Victory205

I can't handle listening to "Leo The RIO" for more than a few seconds, so I'll defer to your good graces on the buffoonarized intercept that he ran.

The F14 was light years ahead of the systems that everyone learned on. Everyone could simply look at the geometry and effect an intercept. RIOs learned to do the math in their heads, and during training, the RIO sim instructors demanded that the student RIO's calculate the geometry in their heads, even though the AWG9 was displaying the same information using the same data. Always seemed a bit silly to me. Pilots would look at the velocity vector and speed of the target, then use their own aircraft's velocity and geometry to complete the intercept without using the collision feature. I don't recall RIO's using collision very often. Karon brings up a good point about lateral separation for a canned, school house rear quarter conversion. In practice, a pilot could generally deal with turn radius using the vertical, unless in bad weather or other altitude restrictions based on threats or terrain. It was good practice, but tactically rarely used, unless to effect a rendezvous on a forward quarter tanker, etc. For instance, on a forward quarter intercept, at a certain range, the pilot could put the TGT diamond on the corner of his HUD to assure sufficient lateral sep to make a rear quarter conversion. We also used rules of thumb to complete efficient tanker rendezvous, peaking at velocity vectors to help visualize aspect and so forth. Believe it or not, a lock, or even a radar wasn't required to rendezvous on a tanker or playmate, especially if holding at any sort of known fix. I bet you guys do it all the time without a whole lot of thought.

If I understand your question- Basically, Collision uses own aircraft velocity to calculate an intercept course to the target. This is as opposed to assuming missile velocity to effect an efficient firing solution. Collision gives a steering course that takes the aircraft to the target, and as such, you don’t want to shoot a missile while the system is in collision- the missile would be tracking farther in front of the target than necessary, since it is much faster than the aircraft. It was used to give the pilot an idea of where to fly to effect an intercept to the target, helping ensure that the fighter would arrive in a viable missile envelope with lots of options. It was also used to effect a rendezvous with a friendly tanker. In a tactical situation, the pilot would back up the RIO to ensure that a missile wasn’t shot in collision. IIRC, it was possible to do so. To see if it works in the sim, set up a high track crossing angle intercept. In collision, the steering T should suggest a course father ahead of a target’s velocity vector. Pure Pursuit is more or less putting the fighter’s nose on the target and keeping it there. For any rear hemisphere intercept, it takes a significant speed advantage over the target to effect a rendezvous or to end up within a rear quarter IR missile or guns envelope. It ends up flying a curved flight path. Lead Pursuit simply has the fighter keeping it’s nose in front of the target throughout the intercept, still flying the curve, but using a more aggressive curved flight path, in order to reduce the velocity advantage required to end up in a firing envelope. Collision calculates a straight course that would take the fighter to where the target will be, taking into account velocities of both aircraft.

If you are going to spend the time, then a better approach would be to test at 5K and at least 15K to get some separation in performance. SL is a waste, there are not charts for that for obvious reasons and you’d be interpolating. Couple things to keep in mind. The Ps charts are developed by flight test maneuvers including acceleration profiles and turn derivatives including windup turns and spot checks, and are largely mathematically derived. They aren't accurate to tenths of G's through the entire spectrum. The whole idea of Ps comparison is to give a pilot general idea of performance comparison in order to better understand how to approach an engagement in a methodical manner. Most folks focus on the Ps=0 line, but the bleed rates are also very important for developing rules of thumb. In the end, it's a tool, not the burning bush for determining which aircraft wins a fight. I’ve moved on to a different build and won’t be devoting any further time to the current release.

If the wings are swept far enough aft the spoilers will bias out, but the main reason was to keep the wings from moving with little velocity changes. If they were just on the edge, they may bump a few degrees, which shifted the aerodynamic center of lift and cause a pitch and trim change. It wasn’t that big of deal when you were tanking every flight on deployment. You got so good at it that you’d be upset if your probe touched the basket at all, and didn’t hit dead center on the coupling itself. DCS is orders of magnitude more difficult. Same thing when we did formation aerobatics. Bomb mode was used to stop the wings from sweeping for the same reason. Minimizing pitch changes is also why Bomb mode was put in for, well, Bombing. Spoiler breakout does increase roll rates as the devices become active, but it becomes an afterthought. It’s the same thing in the airliners, where spoilers deploy at a few degrees of roll input, depending upon flap configuration on some jets, etc. Not a big deal at all. It’s all modeled in the sim, so you can see for yourself. All of this may explain why the Blue Angels never seriously considered the F14 for a demo plane. They’d have to bolt all of these moving parts into a fixed position to keep the center of lift from moving all over the place while they were trying to fly formation. The thrust line and burner stages would have been a handful. It wasn’t a great formation airplane.

I start with fuel that is a two thousand pounds over target to allow for burn time to settle out, if I can’t get stable, I simply reset or work on something else for a few minutes. Good news is that we’re on the same page. I looked at the TMN vs KIAS and calculated it out for a standard day at 5000 MSL to ensure that we weren’t missing something in a temperature or position error, but it works out to within four knots vs chart. To make it straightforward, I used .5 .6 and .7 Mach on the chart and correlated that with KIAS (careful that the TAS doesn’t get switched on on the info bar). So your corresponding targets look as good as you can ascertain reading the G curves on the data at 4.8, 5.7 and 6.4 from your post above. Good work there, it’s tedious to plot that out. So using the Open Beta release I got a steady state G of 4.7 against 4.8 at .5 TMN (305 KIAS); 5.7-5.8 G at .6 TMN (365 KIAS) vs 5.7, and 6.8 G vs 6.4 at .7 TMN (430 KIAS). As the velocities increase, it becomes more difficult to stabilize since the aircraft wants to accelerate through the target speed, which is exactly what my bud described during air show performances. If you don’t get the G on, the aircraft will accel right through the corner velocity and head towards 459 plus. The F14B is a beast. Things to look for are ensuring a stable G, altitude and airspeed, including ensuring that the wings stay in auto and the maneuver devices in auto. If the bank angle is slightly off, then the aircraft will descend or climb, and you’ll see an increase or decrease in G for a given AOA, exactly as the Ps figures show on the chart. It must be stable, you can’t just snapshot a transitory state while the aircraft is accelerating or decelerating, or climbing or descending. This is very similar to what I found on the F14A, it was slightly underperforming at low speeds and over performing at higher velocities. It’s all going to change very soon, but it was interesting to examine. Based on my objective data, which was obtained independently before I looked at the charted targets, there is no reason not to go fly the hell out of the sim aircraft as it sits today.

Need all of that, with emphasis on weight, maneuver flaps operating, KIAS instead of Mach for target, and a stable turn for at least a full 360 or more. It is not valid to take a transitory snapshot. I hope your technique isn’t what I saw on the video on this thread. To set this up, start twentfive knots slower than your test point, on altitude and at the correct weight and load out, plug in the burners and carefully roll into your bank as you apply G. Use less G initially than predicted, and increase as the ASI approaches the test velocity, increase G and bank for a level turn, using bank angle to stay level, rolling with very small rudder inputs. Freeze the aft stick and use the lift vector to stabilize at the correct bank for sustained level flight. When you are completely stable, then look at G. If you use too little G or descend you will accelerate beyond target speed, and if you have excess G available, you can pull harder. If you don’t, because you are at an airspeed that already sustains 6.5 or so G’s, then you will have to reduce power to decelerate, and start the process over. You are also burning close to 2000 ppm at 5000 MSL, so your gross is going to be changing rapidly. I have missions set up with reduced fuel that puts me at a charted gross weight, starting at the correct altitudes. You guys keep saying the performance is off, but you have not provided the test target points and results that you obtained, on what aircraft, load out or weight, much less the charts themselves. All we have is a video, that’s done at sea level and never stabilized, an altitude for which there are not charts in the performance data publications that I have. I’m going to look at the F14B tonight and see what gives.

You need to link or PM the F14 data that you are referencing.

Speaking generally, far beyond just sims and gamers, there is an inordinate amount of drama about pretty much everything. It’s ridiculous and childish. The sim world is beyond the pale, and it’s a facet of human nature. People love to complain, it makes them feel important, many are just immature kids that haven’t experienced the seasoning effect of adulthood. You see it every time an update is release. Someone will immediately snark about something missing. Some of the IL2 gang are seemingly playing the game from the looney bin, and don’t get me started on the YouTube creators. It’s often loudest by the people who fly the worst, who would be far better served spending time learning to run systems, or practicing basics. There was a guy bitching about single engined performance being all wrong on a light twin (I happened to have gotten my ATP in it) slagging the add on MSFS 2020 aircraft mightily. Well, he didn’t have the failed engine’s prop feathered, he didn’t have the aircraft at zero side slip, and he didn’t have the cowl flap closed. I wonder how many sales he cost the developer? Most of what we’re doing is what I call “Historical Entertainment”. It’s a blast, but it’s largely meaningless, but you can learn relevant lessons about overcoming obstacles. Most don’t, they want someone else to fix their problems and make everything easier. I respect folks who take pride in being good at something that his difficult. They want it to be difficult, they take pride in overcoming challenges. Take Hummingbird’s “So I would've personally prefered for the "old but correctly performing FM...” statement. This isn’t a diss on him, he understandably doesn’t know better, because there is no way for him to know, but the FM has never performed accurately. It’s had flaws from day one, and will continue to have flaws that we will flight like hell to get right. It’s a great example, because he is really saying that he was comfortable with the “old buy correctly performing FM” performance that wasn’t correct. It’s a bit amusing that you are upset about minor things, when there are massive things still present that you don’t notice because they are in parts of the envelope with which you are unfamiliar. I mean really, if you knew, you’d be laughing too. Lastly, we’re all lucky to have Fat Creason working on this. He’s dedicated to getting it right, and has spent countless hours fighting to juggle the myriad of aerodynamic variables that permutate, cascade, and interact. One little change addresses one deficiency, but it causes nine more in a different part of the envelope. Depending upon your attitude, it’s either massively frustrating, or happily fascinating. The only fatal mistake that you can make, is to fail to enjoy a remarkable opportunity to enjoy a very cool opportunity to experience flight. Don’t let negative people drag you into their world.

Count me as one who is continually astonished that all of this is created from nothing... It’s kind of like walking down 5th Avenue in NYC and realizing that everything that you are looking at, the towering buildings, the vehicles, the products for sale in the shops, including Tiffany’s, all came out of the ground. Hell, the F14 came out of the ground, and the minds of a group of geniuses. So why are so many perpetually pissed off about something trivial?

Pretty amazing. It’s basically a labor of love...

I should say that refueling in the sim is more difficult than in RL, once you got proficient there wasn’t much to actually plugging. Some of the night rendezvous got a little sporting... The sim is mostly a control issue caused by differing controls, curves and screen response, which is dependent on each individual’s set up.

Sorry, just thought that you needed a hug. The raison d'etre for moving the wings aft was to put them in a position so they wouldn’t move and cause a pitch bobble while trying to plug into the basket. The secondary reason was to slightly increase the pitch, supposedly to get the tails out of the jet exhaust of something like a KA6, but that really wasn’t an issue. Same idea with the maneuver flaps, if either system was in a realm where they would actuate, then you were changing the trim and the pilot had to counter with a stick input. Are you sure you don’t need a hug? With all of the lunacy going on right now, it’s understandable.

Sometimes I forget that we have former USAF cargo drivers here. Sorry that you feel wounded. I can send you a per diem check and one of my puppy’s cuddle toys if you like.

Bomb mode is easiest to set up and is appropriate behind a 280 knot KC135, but a couple of clicks of manual “AFT” was what most pilots did, just to get the wings off of the “Auto” schedule. Organic tanking was done at 250KIAS, so that technique worked well. You don’t want the wings moving, and getting the nose up slightly was more comfortable. Behind a C130, maybe only one click aft, and you might hold the maneuvers slats in the retracted position depending upon your weight and what speed he was lumbering along at. Never at 68. The KC10 was the easiest platform to take off of. The KC135 was the most challenging.

Can you take a screen shot of the chart you are referencing and post it here? Also, posting the data points that you are referencing will help- I need altitude, weight, configuration and specific indicated airspeeds that you are testing.

Well said. I’m involved as a way to preserve the heritage of the aircraft and those who put so much effort into designing, building maintaining and flying the beast. It’s a way to share and preserve the legacy with everyone. The old girl deserves it. The whole thing was such a mystery to us until we got to finally have a go, but now, everyone can see what it was like. Looking back, there is much I’d like to know about how various aircraft flew and were actually used tactically, but the folks who know the answers are long gone. Even the current owners of old war birds stay well within the middle of the envelopes, and don’t have access to full power, etc. I’m also not the lone SME, many others have contributed far more than I, and the Heatblur gang have been fantastic all along. They are the ones that should get the full credit.

The F5 is a great trainer. Not a bad idea to master it before moving up. I’ve already mentioned the Korean era jets as good basic ACM platforms as well. Of course people approach DCS in different ways. Some are interested in goofing around and that’s fine, but that approach isn’t interesting to me nor is it worth my time. I am most certainly not here for that, and if that is your mindset, you should skip my posts and go have fun doing your thing. Flying instruments in jets is a bit different. Jet’s are flown on IFR flight plans almost universally, and even under VFR rules, they require IFR precision. That’s simply a facet of vector dynamics and higher energy states. A one degree pitch error at the end of a 480 knot vectors results in a smaller vertical velocity than if it is at the end of a 120 knot velocity vector. One aspect to instrument training that you may find interesting Is that Navy jet students did blind takeoffs from day one. The student was under the bag, performing the takeoff using heading and airspeed, hile the instructor in the front seat monitored and gave heading adjustment commands. The reason for that should be obvious, and it paid dividends later. We also did aerobatic maneuvers under the hood. Loop, Half Cuban 8, Immelmann, Split-S, aileron and barrel rolls. The A4 had a great attitude indicator for those maneuvers. Most of the TACAN penetrations included DME arcs, flown using the BDHI, very straightforward. Also, “fix to fix” navigation was accomplished on every instrument flight. We had no Rnav, no GPS, and the INS wasn’t accurate enough, especially when the fix was moving. I used to sneak into the A4 sims at night when I was in Training Command to practice those, until I could do them confidently. I’d fly the instrument approaches that were coming up in the syllabus over and over to learn the nuances. Friday nights were a great time to get a few extra hours of sim time, while everyone else was out partying. Good for them, the Fleet needed S3 pilots too. I’d fly until the sim techs kicked me out. Never regretted putting in the extra time, but I sure wish that Heatblur was around in 1981! Keeping a jet on altitude, heading and airspeed all require attitude instrument flying technique. It’s power, attitude and trim, and you need to know the power (FF) and pitch attitude for the performance that you desire. It’s exactly like the PPL pilots here learned. The good news is that the Tomcat is very stable and easy to fly. The TA-4J was a handful, which made it a great trainer for the fleet aircraft that students would fly later. I could have also have an Active Pause Button a few times in the A4, but in the Tomcat, the RIO and the autopilot was a godsend to take some of the workload off..

This is how adults talk. Your quip is trite, banal kiddie forum behavior.

Level flight pitch attitude is determined by power setting and airspeed. So you aren’t even asking a valid question, which speaks volumes about your understanding of how to fly an airplane. And that’s the core of the issue. Many of you don’t understand basic flying, and believe that the answer to that core problem lies in a gadget. Just below this image is your instrument cluster, which will give you all the information you need to fly plus or minus 10 feet of altitude if you want to put the time in to learn. It is a problem of mindset, not technology. Understand that the display you want was in 60 of over 700 F14’s built for a timespan of three years. The vast majority of F14 pilots managed to fly hundreds of thousands of fleet hours for over three decades without an advanced HUD. You can too. In fact, you can turn off the HUD and VDI and fly around just fine on the peanut gyro. I had to do that numerous times in real life, including on a night alert launch in a down airplane. You do what you have to do. You are getting into a high performance fighter without an instrument rating, and demanding that something be done to make your problems go away. It isn’t surprising. There are nine million YouTube videos from the DCS gang and maybe what, three, all from one guy on how to fly instruments? At the same time, there are thousands of sim pilots, who have never flown an airplane of any kind, who can do exactly that. The first phase of the syllabus in both jet’s flown strike training was instrument flying. In fact, in advanced strike training, the students got their instrument rating in the back seat, having never flown in the front seat, in an extremely sensitive jet that rolled at 720 degrees per second without an autopilot. FAM and solo and every other phase followed the student first obtaining an instrument rating in the back seat. That’s how important instrument skills are in a jet- it’s basic physics. I’m amazed that so many sim pilots do so well as they do. Flying is a perishable skill, you have to put the time in. My sense is few of you really do the grunt work of flying basic turns, climbs and descents at constant speeds. If you want to get max enjoyment out of a flying sim, at some point, you need to learn to fly. That’s the magic of the fidelity of where we are today. The sims are so good, that you actually need to know how to fly a little. I guess it really comes down to whether you really want a realistic sim or not.

@Nealius In a sim, you aren’t subjected to G forces, so it’s easy to look using TrackIR or VR. I have no trouble flying instruments holding plus or minus twenty feet with minimal attention. I am not sure what you mean about pixel fidelity, it’s simply adjusting pitch, looking at the entire world out of the window. Analog altimeters and ASI’s allow a pilot to immediately judge energy and rates by general need position and movement, while a digital readout on a HUD, which also requires a sim pilot to look forward, to read all three digits and cogitate as to what they mean. An astute pilot can see the orientation of a needle in peripheral vision, and know what the energy state is. With altitude on a hud, it is very difficult to ascertain rate of change, even for newer models with trend vectors. What happens over and over, throughout the sim community from airplanes to race cars, is that when something is moderately difficult, the player wants it changed. Never mind that the player has never driven a race car and doesn’t have even a private pilot’s license. Few want to put the time in doing mundane maneuvers. Based on comments, most jump in, flail about, and declare everything “broken”. There is a video here, where a player who varies altitude by 800 feet, and airspeed plus or minus 20 knots, who declares the turn rates ‘broken’. It may well be, but you can’t tell based on that test. How many of you go out and practice your turns at various speeds to ascertain buffet and pitch attitudes? Do you know what the min velocity is in different configurations to complete a loop? The ability to gain weapons separation using a loop in the F14, or a rudder reversal in the F4 is critical to effect an AIM9 shot. Do you know the min speed off of the top of your head? Have you practice it? My point is that your approach should be this is the aircraft and how it behaves, what are it’s strengths and weaknesses, and how do I employ it effectively? Instead, we get endless whining about flaps and HUDS and this missile or that, all so you can be a hero in some meaningless online fight. If that’s all you want to do, then pool your resources, and get someone to develop an F22 module. You’ll be unbeatable...and bored out of your mind.

Those aerodynamic effects are in and should be apparent to you in the approach configuration. Primarily in the form of carrying tanks on directional stability. See if you can tell.

VSL was on a thumb switch in the rear cockpit mounted on the RIO's "Hassle Handle". The pilot called for it, the RIO's usually had a hand on the handling during ACM, so it was easy to actuate the switch. There is an inordinate amount of complaining and calling for things to be changed in a misplaced notion that things will be made easier. If you simply spend some time practicing basic instrument turns, climbs, descents and level offs in various configurations, you'll find that your scan develops just as a typical pilot is trained. This is the way the aircraft was. Thousands of pilots flew it safely, the upgrades were for a paltry number of aircraft for a very short period when it was employed as a bomber. Every Naval Aviator learned to bomb with a fixed mil setting pipper. How in the world is that possible? It was a friggin' blast, and way more interesting than simply putting a death dot on the ground somewhere and pressing a button (as long as no one was shooting at you). Want to learn basic ACM? Get off the online servers for awhile, quit worrying about "winning" meaningless missile exchanges, and go fly 1v1's in the F86 or Mig15. Then try 2v2's. When you understand energy management and how to fly smooth maneuvers and coordinate stick and rudder, then graduate to the 4th gen aircraft. It is apparent that flying poorly modeled FBW modules has created a tranche of simmers who have bad habits, and have misconceptions about how aircraft maneuver. A ton of examples of that from the Youtube heroes who have pretty sites and polished presentations, but don't know what they are doing. The F14 module flies beautifully. Go make friends with it.

Learn to use analog gauges. The HUD symbology takes longer to read tiny numbers and process what they mean, and can only be seen when your head is aligned. You can glance at the ASI and see your energy state while your head is planted against the canopy under G. Digital doesn’t mean better, and staring through a HUD on a combat intercept is a mistake. While weapons information would be welcome, much of what people complain about is superficial and not well thought out by the engineers who don’t understand how a pilot actually interfaces with displays. There is also an artificiality due to a lack of human RIO’s communicating modes and picture. It was easy to know that you were in VSL HI because the RIO told you he had hit the switch, and you could hear and feel the antenna banging in a vertical pattern. VSL is just 1 Bar search turned on its side. It was obvious. A digital HUD is not holding anyone back, your attitude is.

So only ~8% of Tomcats built ever received the new HUD? Typical Navy... What is your difficulty? Flying the aircraft or do you desire different weapons displays?