neofightr

Yeah, I am scratching my head as to how civil engine reliability trumps all. Combat survival is the primary factor, if one engine suffers light damage and causes hydraulic/engine oil leak the odds of getting back is much greater with the other engine then the one damaged engine. This is why the F18's essential systems were redundantly matched up to both engines.

I recommend you study the naval aviation history a little closer and you will see the pattern emerge. Skim the surface and yup, many successful single-engine jet planes. Peel away and you will see why the Navy went with dual-engines after the corsair II ran it's course. Not sure how piston engines reliability applies to jets reliability. No self-respecting WW2 Naval Aviator fighter pilot would chose a twin-engine design unless it was something unique like the Army's "lightning" was. Single-engine ww2 planes offered great performance, reliability and offered a small footprint on the carrier deck. When I talk about reliability I am talking about both non-combat and combat reliability. Some of the naval air designs took a beating and kept going for quite some time with single-engine damage (flight controls weren't relying solely on hydraulic pressure etc). Also a factor was that WW2 a/c were no where near as complex as modern jet design hence the material loss was no where near as impacting as today's craft.

I am aware but not interested in these type of devices. I think it would be more cost-effective to tape a woofer to my chair. When the day comes where affordable hydraulic chairs become the norm that help simulate Gs then I will be interested in this sim-feedback niche market. I know of one serious undertaking that continues to suffer delays which means we are years away.

The F18C had "cutting edge" avionics based on 80s processors and I watched them get upgraded all the time. One of the major reasons of the limited inventory of F22s was because of the foreseen upgrade costs for the avionics which was more of a priority then increasing the inventory.

Yea this was the standard across the fleet. I also remember the APU turning off automatically 20 seconds or so after the first engine was online. All I did was verify it was off before initiating the crossbleed start. I don't remember a 80 percent minimum requirement.

Yes. I can't remember if you can designate an ip but I think it assumes the previous wp to the target wpt is the ip.

You are correct. By definition bluewater operations indicates there are no alternate airfields for the carrier aircraft so during an engine emergency, any single engine aircraft has one decision to make, eject if the engine does not have enough power due to damage etc. Whereas two-engine aircraft have options and a decent chance of bringing the plane back onboard the ship depending on engine damage. These scenarios do not apply to air forces because there is always an alternate airfield in friendly territory so if the engine can be handled correctly buying time there is a chance to land at a close by airfield.

Cost had everything to do with the single-engine F35 because the original plans set back in the 90s were to have dual-engine variants for the marines and navy and a single engine for the AF. Since the AF variant came online first and was way over budget the other services had no choice but to settle on a compromise and use the established AF variant as their baseline for the program to continue. Bottome line: cost is what forced the single-engine design. The costs of the F22 was way more than just the extra engine. It had to do with the cutting edge performance requirements. The F22 is still the best out there not only because of the powerful engines but everything else it has going for it (cutting edge avionics, airframe design etc). There is no way the the given F22 design could have been made with one engine. Performance would have tanked.

Evidently, you weren't paying attention to the news during the early 2000s. The vipers were falling out of the sky due to a mysterious engine failure rate. I lived near there at the time so I was watching it unfold. Pilots had no choice but to eject. I think it had something to do with the oil system. In the one eng failure I witnessed with the hornet, the pilot had no issues bringing her back on the other engine. Needless to say millions saved. I have discussed the two-engine philosophy at leangth in other threads. The only reason Navy has a single-engine jet as the future mainline FA for service is due to money. No self-respecting naval aviator would pick a single-engine over a two-engine design. Even the marines wanted to go away from it due to lessons learned with the harrier. Bottom line: money

The Navy certainly got it's money's worth with the C. It was a very reliable plane when I flew her. It was rare to hear of a mech failure with the plane even though I experienced one myself. I would imagine it is easier to get more accurate data now that the C is no longer a main-line fighter. Creating an accurate rhino-sim with available public data would be hard.

odd, I don't remember doing this for startups. I manually (I think it was auto) turned off the apu after the first engine start and let the 1st engine startup the second one with the crossfeed procedures. This was to reduce wear on the apu. It was standard practice in my day not sure if they changed this after my flying days.

It doesn't work that way. It boils down to the last two waypoints. The initial point and the target wpt. By inputing said params you are allowing the computer to calculate the exact push time from your ip. You will see the computer tell you the exact time you should leave the ip to get to the target at the TOT with the desired ground speed.

Yeah but just remember they have limits with the engine. Who knows how much extra coding would be required to simulate a bustling flightdeck. Who knows maybe it will eventually be an add-on pack for the standalone carrier module. Time will tell. My priority whishlist for them is to produce a really detailed carrier module that focuses on the unique aero physics of landing on the ship along with the grading system used by pilots. Having a bustling flight deck with realistic landing and t/o ops would definitely be the icing on the cake.

I think it would add immensely to replayability. Being able to setup a mission anywhere in the world outside of extremes like the poles would be grand. The ED devs could contract the work out as to not affect their in-house module developments. Civilian flight dev groups have done it using computer generated techniques with terrific detail so it is quite doable. I am all for it.

My experience with CAS was not extensive (marine pilots forte not navy) but my understanding was you needed to give the computer an idea of what speed you wanted to maintain enroute to the target else the computers could have you flying at 200 kts over the target which would not be good for all kinds of reasons. And flying 200 kts IAS could be 270 or 150 kts GS depending on the winds in the target area. Remember you had weapon envelopes to consider for CAS.

In the hundreds of startups I did in the hornet I never noticed a major change of duration during startups. Sure there could have been a couple seconds variance between aircraft but I assume it was due to the slight variances of the engine builds since I flew lot 10 to lot 20s. The variances could also be due to how the engines were tuned by the groundcrew. I seriously doubt the air properties would change anything drastically during startup to be noticeable.

I was leery of touching the throttles during startup because I didn't want to increase the chance of an engine fire. Interesting, I never heard of this throttle trick to shorten the startup noise. I also assumed that during this phase of the startup the annoying sound was influenced by the sudden change of air temps during ignition. In any case the sound was very unflattering of the jet. ace I have question for you, assuming you are/were a pilot and not aircrew: Do you remember when the apu shuts off after first engine startup? My memory is fading, so far the sim videos shows the apu staying on during both engine starts and I don't remember this.

Here's some surprising trivia for you folks paying attention. In my time with the Hornet, I never was in the cockpit during any towing procedures. All towing happens with the aircraft shutdown and no pilot (deck crew was is in the c/p sometimes). This was to minimize any risks when towing occurred. The deck crew were trained how to work with a towed aircraft and not the pilots. It is true that planes were towed during flight ops, I remember a few times seeing planes right next to me being towed around but they were planes unmanned and shutdown. I remember this one time at dusk, I had just started the engines and was looking down when all of a sudden I had this feeling (out of the corner of my eye) that my plane was sliding back and was about to fall off the edge, when in truth it was the plane next to me being pulled forward. I can't tell you how much a jolt that was to my nerves because I was in no position to eject if my plane fell over and would be in dire straights had that happen. So basically once a pilot is in his plane, he is expected to maneuver to the cat position without any backing up. The flight deck management and crew did a terrific job of making sure the planes were in the right position to minimize any traffic jams or awkward positions to require backing up. Plus the hornet did a great job of turning around with little forward movement required. Could a towing occurred with the pilot in the jet?, sure but it was rare. I don't remember having crew do a quick pushback for my plane but I am sure it happened especially when the flight deck's non-skid treatment wore off during deployment making the planes much trickier to drive around the deck.

From what I remember, audibly you can hear the tires (similar to a car) rumble on the runway and hear when you cross the segments of the concrete but just as importantly you can feel the vibration of the tires as they rumble on the runway at high speeds. The vibration obviously can't be simmed but I have confidence ED will capture the sounds really well based on the other released modules I have played with. I think the F5 module impressed me most with what I see and hear during t/o and landings.

My knowledge is dated by 20 years but for safety reasons there are always lights on the flight deck but they are low intensity for many obvious reasons. NVGs don't work for landings because you lose your depth perception which is important for landing. Plus they would wash out with the deck lights. For those that wonder if a carrier would be more stealthy with lights out, not really because radar and sonar detection would expose a carrier long before flight deck lights would.

Those configurations were after my time. I never had to deal with that type of asymmetric load (assuming the weapons were launched). The FCS should have no problem adjusting for that aero load but I suspect landings were done at half-flaps to keep more airflow over the airframe for better controlability. Typically the models that go out to other non-navy entities have custom wiring done with agreements established before delivery.

I am sure in due time they will address this shortcoming. Now that they finally have this big update out of the way they can finally address these minor details soon enough. We need to remind ourselves this is a combat simulator and not a civ sim like xplane etc. I have all the flight products out there and it's interesting to see where each sim has their strong points and their weak points. For example I love how xplane implemented rotating beacons for the plane anticollision lights. Very realistic but their flight models can't hold a candle to DCS. Not to mention weapon modelling etc. You gotta take the good with the bad.

With regards to the F15, I won't talk about missile tactics because that is real sensitive. I know I posted this point earlier in this thread but what makes the F18 standout against it's peers is it's slow flight characteristics. In my opinion it has the best high alpha maneuverability making it the best dogfighter of all of them in the slow speed regime. In a slow speed dogfight with equal pilot skills the hornet will gain the advantage fairly quickly over the 15 or 16. Those planes were originally designed as interceptors so their strength is top speed and acceleration not turn-rates in a slow dog fight. The 18 is the opposite, suffers in top speed performance but excels in turn rate at slow speeds. Dogfight tactics is universal when it come to these types of jets and I mentioned it in the previous post.

My apologies looks like I sent you down a different rabbit hole. The discussion is in this thread starting around page 9 For your convenience I will paste the main posts: Quote: Originally Posted by RaceFuel85 View Post Question for you..if it's not already been addressed.. What was your take on the F-14A vs the B/D in relation to BFM/ACM against them in the Hornet? I believe the F-14A's optimum corner velocity was around 350 knots..which isn't that far off from the Hornet. Of course the Alpha cat couldn't regain energy as well since the TF30's were touchy to aggressive throttle movement and, as you said, slower to spool up. I won't discuss specific numbers just generalizations. I didn't have a lot of flying against the F14. Typically squadrons didn't do much cross bfm. So the few times I did I believe it was against the B. My understanding with the conversations I had with the crews was the A with the original engines were severely underpowered. This was rectified with the engine upgrades. Back in my day there were not many D squadrons around. I remember the F14 holding its own against me in the few engagements I had, we basically remained at a stalemate through most of the turning eventually someone flinched and the other got the upper hand. But basically that was attributed to pilot skill and not the aircraft. In basic terms to win a dogfight you need be able to maintain a threat with the nose at all times in other words denying your opponent any advantage in angles. If both players are consistently doing this then the turn circle turns into a scissor fight as the pilots jockey to get behind the other. When different aircraft have similar performance numbers then it will always boil down to which pilot is better at maintaining optimum speed and AOA numbers through the entire engagement because by doing so you are maximizing what the plane can do and eventually you will control the fight and get the edge. So my point is not to get hung up on the numbers between a/c but focus on the numbers of your aircraft as to always strive to maintain them. Because really it's a toss-up between all the last gen fighters when you factor in pilot skill and error.

Yes I did (all 3) and I talked about it in another convoluted thread. Lots of stuff talked about in this thread some ugly and some good. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=191547