Delta winged aircraft speed question

[Atreides 144]

I'm just curious about how the delta winged aircraft's especially the Mirage's rapidly bleed speed when making tight turns and loops etc, my question is, how accurately or realisticly is this implemented in the SF game ? Do delta wings really loose speed that rapidly as opposed to conventional winged aircrafts ?

 

Cheers.

[BUFF 8]

I don't know exactly how accurate it is in the TW games but in real life deltas do bleed energy badly in turns.

[Southernap 1]

Delta wing aircraft are really configured well to travel fast in a straight line. The will bleed thier speed (and energy) rapidly as they manuver. The easy way that I have found to fight with them is to use zoom and boom tactics. That is zoom in on a (or two) targets, engage them and then roll away picking up engery for another engagement on another target. It is a pretty old tactic but it works well with delta wing aircraft.

[FormerlyKnownAsSaywhat?! 0]

Apparantly Deltas bleed speed during manouvering due to loss of lift from the leading edges, more so if they're a low aspect delta. You'll see some deltas have cranked wing roots (like the Vulcan) or they'll have stretched roots (like the Hal Tejas) to counter this loss. I'm not too sure on the whole mechanics of it, I'm not an engineer, just a nerd. But this site might help. It explains delta dynamics... but it's kinda technobabble...

[FormerlyKnownAsSaywhat?! 0]

Helps if I give the link:

 

http://www.aerodyn.org/Wings/delta.html

 

Oops...

[+streakeagle 871]

Aircraft in these sims perform per the aerodynamic co-efficients programmed into them:

1. Given actual lift, drag, and thrust curves for a given fixed wing aircraft, an extremely realistic flight model can be produced very quickly. Sufficient quantities of data this good is almost impossible to come by.

2. Given very detailed performance curves, the lift, drag, and thrust curves can be accurately derived/estimated with less than 1% error in most areas of the flight envelope. Some flight manuals, such as the F-4 Phantom, contain more than enough data to get this accurate. This is a very time consuming/labor intensive process as charted data has to be converted into tables of numbers which are then converted into tables of aerodynamic data which then has to be co-related to solve for the data needed by the flight model.

3. Given just a few specific performance parameters such as max sustained and instantaneous turn rates, max climb performance, max speed at sea level and max speed at altitude, a flight model can be made using basic aerodynamic rules of thumb which will hit those numbers and still have more than 20% over most areas of the flight envelope.

4. Given just the standard data found in most aviation books such as ceiling, max speed, sea level thrust, weight, and dimensions, almost any flight model can be quickly manipulated to hit those numbers and still have more than 50% error over almost the entire flight envelope. If a similar aircraft is used as a baseline, then despite the lack of data and the very little time spent developing the FM, the quality may approach that of the previous group.

 

The stock flight models and some addons tend to fall in group 3 since they were engineered more to be fun and flyable than precise to the decimal point.

Of the hundreds of addons released, most fall in group 4 as an existing flight model is hastily modified to reflect the weight, dimensions, and top speed of some less than well documented aircraft.

Very few addons fall in group 2. There are only a few people capable of doing this and they can only make so much progress given they have jobs and families.

I do not know of any SFP1 aircraft with flight models made from a complete set of aerodynamic co-efficient curves. So group 1 is an unattainable holy grail as far as I know.

 

So, if you find yourself unhappy with the induced drag of some delta-winged addon, feel free to increase it to any amount you like. The trick is knowing what the real aircraft could do and calibrating the flight model to follow that. Of course, you may find that the other aircraft have such low drag that any aircraft with a truly realistic flight model will get stomped in a dogfight. Try temporarily installing my advanced F-4B flight model (an old attempt at a group 2 flight model) and you will see what I mean :) That version doesn't have calibrated level flight acceleration or climb performance, but its angle of attack limitations, speed envelope, and turn performance are extremely accurate (much less than 1% error in the subsonic region and not too bad above Mach 1.2 either). But be forewarned, the F-4B is practically a delta and therefore bleeds speed like a stuck pig at high angles of attack. I suggest keeping your speed above 400 kts or you won't have a chance against aircraft with stock FMs.

 

You can get my F-4B FM here: http://web.tampabay.rr.com/sflores1/files/F-4B.zip

Edited January 18, 2007 by streakeagle

[Atreides 144]

A big thank you to everyone for shedding light on this. Cheers !