cheezit

I've heard Gaijin is adding the F-14 to War Thunder in the near future, so I think the problem will solve itself soon enough.

F-14 Tomcast Episode 8: Ordies!

Of the two filters that could potentially be in play here (main-lobe clutter and zero-doppler [shift]), I think MLC is the one that's going to be relevant for chaff. The MLC filter is subtracting V_ground from the raw doppler return and then filtering out anything within 133 kts of zero. Since chaff nearly immediately assumes the velocity of the surrounding body of air, unless the component of V_wind pointing directly towards the aircraft is greater than 133 knots, chaff won't get past MLC. I wonder if you could rig up hurricane-force winds in the mission editor and see whether chaff starts showing up on the DDD and/or TID.

My uneducated take on this topic is that the ceiling to how well EW and ECM can be practically implemented in DCS is not very high, but nonetheless we are currently very far below that ceiling.

Episode 6: The Tomcat as a Forward Air Controller - Airborne (FAC-A) platform

5th episode is up (Iranian Tomcat):

Is there anywhere I can read up on what this consisted of? Seemingly every pilot that flew the A and talks about it has mentioned the TF30 being detuned at some point, but when I look at the testimony in congressional hearings where modifications to the TF30 were discussed I can't find anything about it (plenty of stuff about other changes to improve reliability and service life). The earliest documents I can find appear to show uninstalled static SL thrust of 20,900 lbs in max A/B and installed static SL thrust of 17,000 lbs in max A/B for the TF30-P412, and later documents show the same numbers for the TF30-P414A. There's a real paucity of documentation of installed thrust at any other altitudes and airspeeds, so if the detuning affected operation at normal operating altitudes and airspeeds while leaving static SL thrust more or less unchanged it's invisible to a civilian observer.

I wonder if part of the discrepancy between your target numbers and Hummingbird's is the version of the charts you're looking at. My assumptions are that you've got the final version of the charts while Hummingbird is looking at the (now cleared for open publication? certainly floating around the internet ) version from 15 September 1990, although of course I lack a palantir and cannot tell with certainty what anybody else is looking at. That September 1990 version, unless I am reading it wrong, shows the same numbers that you listed for 4x4 and GW of 55,620 lb with max A/B per figure 9-2 (Sheet 1 of 12) on page XI-9-3 (note the chart is dated September 1987 despite the first page after the cover being dated September 15th 1990) at SL, 5k, 15k and 25k, but at 35k feet the chart shows Mach 1.97 which is the same number that Hummingbird got. Nb. I get the same numbers as seen on Figure 9-2 when I cross-reference with Figure 9-5 (5k chart on page XI-9-29, 15k on XI-9-30, 35k on XI-9-31) by tracing a horizontal line at 1g on the Y-axis to its rightmost intersection with the Ps=0 line, and then from that point tracing a vertical line down to the TMN on the X-axis. Not sure if this is the right way to try to cross-reference, and of course Figure 9-5 doesn't have any data for SL or 25k feet. Another couple of curiosities I see in the September 1990 charts: the 2x2x2 loadout seems to give up basically nothing on the top end compared to 4x4, with a top end speed of maybe Mach 1.94 or 1.95 instead of 1.97 despite being 1500 pounds heavier (cf. XI-9-34), and even slapping on tanks with a bunch of drag and a further gross weight increase of ~2800 lbs still gets you a pretty respectable top end of 1.80 or so - that's actually a fair bit faster than some newer fighters can go when clean, if I'm not mistaken. Also there is a dotted "structural limit" line and a solid "projected structural limit" line at what looks like a +1g offset from the "structural limit" line, for some reason that I am ignorant of. I wonder whether any of this survived to later versions of the charts based on what I assume is more and better testing. In any case, thanks for putting in the time and effort dusting off the old charts to ensure that ill-informed and obnoxious pedants such as myself enthusiasts and consumer simmers get a super high-fidelity version of the Tomcat in all its glory.

The document is NAVAIR 00-110AF14-1 / 00-110AF14-2. If you google "F-14" "Standard Aircraft Characteristics" you'll find every version that's publicly available. The ones I posted snippets from were declassified & (partly) cleared for open publication in the 1992-1993 timeframe, fwiw.

Here's what Grumman thought the D could do prior to service entry: Compare this to what they thought the A could do in 1974 and 1977 (noting that some configurations have changed, eg. "Deck Launched Intercept" going from 0/4/4/tanks to 2/2/2/tanks): I'm sure there are lots of caveats to these charts. Some of them are even listed in the document right below the part I screenshotted - didn't realize I'd cut the notes off until after I'd already formatted the post, mea culpa!

My friend Dariush is very interested, provided you can ship internationally. Actually if you have 78 more where that came from he'll pay top rial dollar. Aside: are we actually allowed to have buy/sell/trade threads in this forum? Perhaps I misread the rules.

1974- and 1977-dated copies of NAVAIR-00-110AF14-1 ("Standard Aircraft Characteristics Navy Model F-14A Aircraft") list "static thrust at sea level" of the TF30-P412A in Max A/B as 20,900 lbs per engine. As mentioned earlier in the thread, the 1972 preliminary NATOPS says "At sea level, static conditions, each [TF30-P412] engine develops 10,500 pounds installed thrust at military and 1700[0] pounds thrust at maximum afterburner." I wonder if ambiguity about the word 'static' is part of the confusion - it's ambiguous (at least to an ignorant non-pilot such as myself) whether it implies 'uninstalled' or whether 'static/moving' and 'installed/uninstalled' are orthogonal, and thus it's unclear whether a phrase like 'static thrust' means 'installed but at zero airspeed' or 'in an immovable [aka static] test fixture' if installed/uninstalled isn't explicitly stated.