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1986 Farnborough Air Show Report
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Farnborough 1986, the aerospace exposition of the year, will go down in history as being a truly European event. Notably absent were the Americans who for reasons of no political significance simply did not bring their new or present-generation aircraft to the show.
In many ways the show this year was seen as highlighting the great strides towards collaboration and high technology that Europe has been aiming for this past decade. Whatever Boeing had brought over would have been technically overshadowed by the brilliant performance of the Airbus A300 Fly. By Wire (FBW) flight demonstration while the multitude of rotary wing, missile, general aviation and small to medium-sized transports and even advanced spacecraft showed ably that Europe has well and truly arrived on the international aerospace scene.
To this effect, the two stars of the show were the all-new British Aerospace EAP and France’s Rafale A fighter technology demonstrators. Due to the infancy of their flight test programmes (the EAP had first flown just one month prior to Farnborough!) both aircraft were only limited to about two-thirds of their potential manoeuvring envelope. Despite this their performances were spectacular and _ ably verified the potential afforded the next generation of fighters in greatly enhanced low-speed, high-angle-of-attack performance through use of aerodynamically unstable airframes controlled by FBW computers.
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