SwingKid

Ok, that does look like something I don't want to try myself, but: - it's a slow aircraft, - it's a low-wing aircraft, - they aren't doing it on top of the spectators, and - they are all doing it together, and obviously on purpose from training, using the ground effect instead of fighting it I think the Su-27UB photo is more frightening, but maybe because I just can't understand how it was done. Maybe he was only at that altitude for an instant, and the ground effect was already "bouncing" him back up? The f-14 was also scary, but less so because you could watch him accelerate to safety. I wonder if he scraped the lower fins doing that, but didn't mind, because the F-14s are being removed from service anyway. -SK

Well, for a given speed, there is a distinct altitude threshold when the lift generated by the wing ceases to be less than the weight, and begins to be greater than the weight. This is a very stable level - any increase in aircraft altitude will cause the lift to decrease, and the aircraft should fall back; any decrease in the altitude and the lift should increase, causing the aircraft to rise. It likes to "sit" on a cushion of a specific height. Physically, you are correct, but from the piloting point of view, we "feel" it as a discrete altitude when flying. You have to push the nose down to fight it, if you want to descend. Since you seem to understand, maybe you can help me remember my training - what happens when the plane flies very fast? Is the ground effect reduced, and the plane can approach nearer the ground? I thought that ekranoplans continued to accelerate even after they rise out of the water, but since the airplane I fly is always slow, I'm not 100% sure that it affects faster aircraft in the same way. -SK

"on a fixed-wing monoplane, about half the distance from a wingtip to the fuselage." If he's low enough to touch the ground with wheels extended, he's below the ground effect. -SK

Setting that OT aside, it looks like he might be right in this case anyway. I actually like being proven wrong. Look at it this way - no more Russian-flown airshows for me. He might have just saved my life. -SK

I learned about it in ground school while studying for a private pilot's license, it's basic aerodynamics in order to make a normal landing with any aircraft AFAIK. It's also described in the landing instructions from the F-15 Dash-1 flight manual. "Most pilots, especially of small aircraft, will experience ground effects on landing; in fact the art of landing largely comes down to understanding when these effects need to be taken into account. As the aircraft descends towards the runway, it will not be affected by ground effect, but as the aircraft flares and descends the last few feet, ground effect will cause a pronounced increase in lift. If not anticipated by the pilot this can cause the aircraft to rise suddenly and significantly — an effect known as a "balloon". Left uncorrected, a balloon can lead to a dangerous situation where the aircraft is rising yet decelerating, a condition which can rapidly lead to a stall, especially when it is considered that landing speeds are generally only a very small margin above the stall speed. A stall even from a few tens of feet above the ground can cause a major, possibly fatal, crash. A balloon may be corrected given sufficient runway remaining, but for novice pilots a better option is to go around. A good landing approach allows for ground effect such that the aircraft flares and is held off in ground effect until it gently descends onto the runway." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect Hmm, it seems that it might not apply to a high-speed pass though, since the wingtip vortices are far behind the aircraft in that case... If that photo is real... and it's beginning to seem that it might be... I would not want to be at that airshow. :( I hope it's some kind of illusion. -SK

What does any of that have to do with you being "right?" -SK

Requesting the link :) -SK

While flying horizontally? Correct, you can't crash. Any pilot can correct me if I'm wrong. This is what makes flying light aircraft so safe - as long as you keep your speed up, you almost need to want to hit the ground, in order to do it. You need to be either in a dive, or at stalling-low speed, to penetrate the air cushion. Trying to approach the ground at high speed in horizontal flight is like trying to push two like magnets ends together. That's how the F-14 started to rise off the ground in the video, without needing to raise its nose. Once you penetrate the ground effect "cushion", either by diving or by stalling, you WILL touch the ground - it's too late then to raise your nose for more lift (see the Su-27UB crash video in another thread). The normal procedure is to do it by stalling, with landing gear extended to land. This is how planes manage to "flare" nose high at the last moment to land - the air cushion holds them aloft until they stall at the last second. Note, none of the above is modelled in Lock On, not even in AFM... There, you can perform such maneuvers as seems to be in this photo without any obstacle, get as close to the ground as you like - but as a result, landings are a bit different than they are in real life. Landing in Lock On is more akin to trapping on a carrier (where there is no ground effect because the deck is elevated). Especially watch the AI on a landing. There is no flare - it approches the runway nose-high from miles away, like a carrier trap, but at dangerously slow speeds. Tying this in real life is very dangerous, because there's no "cushion" up there - fly slow enough to descend with that kind of nose-high pitch, and you are probably going to stall and crash. -SK

Ok, interesting... Maybe rather than being an intentional Photoshop job, the shot was just taken from a funny angle that makes the aircraft look closer to the ground than it really is... Or perhaps, that's not the aircraft's shadow underneath it, but just a big smudge on the runway that causes an illusion? -SK

The ground effect cushion will automatically lift your jet away from the ground, unless you're flying below the stall speed - which the Su-27 clearly is not. What do safety standard have to do with it? You take off from a runway, not from grass. He's lower - he's on the ground. :) You can't see it well in this video, but this is a take-off roll. The F-14 raises his gear early and keeps his nose level. As he accelerates, the ground effect eventually lifts him up to the correct "cushion" height, after which point he can no longer penetrate below it anymore. You can see that his engines are on max military or afterburner the whole time, but his wings are extended for slow-speed flight - he's accelerating down the runway in a takeoff roll. This is possible because he's actually lined up on the runway, and not banking around. Note that you never see him descend to this altitude, only to rise away from it. So IMHO, the Su-30 photo is 99% sure an April Fool's Photoshop, because that aircraft is clearly not on a take-off roll, being misaligned with the runway as it is. Nevertheless, I'd be interested to see the link to this "airliners.net forum discussion" you refer to... -SK

100% Photoshop: - the aircraft is below ground effect, - the aircraft has no AOA, - the aircraft is in a bank, - the aircraft is not even lined up on the runway, - the engine exhausts are at the maximum military power setting, - April Fool's was yesterday. Gotcha. -SK EDIT: d'oh! forgot the refueling boom. EDIT: double-d'oh!! That's a company prototype. The real airshow Su is in the background of the same pic. :p EDIT: triple-d'oh!! even the focus and lighting are mismatched.

I'll use whatever powers ED makes available, but for now, the host must exit and re-start between every mission, alternating between Lock On, SkyWars2, Lock On, SkyWars2, etc. to generate each new mission. Thanks for support! -SK

"You always were an asshole, Gorman..." -SK

-SK

Hmm, it's a good idea, but I wonder how to manage it for multiplayer, since the DC is presumably only running on the host's computer... Have the clients e-mail their pilot log files to the host after each mission, to be updated by the DC? Needs some careful planning. Thanks for interest! -SK

The folders and files instructed to delete are SkyWars2-specific. It's still in "alpha" development, and each new version is incompatible with the last. The missions are still pretty empty right now - usually just your own aircraft, your briefing, and your assigned mission goal - either a bridge or a runway. It "works" and satisfies all my technical criteria for a DC, but it's not really very fun or interesting to play as a pilot yet, so I wouldn't call attention to it now, except that I'm concerned about v1.2 - it looks like the last chance for ED to make Lock On compatible with such a 3rd party DC. Thanks. Rep sent. ;) -SK

Go DONGLES!!! (I just had to say that before this topic gets locked :) -SK

That's the plan. -SK

Are you sure you're not equating the word "dynamic" with "real-time"? An external turn-based DC like SkyWars2 can allow the players to choose which slots they want to occupy from its own interface, before writing the mission file, and record their choices in the file, no? That's how I manage it in SW2. -SK

This sounds a lot like "player selection", doesn't it? He seems to be saying that if you CAN do this, then you haven't got a true DC. :confused: SkyWars2 lets you fly whatever you want, but I'm not sure that's what he's talking about, or if he's looked at it. Or, for that matter, read AndyHill's post, that he seemed to be responding to..? Admittedly, it was a pretty long post... ;) -SK

Can you rephrase this sentence? I didn't understand it. How can you have a multiplayer session without clients? -SK

Thanks for the support! The "SkyWars2" DC is a work in progress and I'd like to continue working on it and to make it v1.2 compatible, but as AndyHill says, it depends on a good debriefing-save feature built into the sim, and I think he's correct that it wouldn't be very difficult (such a feature was already partly available, at least for single-player, in v1.0-v1.12a). It's something I've been asking for since v1.0 release, and v1.2 looks like our last chance for a while... When their decisions need to be made about what work to include, it helps to know that it's not just one person interested, but many. Hoping for luck... -SK

More precisely, even that range might be wrong. What it's best used for (IMHO) is comparisons. If miniZAP says missile A flies 10 km and missile B flies 20 km, but in the real world, missile A flies 15 km, then it's a fair bet that in the real world, missile B flies 30 km (not the 20 km that miniZAP quoted). It can estimate roughly how much better one missile's aerodynamics should be than another's, because unlike our sims, all missiles in miniZAP at least follow the same physical rules (regardless of the correctness of those rules). Most missiles in our sims mainly follow individually-tailored scripts, AFAIK. So, we can make observations like - "wow, AIM-120 has longer range that AIM-7 AND R-77!" - without even knowing for sure, what that range should be. Very useful IMHO for capturing the correct "combat balance" and developing realistic tactics. -SK

Just to clarify, "we" = me and GG, for "what if"-discussion purposes only. The values generated by miniZAP have not (AFAIK) been used to develop missile range in Lock On. I think that miniZAP actually agrees with Rhen's estimates better. If you'd like to try it: http://www.ecf.utoronto.ca/~pavacic/missiles/minizap.zip -SK

Sorry if this is a silly question - was that sarcasm, or did it really solve the problem? I can't tell. If the problem is with the speed of the tanker, then just set its speed in the Mission Editor, sure. I don't understand what that has to do with 42 waypoints? You can set an aircraft's speed between two waypoints. If the problem is with the tanker AI bank angle or turning radius, then that's more complicated, but I don't understand why to complain about its speed. :confused: -SK