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The undercarriage didn't retract in the video. Was that just an artefact of the stages of flight the film came from or was the undercarriage fixed for the maiden flight?


Pure speculation on my part, but on a first flight when you're shaking out the fundamentals, it's safer to not retract landing gear in case there is a catastrophic failure in, say, your hydraulic system.


You never retract the landing gear on the shakedown flight. I remember seeing this watching a documentary on the X-35 and X-32 prototype fighter jets.




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