SgtPappy

Ok I'm terrible with this new forum's quoting system so I'll figure out how to break it up later lol. Thanks for the info, as I figured, the thrust values aren't actually that pertinent to the crew. During one of the latest Tomcast episodes, one of the first VF-1 guys says how their planes had crazy amounts of power and those were detuned - I'm thinking the thrust output from the TF30s in those VERY early days is not a number we have floating around. And it makes me super glad to hear that really well-trained pilots could manage compressor stalls. In the game, I have issues primarily when I'm refueling up high and slow and the tanker refuses to speed up, then its wash stalls one of my engines. Have you ever experienced that situation in real life? If so, how did you mitigate it? Can you tell the guy to go faster?? Hummingbird did do the 5 kft tests, however. I would know, I was flying with him one of those nights! See his stuff above. When I see the info below, I take it as "hey here's what I tested, this is what the plots say" and that's it. I believe we've all learned that the plots are estimates, and are general and that there's only so much error that can be eliminated. I think Hummingbird understood that because he hasn't really mentioned the 5 kft data since he understand the 0.1 G difference is a non-issue. We're all getting to a mutual understanding there together!

I agree, Baz. I think there are uses for people obsessed with the mathematical programming of what is in truth a simulated aircraft. If others don't share that obsession then that's fine. I don't see the need for insults on this forum. However, I believe the argument now is that "it's ok to focus on these numbers but also please just understand the perspective that these charts are estimates and the ~5% error we are getting is actually the best we can do practically. If you find spot on performance, that's most likely a coincidence as any data set oscillating about the goal value is likely to hit that goal value somewhere and expecting the data to be exact everywhere just isn't possible. Avoid the use of statements like "these numbers should be here" when the charts themselves are estimates." Do I have that right? I think we can treat each other more respectfully and still get the point across. Being tired of explaining something to someone who is actually being polite is no excuse to then call them stupid, IMO. Perhaps you can tell, it's my unhealthy obsession with trying to get everyone to get along - there are so few of us in this niche Yea, Quid did an excellent post here on their sources of TF30 data: It sounds like the pilots may have been told about the detuning at some point and the myth stuck - that is if they are referencing the 20,900 lbf vs the 17,700 lbf figures. Maybe there is another detuning that we are not aware of. @Victory205, anything you can share about this.. is it a myth/misunderstanding/misremembered event or is there more to the story?

A "Next Launch on TWS target X" command akin to the "STT TWS target number X" would be a game-changer

Link is broken. This one should work: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/former-f-14-rio-tells-the-story-of-when-he-and-his-pilot-pushed-their-tomcat-beyond-the-aircraft-advertised-top-speed-of-mach-2-34/

Yea, honestly, I can see how darn close this flight model is after using the scripted STR mission - my flying is so sloppy so I need to try more data points with less climbing and diving - but this should give a rough idea of how close Heatblur got the F-14A! I believe comparing it to the F-15 was folly as we had originally assumed that the F-15 was exactly matching its graphs.

I'll try this too - what a badass ship! Heatblur did another amazing job. The 80's is where it's at

Thanks @fat creason! I hope in no way do our discussions or tests mean to be a slight on all your hard work. Our obsession to us isn't trivial although your point on accuracy obviously stands, and expectations could be adjusted to take this point into account. I think I speak for all of us when we say we love the Tomcat, this rendition of it and of course just want to see her kick ass - especially for those who play on MP. I think we've concluded to the best of our abilities that indeed, the Tomcat is closer than it ever was before and I for one would not have been able to know that unless I really tried my best to look at these numbers. Awesome work as always!

If it's the same mission I'm thinking of, I'll try it tonight. I'm trash at flying perfectly stable though, so if you want to have a go at in the F-14A, let me know what you get @Hummingbird and @captain_dalan. My quick and dirty flights just now got me 4.8 G at TAS = 344 kn, 5 kft and 4.8 G at TAS = 399 kn, 10 kft. I took these approximate speed figures from using the true Mach given in the F14-AAA-1.1 turn rate diagrams which say I should get 5 G at both those tested points but the 0.2 G could easily just be my own error.

Did they complete the TF30 tuning? I was under the impression that it was in progress after reading the language used in the patch notes. I plan to do some quick and dirty testing today for the F-14A at the real world data plot points I have, but from last night's flight tests with Hummingbird, it is eaten alive at all speeds between SL and 5,000 ft by the F-15 even at speeds where it should have clear superiority (i.e. 340 KIAS). From the plots, if both planes are around that same speed, the F-14A should out-rate the F-15 which was evidently not the case in-game. According to the plots, the F-15 at max. STR out-rates the F-14A by about 0.5 dps up to around 20 kft (I think) but it must do so at a higher speed which may negate the rate advantage. However, preliminarily, the F-15 had no trouble (even in zone 4 A/B) catching up to and then lapping the F-14A when we tested a series of level turns from 5 kft down to SL at the same speeds (STD day, same weights and loadouts per the real world charts). This result may also be caused by the F-15 which appeats to be overperforming by some 0.4 G at low speeds at ~Mach 0.5 at 5 kft - and that's quite a bit.

That's fine you don't have to care about hard data. Sometimes people prefer the flight model to "feel" right even if it's subjective. Fortunately, people who do care about the data are also allowed to not care about solely if something "feels" right to an SME. And that has nothing to do with the quality of work that the SME's provide. I like blue and you like green - both are allowed and are valid so let's all stop the tribalism revolving around what the other party should care about more, yea?

This had me wondering the same thing! I can't really recall if I've had an AIM-54 home in on a target after the track became an "X" unless it was already active when the track became an "X".

Apologies if I misunderstand you but static and and installed are not mutually exclusive terms. They way I sometimes think of it is how a car can be mate black but just because it's matte doesn't mean its black.. it could be matte red or shiny and black. Silly example but I hope you get the point. Shiny and colour are two different dimensions that don't rely on each other as are installed and static thrust. Static just means the engine isn't moving. It may or may not be installed in the aircraft. Quid's excellent post above should remove any remaining ambuguity.

The way I understand it is that "static" and "installed" indeed orthogonal terms. I'm not sure I've ever heard "static" implying "installed" in the industry. Static conditions are, as you say, on a stand with zero freestream velocity at the inlet. This is obviously a practical condition to test on the ground. I would think installed should be explicitly stated.

I guess I'm a little late on this but if you press the jettison weapons command instead of the jettison tanks command (LCtrl + W by default I think), then the wing tanks come off first. If you press it again, the CL tank comes off, followed by I think 2x wing pylon missiles, then the other two then the fuselage stations etc.

I'm just speaking very generally from a radar-theory perspective for pulse locks. Now that you mention it, maybe the AWG-9 requires Doppler return to maintain lock in PDSTT and that's why you need to switch to PSTT if the target starts to beam.

My understanding from the limited amount of studying I've done so far is that once you have lock, the enemy can't do much to escape just by maneuvering. Clutter would have to be introduced into the range cell, while sidelobe return would have to be strong or jamming strength over target signal strength would have to be high - basically a low S/N ratio plus clutter in the mainlobe that's tracking the target. Then all that needs to be in combination with low radial speed and maneuvering in the beaming plane of motion to deny the possible transition to PDSTT and broken lock search patterns. In TWS with the MLC filter off, the effect would be lots of false returns, so it would make sense to switch to pulse search and use the DDD to lock the target. If locked already in PSTT, I assume the MLC filter on or off would have no effect. Hard locks (STT, as opposed to TWS "soft locks") are very strong and can't really be broken by maneuvering and just entering a notch which would normally deny Doppler information as IronMike mentioned. This is one issue with some modules like the F-15/FC3 fighters where lock is broken even in a look-up, 1 nm situation as long as the target has low radial speed. If you have lock, you don't even need Doppler return anymore as you did in search since the tracking gates in elevation, azimuth and range are keeping the radar looking at the target (notwithstanding loft calculations, just looking at automatic tracking).

Thanks IronMike. Yea, I understand that the main beam is concentrating on the target. And indeed, without chaff, the STT range and angular gates keep the target locked and tracked at even longer ranges in a look-down scenario. When alone and without a RIO, it's a lot of fun to use PSTT on someone at 20 nm and just loose a BRSIT AIM-54 at them as they close! However, the above is not what I'm unsure about - and please correct me if I'm wrong here: It really would be the chaff in the resolution cell that should cause the break lock from a PSTT (given a wide enough res cell) and that cell seems pretty wide in azimuth/elevation at 15 or even 10 nm (thousands of feet) so I believe here that's where chaff should cause the break-lock. Understandable that the current DCS engine prevents this in the F-14 and it is not currently modeled. I believe the FC3 modules will just do the dice roll thing which is how I think it works with all missiles in-game. This isn't really an argument to request that feature now, it's just a discussion I want to have to understand the real-world effect in comparison with the game.

I was flying as RIO with a buddy versus other friends in a practice session when I realized that pulse locks did not seem to be broken once range was within, say 15 nm or so. We were looking down from ~12000 ft over flat land on the Caucasus map with the target being a Hornet right on the deck, cold, beaming, S-turning, pumping chaff. We tried a few more times and another friend also could not break pulse lock in look down conditions at ~ 10 nm in the Viper. I'm not sure if this is a bug, but the intent of this post is to ask if others have had similar experiences and if this is an accurate scenario. Is the resolution cell of the AWG-9 at 10 nm so tight that a pulse lock can be maintained? I did so prelim calculations and at that distance, the angular resolution cell length is around 2200 ft (2.1 deg. beamwidth for 3 cm wavelength and AWG-9 array diameter ~= 0.91 m). Assuming chaff takes 1/2 a second to bloom to a large RCS (~30 dBsm or so) and the defending target is beaming at 400 kn, you'd have a bunch of fully-bloomed chaff in the res cell for over a second - and a constant stream should throw off a pulse track of the RCS centroid. Obviously, there's more to it than this but if it's realistic, that's awesome! But I have a sneaking suspicion it might not be unless there's something special about the AWG-9 pulse modes in tracking I'm missing. If people want to see tracks/tacview, I'll setup an experiments with my buddies this week. Thoughts?

Indeed, and Bio, who we all love, has specifically quoted the same mistake in OP's video stating that the detune from 20,000 lbf in the enthusiast books to 17,000 lbf in the NATOPS was a "big hit" to engine thrust. These guys obviously know what they're talking about, but engineering-level mistakes like this that don't actually concern the crew are made even by the best pilots/RIOs. After all, they're more concerned about turn rates, speeds, climb profiles, TSFC etc. and the engine thrust curve is just extra trivia since that value is unseen and is baked into the performance parameters that actually matter to them.

Yea, I believe the -412A was that mod and then came the -414 sometime in 1977 and the -414A in 1984 which was reportedly much better but still not up to the standards of the late 80's digital EEC-equipped engines. AFAIK they all were trimmed at the same levels by the time the -414 was widespread in the F-14 fleet. I've heard some pilots (there's a video on youtube of an airshow Tomcat crew in 1997) even state that the engine was detuned to ~17,000 lbf thrust because they're quoting the installed thrust value from the manual and comparing it to the brochure uninstalled static thrust (the ~20,800 lbf value). Pretty confusing.

@Noctrach @Naquaii, I also noticed something similar (maybe the same) when testing vs both AI and humans... Even at ~5nm, a Phoenix can be spoofed by chaff with the cold (human) bandit doing hard S-turns while in burner (doesn't look like the angle is enough to notch). Against the AI, it's even easier as I see Pheonixes pass by me harmlessly while I was cold and turning side to side when launched by AI. I'll work on getting a few tracks when my friends and I have the time. I thought this was also the MLC and Doppler filters kicking in but then I realized, the AIM-54 is closing ~300+ kn to the target and only the AWG-9 would be vulnerable to this +/-100 kn closure speed. Do I misunderstand something? Would like your thoughts.

Wow, this is wild stuff! Super excited to hear something like this in the F-14A. Thanks for the link. Good stuff to study.

This is epic! It actually makes me even more excited for the old school stuff coming out on the earlier F-14A's. How the heck did you find/come up with this audio? In other discussions, we've heard that you needed off-the-shelf fuzz busters to get the SA-6 launch signal as the ALR-45/50 either couldn't give launch warning or would give spurious false alarms and so was often in filtered mode which removed the ability to hear/see the SA-6 launch. Some crews even mentioned the system was useless. If in filtered mode, I guess you'd have to pay attention to the track signal and then look in that direction for a launch?

It looks like there's good news on the horizon! See Chizh's reply on implementing the correct APG-63 ranges:

This would be awesome to have, as many of my lost targets are right there, near the merge when I've seen cold bandits basically just turn around and instantly break lock during the 0.5 seconds they're in the notch. At such close ranges, the range gating and small res cell should prevent this but anyone who flies the F-15 knows that any bandit can break lock at any range without chaff just by being 90 deg. aspect momentarily. No chaff needed, just turn around. I've died a couple times this way as my boresight has been just a bit off. This tactic should be suicide for a bandit at this range, but it ends up as very deadly (at least against my flying which needs improvement). As mentioned I've noticed at longer ranges (> 5nm or something), the radar will try to extrapolate the target's heading via MEM and if the target comes out of the notch enough, it will reacquire but at short ranges, I've never seen this happen. The high level of automation necessary to make the Eagle a deadly WVR is missing from FC3 and though I understand that it's not a FF aircraft, it would be good to use existing architecture to have some of these function in the background perhaps.