Bozon

The F-16 at the time (early 80s) had a very powerful lobby that made sure the US government eliminated any competition to it. That included the F-20 and Israeli Lavi.

How did the Houthi drones reach Denmark?

In DCS the “G meter” should be sound and to a lesser degree screen shakes. When pulling G there should be another wind noise on top of the regular one that sounds like “irregular flow” like turbulent wind (for lack of better words to describe it) and increases with G load. When approaching stress limits there should be some kind of crackles and shakes to indicate it. No it’s not very scientific, but in this case the “feel” is more important than pure “fidelity”.

Thanks @Skewgear. I think these limits are more procedural than structural - meaning, the danger was not the speed in the dive, but the stress during pull out. I find this interesting for two reasons: 1. There is no dive angle associated with the limits. Pulling out of a long shallow dive is not the same as pulling out of a 70 degree dive, even when the air speed is the same. 2. Apparently Mosquito pilots had no difficulty in pulling way more than 3 G and rip their wings off. I always said that “that” test report which claimed the Mosquito stick gets heavy and does not allow pulling more than 3 G was a “pilot’s exaggeration” and not a real limit. The test pilot was probably a Spit pilot who was used to pulling 5G with his pinkie finger.

Makes no sense. 350 mph is lower than max level speed at altitude and in case it is in IAS then it’s near the max level speed at sea level. This speed should be very far from any structural limit. The problem with diving the mosquito in DCS is that you have no feel for G and at these speeds the sensitive stick response can easily over stress the airframe. ED believes that Mosquito wings were fragile. The wings were actually considered as very rigid, and DH during the design phases reduced the number of struts inside the wing to save weight and material because it was deemed unnecessarily stiff. Historically, Mosquitoes did suffer from broken wings by over-stressing the wings in pullouts. Accidents like that were prevalent in post-war mosquitoes. This has a lot to do with the main issue with wood construction - the variance. Metallurgy is very predictable - you can make thousands of metal beams all with exactly the same limits. Wood properties on the other hand vary from forest to forest and tree to tree. Wood also continues to change as it ages and how it changes depends on many parameters, so no two beams are exactly alike. This means that while the average Mosquito wings were strong enough, some were extra strong and some… weaker than average. So if you stressed your airframe and happened to be in one of the latter, its bye bye wings.

I highly doubt HB opened the F-4E early access sale and then announced a huge delay just to spite Aerges. HB can only lose from such a move. The F-4E has a very large and very eager fan base that would buy it regardless of other models they were tempted to buy just before the sale - a huge fraction of their sales potential is assured. The opposite is not true regarding Aerges and F1, and my own example is a testimony to that. So HB can hurt Aerges, but have little to gain from it, and they did take a reputation hit from these events. The sale & delay was a fiasco not a cunning plan.

I took the F1 for a spin since it went on the free trial - what a lovely module! It is just on the edge of “modernity” that I can stomach, still a computerless plane directly controlled by the human. It is also as close as I can get to a Mirage III. The CE cockpit shares quite a lot with the Mirage III in its layout and views. In fact the entire front of the plane front the air intakes to the nose is very similar to M3. I have no special attachment to the F1, but I instantly liked it. Had I known that the Phantom will be delayed so much, I would have bought it already. I figured two complex planes (for me, I’m a warbirds guy) will be too much to learn in parallel. F1 is definitely on my list now, and the moment I’ll be ready for another jet module, this is going to be it. Well done Aerges, I’m a fan.

Technically speaking, a mosquito is a bug. Jokes aside, as Art-J says we need a replay track to see what is going on. This should be some simple issue since no one else experiences this. Let us know if you require guidance how to produce the replay track file.

Hey, I was already overweight when I got on the plane and I doubt this can change before I land it.

I continue theorizing from my post above. After some more thought I realized that the bottom of the power required (also minimal drag) shifts from around 150 mph (clean) to a much lower speed (near 110 maybe?) due to the added parasitic drag (gears & flaps extended). The real FB.XI manual says final approach speed with flaps down should be 100-105 mph, and warns that the glide with all the drag extended is steep. This speed is extremely low and just a hair above the stall speed which is said to be 95–100 mph - so this must be at the back of the power required curve, even with all the drag out. This sounds dangerous to me, as every pull of the stick only makes you sink harder, or stalls you. Gliding down on final with drag out & power-off at 120–130 mph should put me on the bottom or front side of the power required (drag) curve. Thus when I flare and the speed starts to drop I initially get less drag and a more manageable and easy flare before the speed drops to the other side of the curve, the drag shoots up and the plane sinks - which is desirable if I am already floating by this time. edit: The manual says for go-around that the plane “will climb satisfactorily at approximately 120 mph with flaps and undercarriage down” - so I assume this is roughly the minimal drag speed for this configuration.

@Ala13_ManOWar I think you are correct about the back side of the power (required) curve. The Mosquito feels like it has a lot of induced drag and a fairly steep reversed slope for that curve around ~120 mph and below. If I use engine power to hold the speed, and then cut it for the flare, my speed drops fast, the drag shoots up, and I immediately sink and hit the runway hard at the bottom of the flare. It is a matter of practice I know. Just easier for me to come faster, steeper and power off all the way. Less stuff to manage and the longer float gives my poor flying skills just the time I need to stabilize a 1 meter floating till a gentle touch down.

This difficulty of landing the Mosquito is somewhat offset by the low probability to survive the sortie and make it back at all The thing that made the Mosquito a bit difficult for me was the huge amount of drag that it generates with the undercarriage lowered, flaps out, and 2850 RPM, landing configuration. This makes the power off glide quite steep, and if you want to flatten the final approach and keep ~120 mph, you have to keep some power on. This worked poorly for me and I often messed with the throttles too much and banged the plane in a hard landing. I now adopted a “glider” like final approach: I keep my altitude, flaps retracted (undercarriage down because it is slow to move), and wait for a relatively steep angle to the zebra before cutting the power and entering a glide. At this point I extend the flaps fully as air brakes, glider-style, to come down steeply. I also allow a higher glide speed than 120 mph if I need to steepen the slope. With all the drag, a higher speed is not a problem and only extends the floating after the flare by a little - flare, hold it floating 1 meter over the runway and the plane will sink the last meter and 3-point itself when it runs out of speed. That is probably not how they did it in the old days, but I write off fewer airframes this way.

I understand where you are going with this, however I think that this is just avoiding the main issue. Multi-crew aircraft require a certain level of AI for single-player. There are other multi-crew modules in DCS from helicopters to modern jets with different levels of AI for each of the crew: Pilots, WSOs, gunners. The DCS warbirds don’t get any AI and the Mosquito is the first warbird module to really warrant it. We only need a very basic and minimal pilot AI, to allow us to hop on to the navigator seat and do navigator’s s#!+. It would be really really nice to also have a slightly more sophisticated navigator AI, who is also interactive and can perform several tasks. DCS warbirds isn’t going in that direction it seems, so just give us a pilot “AI” who shuts up and holds level and heading - just a basic autopilot.

The combination of the radar and the early fox-1s means that BVR is not much beyond WVR. The nature of fox-1s necessitates that you keep closing the distance while guiding the missile, so by the time the guidance has finished you are already WVR. The fox-1s allowed the F-4E to enter WVR combat with an advantage vs. most contemporary fighters that lacked fox-1s. This is by forcing them to notch the missile, so the WVR fight starts with the opponent recovering from the notch, while the F-4E is pointed at them and has kept all its speed. Somewhat similar to Mig-21Bis and its R3R, only a lot better and earlier to the Bis.

This nose while clean has a mustache though. Oh wait, I see what you meant…