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effte

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  1. The issue of landing distances was raised again in another thread. I almost replied that it was verified OK, as that is what I recalled from this thread However, I have been feeling that the brake performance was more abysmal than I would expect in the latest versions, so I decided to have another go at verifying them. Test setup and procedures GW 37500 lbm Flaps 20° -> Vref 135 KIAS (125 for minimum run) Batumi 13 used, flown on ILS GP for nominal TCH. Dash one procedures used. Idle after crossing threshold, three second free run following touch down before applying full braking utilizing the A/S. Flown on normal Vref. No wind. No significant runway slope (<0.3%) 15°C, 1013 hPa -> Landing index 100 Watch towers placed as placemarks along the R/H side of the RWY, at approximately the anticipated T/D point and at the anticipated stop points for the three configurations listed in the -1. Published data As per A-10A dash one: Air distance (normal Vref) 1270’ (387 m) Flaps 0°/no speed brakes: 2200’ (670 m) gnd roll, LDR 981 m Flaps 20°/Full speed brakes: 1650’ (502 m) gnd roll, LDR 890 m Flaps 20°/no speed brakes: 1950’ (594 m) gnd roll, 1058 m RCR 23 (dry hardened runway) assumed. Results See the attached picture for results. To my surprise the ground roll distances are twice the published figures. Speculation I think the abysmal braking is due to the A/S still (again?) being over-active. Further work See if better results are possible using manual braking, thus confirming that the A/S modelling is at fault. (And yes, A/S should by far outperform a human when it comes to maximum effort braking - check the dash one in general and figure A2-9 in particular if in doubt.) Peer review to see if I made any mistakes. Potential issues No regard given to brake cooling. Something seems to be amiss with the threshold crossing heights. Slight bounces on two landings, TD measured where the wheels contacted the runway and stayed down. I never braked to a full stop on the first attempt, so actual stopping position estimated. Good correlation with second attempt in the same configuration though. I could have screwed up - please check my data. Controller issues - checked in options. No conflicting axes, getting full output from Saitek pedals. In addition, seeing full input with RCtrl+Enter in game, with A/S activation indicated both on RCtrl+Enter and on the HYD gauges. Mission file and track http://forums.eagle.ru/attachment.php?attachmentid=63450&d=1330800793 http://forums.eagle.ru/attachment.php?attachmentid=63452&d=1330803158 Cheers, Fred
  2. My initial reaction was that this was sorted a long time ago. However, I have been feeling that the brake performance was more abysmal than I would expect in the latest versions, so I decided to have another go at verifying them: Test setup and procedures GW 37500 lbm Flaps 20° -> Vref 135 KIAS (125 for minimum run) Batumi 13 used, flown on ILS GP for nominal TCH. Dash one procedures used. Idle after crossing threshold, three second free run following touch down before applying full braking utilizing the A/S. Flown on normal Vref. No wind. No significant runway slope (<0.3%) 15°C, 1013 hPa -> Landing index 100 Watch towers placed as placemarks along the R/H side of the RWY, at approximately the anticipated T/D point and at the anticipated stop points for the three configurations listed in the -1. Published data As per A-10A dash one: Air distance (normal Vref) 1270’ (387 m) Flaps 0°/no speed brakes: 2200’ (670 m) gnd roll, LDR 981 m Flaps 20°/Full speed brakes: 1650’ (502 m) gnd roll, LDR 890 m Flaps 20°/no speed brakes: 1950’ (594 m) gnd roll, 1058 m RCR 23 (dry hardened runway) assumed. Results See the attached picture for results. To my surprise the ground roll distances are twice the published figures. Speculation I think the abysmal braking is due to the A/S still (again?) being over-active. Further work See if better results are possible using manual braking, thus confirming that the A/S modelling is at fault. (And yes, A/S should by far outperform a human when it comes to maximum effort braking - check the dash one in general and figure A2-9 in particular if in doubt.) Peer review to see if I made any mistakes. Potential issues No regard given to brake cooling. Something seems to be amiss with the threshold crossing heights. Slight bounces on two landings, TD measured where the wheels contacted the runway and stayed down. I never braked to a full stop on the first attempt, so actual stopping position estimated. Good correlation with second attempt in the same configuration though. I could have screwed up - please check my data. Landing distance test.miz Landing distances.trk
  3. There. I corrected it for you. :thumbup:
  4. Haha, I give up... the field of surgical humourectomy has clearly advanced way beyond what I could ever possibly have imagined. Have a nice day, Bearitall. I guess we will just have to agree on disagreeing to be agreeing, even though we agree. :D (Now I made my own head spin.... whooo....)
  5. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=sarcasm :D
  6. Yeah, if it ain't plausible - screw it! A-10s flying combat missions in Georgia? Not gonna happen, so that won't sell either. Just forget it! He's right, you know. Much rather nothing at all than something Incredibly Awesome where the backdrop ain't Just Right. What's the next step in the lunacy? They'll find some weird aircraft most people have never heard of, with only a dozen or so operational, base a simulator on that and think people will actually buy it? Hah! No way that would sell. They'll dig their own grave, and that of the entire sim industry! The only way they could make a worse business decision would be for that rare aircraft to be a helicopter, which we all know is a niche market. I'm laughing my socks off at an insane thought I had here. Imagine trying to get thousands of people to have a great time flying American combat aircraft and rare Russian helicopters online in a simulated Georgian scenario - even cooperatively! To attempt that would be a spectacular failure indeed! Good to know that I have smarts which ED don't have, making me able to warn them about what going down that route would mean... MTFD, seriously? Only as much as it deserved... :D
  7. Left cockpit wall... :) Edit: Just below the railing, just aft of the seat back, http://www.stclairphoto-imaging.com/360/P51-Mustang/P51_swf.html
  8. Handbook sea level speed on max continuous (i e not top speed, but the max you'll realistically use to go anywhere) is 274 knots when clean. Edit: 315 statute mph, for those who don't want to recalculate.
  9. First off, stow the yellow bars in the ADI. In the A-10A they are command steering bars, giving you steering commands rather than ILS indication. No information has been found stating a change in function in the C, and they were (bugged) command steering bars in the betas. The fact that they are acting as ILS repeaters in the current versions is probably a placeholder pending implementation of working command steering, so you'll be doing yourself a disservice learning to fly using them. Use the caret on the left of the ADI (the caret, not the triangular pointer which is always centered) and the central bar on the HSI instead (see attached picture). Setting the inbound course on the HSI will of course help a lot there. Second, the A-10C is only certified for CAT I ILS approaches. This means that the lowest altitude you can fly an approach to is usually to approximately 200 feet above the touch down zone (your decision altitude). That is long before your ten seconds prior to touchdown. If you do not have the runway in sight to enable you to transition to landing using visual references (i e by looking outside) at that point, you have to go around and try again or go to an alternate field - it's mandatory. Below the decision altitude, the glide path is not reliable and will in fact be severely distorted, due to the way the signal is constructed. For lower minima, higher quality ILS installations are required and aircraft will have to be suitably equipped to transfer vertical guidance to the inertial navigation system, radio altimeter or a combination thereof. Checking the specs of the modelled ILS's and doing a bit of flight testing to determine their characteristics, I've noticed that someone at ED has been digging deep into the serious reference documentation on the systems in order to model them correctly - far beyond the documentation those who are in professional aviation outside of the radio nav field ever see. This is further proof of this - well done, ED! Cheers, Fred
  10. I'd expect GPS jamming (and even spoofing) in every area of conflict. You don't want to know how cheap and available those devices are. Jamming receivers which have access to the military GPS signals is just slightly more difficult, so the basic assumption has to be that GPS will not be available for use. I can't see a Mustang getting equipped with an INS, even if thrown in as FAC or the like in a modern conflict. Regarding the Collins foundation, see previous post regarding airspace. Also consider the distinction between what you wrote, i e needing, and wanting. Finally, you're approaching being an order of magnitude off regarding the price of an approved panel-mount GPS unit. :)
  11. Krebs, I know the feeling. The other night, the movie I wanted to see was on channel 4. Yet, they were playing other movies on all the other channels! Imagine my feelings of outrage, abandonment and despair! Sure, I got to see my movie, but a lot of other people got to see other movies which I didn't care about. All work should be focused on bringing me the movies I care about, so what are they doing airing all the rest?! Now I'm off to find places where people are discussing those other movies in order tell them how deeply disturbed I am about the existence of their movies. ;)
  12. Viper, that only tells me you fly with far too good visibility... ;)
  13. What you need depends entirely on what you want to do... and, all too often these days in the case of GPS, your own ability and/or lack thereof. If you want to thread your way through a crowded complex airspace in a high-performance fighter while keeping your eyes out of the cockpit, well, then I'll be starting to agree that you need a GPS, at least to the point where it would be stupid to go without one. In other words, once we get the L.A. scenery I'm prepared to vote for the addition of a GPS. Until then, I volunteer to help people learn navigation by map, clock and compass. It's great fun, and you'll miss out on it if you hit Ctrl-G and bring out the portable Garmin attached to the glareshield (in which case I do hope a 50 degree misalignment of the compass is simulated... :D). My impression of the DCS series community is that it is certainly not made up of people who shy away from challenges, so I think we'll be seeing a marked rise in the navigation capabilities once the Mustang hits our hard drives. :thumbup: As for an upgraded radio, I agree. I want to cooperate with those flying A-10s and Ka-50s, which means the radio is indeed needed. Cheers, Fred
  14. Ah, every time you think the joke is obvious... :)
  15. No, I want you to start overseeing the development hours. I guess they're doing 45 h/week or so now. Well, every day has 24 hours. Then you work over lunch giving 25 hours. There's seven days per week. Work weekends and add two days. Nine days. Total of 225 h/week. That's a 400% increase right there! Public beta around... next Thursday? :) (Now the devs will want to kill me, but I can't be content with that.) Then I hear rumours that they are working on some kind of USAF flying hairdryer project in parallell with work on The Aircraft. This spreading of resources on unnecessary side projects is obviously unacceptable and must stop! (Now, half the community will want to kill me as well - mission accomplished! :D)
  16. Less spelling - more developing! ;)
  17. You have your UHF in manual mode (MNL) and not in PRESET, right? Shouldn't have to use the LOAD button...
  18. Hate to rain on your parade, but you had indications all along. Check reply #14 as well... :)
  19. Good way to avoid play though... ;)
  20. I try to speak only on matters where I have relevant experience. In this case, my experience covers: A) 1920x1080 on a 22" monitor... I think... possibly 24"... with TrackIR and zoom on the Z-axis B) Spending lots of time (and I do mean lots) admiring the world and air traffic at altitudes mainly up to FL100, with 20/14 or so vision. C) Spending quite a bit of time on the ground looking for aircraft, again with 20/14 vision. I can tell you that I find acquiring targets on the ground a whole lot easier in the real world than in A-10C. The difference is even more pronounced, by far, when it comes to reacquiring known targets. I think this is due to monitor resolution, poor SA when seated in front of a monitor and real-life terrain giving you far more visual cues. I haven't been taking notes, so I can't tell you that "you're going to see a vehicle of size x at y miles slant range". I can tell you that I'm constantly annoyed at the difficulty of spotting ground targets in the sim, v s my real-world experience, and I'll give the reduced labels a go as a crutch to compensate for hardware limitations. But, it is a free world. Everyone else is equally entitled to his/her ridiculous opinion... :D (Try putting a speedboat in calm seas and tell me it isn't ridiculously hard to spot.) Air-to-air, I think it is more or less right. At least I'm never jolted back to reality by the visual appearance of other aerodynes during my pretend-piloting sessions, so it passes the suspension of disbelief test.
  21. You need to look up your take-off speed. Flap retraction not before you have your takeoff speed + 10 KIAS. Retract your flaps too soon, and you end up with not enough stall margin. If you are hit by a gust reducing your airspeed, or if you enter a wind shear, you'll end up in trouble. The aircraft does not have automatic flaps. Don't fly it like it does, even though the systems will protect you from damaging anything if you do forget them.
  22. That's a common simplification. In reality it depends on the facility. Half deflection is 0.12 times the glide path angle for the GP, with no real promises made as to what full deflection really means - they can be significantly non-linear. For the localiser, the sensitivity is set for full deflection to give you a certain distance to the centerline at a given point on the approach. This means the sensitivity, in degrees per dot, will vary depending on the distance from the threshold to the LOC antennae (which mainly depends on the length of the runway, of course). A shorter runway means a less sensitive LOC, due to a wider course sector. (A given deflection will give you the same picture at that given distance from the threshold every time - that's the point.) The approximations are good enough for government work though - but know that they are, in fact, approximations.
  23. It's good to know from a hardened RHS 'combat' veteran that over-G'd tankers or transports are never employed as CAS in todays environment. Now, where were we? Talking about maintenance of frontline aircraft in war-time, I think? Thinking better of it, it's coffee time. :)
  24. And there's always another unit available, with the capability and availability you're lacking since you grounded half your fleet due to minor snags? The real world called. They wonder where you are and if they can join you, as things seem to be much better arranged there - wherever it is! :)
  25. If you are not limited by available airframes, maintenance crew, spare parts, time etc etc etc visavi the desired amount of aircraft flying. This will never happen. Half true. You won't take one - you will be assigned one. As I said before, the aircraft flying without some kind of squawk in the maintenance logs are easily counted. There's always something - big or small. How much will be determined by operational requirements and available resources. Small requirements - large resources - only small squawks. Large requirements - few resources available - you go flying with things which would normally mean grounding the aircraft. This is all planned for in advance, so it's not a question of bending the rules as much as applying a different set of rules. There are people who work solely with figuring out how to do wartime repairs. I have to follow a three-feet high stack (or maybe six feet, don't want to think about it really) of safety instructions in parts of my work. All of them state, on the very first page, that they only apply in peacetime. First shot fired, and they are at best guidelines and will be the first thing to go when the firewood runs short. That bit you got right. And all of the above is taken into account. The equation invariably ends up with fewer airframes on the line than you'd like to have. Soooo... keep the jet with a couple of snags on the ground while they are worked out and tell the grunts that sorry, CAS isn't available in your area today - please cancel your appointment with the enemy as we can't figure out how to get power to pylon three? Or just go flying and do what you can without using anything requiring power on pylon three? No. All of those can, and most certainly will, be overruled (albeit not without due consideration) if the aircraft will really make a difference. You have to realise that the mindset in peacetime aviation is one of never taking a risk if it can be at all avoided. You're not going to ever risk losing airframes or pilots due to not performing maintenance when you would be able to do so. Hence, full inspection after an over-G or hard landing is a no-brainer. For a given amount of Gs registered, you know that you will find squat diddley 99% of the time and the remaining percent of the time you will have a few fasteners loose. Yet, you ground the aircraft pending inspection to make sure that in the case where the fasteners are loose, they will be repaired prior to next flight as it will be horrendously expensive if a few more flights are done where said fasteners may result in a cracked rib. It's not worth taking that risk just go get another practise flight done. That flight can wait, it' a nuisance at worst. Now, if lives depended on getting that aircraft in the air within the next hour? While papers are written on these matters (and I've had the dubious pleasure to write one or two myself), it's really quite simple. In most walks of life, you do an analysis of gains versus risks. Is the time saving from jumping down that three foot drop versus taking the stairs ten meters away worth the risk of spraining your ankle? Probably. What happens if the drop instead is six feet? Suddenly, the detour over the stairs sounds like a better option, doesn't it? If your kid is below that drop, standing in a puddle of gasoline and just found a box of matches.... ? Suddenly, the drop could be nine feet and you'd jump without even considering the stairs. Broken ankles heal. The gain far outweighs the risk. It is the same thing in aviation. If lives can be saved through getting the aircraft airborne, you accept risks which would never be considered otherwise. The only difference is it is infinitely more complex and is approached in a much more systematic manner. Even in peacetime, snags are accepted if they are not deemed an undue safety concern. That's why you have MELs. Binders (literally) full of lists with items which can be broken with the aircraft still deemed airworthy, perhaps for a limited time or perhaps with restrictions - but definitely, no doubt about it airworthy. Then you have more binders telling you how to deal with those deficiencies in everyday ops. And that is in civvie world... if you have ever been on a commercial flight, you are almost guaranteed to have been on an aircraft flying with a few MEL'd items. Yet, you insist that air force aircraft will not go flying with snags. Summary: Item A is broken. Job B needs to be done. Do you need A to do B? Yes or no? If yes, find another jet for job B or it's not happening. If no: Will item A being broken affect your capability in any way while doing job B? If no, all is fine. If yes, deal with those limitations and go do the job. Edit: I'm stuck doing nothing at the moment and bored out of my skull, so I amused myself by beating this dead horse to a pulp. Don't expect further replies on the matter unless you come up with something interesting.
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