F-14B lack of thrust after update

[Guest]

The B model seems to lack thrust - in general, but particuliary after the last update. 

Flew last night and with a standard loadout of 4-2-2 and two bags I could not get it higher than mach .7 in mil power at 30k feet. Even with full blowers I struggled to go supersonic.
Even fully clean (but with phoenix rails) I couldn't get it anywhere near .9 in mil.

Catapult shots and runway takeoffs also seems much more sluggish than usual.
Anyone else noticed this?

Also, I say lack in thrust in general because the B model is _much_ slower ingame than in RL.

In real life a slick B/D model holding at angels 10 would accelerate from 150KIAS to 610 in about 9,5 seconds.  I’ve never managed to do it in under 26 seconds in DCS. Source:

Watch from 2:25. 

 

It's also way slower in top speed. A slick B would go from 400knots to 2,34 in about 50 seconds. In game you can never hope to reach mach two in that time.
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/former-f-14-rio-tells-the-story-of-when-he-and-his-pilot-pushed-their-tomcat-beyond-the-aircraft-advertised-top-speed-of-mach-2-34/
 

[DD_Fenrir]

1. Not much info to go on here - and no, the anecdotal stuff you have posted does not represent reliable, qauntified and most impotantly validated datpoints.

2. What map, what altitude, what air pressure values and what ambient air temp were your tests performed at? Variations in these can have a signficant effect on thrust and lift.

3. 4-2-2 is a heavy, draggy load. That said, I have routinely got to 0.9M at similar altitudes in Mil power and using afterburner can get +mach 1 airspeeds with it. This could indicate a fault in your DCS install. Have you tried a repair?

[Guest]

1: We’re not talking small discrepancies here. If the performance is 1/3 of what the pilots operating the aircraft experienced one would think that would be of interest.

2: And fuel state. I tested it on the standard free flight in Caucasus. The conditions should therefore not have changed. (Only applies to the strange loss of thrust after the latest update, I fully agree that the conditions the pilots where flying in when they recorded completely different performance than what we see in DCS might have been more beneficial. Though different conditions is not sufficient to explain such a large discrepancy alone)

My test (again drop in performance after last update)was done at 30k and 36k feet.

The up to 610 test was done at 10k feet, and as close to what the pilot in the video describes as possible and with 7000 lbs of fuel. The main uncertainty in that test is whether he unloaded or not. From the way he tells it in the video I deduced that he accelerated in level flight, and tested accordingly. Unloading would ofc give a quicker acceleration.

3: Agree it’s draggy and wouldn’t expect more performance than you say you’ve achieved , and I’m used to similar performance in the past. I’ve not thought about a possibility for a fault I my DCS install. Thank you! . It might perhaps be as simple as that, in that case I will report back!  Will repair and test again as soon as I’m able!

Edited September 11, 2023 by Werlin
Typos - typing on iPhone

[Dannyvandelft]

I was doing .95 in MIL with that exact loadout last night. No issues. 32k altitude in Syria.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[Guest]

10 hours ago, DD_Fenrir said:

3. 4-2-2 is a heavy, draggy load. That said, I have routinely got to 0.9M at similar altitudes in Mil power and using afterburner can get +mach 1 airspeeds with it. This could indicate a fault in your DCS install. Have you tried a repair?

Tried again today after repair and update. First with a 4-2-2 load. Got same results as you. Then Lantirn, 4 GBUs and two MK20s, still close to .9. 
Seems you were right about the repair. Thanks again.

[Spurts]

11 hours ago, Werlin said:

 

In real life a slick B/D model holding at angels 10 would accelerate from 150KIAS to 610 in about 9,5 seconds.  I’ve never managed to do it in under 26 seconds in DCS. Source:

 

This is where you need to do a sanity check.  The pilot is describing a 2.5G acceleration which is not possible.  He is exaggerating.

[FR4GGL3]

Is every single Pilot in an Interview exaggerating? This is the second time that the DCS People proof a Pilot wrong. And then there are Ex Pilots who stall the DCS plane and don't know why.

Don't get me wrong either the lack of feeling of the plane is such a huge impact or the DCS representation has its flaws. I don't know and I can say that I can live with the plane as it is. But it is a bit strange to me that a lot of Pilots stories should simply be wrong. Why would you do this as a Pilot?

[razo+r]

Every human will exagerate to some degrees their memories. This phenomen is not exclusive to pilots only. 

[FR4GGL3]

And then there are the small insights of Victory 205 (I appreciate all of them) that make me think that being a F-14 Pilot was some really serious Business without any time for BS. If you need to be that kind of a serious person, why would you tell such stories?

Or is it that those shiny stories are needed to be some living legend? And all the others that don't want to talk big, don't talk into cameras?

[Nealius]

I haven't noticed anything off in regards to power except a tendency for the nose to fall on cat shots. With a 2x2 Sparrow-Sidewinder, LANTIRN, two empty tanks payload I can do a 15-unit level pass at 150kts, plug in burner and climb at close to 60 degrees at 170kts for a couple thousand feet before speed decays below 150. QNH 29.71, OAT 29C.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Nealius

[Callsign JoNay]

10 hours ago, FR4GGL3 said:

Is every single Pilot in an Interview exaggerating?

I don't think he's exaggerating, I think he's sincerely misremembering...by a lot. Spurts is right though, that kind of acceleration is impossible. You can punch it into an inertia calculator and see for yourself. It's like 2.5 Gs of acceleration. That would require about a 2.5:1 thrust to weight ratio. Even the Raptor is no where close to that.

[Spurts]

Here's the thing, in cases like this story the pilot has the speeds right because he can look at those, but he did not have a stopwatch that he timed it with.  Think about simply saying the words he used out loud and it's easy to see it as "The plane accelerated (large accurate speed difference) in (a surprisingly short period of time)"  The performance was in reality enough to shock him, so much so that he has to make up the time as something unrealistically short just to convey how it felt to him.

[IronMike]

Not all pilots are the same, for some flying the Tomcat has happened over 30 years ago. Misremembering and also, importantly: often illustrating to an audience that shares many different professions and levels in knowledge about aviation - is what I think leads to such stories. The setting likely also makes a difference: you would try to leave out such things say if speaking to a class of aerospace engineers at a University, contrary say to speaking at some convention or on a TV interview to a much more general, public audience.

I can assure you though that none of the pilots I (or we) flew with struggled with the Tomcat's FM, to the contrary, it felt more like them being right back at home. One of our early SMEs landed a 3 wire on his first attempt just by following his muscle memory, even prior to release (and much has been refined since then, mostly thanks to the outstanding input from Victory205). We had similar experiences with other pilots, both with or without prior DCS experience.

Here is the early FM test video from, my gosh, already 6 years ago.
 

 

[eatthis]

On 9/13/2023 at 4:17 PM, IronMike said:

Not all pilots are the same, for some flying the Tomcat has happened over 30 years ago. Misremembering and also, importantly: often illustrating to an audience that shares many different professions and levels in knowledge about aviation - is what I think leads to such stories. The setting likely also makes a difference: you would try to leave out such things say if speaking to a class of aerospace engineers at a University, contrary say to speaking at some convention or on a TV interview to a much more general, public audience.

I can assure you though that none of the pilots I (or we) flew with struggled with the Tomcat's FM, to the contrary, it felt more like them being right back at home. One of our early SMEs landed a 3 wire on his first attempt just by following his muscle memory, even prior to release (and much has been refined since then, mostly thanks to the outstanding input from Victory205). We had similar experiences with other pilots, both with or without prior DCS experience.

Here is the early FM test video from, my gosh, already 6 years ago.
 

 

20+ year  old muscle memory is INCREDIBLY impressive! im a trucker and if i go a few weeks without reversing i can feel it lol 

[JCTherik]

150 and 610 kcas at 10k is 174 and 685ktas respectively, assumig 0 degrees C at sea level, that's 511kn or 263m/s of difference.

263m/s in 9.7 seconds makes 27.1m/s^2 or 2.76G of average forward acceleration.
 

Yea, that guy is absolutely full of it.

19838 kg (dry tomcat) * 9.8m/s gives 194kN of thrust required for 1G.

For 2.76G, 194*2.76 = 535kN required, but each tomcat engine can only do 120kN.

And that's just inertia of the bone dry cat, and he's claiming that he went from way behind the power curve into transsonic in under 10 seconds.

Meanwhile in reality, he spent half that time waiting for the engine to spool up and the other half waiting for the flaps to move, because you can't accelerate at 50kn per second and not overspeed the flaps.

[maxsin72]

On 9/12/2023 at 12:12 AM, Spurts said:

This is where you need to do a sanity check.  The pilot is describing a 2.5G acceleration which is not possible.  He is exaggerating.

 

On 9/12/2023 at 8:58 AM, razo+r said:

Every human will exagerate to some degrees their memories. This phenomen is not exclusive to pilots only. 

 

On 9/12/2023 at 7:13 PM, Callsign JoNay said:

I don't think he's exaggerating, I think he's sincerely misremembering...by a lot. Spurts is right though, that kind of acceleration is impossible. You can punch it into an inertia calculator and see for yourself. It's like 2.5 Gs of acceleration. That would require about a 2.5:1 thrust to weight ratio. Even the Raptor is no where close to that.

 

On 9/13/2023 at 5:17 PM, IronMike said:

Not all pilots are the same, for some flying the Tomcat has happened over 30 years ago. Misremembering and also, importantly: often illustrating to an audience that shares many different professions and levels in knowledge about aviation - is what I think leads to such stories. The setting likely also makes a difference: you would try to leave out such things say if speaking to a class of aerospace engineers at a University, contrary say to speaking at some convention or on a TV interview to a much more general, public audience.

I can assure you though that none of the pilots I (or we) flew with struggled with the Tomcat's FM, to the contrary, it felt more like them being right back at home. One of our early SMEs landed a 3 wire on his first attempt just by following his muscle memory, even prior to release (and much has been refined since then, mostly thanks to the outstanding input from Victory205). We had similar experiences with other pilots, both with or without prior DCS experience.

Here is the early FM test video from, my gosh, already 6 years ago.
 

 

 

On 10/13/2023 at 7:45 PM, JCTherik said:

150 and 610 kcas at 10k is 174 and 685ktas respectively, assumig 0 degrees C at sea level, that's 511kn or 263m/s of difference.

263m/s in 9.7 seconds makes 27.1m/s^2 or 2.76G of average forward acceleration.
 

Yea, that guy is absolutely full of it.

19838 kg (dry tomcat) * 9.8m/s gives 194kN of thrust required for 1G.

For 2.76G, 194*2.76 = 535kN required, but each tomcat engine can only do 120kN.

And that's just inertia of the bone dry cat, and he's claiming that he went from way behind the power curve into transsonic in under 10 seconds.

Meanwhile in reality, he spent half that time waiting for the engine to spool up and the other half waiting for the flaps to move, because you can't accelerate at 50kn per second and not overspeed the flaps.

 

German Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Lorenz “Enzo” Schaffelhofer, during a podcast, claimed Eurofighter can accelerate to Mach 1 from 200 knots in less then 5 seconds, low altitude during a very cold day over Baltic sea.

I really doubt Enzo was misremembering.

So i think Tom "Trots" Trotter probably is telling the truth, his F14D was in clean config, without tanks or any other payload.

Edited October 15, 2023 by maxsin72

[maxsin72]

Here is the podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fX6u558JbI&t=2780s

 

Edited October 15, 2023 by maxsin72

[Despayre]

29 minutes ago, maxsin72 said:

I really doubt Enzo was misremembering.

Why? People misremember what they did yesterday, all the time, and that's when they aren't paying attention to 50 other "life or death details" at that moment.

Also, you seem to be discounting various other reasons to exaggerate\obfuscate performance, such as classified specs, or deliberate misinformation, exactly like what was done with the MiG-25 Foxbat; the US thought it was a much better plane, (until they got ahold of one).

[Spurts]

Physics says otherwise

[maxsin72]

43 minutes ago, Despayre said:

Why? People misremember what they did yesterday, all the time, and that's when they aren't paying attention to 50 other "life or death details" at that moment.

Also, you seem to be discounting various other reasons to exaggerate\obfuscate performance, such as classified specs, or deliberate misinformation, exactly like what was done with the MiG-25 Foxbat; the US thought it was a much better plane, (until they got ahold of one).

Wait... wait, who am i? I forgot everything :))))))))))))))))

[Victory205]

47 minutes ago, maxsin72 said:

German Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Lorenz “Enzo” Schaffelhofer, during a podcast, claimed Eurofighter can accelerate to Mach 1 from 200 knots in less then 5 seconds, low altitude during a very cold day over Baltic sea.

I really doubt Enzo was misremembering.

So i think Tom "Trots" Trotter probably is telling the truth, his F14D was in clean config, without tanks or any other payload.

 

They’re both full of <profanity>, and take you for fools. You should be angry at them for lying.

Since the claim was instantly suspect when this video was brought to my attention, I ran the accel numbers months ago, and the result is commensurate with the G loading on a Cat shot off of a C-13-1 steam catapults found on Nimitz class aircraft carriers. If true, then generally speaking, the F14B performing an afterburner takeoff would be able to accelerate from 0-140 knots in 310 feet…without using the catapult

The strange aspect was the exactness of the claim of “9.7 seconds”, which would have had to have been timed with a personal electronic stopwatch since the analog aircraft clock isn’t that granular. Why people do this is beyond me. 

Out of curiosty, I ran accelerations in the HB version of a clean F14B.

-At 3000 MSL in level flight 150-610KIAS took 34 sec.

-At 8000 MSL, with a zero G unload, it took 27 sec. 

-At 18,000 MSL, pointing the aircraft at the center of the earth, unloading to zero G, it took 17 secs (the distance required resulted in crashing into the water).

-A clean DCS F16 for comparison, with it’s superior thrust to weight, using those setups took 30/24/20 seconds respectively.

To achieve anything close to the claimed performance, we would have to triple the acceleration rate of the Heatblur F14B. I want to be in the room when @IronMike approaches @NineLine with that proposal.

I was already working to address this claim with more detail is on my list for an article, but so far, there hasn’t been any determination by Heatblur on setting up a venue for it. I may look for an alternative, since the goal is to preserve the true technical aspects of the aircraft and how it was flown that will outlast me, long after I’m gone.

Props to the gents here who smelled the BS and broke out their calculators- JoNay, Spurts, JCTherik, et al. Well done.

Bonus Question: To triple the current acceleration, what increase in thrust would be required? Don’t worry about ram effects since they cancel out, what’s the general magnitude of the required increase?

[maxsin72]

46 minutes ago, Spurts said:

Physics says otherwise

Ok, try to explain to Enzo and Tom that what they have done is not real.

[maxsin72]

26 minutes ago, Victory205 said:

They’re both full of <profanity>, and take you for fools. You should be angry at them for lying.

Since the claim was instantly suspect when this video was brought to my attention, I ran the accel numbers months ago, and the result is commensurate with the G loading on a Cat shot off of a C-13-1 steam catapults found on Nimitz class aircraft carriers. If true, then generally speaking, the F14B performing an afterburner takeoff would be able to accelerate from 0-140 knots in 310 feet…without using the catapult

The strange aspect was the exactness of the claim of “9.7 seconds”, which would have had to have been timed with a personal electronic stopwatch since the analog aircraft clock isn’t that granular. Why people do this is beyond me. 

Out of curiosty, I ran accelerations in the HB version of a clean F14B.

-At 3000 MSL in level flight 150-610KIAS took 34 sec.

-At 8000 MSL, with a zero G unload, it took 27 sec. 

-At 18,000 MSL, pointing the aircraft at the center of the earth, unloading to zero G, it took 17 secs (the distance required resulted in crashing into the water).

-A clean DCS F16 for comparison, with it’s superior thrust to weight, using those setups took 30/24/20 seconds respectively.

To achieve anything close to the claimed performance, we would have to triple the acceleration rate of the Heatblur F14B. I want to be in the room when @IronMike approaches @NineLine with that proposal.

I was already working to address this claim with more detail is on my list for an article, but so far, there hasn’t been any determination by Heatblur on setting up a venue for it. I may look for an alternative, since the goal is to preserve the true technical aspects of the aircraft and how it was flown that will outlast me, long after I’m gone.

Props to the gents here who smelled the BS and broke out their calculators- JoNay, Spurts, JCTherik, et al. Well done.

Bonus Question: To triple the current acceleration, what increase in thrust would be required? Don’t worry about ram effects since they cancel out, what’s the general magnitude of the required increase?

I really don't know, Enzo seems so sure in the podcast: he has no exitation, the interviewer ask him "5 second?!?!" and he confirms. I really don't understand why he is not telling the truth. It's really difficult to think that people who is doing a very important duty is lieing. Enzo had also the opportunity to tell "i can't answer", so why to tell a lie?

Edited October 15, 2023 by maxsin72

[Frosty2124]

41 minutes ago, maxsin72 said:

I really don't know, Enzo seems so sure in the podcast: he has no exitation, the interviewer ask him "5 second?!?!" and he confirms. I really don't understand why he is not telling the truth. It's really difficult to think that people who is doing a very important duty is lieing. Enzo had also the opportunity to tell "i can't answer", so why to tell a lie?

 

Typhoon is good, but the numbers quoted aren't feasible.

Sincerely,

a Typhoon SME

[Victory205]

23 minutes ago, Frosty2124 said:

Typhoon is good, but the numbers quoted aren't feasible.

Sincerely,

a Typhoon SME

For perspective, the Space Shuttle accelerated at ~3G on its way to low earth orbit. The fantasy F14B in the video could almost keep up with it below the troposphere.