Mako

Here's a tip. If you're going to compliment/show appreciation/pay tribute to someone...know their right name! Gary Larson.

Ha! Yes indeed, a stalled wing continues to produce lift (in mass quantities) as long as there is any airflow at all. The real problem with loss of laminar flow over the upper surface is the huge increase in drag rather than a loss of lift. That's what causes you to stop flyin' and start fallin'. L/D is the key to flight!

Using the Bernoulli Effect to explain how a wing produces lift presents some major (and mutliple minor) quandaries. 1) Um...Why are these two particles required to remain the same distance apart? Are they like, married or something? 2) If it is the curved upper (in normal flight) surface of the wing which is producing lift courtesy of Bernoulli, how can an aircraft fly inverted? With the curved surface now on the "bottom" it would seem that the aircraft would plummet. 3) Consider a symetric airfoil. If the Bernoulli effect were the cause of lift it doesn't seem that this design would produce much lift since the air molecules would (assumingly) feel a need to accelerate equally in order to reach the trailing edge at the same moment. There would be no pressure differential. My admittedly limited understanding is that, while the correlation between velocity and pressure can be observed with a wing in flight it is almost more of an effect rather than a cause of lift. Most of the lift is produced by a simple action/reaction situation. The wing pushes air down (due to angle of attack) and is thus experiences an upward force. The curved surfaces (on top and/or bottom) simply allow this to happen at higher angles of attack without airflow separation. Flaps exaggerate the downward motion of the air and thus increase lift (at a cost of a great increase in drag).

True, Tonopah is separate from the Nevada Test Site, both are part of the enormous Nellis Range Complex. To keep this on topic (a bit. Aviation related anyway). Zoom your view out 4 or five clicks. Near the top of the frame you will find a very large crater (a story in itself). Now scroll the view down a bit and you'll find a road heading off to the east. Follow that road to a dry lakebed with a very large airfield/complex. If you do see the complex there is something wrong with your browser because that place does not exist (hint, the dry lake is Groom Lake).

oooooh, look at all the pretty craters! Tonopah test range, Nevada.

How does a bubble work in multiplay? If another human group is fighting AI (or other humans) outside of my bubble, how is it handled? Is my question irrelevant to this discussion? Does the bubble system only apply to offline play?

That would be "late'd". I think he was accusing you of caffeine OD.

Oh geez..of course! So complicated that my thinking starts going in circles. Or would that be vortices?

I did say that drag is very high and that is what prevents a large increase in speed when in a dive. I agree that the low acceleration seen in LOMAC is accurate. I understand the relationship between TAS and M (more or less). My statement about TAS vs. IAS was in regard to a previous statement about reduced manuerverability at high altitudes. It is my understanding that the low air density (and thus, low IAS) is the source of the problem not "compression". Am I incorrect?

I just ran a simple test in the F15. I found a source which gives the best climb speed (corresponds to maximum L/D speed) at about 170 kts. Payload wasn't specified so I just took 50% fuel. Under these conditions I obtain an L/D of about 9. I got a similar number at 1000m and 9000m. There are possible problems with my experiment. 1) Wrong speed. If 170 were too fast or too slow the true max L/D would be higher still. 2) Wrong payload. This would only affect the speed at which max L/D is obtained. 3) I used the distance measuring utility on the map. There may be accuracy problems with that which would introduce error. Though I haven't been able to find a L/Dmax number for the F15, this seems a bit high but not unreasonably so. So it seems that if anything, drag may be "undermodelled"

Actually using TAS is not very useful for anything other than navigation. For aerodynamic considerations IAS should be used, it really is telling you how much air is flowing around your aircraft. As an example, by using IAS for your "stall speed" you will use the same value independant of altitude. Whereas by using TAS you will have to adjust for altitude. At 40k there is not "a lot of air going over your control surfaces". While the air molecules may be moving faster over your control surfaces, there are not very many of them. The fewer molecules there are, the less force on the surfaces. "Compression" does have an effect but it is not the main reason for reduced control at high altitudes. Regarding the seemingly low rate of acceleration: Drag is the culprit. Compared to the force of drag (at the speeds we're talking about) the force of gravity is really pretty insignificant. It is, after all, only one 1G.

This sounds a lot like was happening to me at one time. I don't know why it was happening but I do know what was happening. After about three to five minutes of flying online, my computer would simply stop sending UDP (or was it TCP, I forget which) packets to the host. The inbound stuff was fine. I used a packet sniffer to determine this. Like you said...extreme stealth. Pretty boring actually. The problem resolved when I reformatted (for another reason).

Like my ol' Pappy used to say; "When in worry or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!" :lol:

English term is "wake".

I've never been to the theater of LOMAC but I do have a bit of knowledge about wind, waves and swells. I don't think the Black Sea is large enough to support a significant swell without high winds and whitecapping. I haven't heard of Yalta being a Mecca for surfers :wink: . Vertical deck movement would probably make a "realistic" landing very difficult to simulate. As it is now, there are some who complain about how easy or "scripted" the landings are. Other than a visual effect, what would be the point of a pitching/rolling flight deck? Would you alter your approach?

Re: Padlock wishlist Since I do use padlock it may be presumputious of me to comment but I will anyway. I think there are several reasons padlock is not used by many. 1) TrackIR seems to make it unnecessary. It provides a means of smoothly moving your POV without using a finger which would be better used for other things. I don't think any changes to the padlock system will make it better than TrackIR (note, I don't have TrackIR so this could be total nonsense) 2) Lack of understanding, competance. Padlock takes some getting used to . Just trying it for a couple of minutes (particularly in CAC) will usually be enough to convice someone that it is unrealistic and disorienting. The fact that padlock can be disabled in multiplay (and very often is) provides little incentive to take the time to learn how to use it. Not sure there's anyway around this learning curve problem 3) The perception that padlock acts as visual radar. This has improved a great deal from earlier versions (that and the ability to cycle through targets, thank you). I think the current implementation is pretty good. This is something that is a necessary part of padlock and unfortunately will always be the main bone of contention. I look at it in terms of the "feature" restoring a certain amount of the visual acuity which is removed our video screens. Oh, I don't like the way a padlocked aircraft is suddenly snapped to center FOV, as smooth movement would be nice. Slightly OT, I would also like to see the ability to move the SCHLEM targeting circle within the FOV (like the target designator on the HUD). This was possible in the Flanker series and is a nice feature.

There should at least be a delay of few minutes after the event. Being instantly told your missle attack was sucessful is problematic...realitywise. Hopefully it will possible to disable the messages when running trks. They will seriously uglify the playbacks and movies.