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I keep seeing eagles flying around at mach 2 with ease. Yet, when I try that in the flanker it takes 5 minutes just to get to mach 1.5. I figured it was the weapons drag+fuel weight, so I put it in the editor with no weapons and reduced fuel so it had the same internal fuel as the eagle. The eagle still accelerated faster than the flanker. Ok, so maybe the extra weight of the flanker is causing more drag which is more important than thrust at supersonic speed? I thusly reduced the flanker's fuel even more until the flanker and eagle had the same total weight. Now I was certain that the flanker would leave the eagle in the dust because it has 44 more kN of thrust with the same weight. The eagle out accelerated the flanker again. This time I let the simulation run until the eagle had reached 2000 kmh. The flanker was still creeping toward 1600 kmh. My question is, why is this so? Does the larger airframe create too much drag to accelerate much past 1500 kmh? Does the airframe compromise aerodynamics in favor of high AoA controllability? Do the air intakes on the flanker not perform as well at supersonic speeds compared to the eagle? Does the space between the engines on the flanker cause some kind of drag at supersonic speeds? tl;dr Why doesn't the flanker's additional 44 kN of thrust make it accelerate faster than an eagle of the same weight? flanker-eagle-acc.trk

When I do researches on F-5E tiger's Landing video records, I found most of the "tigers" will do a nose up Aerodynamic Braking, in this video the voice over said 10 degrees (?) But I found it's really hard to do it in DCS, even I tried to touch down very Gently, the nose gear will "Strike to the floor" within 2 seconds, just like there is a force that pulling it down. ( I double/hundred checked my brakes are off ),TRACK INCLUDED DOWN BELOW , but yet I'm not a professional, and I'm lack of documents to proof it further, maybe you the one can provide a little help. PS. the F-5E must need moooooore LOVE F5LAND.trk

10000ft_M042_sustained_G_26000lbs.trk Condition: 26000 lbs total weight, drag index = 50 (6 amraams), 10000 ft, mach=0.42 F-16C-50 should sustain 3.2G at this condition, however there is no way I can sustain this G load in DCS at this condition. I'm doing 2.9G mostly. Please see attached.

I've seen a couple mods with smooth flight behaviour thanks to custom flight model binaries. The best example I can see is Freebirddz' Su-30 mod ( https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/247098-dcs-su-30mmk-mod/ ) The default flight model for custom aircraft feels too static and awkward, so I am impressed by mods with these flight models. I'm wondering if there's a template (preferably a .sln file) somewhere I can use to make my own.

edit: My bad, my post was unclear. Im specifically talking how the addition of stores affects the top speed of the F-18. Im not talking about fuel economy, which I have not compared. -------- Not saying anything is wrong or unrealistic, I would just like to understand why this is. I know the F-18 is more draggy than an F-16, and has somewhat weak engines. But the way stores add drag to the plane seems counterintuitive to me, and I wonder if someone can explain it. Below im triyng to explain my train of thought: So you put stores on an F-18, even a single fuel tanks, and it already lowers top speed by a good chunk. Put 4x Aim-120 with the double rack, and youre down even further. At this point it already can be tricky to even get supersonic, maybe impossible to get past the transonic region. Similar story with bombs and other kinds of addons. Yet with any other plane I tried, F14, FC3-planes, Mirage-2000, Mig-21, Ive never seen such a heavy effect of drag. For example, the F-16 handles a lot worse with three fuel tanks and 6x missiles, but its top speed isnt really affected much. Acceleration is slower, but you can go close to mach 1.8 or so at ~30-40k feet, last time I tried it. Even if you dont use full afterburner (which ofc is very high capacity), the speed seems to remain higher. And consider the difference in drag: An F-16 by itself is a lower drag plane than an F-18, but logically I would then assume that the same drag+weight bomb load would have a more adverse affect on the F-16 then, compared to the F-18. Because percentage wise (Im making up numbers), the F16 drag might go up by 20%, but the F18 drag only goes up by 10%. Similar story with weight. Yet the F18s speed seems to go down so much more than the F16s speed. Can someone explain why the Hornet is slowed down this much more by stores? Or do I have more fundamental misconceptions here?