vanir

Oh that makes much more sense, cheers.

You reminded me of a Youtube of an Eagle clocking 12G that was doing the traps on aviation forums a little while back. And 7.5G is the limit I read over at the excellent F-16 website too, though my Luftwaffe reference iirc was just making a casual statement like, "8G is a more realistic limit than 9G, but MAPO claimed the MiG was an 11-12G airframe and 9G was its operational limit." Pretty sure the quote said something like that but you're right, I've read the 7.5G limitation as a more technical appraisal, I believe it went along the lines of 8-9G up to 0.82 Mach and 7.5G at higher speed, but the F-16 can do 9G safely at any speed for years without trouble, proved by experience and even that is more of a pilot limit than an airframe one. If I remember a conversation with a Romanian air force fitter I had once correctly, the 9-13 centreline tank is speed limited but not G-limited, where Viper tanks are G-limited. The 9-13 tank and German modification of the 9-12 tank can also fire its gun with it on but the 9-12 standard tank can't, I can't remember if the 9-12 tank was G-limited or not but I do have Luftwaffe pilot statement mentioning speed limitation and saying nothing about a G-limitation. So that's a little difference.

Being in Australia I used a debit mastercard and bought the dvd version online, that's a good way to get your hands on a copy, local stores tend to do a mark up anyway and this way you buy direct plus postage.

Boberro said the Su is reworked in FC2. The Su-33 certainly feels a lot more "right" to me in handling and performance characteristics but I haven't flown the MiG in FC2 and I'm not really any authority to know what's accurate one way or another. I did always think the MiG felt a bit weird in 1.02 (the only version I had before FC2). At low power settings those engines are basically F404 class but they have truly monstrous afterburners and overheat/wearing problems. It's this "dirt and grit" that's really hard to get from flight sims that just hand listed performance for free and might not recognise that your airframe joins and engine bolts might be shaking apart whilst trying to achieve it IRL, and even in IRL whilst clean and prepared benchmarks do look good on paper they're not always very achievable in general service. IIRC the German detuning kit involved a new hot section using the very best high temperature alloys engineering available and was essentially designed so that the Luftwaffe wouldn't have to replace engines every 2-3yrs, since it couldn't guarantee them from RF at a reasonable price or you know, at all. As it turns out the RF did wind up offering a similar "low maintenance kit" for existing export customers, I read it in an advertisement. In the end you know what happened despite the lifetime extension project? The airframes at the base of the fins on the German MiGs cracked anyway. It seems they're not really good for sustaining 9G sorties for an extended period, though have no problem achieving figures like 11-12G in an isolated emergency. Luftwaffe says 8G is a more realistic service limit but they had been operating under overly generous MAPO guidelines, something like that.

In the MiG-29 at least anyway, isn't there a bar that extends and literally pushes the stick forward in excessive pitch situations? It can be disconnected by the pilot for high AoA emergency manoeuvres, but normally it functions as part of the automatic control system (I think it engages at something like 26o pitch up, where western FBW correct at more like 22o and can't be disconnected). Also the MiG does have angled thrust a bit like a Phantom. From what I understand supersonic flight moves the centre of gravity. Not much of an issue in a dartlike design that has variable geo wings like the Flogger, but it would cause significant nose down in 4th gen fighters mostly built for transonic/subsonic performance, which would have to be dealt with in trim, limiting their high mach performance. I don't know what the supersonic handling of the MiG is like but its subsonic/transonic handling is famously neutral. The Flanker has a downward angle for the cockpit such that level flight is at 3o AoA but this isn't for supersonic trim, it's just because the design was centred around short field performance (you can operate Flankers off airfields that could never support an Eagle), the nose down attitude was entirely for pilot view during landing I believe. Still because of this it is fairly possible the Flanker's thrust line is slightly misaligned on purpose, since neutral level flight is 3o pitch up and putting it at 0 AoA makes you dive. My guess, not without some reference, is a very neutral supersonic attitude though, where most other fighters have to trim some pitch up (handled by automatic flight systems iirc but it would cause some increase in drag). This is probably where the Flanker is getting its pretty good high Mach performance from considering it's a big, weighty aircraft and engine thrust isn't quite as spectacular as their fuel efficiency. So yeah I'm guessing you get a little pitch up when you hit burners on a Flanker, but the control system compensates immediately with trim and it only happens at slow subsonic. IIRC from German pilots, the MiG tends to go right for some reason. note, I should add I am by no means any kind of expert and am just rambling about what I've read/heard/assumed from various sources. I could be way off or just plain wrong.

One of the first recipients of the Hero of the Soviet Union award simply rammed his aircraft into an enemy bomber near Leningrad and killed himself, although iirc he shot down two escorts first. It was a pretty desperate war that I don't think could be understated. Mind you the Ukraine had it a little bit easier and were given plenty of warning of the attack. Your grandfather probably would've been assigned there. Heeresgruppe Süd didn't move from their rallying point until two weeks after the northern groups had been pressing into Soviet territory, so there was time to hastily move reinforcements to support Kiev. Some of the big name Soviet aces of the later war were actually in operations in the south, maybe why they survived. But training was poor, it was actually people like Pokryshin who introduced vertical manoeuvring as practised by the Luftwaffe, Soviet pilots were previously trained to think very two-dimensionally. But even so Stavka would only allow Pokryshin to impart his experience when they thought he was being very patriotic, at one time they thought he was a bad political influence to young pilots so they stopped his training efforts.

Just an off topic aside, I'd like to extend a personal thanks to GGTharos for such an active participation in the forums here, both for the chat and helping us newbies get a better handle on playing Lock On both for success and immersion, alongside the extra info which is just really interesting to discuss. Cheers mate.

Probably right, I'm not read up on Valkyrie development, except that it essentially provided the al honeycomb industrial technology put to such good use for later fighters for the US. If it provided nothing else of value, the Valkyrie did quite a lot.

Are we talking about the same encounter Tharos? 26Feb99. Ethiopian Cpt Aster Tolossa was initially escorting a Fishbed strike force in her Flanker SK and departed to intercept a radar contact, which turned out to be an Eritrean Fulcrum UB. The two had some manoeuvring and the Fulcrum wound up on the Flanker's six. At this point she became prepared to shoot it down and contacted the pilot by radio directly, discovering it was her old instructor. She warned him she was in a position to destroy his aircraft, ordered him to land at Debre Zeit and he refused. A further aerial contest ensued. She fired two missiles (listed as "probably R73" by the editor) but he evaded both. She actually shot him down with 30mm fire. The story is published in "Fighter" by Jim Winchester ISBN 1-40543-842-8 © 2004 Do you have a link with the account? This is admitedly a second hand account and a more direct source could certainly differ greatly.

What you say Moa can be painfully illustrated with prop engine combats on the early Eastern Front in 1941. When Heeresgruppe Mitte moved so deeply into Soviet territories so quickly it captured several new MiG fighters on airfields and combat evaluated them. They were among the aircraft types being downed by the dozen. So it came as somewhat of a shock the evaluation of its combat performance revealed what was at the time the fastest combat aircraft in the world, with a high altitude performance so superior the Luftwaffe released an advisory to avoid combat with the MiG above 6000 metres. The combats so far against the MiG were simply well outside its element. They were flown by inexperienced pilots with poor training and poorer organisational infrastructure, virtually no communications (most weren't even fitted with radios), often surprised, caught at low speed and altitude and outnumbered with local air superiority. The combat record of the MiG actually improved 1-2yrs later when it was outdated by newer models on all sides, several Soviet aces made their careers in the MiG in '42-43 then went to airacobras or Lavochkins (airacobras were special not because of performance but because of excellent pilot equipment such as good radios and reliable cockpit heating/air). You know and that's another point. Other things like good pilot equipment made an aircraft a better combat fighter than sometimes performance on paper. A lot of Soviet aces I noticed when I traced histories of their piloted aircraft went from airacobras to much higher performing Lavochkins in the guards regiments, but then requested back their airacobras because they had much better equipment still. I guess when it comes down to it individual pilots make judgement calls between performance advantages because of technical capabilities and because of real world considerations like equipment, sometimes these can make the difference instead.

It doesn't bely the general truth in your statement but having looked over Jane's reporting of the Mikoyan design requirements of the Foxbat it was never intended to shoot down Valkyries which I don't think were in development in 1958 when it was muted. It was all about the (then) A-11 (with a coat of radar absorbant paint the A-12), which rather intentionally sounded like a Mach 3 cruise missile carrier to the Russians by designation. The way I read it was the SR-71 was originally R/S-71 and never meant "strategic reconniassance" but was initially designed to Johnson's personal requirement as a reconnaissance/(nuclear) strike aircraft, the strike capability was never accepted by the air force, so he reversed the designation to SR from R/S on a whim and later people just started saying it meant strategic reconnaissance. Johnson says it always meant it was a dual capability reconnaissance-bomber. The only Blackbird designed solely for reconnaissance from the start was given an attack aircraft designation for the project. Understandably this would disconcert the Russians. It was also intended from the beginning to become the basis for some armed combat variants, the YF-12 already in development construction by 1964 and that had to have been started before 1963 because of Phoenix. Mikoyan design requirements from 1958-64 development phase for the Foxbat as stated by Janes were "to protect soviet territories from high flying cruise missiles and A-11"

Don't know if it's of any relevance but I've some of the communications log (don't know what the right terminology is), of that Eritrean/Ethiopian Fulcrum versus Flanker battle. The Fulcrum was instructed to land and manoeuvred to the Flanker's six o'clock. The Flanker pilot then informed the Fulcrum that she was now in a position to shoot his aircraft down and repeated the instruction to land, which would seem odd since you'd think an aircraft behind you would put you at the disadvantage. The Fulcrum refused, the Flanker won the following aerial contest and took it down with a guns kill. That just seemed like such abject superiority to me. The Fulcrum pilot had also been one of the instructors at the flight school the Flanker pilot had attended too, so they knew each other but also I think it suggests there was a definite case of aircraft superiority going on rather than pilot experience/inexperience. What is it exactly the Flanker has over the Fulcrum for such casual air superiority?

I've got a much better handle on how to use the R27T/ET now (what kind of situations to save it for and why to even carry it), thanks guys. The thing I didn't even think about for things like the R40TD is that high mach high alt targets (like the blackbird, although not modelled), will also be giving off a lot of heat in cold air due to friction.

All makes very good sense. Thanks guys :)

I love that kind of mission building no matter the sim. The immersion is awesome. I used to make some of the most gigantic Pacific Fighters missions, flying hands on in Wildcats for literally hours real time, hitting some target for a few minutes and flying escort cover, then all the long long long way back to the carrier, just trying to find the damn thing, using full "sim difficulty settings" so that you had to actually use the guages for navigation and flight control, none of these external/map views. Fuel management, engine/cruise management, constant trimming and handling combat damage, altitudes and so on. It really took one into world war two, just a hint of what that experience might've been like for combat pilots. That was an amazing afternoon. When I finally landed, no kidding my hands started shaking. Heavy landing too, but I made it in one piece. And you know there's nothing like the emotions of being in the air for over an hour real time in a large formation and being shot down in the very first merge with the enemy just like a bad roll of the dice. It's like the whole time you've been looking forward to giving some and suddenly, all wasted. Grrr. The only thing missing was simming the search/rescue operation and copping all the flak and bad jokes back at the carrier :)

I liked watching some of Israel's early combats using the F-15 on the dogfights series. That generation of missiles were still fairly unreliable and at that stage Israeli pilots still respected gun kills more than missile kills anyway. So basically you had F-15 pilots running around doing classical dogfights going for gun kills, often up against MiG-21s. Shows the classical guns dogfight scenario with something like an F-15 isn't unheard of. Certainly it happened a lot in the Vietnam era too although Phantoms often were stuck without guns. Early sidewinders lost track above 3G so you had very extended dogfights with MiG-19s waiting until you could actually get a tracking shot or somebody made a really dumb mistake.

Thanks for clearing that up for me Alfa :) It is a bit confusing why to have IR seekers on R40 and R27 missiles if they have to have seeker lock before firing. Range would be reduced such that an R24T or R73 would do just fine. And particularly in the case of the R27 it is stated that the missile is common manufacture and only the seeker head is interchangable IR or SARH so that the inertial guidence datalink should still be encased for the IR versions. It makes me wonder, are you sure the R27T/ET and R40T/TD missiles can't be fired before seeker lock using the inertial guidence datalink and attain seeker lock much like an AMRAAM does, only with IR instead of ARH. It's the only way I can imagine they achieve their advertised ranges for IR versions under any circumstances at all, otherwise you're looking at what, 20km max no matter what kind of missile the seeker is on, so what's the point fitting IR to larger missiles?

what amazes me is that early radar operators simply looked at a wavelength signal on a small screen and told you what you were looking at, how far away it was, etc. For example air intercept radar operators on British WW2 bombers. They have been described as "extremely talented individuals, chosen for instinctive ability to read signals and make any sense of them"

SgtPappy I was just going to mention I'm a bit like you having come from WW2 sims and I'm far more experienced using a heavily modded version of IL2 than I am with FC2. I noticed you mentioned in an earlier post that energy manoeuvres weren't used in WW2 fighting and this thread was started basically wondering how to transfer the simple boom and zoom or rake and extend tactics used by, for example P-38 pilots. You were wondering about use of superior speed in a similar fashion for example in F-15C versus Su-27S in WVR (I prefer the term CWC to distinguish from BVR but ad hoc WVR has become popular apparently). Okay so I'm by no means any expert and hope I have all this right and don't sound like an idiot. Firstly I wanted to say that you already have great energy management skills if you've been flying WW2 combat sims. Those old warbirds are literally all about energy management, the most impressive gut wrenching monster of a WW2 plane is a total slug every time you point the nose up, not one can go astronaut and actually accelerate, something like a Tempest V or a Griffon Spit just manages to slow down a little bit less on a fast climb than the next plane. Sustaining a climb in any of them is a slow march up a long, gentle hill and you might as well make a cup of tea while you're waiting or have a little nap. It's just that you get accustomed to that's how you fly them all the time normally that you don't realise that just flying them around in combat at all is all about energy management. Speed is life. Altitude is speed. Always climb high, always keep your energy up, lose it in a fight and you don't get it back again and that's when a Griffon Spit gets shot down by a Hayabusa that's suddenly all over him like nobody's business. All those two thousand horsepowers don't mean anything unless you've got the inertia up to where they make a difference, otherwise it's all torque and manoeuvre and much lesser beasts compete very well. So these improved speed characteristic advantages you're talking about are really a combination of better performance and good energy management. You might be surprised just how accomplished you'll be fairly quickly jumping over to FC2 simming I'd say, you might not realise some of the skills you'd have to have already learned. The first giganto difference I noticed going from the virtual cockpit of WW2 birds to LOMAC jets is the climb, from right off the runway you can go nose up and accelerate at a good speed or climb like a rocket whilst casually reaching cruise speed and great height. The latent energy and excess thrust in jet fighters is superb, it's a whole different ballgame. Then I made a huge mistake. What you do in WW2 birds is go for altitude in combat every chance you get, but in jet fighters with missiles weapons and radar sets the whole thing is backwards. Jet weapons systems get beautiful locks in lookup mode and have greatly reduced performance in lookdown or against clutter. Given that isn't so extensively modelled in sims from what I understand, nevertheless the first point is technologically speaking altitude is death in modern combat where it used to mean life. The last thing you do at convergence is climb for energy and look for targets like you might in WW2. You'll cop a missile that way as if you held up a great big neon sign saying "shoot me" and you're always better off approaching a little lower altitude than opponents for good weapons locks where this would get you killed in a WW2 merge. Mostly the energy management aspect in jet fighters is coming from the fact they're all so high performing, with tremendous climb, acceleration and speed characteristics compared to ancient birds, that the margins between them come down to very specific corner speeds and performance altitudes, that relatively minor advantages in circumstance translates to very exaggerated returns where an F-15C goes from being in front of you to suddenly on your six in the blink of an eye. I'd say really energy management is a lot more sweeping with WW2 aircraft and much more specific and sudden with modern jets, everything is faster, a few seconds mean kilometres rather than hundreds of metres and a good zoom climb doesn't get you 15,000ft it takes you 18 miles vertical. Energy is on tap so energy management is more intellectual I think than with WW2 birds where it's more instinctive. Some of the same rules still apply but I think the whole energy equation starts off very differently with jets and then there is electronic weapons systems to consider, which like nice bold targets against a clear sky background very much. That was all I wanted to mention, which like I said might be of no value, and others like GGTharos are giving you excellent advice on how to actually go about and approach jet combat itself. I just wanted to say what I noticed about energy difference jumping from WW2 virtual-cockpit to a jet fighter sim.

I've just been reading up at a Ru warfare database some of the adv tech details of missile development and came across some interesting points I wanted to get a handle on how might be used/expressed in FC2. I've never really been very clear on the differences between the vast array of Russian AAMs and it's pretty cool getting a good description of real world manufacturer claims and technical differences. linky here: http://warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=242&linkid=1655&linkname=AA-missiles It seems the R27 is designed to be fired before the missile seeker locks on to the target, up to 50-60% of the flight path maybe inertially guided with a single shot kill probability of 0.6-0.8 I assume this is represented by the override launch authorisation function in LOMAC. Is this function reflective of the missile being specifically designed to do this in FC2 or is it more of a "you can do it but don't expect to hit anything" kind of feature? The marked difference with the R24 is that those missiles are designed to be locked on by the parent aircraft before release. If you overrode launch authorisation for them you certainly wouldn't expect to hit anything. The IR seeker on these were a bit ahead of other contemporaries though, all aspect and not prone to distractions once locked. The R40 series is similar to the R27 in that being designed to be launched searching for a target, under inertial guidence, up to 60km head on for the D versions. Its big differences are flight speed in the Mach 5 class and special construction materials and details, they're pretty trick and work well against ground clutter or at "edge of space" altitudes equally, but are pretty easy to shake by manoeuvring transonic or subsonic targets. (note, using the EfA mod I took a speed run in a Foxbat-B at altitude and saw clearly making significant G at 2.5M+ just isn't something you do). Unless their game is modded Players don't really use these missiles though, but I think the EfA mod is reasonably popular so it's still worth talking about...though I can't say how simplified the flight models of AI aircraft and their weapons systems are and if this is the modelling Players will be using with mods like EfA. The significant thing about the R60M aside from short range and small warhead is of course being rear aspect and probably fairly prone to alternate heat sources or IR jamming. The R73 has already been discussed enough there's nothing new to be said except the distinction of being designed to lock before launch with other Russian IR AAMs other than the R23/24 aren't always meant to do. So where the IR seeker and databus for say the R27T is probably a linear development of R13-1M1 with an emphasis on modular heads (R27 missiles have interchangeable seekers), the development paths from R13 split for R40TD and R24T and the latter starting off all aspect and a good seeker wound up further evolved to the R73. RVV-AE (R77) has a claimed max range of 100km (max engagement alt 30km), although it is designed for up to 80% of the flight to be under inertial guidence, so in this sense works much like the R33E. If you actually want to lock a target first and guide by SARH until a terminal phase range would be reduced by parent aircraft radar tracking range, and actual frontal aspect active seeker range is similar to AMRAAM proportions. It's just presumably the R77 has tremendous power to weight and streamlining for a very good reach ballistically speaking. So how detailed are the various Russian missile types for their functionality in FC2?

I don't know, I was simply reading an engineer's report on the old smerch on the web describing it's jam proof capabilities being provided by its signal being a powerful emission of multiple frequencies. Piggy back was the term he used. Naturally I figured a linear progression with Russian radar development. You can trace the Fulcrum radar right back to the Flogger for example.

A Flanker-D DCS follow on from the A-10 would be spectacular.

Actually this tech talk brings up an interesting point, looking at it with very little hands on physics experience but just as a pragmatist. I've occasionally wondered at russian-english translation with lock on. Is it possible PRF describes signal wavelength with poor transliteration? Just thinking logically, and obviously I could be way off, first time I've thought of it and I just woke up. But if you had an approaching target you could afford to pulse less frequently to paint it. If it was receding you would have to pulse more frequently to paint it. On the other hand with the signal itself, irrespective of approaching/receding targets over a shorter distance you'll get away with slower frequencies with beam coherence and over longer ones you'll want faster frequencies so there's still a beam reflection to pick up. So high PRF as described seems counter-intuitive, unless it was a poor transliteration for signal frequency and not pulse frequency. It's just that the ability of Russian radars to piggy back multiple signal frequencies is published (listed as for the purposes of increasing ECCM). Anything to it or am I confused?

Yup, that was it. Very cool looking, adds some real life to a battlegroup. Have a new question though, what is the "INU Fix Point" and how do I use it? Is it to do with missile mid-course guidence?

Oh cool thanks, I'll try it out.