English BAE Lightning "Edge of Space Flíght"

Unfortunately, well known "THUNDERCITY" in Cape Town SA closed their hangars for ever. 10 years they flown people from around the world with the biggest private own jet fleet on the world. Under this jets, there is also the famous british jet Electric Lightning. With this jet is was possible to fly high as possible (behind 68,000ft) into two minutes and cruise between the two Oceans. Hopefully, some day the jets will come back.
Thanks the guys at Thunder City. It will be at the airport of Capetown some solitude, without the roaring of the jet-engines. Our customers loved it. Thanks for all and always flying save.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• BAE
• British
• Lightning
• South
• Africa
• Space
• figher
• jet
• altitude

[patthewoodboy]

North Weald airshow , 1972 I think. The weather was horrid not many aircraft were flying , then the all weather Lightning turns up , hammering along at about 100 feet and goes vertical with full afterburners and disappeared into the low cloud ....oh my the noise was awesome.

[SEL9000]

@patthewoodboy You are right: the Lightning has a very special "sound" and it was unique.

[wolfe1970]

basicly a rocket with fins !!

[SEL9000]

@wolfe1970 Exactly!

[blacktiger955i]

Design brief for the Lightning :-

Get two of the most powerful engines you can find. Bolt on some wings and a cockpit.

Job done.

My all time favourite aircraft.

Does anyone remember the Lightning aerobatic team from the 60s? 9 of the buggers flying around. Fanbloodytastic!

[SEL9000]

@blacktiger955i Absolutely right. Very awesome jet with a special attitude....

[lonelywolf1966]

yep rip lightning, and also tsr 2 , 2 world beating aircraft stuffed by politics

[20chocsaday]

@djfld Thanks for the engineeering detail. It is too later to ask the pilot to explain, he has been even higher than a Lightning for a few years now, but I will try to explain what he told me:

Under a cover was a button, after the cover was slid aside the pilot must hold that button down, the max time allowed was 10secs. There was a big push in the back and after couple of secs black smoke came out of the exhausts.

You can say what was going on.

[djfld]

@20chocsaday Not too sure what you mean by 10 secs on supercharge, the merlins were permanently supercharged.

[20chocsaday]

@djfld 20mins? Thats good. An ex WW2 pilot told me the spit only had 10 secs on supercharge (or equivalent) before the engine blew up. But he said he never heard knew of anyone who tested it beyond that___

[pigpenthegreat]

I remember watching a documentary about the Lightning, and a test pilot was quoted in saying that "you will notice that the wings are only there to keep the navigation lights apart".

An awesome aircraft, I'm disappointed I'll probably never get to see one fly :-/

[eatthisvr6]

Avionics aside how did the lightning do against eagles in dogfights?

[tannoys2008]

@eatthisvr6 theres also test dogfights over western germany with the f15 using lightenings as adveseries,the usaf had real trouble at interception at low level.

The pleasure at airshows in the mid 80 at seeing the lightening basically skidding a turn:)