neofightr

When it comes to gas, the charlie is a thirsty dog. The centerline tank was practically glued to the C. During my combat missions in Iraq it was dual wing tanks as the standard with mid-flight refueling to boot. All the charlie pilots were expert mid-air refuelers thanks to all the practice. You live and died by it. Even back at the boat, the trusty S3 was there to tank if needed. I never thought I would need to but one night it happened. The ship waved me off from landing due to something going wrong with the wires from the previous trap. It was pitch black and I was at bingo and it was blue water ops, so naturally I was told to tank overhead. Thankfully I had good skills when it came to tanking and had no problem with the viking. I remember later that night talking to the S3 pilot and telling him how grateful I was that he was a smooth stick because I was running on vapors by the time I finally plugged in. The charlie had the shortest legs of all the modern gen planes and it could be painful sometimes.

I have been perusing some of the threads here with regards to hopes and desires for the f18 performance model. Having flown a decent amount with the f-86, f5 and mig-15 products, I am convinced that DCS and it's partner will nail it with the hornet performance model. Their attention to detail so far has been impeccable in my eyes. Those that think the FA18C is some uber fast jet are in for a shock. Since the Hornet was designed for the dual role of Fighter/Attack the designers never planned to have it be an interceptor, so the aerodynamics of the jet are not conducive to fast supersonic flight. The F15 and F16 are examples of aircraft made for speed and of course the F14 interceptor with those massive engines was just made for the speed of heat. But throw some bombs on those birds and watch the speeds plummet. In fact once a C Hornet is fully configured with a bomb payload, it's really dirty and struggles to go supersonic at wings level. Sure a slick hornet is pretty fast but not realistic for combat. The one thing the hornet does well is maneuver at slow speed. It will do circles around the F16 and the F15 just runs away when the fight is in close and slow, it knows when it's outmatched :). One just needs to study the publicly available turn performance numbers for all these birds to figure that out. The tomcat could hold it's own with the Hornet in a slow and close fight thanks to that massive wing spread but my biased opinion based on real-life encounters says all things being equal (pilot skill wise) the hornet had the edge thanks to being lighter and more nimble. By the way I have BFMd against the F16,15 and 14 so I speak from experience. Those that want a realistic representation at how the FA18C performs in a flight sim should look for the FA-18D_FSXBA2015 15.6 Training simobject assuming you have FSX or P3d. I have been using it in p3d and I am amazed at how realistic it performs. The drag is about right and the speed is definitely in the ball park. To recap, don't expect to beating airspeed races against the F15 when the Hornet comes out but do expect to be amazed at how great a dogfighter it is.:joystick: Oh and don't think you can slap on 8 missiles on the killer bee and expect to be running down anything supersonic. Like I said, loaded down it's a dirty bird. Most jets are in real life. -Retired F18C pilot (lots 10-20) back in it's heyday before the E/F came on the scene.