The commander of the U.S. Air Force’s F-35 Demo Team, Andy “Dojo” Olson, has posted a new version of a cockpit video first made available in May. The new video features Dojo providing a running commentary as he flew over Miami Beach at the 2019 Hyundai Air & Sea Show. Olson explains each maneuver in detail, explaining what the jet is doing as his hands fly over the jet’s control systems.

The video shows Olson putting the Joint Strike Fighter through its paces, going from speeds of 750 knots to just 50 knots. The pilot also puts the aircraft through strenuous aerial maneuvers, experiencing G forces of up to 9gs.

The jet starts off with a series of high-energy maneuvers to warm up the crowd and a “high alpha half cuban.” High alpha is a engineering term for angle of attack, while “half cuban” is a figure eight. In the most basic sense, the F-35 is performing a figure eight with the nose pointed up and not necessarily in the direction the jet is actually going. At the “top” of the figure eight the jet is going just 50 knots, or about 57 miles an hour.

After that, the F-35 does a tight turn and levels out at 500 feet, its two internal weapons bays open. After a pass over the beach, Dojo stands the jet on its tail and accelerates straight up to “kill all the air speed that I can”. Miami Beach’s impressive skyline, full of high rises and condominiums, fades into the distance in the blink of an eye.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the F-35 flight demo is the “pedal turn,” which from the cockpit appears to be a climb and then steep dive with the jet in a flat spin. Here’s what it looks like from the outside:

One of the most amazing facts about the F-35 is that it can do many of the things in the video without so-called “thrust vectoring” technology. Thrust vectoring technology found in jets such as the jets like the F-22 Raptor and the Su-35 Flanker-E involves installing paddles outside the engine exhaust nozzle–or nozzles that themselves move–to generate thrust in a direction other than the direction the aircraft’s nose is pointed in. This makes it look at times as though the F-35 is floating in the air with its nose pointed upward.

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