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Bozon

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Everything posted by Bozon

  1. 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.
  2. @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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. This nose while clean has a mustache though. Oh wait, I see what you meant…
  7. @Jim Bob Well done sir. I was used from other games to slamming the throttle forward and takeoff while using my free left hand to hold my beer. Mosquito takeoffs in DCS require a bit more concentration and fine control inputs, so I have to put the bottle down for 30 seconds till I reach safety flying speed Navigation to the target, that’s the time for boozing.
  8. Unless it’s a recent bug that I haven’t noticed, I don’t recall having this problem. Are you sure that the switches are in the correct positions?
  9. Last time this “lack of takeoff power” happened to me the reason was that RPM dropped to minimum - I had two axes mapped to RPM (by mistake), one on the throttle and one on the stick base, so when I advanced one the inputs were conflicting. RPM lever would advance to max, but then jump back to minimum when I was not looking.
  10. Unfortunately, many players do not have dual throttles (myself included). Pilots of mosquitoes and other twins describe using different methods, at least 3 that I can think of: 1. Differential power control via the throttles with little to no rudder & brakes inputs. 2. Gradually "leading" with one throttle (left in case of the mosquito) up to full power to counter the base yaw tendency, and using rudder for course adjustments. 3. Starting with partial & equal power to both engines until minimal control speed is reached while correcting with rudder + brakes, and opening up when brakes are no longer required. May not be ideal vs. #1 & #2 above, but this is what I use with a single-axis throttle controller. I should probably get the VKB dual throttle, or something similar.
  11. https://store.heatblur.com/blogs/news/of-delays-and-silence To Heatblur, I appreciate the sincerity of the post. It sounds like you really put your best effort into it, but sh!t does happens sometimes. I also appreciate perfectionism and the aspiration to deliver a perfect product. Please go ahead and deliver us the best Phantom sim ever.
  12. It is possible that the tail wheel collapsed during taxi? Happened to me once - didn’t happen again, but I didn’t try to break the tail wheel on purpose for such a test.
  13. That would be great. It can even be FM-2 so it would be contemporary with the F6F and F4U.
  14. A helicopter dangling a huge pole with multiple giant rotating saw blades between trees and power lines? What can possibly go wrong?
  15. That is actually quite a tiny dispersion - less than 1/6 of a degree. The platform vibrations in-flight are probably on that scale (a guess).
  16. I think I mentioned this somewhere on the forum before - the USAF considered the use of the F-4E in the anti-ship role, but came to the conclusion that ships are extremely difficult to sink on land.
  17. 80% of the complexity was modeling the pilot’s “Olds” style mustache and its response to G effects. The F-14 pilot is clean shaven - that’s easy.
  18. I love sticking my head out the window and let my tongue and ears flap in the wind. I also bark at passing planes. I agree, it’s a bit annoying and an easy fix I suppose.
  19. @zerO_crash, if you again read my post above you will notice that I explicitly state that the climb rates are not real and are simply different units for power/weight ratios. This is because 478kw/2495kg says nothing to most people. The question was “how nimble” so this was a very simplified way to give numbers that are remotely relevant to the question. If you can give us better insight into the relative performance of these helicopters, by all means do! But all you did was to rehash in many words that the climb rates are not physical which we already knew, and update some numbers (which we appreciate) without providing any new insights into the “how nimble” question.
  20. Awwww… there does my phantastic phantom phantasy of loading her up with 21 SUU-11… and just let it rip!
  21. With enough runway you can simply drive to your target
  22. Israeli pilots talk about their Mirages much like RAF pilots talk about their Spitfires - they say it was a joy to fly. They praise it for being very responsive and intuitive. It just “felt right” and leading ace Giora Epstein repeatedly stated that it was much more fun to fly than his F-16A (in spite of the latter being far more capable). He actually stated that the F-16A was not fun enough for him… I can relate to that because the F-4E will most likely be the most modern module I will ever buy in DCS (except Kfir which is about equal). I don’t like modern jets that are more of a flying systems package held together by an aircraft. F-4E was far more capable than the Mirage in every aspect except close dogfights, where they were about equal or a slight advantage to the Mirage. This is the opinion of many ace pilots who flew both into combat, and flew dissimilar dogfights in training using both against each other. I have never heard any one of them who claimed the opposite that the F-4E was a better dogfighter.
  23. Why do you think that this is how I want to see them? I didn’t say they were bad fighters. They had a more important role to fill that no other plane could perform nearly as well and that was not holding defensive patrols - Mirages were more than adequate for that. Phantoms did shoot down Migs over enemy territory during deep strike operations. They were also used in a few aerial ambushes operations because… they were considered very good fighters as well! Plus their radar was actually useful as opposed to the Mirage’s. In 1973 Mirages and Neshers already got their Shafrir II missiles and were still considered top dogfighters. There was still little faith in radar missiles and much faith in the cannons. Mirages performed most of the combat patrols and got more kills than the Phantoms (Mosty the Neshers did IIRC). When IAF’s chief test pilot Dani Shapira first tested the Phantom in the US (probably a B), after they got out of the plane the American instructor asked what he thought of the Phantom. According to his autobiography Dani tactlessly replied: “in a dogfight, I’d rather be in a Mirage”… I can’t blame Dani - he also said that after his wife his loves were his Mirage III and his Spitfire IX that he couldn’t choose between.
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