amb

I've always wondered about one thing, I'm not sure I should bother anyone with it, but maybe someone is bored and know a lot about aerodynamics... So the thing is: Why is it that the Viggen seems to have such a large wing surface area, yet it doesn't seem to turn much better (any better?) than for example a F-4 Phantom which has sort of small-ish wings - or more regular sized wings one might say. I know the wing area isn't the only thing determining lift, but I've just always wondered why they decided to design the Viggen's wings that way, with such large area. My best guess is that it has something to do with providing lots of lift at slow speeds to shorten take-offs? I don't really have any idea what I'm talking about now, but from my layman's perspective I guess it makes sense that a large wing area with a low camber would be able to give a lot of lift at slow speeds if the alpha is high enough, while also providing relatively little drag at high speeds. Is that what's going on here or am I way off?

Awesome! Thanks!

Thank you! That's very helpful. So it should be fairly safe to use the radar if you're flying low, the only ones who would pick you up on their RWR would be the ones flying even lower than you, or basically on the same height.

I'm wondering about some things regarding the scan area of the radar, like how far ahead does it look? And does this vary with altitude or how does that work? Does it scan straight ahead in A2G mode or is it always pointed down by some degree? If you're flying very low it seems that it should do a scan straight ahead in order to be able to give you useful picture, but if you're flying higher up that would of course not be necessary, so does the aircraft adjust this automatically based on altitude or how does that work? Basically the two main things I'm wondering about is: 1) How big of a distance ahead is scanned by the radar (and does this vary with altitude)? 2) Will I be able to safely keep scanning in A2G mode without having to be afraid of showing up on other peoples RWRs? Given that they are flying on the same or higher altitude than me.

Seconded.

What is that vertical stick next to the throttle on the left in the Draken cockpit? It's not for RB05 is it? I didn't think the Draken could carry that...

Thanks! That's really interesting... So am I interpreting this correctly when I say that the strategy here is to let the ships see your flight of 4, but then at the same time as 3 of them breaks of (and dives below the radar I presume), the 4th on starts dispensing chaff and the chaff will make it sort of look like there's still multiple aircraft in that flight (chaff creating the false signatures), so the ships will (hopefully) think the attack is coming from one direction but then suddenly the 3-flight pops up from another direction and launches. Is that about it? Pretty cool if so... I just wonder what kind of benefit this would give, I know nothing about naval maneuvers/tactics but a wild guess would be that perhaps ships will form up a certain way to defend against an attack from a certain direction, so putting the ships with the strongest countermeasure- and AA-systems in front and keeping the ships you want to protect in the rear? So this would be a nice move around that then... just guessing wildly though Too bad you can't use chaff in this way in DCS, to create false radar signatures I mean.

540 chaff and 28 flare seems very heavily biased towards chaff... my best guess is that maybe it was standard practice to more or less continuously dispense chaff while in a hostile zone? As in whenever you are pained by radar you just dispense chaff at a fixed rate all the time? I know the viggen had some sort of auto-system for doing this tied into the RWR, so maybe that's how that worked - as soon as RWR detects something it dispenses chaff at a certain rate, perhaps at a greater rate if locked up? I'm just guessing... While I guess flares would only be used during the attack run itself...?

Cool, thanks! :thumbup:

Well I'm totally psyched about the Viggen. The F-14 too, it was my favourite as a kid, such a huge beautiful bird, just stunning. I really hope someone buys the guys at LN cake and/or beer whenever they release these things. It's a good thing I'm getting too old to play very much, otherwise I would probably fly 24/7 after release.

I see your point and there's no need to be rude.

Well sure, but that begs the question: Why was the F-14 announced such a long way before its release date while at the same time they are so reluctant to announce the Viggen even now? It makes no sense. If I were a suspicious person I might start guessing that maybe there's some sort of internal conflict between the Viggen team and the rest of LN which puts some uncertainty on wether the Viggen will actually be released under the LN name or not, thus they don't want to announce it under that name until they know how it's going to be. I don't really think that is the case, but this lack of information just makes the imagination run wild...

The thing which strikes me as strange is why the F-14 has got its own forum and all when the Viggen is supposedly closer to release...

I love you

That would explain it! I had understood it as that it didn't start to close before the front gear touched down. Thanks! :)

I found a short sequence in this video which I think is interesting: [ame] [/ame] The interesting part is that according to the manual it should take about 5 seconds for the thrust reverser to fully close, but I'm counting at most about 3 seconds from the moment the front gear compresses to we getting a view of the rear - and seeing that the reverser already looks fully closed... Thoughts? Edit: The timestamping doesn't work when embedding for some reason. But the part I'm talking about is at about 1:28

Yes :) You can find the kit here: http://www.mbs-rcmodels.se/skalamodeller/ I can highly recommend it to anyone who likes to do builds like these. The instructions are clear enough even for a total rookie like me and the guy who owns the shop - which is the same guy who designed the kits - is a super nice guy who's very happy to help, so if you run into any problems you can just call him. Personally I think I'm finding out that doing these kinds of builds is probably not my thing :) But that's just me, and I still intend to finish this one... one day :)

Cool! I'm building a Draken, although it's been standing still for quite some time now...

My thoughts exactly! It seems to me that there's a bit of a tendency to choose the latest/greatest and most upgraded version of an aircraft (or other vehicle) when modelling them in a computer game, and I think that's a shame since it's not very historical. You just end up having battles between obscure models that are then really just fantasy battles that have little to do with how it might have been in reality. I'm not saying that DCS is the worst offender when it comes to this, but that might be largely because the latest and greatest versions are often still classified to some extent.

Slightly off-topic, but if there was to be a JA 37 in the future, which version of it would you guys prefer? I'm leaning towards the JA 37C since although it's not the most capabale version, I feel like it's probably the most representative of what the JA 37's were (for the most part of their life) since it had the original cockpit and electronics - but in their most upgraded version. Although a JA 37D would be really cool as well, it's almost a bit more like a Gripen in disguise with its new central computer, large LCD-screens and AIM-120's. What do you guys think?

Plus, if I understood it correctly, the hydraulics used for the thrust reverser are pretty slow so it takes about 5 seconds for them to fully close/open. So even if there wasn't anything preventing you from using it in mid-air it would be quite difficult to do so effectively because of this.

I don't care a huge amount about this - I think it's kind of fine either way, but I just want to say that things like this makes me worry a little bit, because it's a very slippery slope... If you start doing some modifications to an aircrafts capabilities for gameplay reasons then exactly where do you draw the line? I just want DCS to stay a true simulator and not go the way of implementing unrealistic things for the sake of gameplay/balance. Call me a purist I guess. But like I said, I'm sort of okay with this modification, I just don't want this to be used as justification for more compromises regarding realism...

Awesome! Thanks a bunch!

Sorry about asking again, but did anyone get a chance to grab a copy of the flight manual before the links went dead? Would be awesome if someone could re-post them somewhere else.

Wow - what makes you say they might have started working on a Draken? What did I miss?