Engineer
Major
My guess is the original abrupt change in materials caused problems in radar reflection. The new black band makes the change more gradual, to help reduce radar cross section further.
J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread IV (Closed to posting)
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Except that most radomes, from what I've seen, don't have the radar antenna flush with the main fuselage but instead tend to jut out into the radome area.
It could be that the material is actually reflective, like a radar dish to concentrate beams into the antenna, or alternately it limits the radome area further as the antenna cannot make use of the back area; this helps to limit RCS, but indicates that the aperture size is reduced to only 5/6ths of the apparent radome for a Flanker-sized radar.
It could be that the material is actually reflective, like a radar dish to concentrate beams into the antenna, or alternately it limits the radome area further as the antenna cannot make use of the back area; this helps to limit RCS, but indicates that the aperture size is reduced to only 5/6ths of the apparent radome for a Flanker-sized radar.
JayBird
Junior Member
Yes, there is a topic in cjdby forum discussing about J-20 2015 leaving for Yanliang this afternoon.
So are all the J-20s there now??
Not fuselage, but bulkhead. Behind the bulkhead are the main avionics compartments. The antenna is mounted on the bulkhead and protrudes into the radome volume. If the antenna is the mechanical sweep type, then the sweep angle limits determines how much is that protrusion, which in turn affects antenna dimension.
For the F-15 example above, do you see how the antenna is swept ? Since radome volume is conical in shape, if you want true 180deg sweep angle, the antenna will need to go deeper into that volume, which will make the antenna dimension even smaller.
I tried but have no idea what this mean. Sorry.
The moderator on CJDBY said so as well. I'd say that this is confirmed.
Thanks for the education, Gambit.
What I mean is that there is a dish behind the AESA antenna, which is the discolored part of the radome, whose role is to try to reflect and focus radar waves back onto the antenna. I don't know if this is normal, or if this is stupid from a materials engineering point of view; this is just speculation.
The second part can be easily simplified; what I mean to guess is that the Chinese just slathered RAM on the part of the radome that was unused because their radar turned out to be bulkier and smaller than expected, so it jutted more into the radome.
What I mean is that there is a dish behind the AESA antenna, which is the discolored part of the radome, whose role is to try to reflect and focus radar waves back onto the antenna. I don't know if this is normal, or if this is stupid from a materials engineering point of view; this is just speculation.
The second part can be easily simplified; what I mean to guess is that the Chinese just slathered RAM on the part of the radome that was unused because their radar turned out to be bulkier and smaller than expected, so it jutted more into the radome.
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