RYAN Q

This is an F-16 lighting the afterburner on a dusk takeoff, and the best design choice on it is one you can't see this jet is built to be unstable on purpose. A stable plane wants to hold its heading, so it fights you when you try to turn. An unstable one wants to move, so it snaps into a turn the moment you ask. A flight computer makes hundreds of small corrections every second to keep it flying straight, and the pilot never feels it. That's also why the stick is a small force-sensing one on the right side, and why the seat is tilted back 30° to help him stay conscious at 9 g. The cost is that the jet needs that computer to fly at all, and it has only one engine. Hang fuel tanks and bombs under the wings like in this clip and you give up some of that agility. one engine makes about 23,800 to 29,200 lbf in afterburner, depending on the version. A clean F-16 weighs about 26,500 lb at takeoff, so on the stronger engines it has more thrust than weight. It needs about 2,500 ft of runway at training weight.