AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 185 / 186

Plate 185 of 186 · Cold War · Canard-delta fighter demonstrator

British Aerospace EAP

EAP, painted as ZF534, the RAF Museum Midlands’ British Aerospace EAP (Experimental Aircraft Programme), the only one built, first flown from Warton on 8 August 1986, flown 259 times before it was retired in 1991, used for teaching at Loughborough University and moved to Cosford in 2012, where it is displayed: Britain’s technology demonstrator for what became the Eurofighter Typhoon, 38 ft 7 in in span, with two Rolls-Royce RB199 afterburning turbofans fed by a chin intake under the cockpit, a cranked-delta wing, all-moving canard foreplanes close behind the cockpit, a single swept fin and a bubble canopy, shown standing level on its tricycle undercarriage with the canards set leading edge up as parked, four dummy Sky Flash rounds semi-recessed under the fuselage and dummy ASRAAMs under the outer wings: off-white overall with a dark navy spine from the windscreen to the tail, a thin navy cheatline from the nose to the tail, a navy canopy frame, a navy arrow on the fin carrying a white ‘eap’ logo, a black ‘ZF534’ at the fin root and a red and white rescue marking on the rear fuselage, as displayed (no photograph shows the upper surfaces squarely, so the top of the spine and the plain upper wings are inferred, and the navy is the darker shade seen in museum photographs rather than the brighter blue of its 1986 slides).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as ZF534, the RAF Museum Midlands’ British Aerospace EAP (Experimental Aircraft Programme), the only one built, first flown from Warton on 8 August 1986, flown 259 times before it was retired in 1991, used for teaching at Loughborough University and moved to Cosford in 2012, where it is displayed: Britain’s technology demonstrator for what became the Eurofighter Typhoon, 38 ft 7 in in span, with two Rolls-Royce RB199 afterburning turbofans fed by a chin intake under the cockpit, a cranked-delta wing, all-moving canard foreplanes close behind the cockpit, a single swept fin and a bubble canopy, shown standing level on its tricycle undercarriage with the canards set leading edge up as parked, four dummy Sky Flash rounds semi-recessed under the fuselage and dummy ASRAAMs under the outer wings: off-white overall with a dark navy spine from the windscreen to the tail, a thin navy cheatline from the nose to the tail, a navy canopy frame, a navy arrow on the fin carrying a white ‘eap’ logo, a black ‘ZF534’ at the fin root and a red and white rescue marking on the rear fuselage, as displayed (no photograph shows the upper surfaces squarely, so the top of the spine and the plain upper wings are inferred, and the navy is the darker shade seen in museum photographs rather than the brighter blue of its 1986 slides). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (980 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the EAP modelled here.

History

The EAP

By the late 1970s the RAF knew it would need a new agile fighter in the 1990s, and the main European air forces had similar needs. Several national and joint studies came and went, among them the Anglo-German-Italian Agile Combat Aircraft drawn up by British Aerospace, MBB and Aeritalia. When governments would not commit to building it, British Aerospace announced at the 1983 Paris Air Show that it would build a demonstrator anyway, the Experimental Aircraft Programme, paid for by the company, its partners and the Ministry of Defence. Two aircraft were planned, one to be built in West Germany, but German funding never came and only the British airframe, ZF534, was built at Warton in Lancashire.

The EAP tested the ideas a modern fighter would depend on. Its cranked-delta wing and all-moving canard foreplanes made it deliberately unstable in pitch, so it could only be flown through a quadruplex digital fly-by-wire system that adjusted the control surfaces many times a second. The wing and much of the structure used carbon-fibre composites, and the cockpit had three colour multi-function displays in place of most dials. To save time and money it borrowed proven parts from the Tornado: the RB199 engines, the fin and some of its systems. Dave Eagles flew it for the first time on 8 August 1986, and on that 67-minute flight it went supersonic. A month later it was flying displays at Farnborough.

Over the next five years the EAP flew 259 sorties, explored high angles of attack and passed Mach 2. The data went straight into the Eurofighter, which Britain, West Germany, Italy and Spain agreed to build in 1988 and which closely followed its layout; the first Eurofighter flew in 1994 and entered RAF service as the Typhoon in 2003. ZF534 made its last flight on 1 May 1991. It went to Loughborough University as a teaching airframe and in 2012 moved to the RAF Museum at Cosford, which now owns it.

This airframe

EAP ZF534

ZF534The airframe modelled

ZF534 is the only EAP built. It flew from Warton between August 1986 and May 1991, then spent many years at Loughborough University before the RAF Museum took it to Cosford in 2012, where it is shown in the Test Flight collection. The model shows it as photographed there: off-white overall, with a dark navy spine from the windscreen to the tail, a thin navy cheatline from the nose to the tail, a navy canopy frame, a navy arrow on the fin carrying the white “eap” logo, the black serial ZF534 at the fin root and a red and white rescue marking on the rear fuselage. It wears no roundels. It stands with its canards set leading edge up, as parked, four dummy Sky Flash missiles half-sunk under the fuselage and dummy ASRAAMs under the outer wings. The published length of 14.70 m fits neither the drawings nor photographs of the aircraft; measured against its Sky Flash rounds it is about 15.7 m from the tip of the radome to the top of the fin, without the nose probe, and the model and the length given here follow that. No photograph shows the upper surfaces squarely, so the top of the spine and the plain upper wings are inferred, and the navy is the darker shade seen in museum photographs rather than the brighter blue of 1986 colour slides.

See it at Royal Air Force Museum Midlands

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the EAP in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 186 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.