85th_Maverick

So I come back with the asking! Can you provide us tracks/recordings of 120C's loving chaff? I've just provided you with what I've found, which is that in more than 90% of cases you'll always be missed by all active radar missiles (120s, 77s, etc.) when flying low/slow and beaming without a single chaff dropped, while the chaff never makes any difference. Cheers!

Hehe..., welcome! Yes, I was in SP this time! This MP only issue is for years now. It's most probably due to lagg/sync as you mention. I can't even count how many times I've been doing guns only fights and I could clearly see the attacker's bullets go way by me and at the same time I get damaged and after I check the Tacview, it also proves that no bullet has ever hit me and the white flashing box never appears, but in-game it simulates as if I was hit. The exact opposite thing I did to another player as I've shot bullets with the Su-27 (they are like a line of bullets, little spread) at him and the bullets clearly missed him by tens of meters and all of a sudden I see him flaming, then after he ejects it said that I've hit him with 30mm, and again..., the Tacview shows that NOT a single shot has ever hit him. LOL! Think of that when you wanna go GUNZO on someone else spraying bullets allover the place. You clearly have all the bullets on him and they all miss, but if you clearly miss, it sometimes hits him and vice-versa on you! Aka R-77 and other?

Hi, thx for the reply! I've found out that only if I fly as slow as 110-120kts ground speed (~200km/h GS) close to the ground (usually below 100ft AGL) and maintain about 80..100 degrees from the incoming missile's path, I never need to use one chaff and more than 90-95% of the missiles will lock onto the ground somewhere. Some 5-10% still get a chance to remain locked on the plane, by some logic! But..., I tried beam notching the AIM-120C while coming from head on both at high speeds and low speeds and never ever it went to chaff even if I spoofed 20 chaff a second, unless the speed dropped below a threshold and depending on the rate of change of my velocity vector (this seems to make the radar falsely predict where I should be in the next moment) it will eventually lose lock, but the chaff does nothing! I'll provide a track of what I did and it won't go for chaff and I'd be happy to see how you made it go for chaff. From what I can see, the lock breaking of the AIM-120C is not due to chaff, but only due to the low&slow 1st notch combination. The B model, on the other hand, does go for chaff, although with a much lower chance than an R-77 (for example, not as if it should be related to it or anything like that). aim-120C vs beam notch vs chaff.trk Aim-120C vs beam notch vs chaff.acmi

Don't want to sound absurd or anything, but...I personally don't find that explanation as from someone with a correct understanding of it if he mentions the "steep angle" as angle of attack and that it is great due to being tethered. First of all, being tethered is mandatory if you want it stable under the right pressure differential loads and loads variations within a given range (only above a given positive allowed) as it may happen through a turbulence that won't bring the AoA close to null lift, cause if it passes through turbulence that even for a 0.5 seconds (the material of the kite has very little inertia in order to maintain it's shape for long) the kite would wrap on itself and eventually won't come back to the correct shape under load again, which is hazardous. The angle of attack critical value has nothing whatsoever to do with how the straps and controls and anything else is being tethered on the actual wing, cause that's what it is in the end, a flying wing. The crit./stall AoA has to do only with how the kite (this wing) meets the airflow (be it streamlined, with vortices and their distribution or turbulence) and how that airflow reacts with it according to it's geometries (aspect ratio, sweep, airfoil shapes, taper ratio, flow augmentation devices, etc.). From my opinion, a kite won't go more than 13..15 AoA without stalling and tumbling. I may be wrong if I don't know about some effect that is far from my knowledge, but of what I know, neither kites, neither ship sails can't pass beyond 11..14 degrees (the lower the relative sweep angle and the higher both the aspect ratio and airfoil cambers, the lower the stall AoA, as a global law). The AIM-120 has a very very low aspect ratio for it's fins (around 2 or below, mostly for the C model) and as I've discussed about it before (when I tried in different ways to explain that it has way too much lift in DCS for the correct critical AoA), the nose cone generates a system of vortices that grows in intensity with AoA, thus still maintaining what we call "an attached airflow" almost along it's entire length, increasing the critical AoA on the fins by quite a lot of degrees. The fins alone, at least for the B model (look like MIG-21 wings to me) will stall at around 21..22 deg. AoA, but the vortexes delay the separations of airflow between the high and low pressure areas on the fins up to about 27...28 AoA. The C model, due to having an even lower aspect ratio than the B, will further increase this crit AoA advantage by at least a 1 or 2 degrees.

Sorry for the bit off-topic reply, but now, no matter how much I believe to know about aerodynamics, there's always room for rather curious new stuff that tends to contradict my view about airflow in general and if true about what it's claimed, I'm only looking forward to comprehend and eventually accept it! As far as I see it, the kite is nothing more than a wing that has an almost elliptical plane projection (seen from the top), has a distribution of cambered airfoils from root to tip and their relative numbers affects lift/drag and critical AoA, and being shaped (grossly) as a circle segment from a front projection (otherwise known as a "C" design), it generates similar beneficial and detrimental effects to that of a negative dihedral and downwards winglets wing. Of course, being of almost a constant radius under load, it has better lift/drag performances than a negative dihedral and downwards winglets wing which would generate additional interference drag between the wing and winglet, but the gross effects are similar, and one of them is that it stalls at regularly lower angles of attack (some 13..14 degrees maximum), compared to most planes and that happens due to both the "stretched" (not under load) aspect ratio of the kite as well as it's relatively high camber. So no..., you'll never see a kite go even beyond 17..18 AoA unless you either bleed off some of the pressure differential between the upper and lower sides of the wing or have some sorts of useful vortices generated along the chords. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but I personally consider that the stall AoA for kites is around 13..14, say 15 AoA, but without any afferent enhancements, that can't be any higher!

And as far as I remember, in 2.5 the R-27T/ET seeker was going for the first 3-4 flares (not 3-4 pairs, exactly 3-4 flares), so I believe they've been most likely changed, otherwise I can't get the differences. From my opinion, missile IR seekers have evolved, so the newest models might not necessarily be unrealistically resistant to flares, but for the early models we probably have in DCS, they might just be too resistant!

Just fresh, with 15 flares. Same result. Indeed I was pushing (not pulling) some around -2Gs while dropping them, but still, it was towards the ground and the IR seeker is more sensitive to ground heat also and I was having some speed in there. I'm not complaining or anything, but just testing it for you! Even with 15 flares, same result.acmi Even with 15, same result=).trk

Not a direct hit, but although the missile self-detonated some tens of meters slightly above and either to the left or right of the plane (we can't see the 3rd dimension), the blast and/or shrapnel damage was just enough to do the damage you mention. And, I wasn't specifically mentioning that video, but this one...: You bet..., lol! I wonder how I'm the first one proving this...! 10 flares vs R-27ET, ET wins.trk 10 flares, enough speed, some maneuvering, no deceiving.acmi

Hi, As far as the latest update tells, the AIM-120s (both B and C probably) have their target tracking loss conditions based on various factors, as stated: "AIM-120. Chaff bug - changed chaff/slow moving targets filtering logic, introduced ground clutter model, missile notching now depends on target/clutter signals ratio, range of blind velocities depends on geometry of intersection of seeker beam and ground." I'm very excited about this new tracking model as it looks (at least for me) to make more sense, compared to reality, that in some given conditions, both the pulse (be it HPRF (high pulse repetition frequency) or MPRF (medium pulse repetition freq.)) and the doppler (due to relative closure velocities vs. beam angles vs ground) modes are unable to maintain a lock anymore! Now, I don't know what was it all about the "chaff bug", because after hundreds of tests (done dozens just today), the AIM-120s (B&C) won't go for chaff whatever magic you might try. Only the R-77 still goes for chaff and quite easily I'd say as just some 3-5 chaff thrown in 0.02 seconds (from F-16) can have the R-77 go for them for good when beaming at the same time. I tried high speed 90+ degrees descending turns and beaming from an initial head on incoming AIM-120B or C while throwing chaff as fast as my finger could press the chaff button and the missile would never ever go for a single chaff until it hits my plane. I tried the same at low speeds and very low speeds (below 200km/h) and still, the missile will never go for chaff. Yes, at very low speeds while beaming it will go for the ground, but never ever for chaff anyway. So these are my 2 questions, if I may: 1. In which conditions would now (based on the latest update) the AIM-120s go for chaff, if will it ever go? 2. What would be the blind "+/-" closure speeds for the new model or relative ground projected speeds of going away or closing in towards the missile, condition for which the missile's doppler can't distinguish between ground and aerial target? As far as the DCS F-14's radar (big-powerful radar) capabilities manual tells, there is a +/- 100knots that the target should have compared to the own aircraft's ground speed, below which the target is lost. So it only tells about the relative +/- closure rate of the target relative to the targeting radar and the ground, NOT about how fast the target is actually flying perpendicular to the tracking radar. So I would understand from the following statement, that I can have even Mach 2 and if the missile is looking towards the ground at my plane, as long as it's not closing or going away from the tracking radar with more than +/- 100 knots, it would still be invisible. Is that true? This is what it tells: "This blind area is a hardware limitation as it is a doppler radar mode it cannot detect targets without a doppler shift. The resulting blind area is 200 knots wide, meaning that a chased target moving at a speed of within 100 knots (+/-) of own groundspeed will be invisible to the radar. This means that when chasing a fleeing target it may very well be necessary to use the pulse modes instead." Yes, fighter and missiles own radars have been brought to be more performant, but by how much, that's the question? Let's not first forget that a missile's radar is still very small compared to that of the fighter which launched it, so I believe that it should have greater overall limitations on keeping a target tracked compared to a fighter's radar. I might be all wrong and the missile's radar is more capable than that of a fighter, but logically, it should be the opposite!

Copy that! Thanks. So, yes it makes sense to compensate for the modeling limitations that you simulate a bigger blast to compare the damage to that done by fragmentation, but still, these 2 JF-17 missiles make a very big boom compared to an AIM-120/R-77/R-27, when the encyclopedia in game tells that they should be very similar!

Well, as I've mentioned, I drop 10, not 5 (in F-16 with 0.02 time interval) and still have it not go for flares, although it might be due to not enough speed only (some 200+kias), but changing LOS and being well below AB are taking place! Anyway, it might be very good as they are already, I just didn't know about how effective their ECCM logic is, but I had to reply to you that 5 are not enough! Cheers!

Many thanks bro...! That's a way to answer! Thanks for reminding Tharos! Although I knew that already about the best conditions to make the flares most effective, it was all about this link that tells very different stuff about the R-73 and R-27T/ET: https://codex.uoaf.net/index.php/FC3#AA-10B.2FD_.28R27T.2FET.29 Cheers bro!;)

No, I haven't played DCS and I've accidentally clicked on ED forums to talk about how the missiles are modeled in it! How do you guys "think" before replying? They are just not easy flare eaters as you say and have just barely a bit higher chance of going for them compared to a 9X. That's all! I had to punch 10 in 0.02 seconds (in F-16) with idle throttle and still 1 in 3 times the missile won't go for flares, no matter the distance between the launcher aircraft and my plane. It's all about the ECCM logics.

Copy that! So it's not as this link tells: https://codex.uoaf.net/index.php/FC3#AA-10B.2FD_.28R27T.2FET.29 And no, it only sounds for you that I get shot by ET nor R-73 very often, both in MP or SP, but those few times I manage to get shot, I wonder why, considering the link that I've provided! Get it? Copy that! Now I learn, based on what you tell that they have ECCM logics! Sorry, I don't waste time reading manuals, so I ask here directly about one thing or another and who can be kind to answer (as you did, thx), answers!

I've also told them (being an ex-aerodynamicist) that the AIM-120s have an incredibly high lift, when their stall speeds at 30AoA (zero propellant left) should be about 430-450km/h, not 270 is it was in 2.5 version. Now they've put their mind together a bit and realized that it should be higher, but still not high enough to be normal/realistic. The stall speed of the AIM-120's in version 2.7+ is still around 350km/h or so. It should be 100km/h more than that. Not everyone understands and masters aerodynamics correctly, and it seems like the FM devs at ED are mostly doing that and don't want to listen to those who have studied the problem with better understanding and more correct approaches for finding the more accurate numbers!

And it should prove so! Who talked about mud? You know there's a difference between soft mud and hard dry soil that we're actually talking about. The differences in pressure required to deform the 2 types (moisturized vs dry) by the same amount can be hundreds or thousands of times different. Unless you've read the links, the worst dry land can withstand pressures of at least 1.3MPA and can go higher than 4, while the grass itself further increases that bonus. It's not what we imagine in our minds of what happens or would happen, it's what verifiable data proves. Here's an accident of a failed rejected takeoff of a Tu-22 in which you can all clearly see how the plane bumps and jumps over the totally unprepared terrain beyond the runway threshold and that nothing major happens with the landing gears until the left wing hits an obstacle: Yes, unprepared grass terrains might most of the times be bumpy, but not sticky and not with 100% grip (train rails). So, until it will be able to simulate (simplified, not required to be complex) some lower friction forces between the landing gear and the grass terrains, I agree with you, it only remains a flight simulator, at least for the aircraft simulated rather correctly, cause even in the air a good part of them have more or less quickly observable flight model problems.

Even if you come with that provable data they'd still think they know it better that it should get rapidly stuck whatsoever!

Isn't the R-27's IR seeker a bit too resistant to flares? I personally don't think it has much of an ECCM system and even the modified (I don't know what has been modified though) R-27T used by Iran as a SAM missile, proves to love flares even when the target is in full afterburner, as proven by recent Iran-Saudi Arabia and Iran-UAE encounters. Even the R-73 is almost as flares resistant as the AIM-9X, when it should normally be a lot worse versus flares, but the R-27T/ET in DCS have their seekers perform already as good as the mentioned R-73.

Hi, I don't know for sure if a similar topic has already been opened on the "Sim Research" thread, but the following video may probably be useful for some insight regarding interesting and presentable data regarding radar mechanics. Regards!

The data at the encyclopedia tells that the PL-12 this missile has the same warhead weight as an AIM-120 (22kgs), but it does an apparent damage similar to a 1000lb bomb next to you! If a PL-12 just self-detonates some 15-20m away from your aircraft, it pulverizes the aircraft in most of the times. The same goes for the IR missiles. Maybe it was just my bad luck during AI tests to see that, but if someone has the authority to check these missiles files data and confirm that the warhead mass or warhead damage numbers are right, it would be great. Cheers!

LOL! So instead of making the planes be able to roll on unprepared grass terrains as well, which is absolutely normal on a dry grass land, you want to make them get stuck, thinking that that's how it is realistic...?! Why would you imagine that it should be stuck or what makes you believe that a clean loadout afterburning jetfighter, at least..., will remain stuck on dry grass terrain as long as it's wheels won't dig in more than 38% (for the F/A-8C, for example) of their radius? If you'd do a bit of trigonometry calculations you can find out the limit wheel depth (be it in sand, mud, whatever) for a given horizontal thrust where it does remain stuck. I've just calculated it right now, that for a clean F-18 weighing 24000lb (1000 above operational empty), in full AB you can start rolling if your wheels haven't dug into the terrain more than 38% of the wheel radius. I'll show you how I've calculated it if you will, so we can conclude that I'm not missing anything! There isn't much of difference between an "unprepared grass terrain" and a "prepared grass terrain" to be used as a runway, as you might believe! The "prepared" one only has the grass cut to some level and then rolled (the rolling is only slightly increasing toughness, it mostly smooths out the surface) after the terrain has been considered acceptable to be used by airplanes after checking out that there are no hidden obstacles and that it isn't too uneven/bumpy to worth the cost to level it. Of course your main wheels might have a good chance to dig in with an enough radius ratio to get stuck even in full AB on a freshly plowed land, but it would be a rare occasion for that to happen in any "unprepared" grass field that has been drying in the sun for at least a week. The down pressure needed on a wheel in order to slowly start digging in, on a relatively low toughness clean and dry soil is usually >1.5 Mpa. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/soil-penetration-resistance So now just for the sake of saying..., do you know how much down pressure is on the F-18C's main wheels (taking it that 90% (could be lower than that) of the weight would stand on the main wheels)? For a clean wings, but full internal fuel config, which is 15400kg (from wiki, with acceptable error), the down pressure is: ~1.6MPA. Thus, in this condition, for about the lowest toughness dry grassland, the F-18 would slowly start digging in, but how much...? Well, as it digs in, the contact area also increases, reducing the down pressure and stopping the sinking at some point. How quick that point occurs? Well, after a quick calculation it results that the main wheels won't continue sinking in the soil beyond 3% of the effective (effective meaning the radius of the already deformed tire under the weight of the aircraft), while this 3% sink of the effective tire radius would require a thrust increase (when compared to 0% sinking) of 11% more in order to get unstuck. Just 11% added thrust! In order to find out the 0% tire sinking (as if on tarmac) required thrust, simply multiply the weight with the friction coef (which for hard soil is about 0.15) and there goes your required thrust. Just above 11% increase over that thrust would be needed to start rolling for a 3% of effective tire radius sinking. I might have the habit of detailing too much, but how can I provide a better view of "how much" the quantities or things evolve? Keep in mind that the roots of the grass only add mechanical strength to the earth compared to dry soil, for similar drought conditions. This is a pressure resistance bonus for grass lands alone. At the moment, only for the F-14, F-16 and F-18, the thrust required to start rolling on the grass is grossly acceptable and even as it is right now it's still a bit too high to be true, but you want to make it even worse? For FC3 and all other jet aircraft modules, it's just spilled glue over the ground everywhere! The "rails" effect which flip you over with the tiniest steering input without having the tiniest lateral slipping must be addressed and do something to reduce the infinite friction coefficient to something just slightly higher than on tarmac as it would normally happen on dry grass. On wet grass and mud however, the plane should skid quite much before starting to dig in to conditions which we see now as "aircraft stuck on grass"..., only in those conditions you may have what happens right now on dry land. Looking forward for contradictions! On the other hand..., cheers!

Hi, As the time has passed and many features have been optimized, corrected and accepted through people's requests, why not also make it possible to have the elevator controls behave exactly as they already do for rudder and aileron control? That is..., to return to a neutral position (according to the trim, exactly as it works for the other two inputs) once the pitch up or down key has been released. Besides having the pitch control only act when a pitch control key is pressed, if we could also have a "MISC" option in which to also adjust a pitch/roll/yaw control rate would also be a further benefit, but more important than all, is to have the pitch controls start moving from neutral to full as long as the corresponding keys are pressed and return to neutral once they are released. I don't know if this would generate a great effort to implement (even without control rate adjustments), but I find it very important in order to fly better, for those who either don't have a stick at some moment or don't have one at all. Thanks!

Although this funny subject has been discussed before, it should be taken more seriously as time passes and it should be relatively easy to fix/model, or it will remain a great drawback and bad looking thing for a modern simulator to have the grass grip coefficient set to virtually infinite. This is mostly about turning and hard braking on grass or coming to a landing even with the tiniest sideslip relative to the ground which only makes your plane snap over in an instant. It doesn't happen like that in reality (more than obvious) unless the factors are powerful enough to make that happen such as CG height and position relative to wheelbase dimensions/position and grass grip. Normally, the MIG-21 as well as the Su-25 are aircraft meant to operate on relatively low prepared grass fields. Only in DCS the grass grips you as if you're driving on rails when turning and sticks you up instantly and better than Super Glue when your ground speed reduces below some 5km/h, point from which you won't be able to start rolling again even with the F-15 in full afterburner, 2% of fuel left and clean loadout. At, least this is how badly affected the FC3 planes are. Separate fighters modules, like F-14,F-16, F-18, etc, don't remain absurdly stuck, but still turn on rails.

U don't need to warmup! All you must do is to hold 7.5G's constantly even if the screen fully blacks out and wait some more seconds until it becomes "morning" again and you'll start seeing everything acceptably (yet not completely recovered) even if you keep turning forever at 7.5G...! Reality is a different story!

Yes, for those who didn't think of it, the design limit load is usually 1.2 to 1.5 times lower than the real limit giving a 100% fuel load in the fuselage, limit for which the structure is starting to fail (not actually failing, but starting to and will eventually fail within a matter of seconds), yet not limited to just those safety factors as you also mention! But, considering that a MIG-29 in DCS seems to have a safety factor of 2 (which I find exaggerated) as the wings start ripping of above 18Gs with no loadout on the belly and with 100% internal fuel, the modern Su-27 (not the original T-10 which indeed lost a wingtip at some high G-loads during trials) and Su-33 (especially the Su-33 which has a reinforced all-around airframe) should actually have a more decent safety factor of 1.3...1.4 with full internal fuel, not ~1.06 as it is right now as the Su-27 loses both wings at just 9.5Gs with no belly loadout and with 100% fuel. The Su-27/33 are having their wings ripped off a bit too soon! Here are the tracks for proof: MIG-29 very high on structural G-limit.trk Su-27 a bit low on structural G-limit.trk