What's The Deal With The Chinese Chengdu J-20 Gear Doors?
Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 09:23AM 
(click pic to enlarge)
After a couple weeks of of 'spy photos' showing up on aviation blogs all around the world, the J-20 Chinese fighter aircraft seems to becoming a fast reality. Updates from Aviation Week and Flightglobal confirm its first flight today, 1-11-11, as does the video below. I certainly find the airplane interesting, but not too surprising considering we've seen the Chinese become an economic and technology powerhouse in the past 15 years. Sure, they may have a way to go yet to catch up, but c'mon, when you've got billions and billions of dollars and a world culture where anything is for sale for the right price, why would we expect anything different. The world, my friends, is changing very fast.
My biggest issue with the J-20 doesn't have anything to do with how it compares to the F-22, or is it really embracing 'stealth' technology. Nope, I'm all about those bizarre gear doors. I'm really confused as to why they would have them extend so close to the ground. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but that doesn't make any sense to me at all for a fighter aircraft that may encounter damaged runways to operate from during battle. From looking at several different photos, it appears to me that the lower edge of the gear doors is only a foot from the ground, maybe less. And considering max gear compression on a hard landing, it would seem those doors would get extremely close to the ground.
So, the weird gear doors, that's my big mystery about this new development in Chinese military hardware. Anybody have any thoughts on this? I guess it'll be interesting to see what more we learn in the coming weeks. Even more interesting, I'm wondering what this whole display really means... as in, is it really a distraction of some sort. Hmm?
Video of the first flight of the Chinese Chengdu J-20 fighter aircraft
Reader Comments (5)
I wonder if they aren't gear doors at all, but maybe some sort of bleed air system for the engines?
Tailgear- True, it might not be an actual gear door, but when you look at this J-20 Gear Door Close Up Pic it does seem like a forward gear door, with the gear most likely swinging that way. Either way, the pix I've seen of it in the air show that these doors were open for the flight when the gear was down (which was probably the entire flight) - Interesting stuff.
My thoughts exactly. Those main gear doors stick out like a sore thumb and seem way awkward. Have you also noticed the extreme movement capability of the rudders?? One bad move in the cockpit, and those suckers probably would pop right off!!
Owen
Owen- We sure think alike... the wildl extreme rudder deflection is very odd. I can't imagine a need for that. However, maybe they have it set up so that deflection is speed sensitive - maybe you could use all that throw at 100mph.
Sad is more like it, the idiots tried to coppy the F-22 using their own style, and if you look at the vidio close enouph it is the gear doors. They probably built it to combat the F-22 stealth capabillities and match the performance as close as they can.