbolt shook the sky!
As preparations for the new test begin, the trial training base is busy again.
The bomb-machine adaptation work that was done on the No. 19 aircraft had to be done again on the No. 05 prototype aircraft parked in the hangar next to it.
Especially the 1471G pulse Doppler radar on the J-8C is basically a product of two eras from the monopulse radar on the older model. Not only is the main beam completely different, but the arrangement of the continuous wave illuminator is also very different. , so the radar and CWI-F need to be debugged separately for compatibility.
This is also a new challenge for the ground staff at the trial training base.
Until three o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, with the cooperation of multiple units such as the 601st Institute and the 14th Institute, the No. 05 prototype of the J-8C finally completed all preparations for the target test overnight and mounted two test missiles. Use bombs to prepare for takeoff.
The test pilot is naturally Feng Lin.
Since this is the first round of target testing, for the sake of safety, the scheduled launch distance this time is still 10-15km, and the targets are still two conventional HB170B subsonic unmanned target drones.
This model can carry a corner reflector, has enough RCS area, is easy to be intercepted by radar, and its flight altitude and flight speed are within the most comfortable killing range of most anti-air weapons. It belongs to training and testing. basic subjects in.
Although in Chang Haonan's view, it is a bit overqualified to let the combination of J-8C and Thunderbolt 11 shoot this kind of thing, but everything must be done step by step, and you can't shoot supersonic physical target drones right away. .
Although several prototypes of Project 83 have undergone multiple rounds of test flights and even made a splash at the Xiangzhou Air Show, the trial training base has only tested the No. 03 prototype without major modifications before. After all, things seen on TV are not as intuitive as in person.
So today, Feng Lin's crisp take-off action with bombs still aroused waves of admiration in the tower command center.
Of course, for everyone in Institute 601, especially Chang Haonan, this situation has been seen too many times.
Everyone didn't even have any mood swings, they just stared at the CRT monitor showing the empty situation information.
“Unit No. 05 has entered the test airspace, and the radar started normally!”
All the preparation procedures seemed to be exactly the same as last time.
But experienced commanders are still keenly aware of some subtle differences.
For example, the pilot reported that the radar had been activated about two minutes earlier than before, so that the target aircraft had just completed preparations for takeoff at this time.
So, I had to wait for a while before reporting the target situation to the pilot:
"The target aircraft has taken off and is expected to enter the target area in two minutes!"
"Roger that!"
Everything seems to be back on track.
However, a minute later, when the commander made the second report on the radio, the situation changed somewhat.
"The target is expected to be one minute..."
"No. 05 aircraft reported, 35km, radar intercepted target!"
The commander who was interrupted mid-sentence held the intercom in his hand and was stunned for about a second.
He has served as a tower commander at the trial training base for nearly 10 years and has never encountered such a situation.
The distance of 35km did not surprise him so much. After all, when the Su-27 was shooting targets before, he found that the target was even much further away.
The key is the angle.
Generally speaking, the search range of a fighter jet radar is a sector with the aircraft nose as the center. For mechanical scanning radar, the search capabilities of different areas within the sector range will not be much different.
But target tracking, or target interception, is different.
This process requires that the center of the radar beam always illuminates the target, and changes the illumination angle of the beam as the target moves to obtain the angle information of the target relative to the radar antenna.
When the target is on the aiming line, which is the axis of the fuselage for most fighter jets, the angular tracking error is 0.
The greater the deviation from the axis, the lower the tracking accuracy and the greater the difficulty of interception.
When Feng Lin reported intercepting the target this time, the target drone was still at about 40° from the No. 05 prototype, and its altitude was also more than a thousand meters lower.
It can even be considered as a target shooting test while looking down.
When radar detects mid- and low-altitude targets that are lower than itself, it will be interfered by ground clutter, making it more difficult to intercept the target. Therefore, downward shooting is generally completed as an advanced subject.
Just by chance, the combination of J-8C + Thunderbolt 11 made it more difficult for them to fly into the sky for the first time.
The Air Force of this era does not have much experience. The trial training base has only tested two aircraft with beyond visual range combat capabilities, the J-8B/D and the Su-27.
Needless to say, the performance of the former's 208A radar has proven through yesterday's 12km target capture that it is completely unable to adapt to the actual combat needs of the 1990s.
The detection range of the latter's N001 radar is indeed far enough, but other than that, it has no particularly outstanding advantages...
So except for Chang Haonan, no one can It was expected that the target acquisition process of this target test would be so smooth.
Actually, this is one of the many benefits of installing a new engine.
In addition to more abundant power, better engines can also drive high-power generators to provide more abundant energy for airborne equipment.
Increasing power cannot solve all problems, but if you want to solve any problem, you must have enough power as a guarantee.
This thing is the same as the power supply when assembling a computer host.
I can do without it, but you can’t do without it.
The power supply is large enough, and the freedom of DIY is large enough, so that we can afford high-performance processors and graphics cards...
In short, the Chinese aviation engineers in 1996 had not yet realized Despite the pleasure brought by abundant power supply, the design of subsystem energy consumption is still tricky.
In addition, the sudden explosion of the turbojet 14 was not originally included in the August 3rd Project plan.
The result is that more than half of the total 36kw power generation power of the current full version of the J-8C is actually not used.
Even so, it is enough to give everyone in the trial training base a long experience.
......
The shock left to everyone did not end.
Before the tower commander could make any response, Feng Lin's voice came over the radio again:
"The missile is ready!"
From radar interception of target to continuous wave From the illuminator starting to work to preparing the missile, the entire process took less than half the time.
Obviously, everything has improved a lot compared to the last test.
Guo Liqiang, the leader of the Second Bureau of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, was standing behind the commander. He didn’t even dare to breathe. His hands clenched into fists were hidden in his sleeves, but both sleeves were slightly moved. trembling.
"Unit No. 05, the target has not yet entered the missile envelope, waiting for the launch order!"
The commander who finally reacted issued the first such order in his life——
Despite the thunderbolt 11, or the Aspad’s paper range is almost 40km, but this number is the theoretical data that can be achieved when the carrier aircraft and the target fly relative to each other at 1.2 times the speed of sound at an altitude of 10,000 meters.
The height of the No. 05 aircraft and the target drone are now below 5,000, and the speed is maintained at subsonic speed. 35km is obviously beyond the reach of this kind of missile.
In fact, as a model whose main research and development work was completed in the late 1970s, Aspad has indeed fallen behind in these hard indicators.
It's just that the performance of the radar provided by China was too poor before, so there was no time to pay attention to the effective range of the missile itself.
About half a minute later, Feng Lin finally obtained the shooting permission.
A missile was ignited from under the wing of No. 05 aircraft, then quickly flew away from the pylon, and flew towards the distant target under the guidance of the signal provided by the continuous wave illuminator.
The target test area is not far from the airport, so ground radar can track the entire process.
Under the gaze of hundreds of pairs of eyes in the tower, the signal representing the missile and the signal representing the target drone were getting closer and closer, and finally overlapped and scattered into several randomly scattered Target.
Hit.
(End of this chapter)