Spurts

climb speed starts at 130-135? man, to think I was leaving some climb on the table by climbing at 150-155

Both really fun. The Jug has had more time to be refined, but IMO you can't beat carrier landings. I also like the cockpit layout of the Corsair, which is odd because it looks like a mess. Had no problem getting the F4U up to 40,000ft in my second flight.

The IR Sensor is still going to be ITAR controlled

352KTAS is 405mph.

Yeah, that's why I was shocked to see 620mph with no damage. I'm fine with it still being a WIP issue.

Last night I did an altitude test and took the plane to 40,000ft. From there I wanted to see the behavior in a high speed dive. Leaving prop set for max RPM and throttling engine to max MP, I put the plane in a 50-70 degree dive. I rapidly reached 540KTAS (per tacview) and the prop never oversped, the MP never redlined, and it held ~540KTAS from 24,000ft to 7,000ft when I pulled out of the dive. Every other warbird I've flown would have killed the engine and lost the prop to try a full power and max rpm dive like that. Is there some feature of the engine that lets it safely be put into dives like that or is the overspeed mechanic not implemented yet?

Thank you for all your hard work on this. Nailed my first carrier landing today, and survived re-launching as well. Got her up to 39,000+ft (oil temp was redlining even with open cooler at 300 knots true 155 indicated).

I got her up to 1.93 with 8 AAMs and 3 empty pylons

there are a LOT of fully decommed Tomcats out there

Iranian F-14s destroyed

it used to be higher. You would get a series of systems failures before the wings came off. 20G ripping the engines from the mounts and shattering the INS but the wings remained.

Yeah, I used to 1v4 a pair of Flankers and Fulcrums in the Tomcat in gun fights.

I get around this by going full forward trim on entering BFM. Stops me from getting that last bit of up elevator and means all I have to do is relax pressure to get the "nose down" to speed up.

Looking over several variants of the A3D on Avialogs (https://www.avialogs.com/aircraft-d/douglas/itemlist/category/306-a-3skywarrior?start=12) shows that even as the weight increased with later variants the Max T.O. Cat weight doesn't exceed 73,000. Not that I am finding anyway. I never mind an honesty check if I ended up missing something. You are right about the F-111B though, showing a near 78,000lb Max TO Cat weight. I never consider it since it never went to service.

The AoA indexer goes to 28, and 28 may correlate to 22 degrees under certain circumstances, bit that is not the AoA limit of the F-14. "F-14A High angle of Attack Characteristics" paper from August 1976 P.582 Figure 12 shows that max deflection of the horizontal tail results in pitch up moment just past 40 degrees, and P583 states "An unrestricted alpha capability does more than allow the pilot to generate superior levels of instantaneous g. Pilots have found that by flying above alpha=30 deg they effectively convert the aircraft into a flying speed brake.... Also, when flying in the high alpha region, the pilot finds it extremely easy to command the attitude changes required to point the aircraft at the target as he falls in behind his adversary." I have several times in DCS reached 40 degrees AoA in hard pulls. As to the 9+G stories, the book "Tomcat: Bye, bye, baby" has numerous accounts and the AIMVAL/ACEVAL reports show plots of how often the planes in that test exceeded 6, 7, 8, 9G And the 12G pulls weren't test pilots, but operation pilots during both peacetime training scenarios and wartime scenarios. The F-14 IS OVERBUILT as you mentioned it would be. There is a reason it is so much heavier than everything else. It is the heaviest CATOBAR aircraft ever.