On Mid Compression Bypass Circuit

[lunaticfringe]

12 hours ago, FR4GGL3 said:

I should have written the Guys that talked about using the MCB in real life are regarded to be some of the best.

Nevermind.

They also didn't shoot anybody with the M61 having deactivating the MCB, just like nobody shot a Sidewinder at anybody with the big boys down.  Because they did these things for an advantage in the training and ego-checking environment, rather than under actual combat conditions.  

Mid-Compression Bypass exists to protect the engines and maintain engine stall margin in the high AoA environment, and the circuit engages in the event of firing the gun to smooth airflow turbulence from the gun's vented gas.  ACM is the high AoA environment.  And I don't know about you, but reliable use of the gun- ergo, not losing an engine for squeezing the trigger, is kind of the point of entering the phone booth with bad guys.  Same deal with glove missiles and the flap handle; part of why the maneuvering flaps only deflect so far is to compensate for missile exhaust.  Slap that handle down, but you don't get to shoot anybody- because you'll look the fool coming back to the boat with a flap panel torn up because you can't follow basic instructions.

All that noise was left on the beach when they were cruising into harms way.

[RustBelt]

A lot of the “best” never had a single actual kill. 
 

They were flying Sports ACM in safe environments. 
 

Much like DCS really. 

[draconus]

On 6/30/2023 at 4:14 PM, Naquaii said:

Looking at it from the other side it's kinda hard to see why people are so single-mindedly chasing a circuit breaker that does so little it might as well just be a fidget spinner.

I don't see anyone chasing it for any advantage in combat, some just want to test it since you made the feature available and described it:

Quote

TF-30 Mid Compression Bypass Circuit Breaker will allow pilots to disable the TF30’s MCB circuit, which may give extra thrust in some conditions, but at the cost of stability. The real life viability of this tactic is in question, however we’re providing it as-is and in accordance with technical specifications. Use with care!

[https://forum.dcs.world/topic/252101-dcs-f-14-development-update-enter-the-a/]

You say it works but at the same time we have no way of knowing/testing it, so yeah, useless in that case.

[Naquaii]

4 hours ago, draconus said:

I don't see anyone chasing it for any advantage in combat, some just want to test it since you made the feature available and described it:

[https://forum.dcs.world/topic/252101-dcs-f-14-development-update-enter-the-a/]

You say it works but at the same time we have no way of knowing/testing it, so yeah, useless in that case.

Which is also why I personally lean towards wanting to remove it, but not my call.

And yeah, that's kinda why, it making so little of a difference and it being so hard to see the effect.

[draconus]

21 minutes ago, Naquaii said:

Which is also why I personally lean towards wanting to remove it, but not my call.

And yeah, that's kinda why, it making so little of a difference and it being so hard to see the effect.

Fair enough by me, since it's not realistic anyway to do it during the flight. Why was it implemented in the first place?

[Naquaii]

4 minutes ago, draconus said:

Fair enough by me, since it's not realistic anyway to do it during the flight. Why was it implemented in the first place?

More or less because it became a thing due to some high profile individuals talking about it.

[FR4GGL3]

On 7/1/2023 at 8:43 PM, lunaticfringe said:

They also didn't shoot anybody with the M61 having deactivating the MCB, just like nobody shot a Sidewinder at anybody with the big boys down.  Because they did these things for an advantage in the training and ego-checking environment, rather than under actual combat conditions.  

Mid-Compression Bypass exists to protect the engines and maintain engine stall margin in the high AoA environment, and the circuit engages in the event of firing the gun to smooth airflow turbulence from the gun's vented gas.  ACM is the high AoA environment.  And I don't know about you, but reliable use of the gun- ergo, not losing an engine for squeezing the trigger, is kind of the point of entering the phone booth with bad guys.  Same deal with glove missiles and the flap handle; part of why the maneuvering flaps only deflect so far is to compensate for missile exhaust.  Slap that handle down, but you don't get to shoot anybody- because you'll look the fool coming back to the boat with a flap panel torn up because you can't follow basic instructions.

All that noise was left on the beach when they were cruising into harms way.

Well... no one will win or loose anything in DCS. Because it is a Simulator and also not an actual combat situation. I get your point in real life, when you need to do your job and come home safe and not being grounded or killed. But this is a Simulator and it is nice that you can try all that stupid things without real consequences. I mean, nobody would also have used differential Thrust regularly in real life, but it is in the module (though I've heared about a F-18 Pilot that tried it once and got trouble because he split the handles too far). I also ripped the Wings off because I wanted to see how hard I can push and when they are gone. There are fun videos out there of someone cobraing a SU-27 on the Deck of a carrier. All stupid nonsense. The good thing is: as it is a Simulator, you can brake the rules without hurting somebody and sometimes it is interesting doing that. The next time you take it serious again.

Do what you need to do. If it needs to go out of the module because of reasons, then do it.

[Elliot]

On 6/30/2023 at 2:08 PM, Naquaii said:

...people actually thought it was bugged and not working while in fact it worked all along.

can confirm lmao

[Redliner7]

The juice isn't worth the squeeze - it's such a tiny part of the overall Tomcat experience, I think it should be removed if it pulls dev time away from the bigger issues at hand.

I mean if I'm reading it right, you also prevent guns from working and increases engine stall margins so what's the point?

Sent from my Pixel 7 Pro using Tapatalk

[draconus]

2 minutes ago, Redliner7 said:

I mean if I'm reading it right, you also prevent guns from working

No, it doesn't prevent the gun from firing, just increases the likelihood of engine problems when the gun firing gases enter the engine inlet.

[SkateZilla]

As I said in the other thread.....

I'd honestly rem the code/system entirely,

Users got the idea that popping the breaker was equivalent to pressing the NOS or TCS Off button on a race car. (More power at the expense of stability etc).

the issue here is, the over the top story in a book or video interview was over hyped to get the viewer/reader excited, I know pilots that literally laugh at this, and say they would never use such an high risk tactic, ever.

Why would you risk compressor stall and losing your aircraft for a measly 2000lbs of thrust (out of a total of 41,800)(aka ~5%), when you can better manage AoA, G's, turn rate and maintain speed without any risk.

If you desperately 5% more total thrust to win all your engagements, your doing something wrong.

[Naquaii]

1 hour ago, SkateZilla said:

As I said in the other thread.....

I'd honestly rem the code/system entirely,

Users got the idea that popping the breaker was equivalent to pressing the NOS or TCS Off button on a race car. (More power at the expense of stability etc).

the issue here is, the over the top story in a book or video interview was over hyped to get the viewer/reader excited, I know pilots that literally laugh at this, and say they would never use such an high risk tactic, ever.

Why would you risk compressor stall and losing your aircraft for a measly 2000lbs of thrust (out of a total of 41,800)(aka ~5%), when you can better manage AoA, G's, turn rate and maintain speed without any risk.

If you desperately 5% more total thrust to win all your engagements, your doing something wrong.

 

Not a counterargument but more of an addition to the above:

 

The amount of thrust you describe is also a worst case scenario.

People need to remind that pulling the breaker stops the system from operating the MCB.

Basically the MCB removes compressed air to stop the fan blades from stalling in certain situations and that might remove thrust.

But depending on situation it might not be that much and is also very likely to be in a situation where the removed thrust doesn't matter much at all or might be much less.

Especially not compared to the things it counters in regards to engine function.

 

So the notion that the MCB breaker adds thrust is false and the potential thrust removed (which might not be as much as stated) is done to stop the engines from stalling.

[SkateZilla]

yeah, I guess NOS button was a bad example, more like a Safety Throttle Limiter (ie STM and TCS).

The System will only affect the thrust in the situations it's designed to prevent compressor stalls. so it's not really a "Boost" but more so Disabling a "Limiter" (well the system doesn't limit parsey either, it more or less engages a safety mechanism that causes a thrust penalty of up to 5%, and honestly I think the 5% is in reheat and only 2% max penalty in Military thrust.

But Basically Like Turning off STM and TCS on a hot Dry Straight Race Track, vs Turning it Off on a Turning Wet Track, lol.

Turning it off straight and level does nothing, turning it off in a high AoA with stop the system from engaging and thus not incur the thrust penalty under high AoA but substantially increases the risk of a compressor stall.

I don't think the breaker existed to facilitate a BFM Edge, it existed as a way to disable the system / circuit had it sustained damage and needed to be shut off to safely return to base/boat.

If it was designed to be disabled to give a Dogfighting edge it would have had a switch in the pilot cockpit somewhere, and not a remote breaker off to the right that neither Goose or Rooster couldn't find in a hurry if they wanted too.

Edited July 6, 2023 by SkateZilla

[Naquaii]

4 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

yeah, I guess NOS button was a bad example, more like a Safety Throttle Limiter (ie STM and TCS).

The System will only affect the thrust in the situations it's designed to prevent compressor stalls. so it's not really a "Boost" but more so Disabling a "Limiter" (well the system doesn't limit parsey either, it more or less engages a safety mechanism that causes a thrust penalty of up to 5%, and honestly I think the 5% is in reheat and only 2% max penalty in Military thrust.

But Basically Like Turning off STM and TCS on a hot Dry Straight Race Track, vs Turning it Off on a Turning Wet Track, lol.

Turning it off straight and level does nothing, turning it off in a high AoA with stop the system from engaging and thus not incur the thrust penalty under high AoA but substantially increases the risk of a compressor stall.

I don't think the breaker existed to facilitate a BFM Edge, it existed as a way to disable the system / circuit had it sustained damage and needed to be shut off to safely return to base/boat.

If it was designed to be disabled to give a Dogfighting edge it would have had a switch in the pilot cockpit somewhere, and not a remote breaker off to the right that neither Goose or Rooster couldn't find in a hurry if they wanted too.

 

Yeah, that's absolutely not the purpose of the breaker.

And yeah, I think the biggest loss of power is actually with wheels down where it cuts in to prevent flameout of an afterburner at launch.

[fat creason]

Here's the logic for anyone interested:

 

You really have to be in specific situations for it to open, pulling this breaker is more ill-advised than anything really. Also remember there is no indication in the cockpit that the MCB valve is open.

Edited July 7, 2023 by fat creason

[Q3ark]

Judging by the narrow window that the MCB valve would open at dogfighting speeds and AOA’s It would seem that the effects of pulling this breaker are more psychological than anything. 
 

I think some of these old pilots stories are full of it  I have huge respect for them but they do seem to like playing with people to big themselves up.

[draconus]

5 hours ago, fat creason said:

Also remember there is no indication in the cockpit that the MCB valve is open.

One would expect at least the circuit for MCB test but it's missing in the scheme.

[Redliner7]

Here's the logic for anyone interested:

 
You really have to be in specific situations for it to open, pulling this breaker is more ill-advised than anything really. Also remember there is no indication in the cockpit that the MCB valve is open.

Sent from my Pixel 7 Pro using Tapatalk

[Sandman1330]

On 7/6/2023 at 9:44 AM, SkateZilla said:

As I said in the other thread.....

I'd honestly rem the code/system entirely,

Users got the idea that popping the breaker was equivalent to pressing the NOS or TCS Off button on a race car. (More power at the expense of stability etc).

the issue here is, the over the top story in a book or video interview was over hyped to get the viewer/reader excited, I know pilots that literally laugh at this, and say they would never use such an high risk tactic, ever.

Why would you risk compressor stall and losing your aircraft for a measly 2000lbs of thrust (out of a total of 41,800)(aka ~5%), when you can better manage AoA, G's, turn rate and maintain speed without any risk.

If you desperately 5% more total thrust to win all your engagements, your doing something wrong.

Unfortunately, in the common BFM arenas of DCS, many (I may even venture to say most) Tomcat guys now spend more time gaming the edge cases of the flight model than flying actual BFM. They’ve figured out exactly how many G they can get away with (it’s in the vicinity of 20G if pulled progressively), use flaps jammed at 400kts for extreme turn rates and AoA excursions, manual wing sweep forward, and things like the MCB breaker. This results in an aircraft that performs wholly outside the realm of where it should, enabling basically instant 180 degree turns and unreal turn rates that they exploit into head-on passes to again exploit the fact the tomcat pilot cannot be “pilot sniped”. It’s all about playing to one exploit after the next.

It’s really too bad, because one can’t enjoy proper BFM in this module anymore since the community has found every little edge case that I’m sure was never intended by the devs. If you try and fly it “proper”, you have no chance anymore.

I only say this as context as to why this MCB has generated so much discussion. It’s players wanting to find yet another exploit in a module full of them. I do not mean this as criticism to the module (I love this thing), and other modules have their own exploits (paddles and overrides are the norm rather than the exception). However, the nature of the Tomcat not having FCS makes it more susceptible to these exploits, and it has become the reality on open dogfight servers.

[Elliot]

38 minutes ago, Sandman1330 said:

They’ve figured out exactly how many G they can get away with (it’s in the vicinity of 20G if pulled progressively), use flaps jammed at 400kts for extreme turn rates and AoA excursions, manual wing sweep forward... 

however, the most effective ones do come at consequence, and the devs have done a pretty good job of this. 

jamming the flaps makes it so that you can NEVER get fast again, so someone like a hornet could easily hit the burner and get out of there at 600kts+, while a tomcat with jammed flaps will be stuck at 400.

pulling 20g (which i do agree, is bullcrap) breaks the INS (g limit of 12), which makes it MUCH harder to get a kill as the gun sight will likely be incorrect, and you'll have to cage and eyeball it to get a clean shot (which requires skill), further increasing the workload on the pilot as there's no fly by 

 

a note too is that irl, the tomcat stick has an opposing force the more g's you pull, which means that in reality, it's really hard to pull 10g+. This isn't present in dcs, which is why there is a lot of exploit in its flight model. 

Edited July 11, 2023 by Elliot
fixes

[Callsign JoNay]

1 hour ago, Sandman1330 said:

Unfortunately, in the common BFM arenas of DCS, many (I may even venture to say most) Tomcat guys now spend more time gaming the edge cases of the flight model than flying actual BFM. They’ve figured out exactly how many G they can get away with (it’s in the vicinity of 20G if pulled progressively), use flaps jammed at 400kts for extreme turn rates and AoA excursions, manual wing sweep forward, and things like the MCB breaker. This results in an aircraft that performs wholly outside the realm of where it should, enabling basically instant 180 degree turns and unreal turn rates that they exploit into head-on passes to again exploit the fact the tomcat pilot cannot be “pilot sniped”. It’s all about playing to one exploit after the next.

It’s really too bad, because one can’t enjoy proper BFM in this module anymore since the community has found every little edge case that I’m sure was never intended by the devs. If you try and fly it “proper”, you have no chance anymore.

I only say this as context as to why this MCB has generated so much discussion. It’s players wanting to find yet another exploit in a module full of them. I do not mean this as criticism to the module (I love this thing), and other modules have their own exploits (paddles and overrides are the norm rather than the exception). However, the nature of the Tomcat not having FCS makes it more susceptible to these exploits, and it has become the reality on open dogfight servers.

Using exploits and cheap tricks in the F-14 was done in real life and are part of the Tomcat's lore/identity. Flaps, emergency swept wings, circuit breakers, and bending avionics all have trade offs and require talent to use properly. I have no sympathy for FBW, slick config, paddle pullers in the DCS community. 

The immortal pilot, and 20G structural allowance are things that need to be addressed for sure, though. I've also heard there is a bug where if you damage a Tomcat and it appears to be leaking fuel, it won't necessarily be leaking on their side.

[draconus]

1 hour ago, Elliot said:

tomcat with jammed flaps will be stuck at 400

Yeah, any acceleration and vertical and they should be toast, right?

[SkateZilla]

Problem is Virtual Pilots take that "Lore" as Law,
When most of those stories are exaggerated stories exchanged between pilots that eventually were published in writing or video otherwise, without a shred of evidence to prove the scenario actually happened, despite the laws of physics, 20 Gs would kill anyone and the wing box of the tomcat would be destroyed, causing both wings to detach.

I was in the hanger for most of the 90s, hung out with pilots, sat in tomcat pits as they told me stories, as a teen, it was cool to hear them, as an adult that knows more about aeronautics and physics, they are complete bull hardy.

Then again, so where the stories anyone told us growing up..

[Callsign JoNay]

15 minutes ago, SkateZilla said:

Problem is Virtual Pilots take that "Lore" as Law,

That's just one problem. Another problem is the BFM standard in the DCS community of using slick jets, and fuel quantity settings with no regard for having to RTB to a potentially distant airbase. It's all a joke until that's addressed, but it never will be because the FBW crowd wants to have their cake and eat it too, without really exploring the nuances of DACT.

[Sandman1330]

2 hours ago, Elliot said:

jamming the flaps makes it so that you can NEVER get fast again, so someone like a hornet could easily hit the burner and get out of there at 600kts+, while a tomcat with jammed flaps will be stuck at 400.

So assuming it’s not a fox 2 fight, yes you can extend. But when you recommit, you are now in a head on situation - against a tank of a jet with an invulnerable pilot. Advantage tomcat pilot

I don’t want to derail this thread, as I said earlier I only posted to bring context to why so many are fascinated with the bypass breaker, so I’m going to withdraw from further discussion on this topic and hopefully let the thread stay OT.