Phantom12

Best sustained turn speed is in the realm of 450-480 knots. Best instantaneous looks to be more like 430 or so in the real charts and 370 in the "DCS" charts. I think the DCS chart is pushing the AoA higher than they did on the real airplane. As for MiG-17s, there is a nice Powerpoint on the conclusions drawn from Have Drill which can be found here: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB443/docs/area51_51.PDF Lots of nice insights in there, as well as an EM diagram. My favorite quote: Accelerating at 30-60 deg nose low during escape can force the MiG-17 pilot "into a realm of flight wherein his capability to pull out becomes his dominate consideration" FWIW I have read in one of the osprey books that the wisdom of the time for F-4 pilots was to fight MiG-21s at as low an altitude as possible, and MiG-17s at as high an altitude as possible in order to maximise relative perf advantage. Thanks for the tip. Looking at the F-4 charts its definitely noticeable that STR degrades above .9 Mach, which wasnt as obvious in the other charts. .9 is where transonic begins for the F-4 so that makes alot of sense. I didnt scour every corner of the internet but didnt quickly find anything for the MiG-21... I know some of the russian charts are in a different format as well. Unfortunately its also well known that the DCS MiG-21 deviates from the real charts quite a bit in some areas, which makes comparisons harder. I did find an old analysis some French users made on another flight simulation forum, and I attached them to this post. Those seem to be made from the real charts and are for combat loaded airplanes as well. The conclusions seem to be about the same at 15000 ft. F-4 has an STR advantage in the 4-500 kt range, and a decent climb/thrust advantage at most speeds. Interestingly at 5000 ft the advantage is less than at 15... which goes against the wisdom I mentioned above. Some other random thoughts: Ive had decent luck with Aim-7s in the dogfight environment so far. They arent perfectly reliable by any means but IMO its worth taking any half decent shot that presents itself. If it hits great, if not its a 500lb ballast you just ditched, that obviously wasnt going to be useful to you anyway. With good use of the ACM modes you can get quite a few opportunities for all aspect shots you wouldnt get with a RQ sidewinder. I had at least one hit a MiG-21 after being fired from inside of 1NM. Also I become more and more convinced that AoA management is a crucial skill in the F-4. The nose rise/stick force lightening the airplane was known to have near the stall or coming down from supersonic speeds is maybe not as noticeable as in the real plane with 50lb stick forces, but it is there. Its easy to pull more than you wanted and have an accidental AoA excursion. If you dont consciously reduce AoA you can end up bleeding alot of energy for little gain. null Compared-Air-Combat-Performances-Mig-21-vs-F-4-Opus-1.pdf Compared-Air-Combat-Performances-Mig-21-vs-F-4-Opus-2.pdf

Maybe you can post a tacview or video and someone here can give more specific comments. The F-4 should have an advantage over the F1. And RQ heaters can be tricky against maneuverable targets. Its almost easier to use the gun at times. If you can only go one turn it sounds to me like maybe you are bleeding too much speed off too quickly. It can be very easy to bleed alot of speed off if you arent very careful with pitch inputs.

I think it should be faster, around 17 units. Happy to try that too... I might be wrong but I thought hookskips are aggravated by being too fast, whereas too slow risks inflight engagements. Anyway it does seem to reliably catch a wire if you touch down well short and taxi through the wires... Not proper, but then again I guess landing an airforce plane on the carrier isnt considered proper anyway.

Ah I see. Ill experiment flying slower.

It should be mentioned that there is no yo-yo in the world that will allow an F-4 to overcome a significant turn performance disadvantage. Even against a similar opponent they wont gain you anything without trading something else in.

Poorly worded on my part. With the lift vector above the horizon for a given turn gravity will hurt turn performance (rate and radius), and vice versa in the 2nd half of the turn with the lift vector below the horizon. As you mention airpseed can have a big effect on radius. In this case for a nose to tail turn reduced radius doesnt help you as much as the reduced turn rate hurts you. For a nose to nose turn like in the picture you can of course exploit out of plane geometry and reduced airspeed to create a very small radius and gain an advantage. But there are a number of reasons why flying exactly that maneuver in the picture probably wont work out like it does in that example. Its riskier than the more co-planar angles tactics Shaw lays out in the 1v1 similar opponents chapter, and I suspect that's why he recommends those instead of something like that picture. I don't want to try and re-hash the whole book but in short I think being slow at the top at time "3" gives the enemy a good opportunity to start using energy tactics against you, and most opponents, even if they dont know what they are doing will probably just turn at you rather than staying totally horizontal, taking away the vertical separation used to reposition behind the opponent between times "4" and "5".

A similar opponent will follow you through all of that. Imagine 2 F-4s tailchasing in loops, why should one outturn the other. If one flies a wider loop he will spend less energy for turning and more for climbing, and end up higher. But the same concept applies to two F-4s turning in the horizontal as well. If you pull harder you end up slower than the guy who pulled less. If by flying a vertical or oblique maneuver you fly the airplane at lower G where you have a Ps advantage, like in a zoom, spiral climb, or pitchback, you can use that to build an energy advantage or vertical separation. At the top you can then roll or reverse to come down in any direction you want to make up the angles you lost while building energy. The same maneuvers apply against an equal opponent with less energy. Simply flying an oblique tailchase wont do anything for you in the F-4 unless you are exploiting an energy or thrust advantage. Flying nose high oblique turns widens your radius as well due to Gods G as you mentioned. And any sustained turn at low speed in an F-4 is worse than a sustained turn at high speed. Consider the F-4 vs F-4 case again: The bad guy F-4 flies a sustained horizontal turn at 500 knots, while you start a slightly oblique nose high turn with constant energy throughout. Radius increases on the way up, and decreases on the way down and it balances out overall (the two ends of the egg meet up again). For some portion of this turn, while you are higher, you are also slower (constant energy) and turn less than your opponent does, without gaining any energy. You meet again near the starting point with equal energy and an angular disadvantage. Alternatively if you just put the nose straight up without an energy advantage, he will follow you up and kill you. If he does not do this he is probably very passive or doesnt know what hes doing. You need to bleed his energy first before going up. Edit: for completeness sake there are some things one can do with out of plane maneuvers like in this example from Shaw's book. Don't expect most opponents to be as passive as the target in this example though, like I said its not just a matter of vertical maneuvers > horizontal.

I recall reading that the onspeed indication for the E and the J were both centered on about 19 units +- about 0.1-2 units. Youd know better than me if there was some change in the reference lines or how the units were converted from degrees though. Supposedly both run from -10 to +40 deg. Maybe its a skill issue but I never had this much trouble with the Tomcat. Only way I got the hook to engage was on a cut pass and taxi through the wires while trying to use the brake chute.

@FusRoPotato Just to clarify did you actually use an FFB stick in this test or just turn the setting on and try it with a normal spring stick?

To discuss everyones favorite forbidden topic: Anyone tried a bunch of carrier landings yet? The airplane handles nicely around the boat but try as I might I seem to hook skip or bolter everytime. Is there some trick to it or is the hook setup differently for the USAF runway arresting gear? Onspeed AoA seems to be more or less the same as for the navy versions.

The post I screenshotted below and the test date suggested to me that it had been included. Anyway I agree the F-4 has no business trying to fight a MiG-21 at 220 knots. Like I wrote on the first page here my interpretation is that at slow speed the MiG has the advantage, which evens out by around 300-350 knots, and in the 400-500 the F-4 has an advantage. A MiG-21 at 220 knots would seem like a great case to try a climbing spiral. Depending ofc on weapons etc. Part of the idea with the spiral is to keep the bandits nose off, or be out of range for guns/present a high angle off/los rate for RQ heaters even if he can get the nose on. Initiating it at the right moment, such as after the pass in a 1 circle fight where the bandit has to bring the nose around quite a bit helps as well.

Thankyou for your kind words. Im glad if my ramblings are helpful to people here or serve to further the discussion. I attached the file to this post, otherwise it can be found directly at this link: https://discord.com/channels/743133715672072192/1092582325591740516/1092610588162654280 All credit for these goes to Contact Light on the DCS dogfighters discord. Hope he doesn't mind me posting them here but you can find them in the user files with a google search as well. https://discord.com/invite/dogfighters Here is the chart for the F-4E Subsonic_Energy_Maneuverability_Diagrams_for_DCS_202304.pdf

FFB will of course swing if you let it. Forces generated by an FFB stick are much weaker than the real airplane so its not difficult to hold in place. Are we sure that the F-4 is not simply more prone to these sorts of oscillations than some of the other aircraft in DCS? If you take a Me 109 up to high altitude or load up the aft fuel tank in the Mustang etc they will bobble around alot more as well. Abruptly unloading tends to aggravate these things. Re the little diamond: my interpretation of that has been that it represents the zero force position for the stick. Of course it will move forward as load factor increases due to the nose down force produced by the bobweights. Once you unload again it moves back to where it was.

Im sure alot of people here and HB have already seen it but this vid has some nice examples of GIB callouts in the bombing pattern near the end.

I used it all the time during air to air in the F-14. That way I can keep sight and not need to keep checking the airspeed indicator during maneuvering.

Keep in mind its AI so the energy addition and bleed rates for the MiG probably dont match the player FM. Even for a player though the MiG-19 will have an accelleration/thrust advantage over the F-4 at higher Gs and lower Speeds, which of course reduces margins. A few of those zooms are poorly executed on my part as well and I started them without enough advantage or flew them inefficiently. IMO the good ones are the initial climb and the one after the extension and turnback. Some of the others are "bad, but got away with it". The AI also flew very aggressively in this case, bleeding alot of speed and giving me opportunities to zoom, which a more patient player may not do. Its probably more practical to shoot such a player with a sparrow before the merge, or bring a wingman and gang up on him. In the end I think you're right that it serves to illustrate that energy tactics can be tricky to implement in practice, require much attention to the details to get right, and can take quite a long time to make a kill.

When people make concentration camp comments they come off less educated and qualified and more hyperbolic and emotional. More than a little ridiculous. Im still not sure what the problem is? The video doesnt mention what settings were used and mostly seems to demonstrate behaviour on the ground. As grover mentioned its a special case and anyway not really relevant for handling the airplane since it isnt moving. I had a try with my WH yesterday and none of it really struck me as unusual or unintuitive. Actually it felt pretty good. I had no problem flying at combat speeds or setting up for an onspeed approach. In a few ways once trimmed it was easier than with my FFB stick, since the axes are higher resolution and the forces dont slacken off like with FFB. Of course if you snatch the stick the nose will oscillate, but this happens even with EDs implentation. Admittedly in this quick test I didnt see a huge difference between blending on or off, and I also eagerly await grovers write-up on how exactly this works and what its doing.

Personally I like the fact it doesnt always explode and kill you straight away. Just cause it doesnt go down in 15 seconds doesnt mean it will make it home

Ok here goes: This is by no means perfect and its vs AI so take it for what its worth. Some parts I think are decent demonstrations of what sort of things one might try in the F-4 to get an advantage against a tigher turning or very aggressive oponnent. Obviously some parts of it will not work against enemies with All aspect missiles or in a not 1v1 scenario. Feel free to critique or point out errors as you all see them. The first turn is a decent example of a spiral climb. Bleeding off speed in the first part of that turn was probably a mistake but it worked out in the end. I can quickly tell hes bled alot of speed so I start climbing until he cant keep up, then go steeper nose up and reverse with the rudder. The AI tries to shoot its RQ missiles at me but its high angle off and they probably wouldnt make the turn unless he had fired them with alot more lead. Coming down like I said I was managing AoA to try and get into an offensive position while also getting at least some amount of speed back as well. The snapshot at 2:30 or so showed bullets pass between the wingtip and fuselage... Close but no cigar. Flat scissors are clearly the MiGs playground and the F-4 can only stay there so long so its time to do something else. Getting out was the right call but the climb afterwards is a good example of what not to do as an energy fighter. Impatiently it was started too early and without enough energy margin. A player or less stupid AI probably would have shot me at the top at 3:20. Failing to make the kill as the energy fighter can be quite dangerous. The better move is IMO what I did after that at about 3:30. Dive towards the bandits extended 6 oclock and pick up speed. Then start a sustained turn back for a neutral merge. Since the F-4 accellerates better than the MiG you might even come back with an advantage if you time the turn back right. I stay horizontal in a sustained turn again here, and the MiG goes nose to nose. Since he gained a huge amount of angles in that one turn he must either be slower than me or turning very hard and getting very slow by the time weve come around. Now its time to defend the snapshot and start going vertical again. Given he had no more missiles I might have tried a pure vertical zoom here as well. After this zoom I end up with what is probably a pretty good RQ missile shot position. In this case Im trying guns only so I dont take it. The result of those scissors are another example of how dangerous it can be to fail to make the kill. It might have been wiser at 5:20 or so to turn left away from the MiG and accellerate and turn back again. Or even just starting the zoom earlier. There is definitely a shooting opportunity on the way up into that climb at 5:30. Here it probably would have been better to get steeper in the zoom or even just go straight vertical. I also turn left in the spiral whereas it probably would have worked better continuing to the right. I get fairly slow without having the nose up high enough as well. This one didnt work out nearly as nicely as the others even though I had quite an energy margin at some points there. Anyway, very far from perfect, but perhaps illustrative in a few ways. Edit: Btw this was flown with full internal fuel and 4 sidewinders. By the end I had burned 6000 lbs of gas.

The most efficient way to zoom is to pull wingslevel till the nose is pointed straight up and then unload and fly straight upwards till you run out of speed. IIRC something like 2/3 sustained G is recommended for spirals but it depends. You might have to turn tighter to keep sight or to stop him from generating enough lead for a gunshot. It will also depend on where exactly your performance advantages over the adversary lie. Generally it should be a more relaxed turn than in the horizontal though. If you want to get a feel for things try the loops and reversal techniques victory describes in the "mastering your first flight" thread. Theres some good info on loops in here as well, and they work in game exactly as described for the real airplane. https://www.f4phantom.com/docs/F4_Phantom_Guide.pdf Best AoA seems to me to be very situational but managing it feels like it will be a key skill in the F-4. So far I try not to exceed the solid tone ever, unless Im very slow over the top and just trying to flop the nose back down. Coming back down and trying to saddle up I sometimes pull into the first beeper and solid tone, but only enough to prevent overshooting or spilling out below the bandit too much. Anytime you hear the tones you are really hurting your acceleration. Given how much being slow hurts it can definitely be worth it to totally relax AoA, acellerate as quickly as possible, then continue turning again, rather than trying to stay in the middle at 8-15 units and sort of kind of accelerate and not turn all that well either. Im trying to upload a video now that, while far from perfect maybe shows a few of the techniques I think could work well in the F-4. Other useful stuff I learned: The gunsight defaults to 1000ft range solution without a radar lock. The inner ring is 25 mils, and the outer one 50. This means that for many fighters of the time the wingspan will be more or less the size of the inner ring at 1000 ft and the length will be about the size of the outer ring when viewed from directly above. The CAA mode will lock a bandit on the nose reliably if you can get a lookup situation (and set to heaters before so it scans the center corridor). Lookdown its not nearly as reliable. The settling time for the sight makes shooting hard maneuvering bandits at longer ranges a bit tricky, and Ive had more success just getting closer to about the 1000ft range where you can just shoot without a radar lock anyway. If you hold the Cage button on the throttle you can remove the lead calculating part of things too if you need a fixed pipper for a snapshot.

Not sure how it compares to the real technique but for me best technique of reversing at the top of a zoom is to use full rudder at about 40-50 kts. Works best if you are not purely vertical but maybe 80 deg nose high with wings perpedicular to the horizon. I tried a couple different things out and for me this is the most repeatable, and "clean" way of getting the nose back down. I can also leave it in burner without running into compressor stalls. I tried the tail slides Victory described in the OP but I usually end up tumbling somewhat on the way down, and if you dont go to idle you get that loud unpleasant sounding banging from the compressor stalls. Probably I wasnt perfectly vertical enough, or too impatient and started pulling on the stick before getting slow enough. At least for me the rudder technique is easier in practice as well as its hard to look at the ADI to get perfectly vertical while looking over your shoulder. Here is Shaw's description of Rudder Reversal FWIW:

Idk if it messes with anything but given that the default hands off stick position is relatively far forward a curve might hurt precision in refuelling rather than help it. Youd have to use a custom curve, or turn the saturation down (but that might hurt you on T/O or other regimes where you need the whole stab).

Tried it out with a few different settings and was able to replicate it. If I centre the diamonds I can activate Alt Hold but there is enough nose up force to cause a pitch breakout pretty quickly. If you hold them together the autotrim starts trimming nose up until either breakout or the 4G AFCS limit shuts it off again. Idk if running a very high breakout setting might allow it to be used in the meantime without the problems above, but if people are desparate for ALT HOLD it might be worth a try. F-4 FFB Trim 1% breakout.trk F-4 FFB Trim 2% breakout.trk

If you check out the charts I linked a few pages ago you can see that the DCS F-4E does in fact enjoy a Thrust advantage over the DCS MiG-21Bis (with emergency AB) in plenty of areas. I did some (very very rough) number crunching and I think it retains this advantage, or at least becomes neutral with the MiG even at useable combat loads. As for altitude I have heard that IRL the F-4 had the greatest advantage at lower altitudes vs the -21, but don't know any more specifics than that. I would post screenshots of the charts here but I dont want to share things that are not my own work without knowledge/permission from the creator. Of course the general takeaway is that if you want to turn and burn with the MiGs, you should try not to lug around too many Sparrows or a full tank of gas when doing so. It goes without saying that external tanks should also be left at the side of the road before entering such a fight. @mattag08 The MiG-17 is probably a great case for using pure vertical as it only has guns and no missiles AFAIK. The other point about adapting tactics from theory to what works for you in practice is also a very good one I think.

Depends which MiG-21. The Bis in DCS has better thrust than most of the ones from Vietnam. Our F-4 seems to still have a slight advantage in many situations though.