Pylon weights and drag

[Stickler]

The "Empty" loadout in the mission editor has a "Weapons" weight of 223 kg/492 lbs.

When manually removing all pylons, "Weapons" weight is not zero, but -288 kg/-635 lbs.

From this I deduce that some pylons, but not all of them in the same way, are considered as part of aircraft weight.

I would appreciate a clarification regarding how pylon weights and drag are being considered in the mission editor and the flight model.

[Volator]

I've been wondering about this for a long time too, and I'm wondering whether this is a bug or intended. If the latter, why? Can't HB access/change the empty weight? If that's the case, wouldn't it be better to just add the pylons weight to the weapons weight?

Can you fill us in on the intricacies of the module, @Zabuzard?

[Zabuzard]

The default model without any "weapons" loaded has pylons and hence the aircraft weight is configured for that specifically.

A "removed pylon" is considered a weapon by DCS. Hence you can pick it from the loadout options, like a bomb or pod. Since it is a weapon, it has weight, including negative weight in this case.

If you would configure the aircraft by default for "no pylons", users would need to "equip" pylons manually in the loadout editor each time and we would also need to tie the pylon visually to all selectable weapons. It is much easier and more reasonable to instead have the pylons there by default and make the "no pylon" an equippable option. That decision then leads to the weight setup.

[Stickler]

Stumbled upon this issue again recently when I noticed once more that, as discussed above, the 2x O/B MAU-12B/A, 2x I/B MAU-12B/A and 4x AERO-3B are part of the "Empty" loadout, which is why the "Weapons" have negative weight when the above items are removed.

However, what I had previously not noticed is that in the Rearm & Refuel window, the presence or absence of the aforementioned stores has no effect on the aircraft's weight; in fact, their weight is included in the aircraft's empty weight independently of whether they are attached to the jet or not.

This means that the aircraft's gross weight inter alia for a super clean jet (no pylons, no external stores) is different in the mission editor and in the Rearm & Refuel window.

Additionally, adding or removing the above pylons does not cause the aircraft's CG to shift (no "bump" when adding or removing them) and I could find no difference in aircraft drag even though especially the MAU pylons do have a small, but not totally insignificant drag index IRL.

Getting back to, and expanding on, the question in the OP:

• Which aircraft weight is the one that is used for flight model purposes, the one in the ME or the one in the Rearm & Refuel window?
• Is my observation that the mentioned pylons do not have an effect on the drag index of the simulated F-4E correct?