mkellytx

Hardly, a clean C with the up rated F404's is well known to go supersonic clean. Back in the day, Fighter Tactics Academy and Rec.Aviation.Military talked about this extensively, including first person accounts of it. Since it was still transonic and not the 1.5M of the Raptor, RAM referred to it as "spif-cruising". Block 50/52's clean are also able to cruise greater than Mach clean.

People keep alluding to that... Now if only someone can find the -34's... Right about the two weeks, two months was fast at Eddy's Patch with an army of engineers backed up with the latest tech working a test acceleration to rapidly deploy something to the field, I can't understand why these developers can't meet their two week deadlines :smilewink:

Like these? Or perhaps these? If you know what you're doing, the performance annex will go a long way towards building an flight model if you use the FTT's the folks at Eddy's Patch and Pax use. Probably not every thing for DCS, but a large percentage.

If you're going AI only go big, rather Big Belly, B-52D Big Belly modification. Full disclosure, I used to fly on an H model, Balls 50 My handy work I'm somewhere in this picture

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I'm just a recovering flight test engineer with a knack for aviation history sprinkled with some occasional stick and rudder time. My current obligations wouldn't permit me to spend the time necessary to develop a proper flight model and my coding skills are positively dreadful as I haven't written a program since grad school almost 20 years ago. That said, here's what I meant by potential left on the table Just as a comparison here are some stats for this and other contemporary fighters and the D (1) Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.0133; Aspect ratio: 3.4; Wing loading: 77.3 lb/ft² (377.6 kg/m²); Thrust/weight: 0.62; Lift-to-drag ratio: 12.8 (2) Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.0130; Aspect ratio: 3.76; Wing loading: 72.1 lb/ft² (352 kg/m²); Thrust/weight: 0.55; Lift-to-drag ratio: 13.9 (3) Aspect ratio: 2.77; Wing loading: 78 lb/sq ft (380 kg/m2); Thrust/weight: 0.86 lbf/lb (0.0084 kN/kg) at loaded weight; Lift-to-drag: 8.58 (4) Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.0173; Aspect ratio: 3.16; Wing loading: 93 lb/ft² (452 kg/m²); Thrust/weight: 0.74; Lift-to-drag ratio: 10.4 (5) Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.0175; Aspect ratio: 3.69; Wing loading: 83 lb/ft² (452 kg/m²); Thrust/weight: 0.86; Lift-to-drag ratio: 12.6

Good call, could get a two for since the B-66 was a derivative and did much the same for the blue suiters.

An argument could be made for the B-47 vice other large bombers. There are several flight manuals floating around in the ether. There are only 3 crew members for the bomber (yes there were EB-47's with men in the bomb bay...) one of which is the co-pilot so the complexity on multi-crew is easier than a B-1 (2 pilots, 1 DSO, 1 OSO) or a B-52 (2 pilots, RN, N, EW, G). Downside, B-47's were notorious for bad handling from their swept wing and 1st gen jet engines. While they could carry conventional bombs, most of their career was the SIOP SAC mission. Most of the technology for the avionics isn't too much advanced from WWII.

[quote=Evoman;362551 There is also a AWACS variant called the E-767 but only Japan operates them. Don't forget the Italians also bought KC767's. Rumor has it they put an espresso machine in the galley. BTW they guy flying the BUFF in that top picture had the desk right next to me when it was taken.

There's enough performance and aero data sitting out there to create a viable flight model. Currently on my hard drive I have multiple performance annexes and many wind tunnel reports. Republic leaned heavily on NASA in the 50's and those reports are all public domain. One of those NASA reports has the full 6 DOF equations of motion for the A/C in 3 configurations as well as the control laws for the stability augmentation system. I contend someone could build a viable flight model and the -1 will give you most of the systems. Now, since this is dCs, the difficult part is finding the weapons' manuals, especially given that it was intended as a nuclear delivery platform... I've yet to see any of the -34's easily available online, now if anyone has one to share... I also am a big Thud fan, if it weren't for the day job I might just relapse to my Aero Eng roots and prior flight test experience to work some of the flight model stuff... After spending time in the performance indices the Thud wasn't that bad of a fighter for the time...Most of the poor performance I believe is attributable to the manpower/personnel policies the Thud left enough potential improvements on the table to make the "what if" worth thinking about...

There's a lot of performance and aero data out there for the Thud if you know where to look. The tough stuff to find will be the -34 and other weapons stuff.

IIRC the BUFF dropped mixed loads of M117 and Mk82's in Vietnam. More recently, it acquired the ability to drop multiple types of J-series munitions on the same pass. I personally conducted multiple missions where we dropped multiple JDAM's (GBU-31), WCMD (CBU-105) and dumb Mk82's in a single pass. Nice live video in the control room.

Today, multi-crew A/C are better for working the radios, double checking the JTAC and sharing the load on those long GWOT missions. Originally, pre-GPS, low level, LGB deliveries at night was thought to be a high enough workload to justify a WSO.

Former aircrew who sat in seats and fortunately never used them. Which is not to say in my 10 years in the AF I didn't know many people who did. Based on that, ACES II is a pretty good seat, know a lot of folks who pulled the handles and lived to tell about it. Also, had the misfortune of being stationed someplace where we had two ejections in two months time, one fatal, one with serious injuries (that guy was supposed to come to my squadron). The fatality was supersonic and low altitude, high q kills. The serious injuries case was a t-38 at over 500 knots which is in the "serious injuries may occur region of the seat charts. FWIW in a controlled ejection scenario we always briefed pulling the handles at as low of an airspeed as possible, 200 knots or less is better. Typically, we'll pull the nose up, slow below 200, you in the back go first and I'll follow you out...

The flight test world also teaches a backside approach for flying precise air speeds and AOA's, since it works on both the front and back.

Quite likely, F-18A-C NATOPS Figure 4-1 puts the max Mach at 2.0, if 1.8 is the max level flight Mach the inlets are likely choking and not producing enough thrust to over come drag. FWIW the 2.0 is probably clean in a dive, when setting limit like this usually you take the plane xx% faster to provide a safety margin for engine surges/compressor stalls or various types of aeroelastic nasties like flutter.

Unlikely for either, can't see USAF allowing their primary two SIOP platforms to be modeled. It would be hard to replicate the 5-6 person crew for the BUFF, and good luck modeling all of the interior of the cabin. Also, can't see folks spending 45 minutes to an hour getting it started, checked and ready prior to taxi. Yes, there are the cart starts, but it's that pesky SIOP thing again... FWIW the BUFF is a better platform to fly in real life than in simulation, I have a few hours in the real one and wouldn't go for a sim based on the above.

The original B-1 implementation was even more rudimentary, it was run off of a laptop hooked up to a F-15E WSO's controller bolted to the OSO station. Initially the WSO would have to hand jam GPS coordinates into the A/C from the pod. I helped flight test that mod, the later cockpit display overhaul was long after I left the program, so I'm not sure how that is done

They did fit the F101DFE with an extension on the F-14, of course by that time the DFE became the F110-400.

Even still that lost flashlight got found 5 months later when someone opens a panel to the DAS compartment...after the impound, after the search and after the sign off. Happened to me in real life, fortunately for me, I became to boss only a month prior to that incident.

If you're out of Crusaders, your out of fighters...

Not sure about dumb CBU's, but at least the WCMD's did take some parameters from the launch aircraft to the weapons. I remember this pretty well since I was conducting a test flight where the wrong HOF was passed to the weapons...that was my first strike dropping weapons at China Lake. It was a bomber, so not sure what the pointy nose types do.

Any Blackbird would be gold, A-12, SR-71. Now real world, I flew at National TPS with Rogers Smith, the NASA SR-71 Pilot. Kick me in the ass for not pumping him for every bit of SR knowledge while I was flying with him. Now in my defense, he let my fly the entire flight even though I was not PIC Try not to judge me to harshly.

Stock photos from MoD, you don't ferry jets with live JDAM's except in special circumstances. For example, in my former life as a maintenance officer we did sent jets down ranges with green bombs, but that was a bomber and that was a deployment from home to a potential war zone. Those Bugs from Oz are just as likely to ride an An-124 to Canada.

Blacklion, Just curious, did you fly a DFCS equipped jet? If so, how would you describe the changes it made to the aforementioned high AOA and landing characteristics? Also, how would you compare a DFCS equipped jet compared to the Bug or the Eagle? Finally, how much of the fun would modeling the system take out of flying the sim? Thanks

A valid point if the main attraction of multiplayer is to see how many other people you can shoot down. That's not possible with a Blackbird unless you go the prototype YF-12, only 3 built or the never built 1980's SR mod to put an AWG-9 with AIM-54C's for anti-AWACS/Anti-Mig-31 for SIOP flying out of K. I. Sawyer. Might be entertaining to see if you can image the target and defeat multiple humans in Su-27's and Mig-29's