streakeagle

So everyone agreed with me from the start that the F-8 is not an angles fighter at all and does not clearly outclass the F-4 in horizontal performance? With a 10% advantage and a sustained turn rate of say 8 deg/sec (perhaps generous for the 30,000 feet altituded needed to get the 10% advantage), that means the F-8 could do 8.8 deg/sec. So, if the F-4 started on the F-8's tail, the F-8 would have to turn for 450 seconds to get all the way around back on the F-4's tail, or 11 full circles. To put it in perspective, under very similar conditions, the F-16 gains 90 degrees on a slatted F-4E in 1 circle and would only take 3 more circles to get the job done. The upengined late MiG-21bis was within 10% of F-16A turn performance. So, in an F-4 vs F-8 match, the pilots' skills outweigh the the performance differences and if the pilots are perfectly matched, the odds of victory are about 50/50 in a close in dogfight. If either the F-4 or F-8 had to face a MiG-21bis, they had better hope they MiG pilot sucks or doesn't ever see them. Funny, I never programmed my F-4B flight model based on how it felt. Having never flown an F-4, how could I ever know what it really felt like anyway? FMs are lists of aerodynamic coefficients. To be accurate, the numbers must either be calculated or tweaked until the in-game performance matches some known standard. The F-8 manual doesn't quantify very much of the performance in ways that help out with calculating the FM or even provide very many perfomrance curves that you can try to tweak the FM to match. The lift curves I found last night were part of the section on how to pull out of a dive without hitting the ground. There is a 1g level flight envelope for max speed that can be matched, but should drag be increased or thrust decreased to avoid crossing the Mach limit for a given altitude? Or is the limit a self imposed one to protect the engine? It takes tons of data to get the performance curves to match, not just min and max speeds at 1g and the sea level static thrust of the engine. The F-8 manual mainly has a lot of data used for planning missions: fuel-burn rates, time-to-altitude, etc. In the above posts, I made the best estimates I could with what little info was available. Actual flight data will probably be +/-10% of what I guessed if I interpreted the table correctly, but could be off by +/-50% because of other variables not reflected in a simple CL versus Mach table. I even have some problems with the F-4 tables as they have some conflicts with the NASA data. One of the two sources is using less accurate data, both are using measured data mixed with wind tunnel results and faired in data points, so how do I decided which one is based more on measured data and which one was cheating by using basic equations to fair in points? So, even with charts in hand, there is room for errors even if you do all the math without any mistakes. I prefer detailed flight manual charts--these had to be as correct as possible because pilots lived and died by them. NASA data is usually gathered by some engineer type doing a study. Some of these studies are very focused and detailed perhaps even better than the flight manuals, but many are done using the same methods I used above: simple linear equations with extrapolated data to fill in the blanks. I may criticize TK's stock flight models in many posts, but TK made all of his flight models from scratch. I merely used his FM as a foundation and tweaked it to fit the curves I have derived from the flight manuals and NASA data. So, I have the utmost respect for TK's aerospace engineering expertise. But he has to divide his time between programming tasks and an entire catalog of aicraft. Whereas I can afford to pick one aircraft and build a massive library of data on it. Duke's problem vs. the MiG-17 was that when he pulled into the vertical, the F-4 pulled out in front of the MiG-17, who would then start to pepper him with gunfire, forcing him to evade and disengage. Energy tactics are not to zoom up in front of guns. They are to get above your opponent while not in his gunsight and force him to stall trying to reach your altitude. An angles fighter's only defense against a high energy fighter is to pull a tight circle every time the energy fighter tries to make a pass, which could result in a stalemate. But the energy fighter can leave at will. Whereas, if the angles fighter has to leave first, he gets an IRM up the tailpipe. First, Duke assumed the MiG-17 pilot was typical and would either go into a flat turn or disengage when he zoomed. Then, he entered into a vertical rolling scissors at point blank range. The object of a scissors is to force the target to overshoot, not zoom past him. I think Duke was lucky that the pilot was not a better shot. After the first time the MiG-17 flew so agressively in the vertical, Duke should have extended, climbed, then come back rather than keep repeating co-altitude head-on passes followed by more vertical scissoring. Fortunately for Duke, he avoided the gunfire and forced the MiG-17 to disengage first. If you fly an F-105 vs the MiG-17 in SF2, you get an idea about how difficult it is for an energy fighter to beat and angles fighter, but if the energy fighter is flown correctly it will never lose, only win or draw. When you fly an energy fighter and try to use only tail-aspect heat-seeking missiles (such as the F-8 or F-4), the job gets even harder since you not only need to be on the target's tail, but the target needs to ease off his rate of turn a bit to helpt he missile track and hit. It sounds really hard to do and in SF2 where the AI can see you even in its blindspot it is even harder, but with a little patience and luck, the enemy will make a mistake. This is the "Iceman" school of dogfighting. It is tedious and boring but reduces your risk to near zero. Attempting to scissor with the angles fighter and relying on the enemy to be surprised and overshoot when you chop your throttlles is the "Maverick" school of dogfighting. It worked out for Duke, but most people who chop their throttles while in front of a gun armed opponent find out that the gun solution is much easier to solve when the target stops and fills your windscreen.

The number crunching is actually the most important part. If the right nubmers show up, they can be used to "calibrate" the stock flight models. I don't even need an FM editor, just an Excel spreadsheet to dial in the lift, drag, and thrust curves. This technique will never get exactly the right numbers on the indiviudal components, but the sum total will behave almost identically to the performance charts. If the numbers don't matter, TK should just use one flight model for all of the aircraft. Screenshots would look just as good and it would make TK's job much easier. Graphics are nice to have, but having unique detailed realistic flight models is what makes a FLIGHT sim fun for me. Of course, it used to be more important to me when I played online multiplayer all the time.

I am a Crusader fan as well, have one hanging right next to my F-4J and MiG-21PF on my ceiling. TK's sims are a blessing as they focus on the the aircraft and time frame I love the most. Third party addons cover the gaps really well too... complete set of Century fighters and MiG-21 cockpits, plus 1950s aircraft. I just wish the flight models could be tuned to be as close to dead on as possible within this engine so that I could better enjoy the subtle differences between types. If you look at the F-8, it was a total dog when WoV first came out, then it replaced the MiG-19 (back around SP1/SP2a) as the unbeatable UFO in online multiplayer. The F-4 flight model has always been too generous, especially in the drag department. Just tuning the Cd0 and CDL tables will give you a very credible F-4 experience minus the nasty departure behavior. I have tons of data on the F-4 on XB-70 that I have yet to translate into FM tables. NASA data could help me do detailed F-104, A-7, A-4, F-106, T-38, F-5, F-105, and B-58 exceeding the quality of my original F-4B FM. It just takes more time and focus than I have to convert all those charts into Excel graphs and then derive co-efficient tables from the graphs, then extrapolate the missing points and fill any remaining gaps with DATCOM estimates or faired in values from similar aircraft. Now if someone were paying me good money to do that for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, that would be great. But why am I going to spend 8 to 10 hours a day at work on computers and control systems and then come home to do what is the equivalent to boring college theoretical engineering homework. I am at the point now where I would rather just play the game as it is.

The missing component for sustained turn performance is drag. The best I can do on short notice is take the two readily available CD0 numbers: F-4: 0.0175 for the F-4B/C, 0.0224 for the slatted F-4E (slats came with a heavy price) F-8: 0.0133 I have no precise way of comparing induced drag. Tons of info on the F-4, almost nothing on the F-8. But the F-4 has a terrible zero-lift drag. 0.175 / 0.0133 = 1.316 or 31.6% worse drag with no induced drag. Aspect ratio is the best relative indicator: A = b^2/S, where b = wing span and S = wing area For F-4: 38.3^2 / 530 = 2.77 For F-8: 35.2^2 / 385 = 3.22 3.22 / 2.77 = 1.162, or possibly 16% more drag for the F-4. Of course, both of these aspect ratios are reasonably close to the typical 3.0 for supersonic jet fighters. If there really is a 16% diffence in induced drag, the the F-4 should be able to compete at sea level with its 24% thrust advantage more than compensating for the drag penalty. But up high, the F-4 will lose in both instaneous and sustained turn performance by about a 10% margin.

I verified the contents of the F-8D/F-8E NATOPS FLIGHT MANUAL NAVAIR 01-45HHD-1 (Change 1 March 1968) and its performance supplement, NAVWEPS 01-45HHD-1A. I found one extremely useful chart that can be directly applied to the game to get CL correct: Angle-of-Attack Relationship figure 4-8 (Sheet 3) which plots CL vs AoA for several different Mach numbers including 0.2, 0.6, and 0.8 (the latter two representing combat speeds). The AoA range is capped off at 20 degrees and there is no indication of the usable limits, but by the scale at the bottome of the graph, it looks like 18 degrees/320 mils was the practical limit. At 20 degrees, the CLmax tops off at 0.89 for Mach 0.8, 0.9 for Mach 0.6, and 0.96 for Mach 0.2, these numbers may be unattainable, but give an upper limit of what the number actually is. I have data for the F-4 that shows the usuable CLmax not only varies with Mach, but also decreases with altitude (this explains why the F-4 can beat the MiG-21 down low but loses up high). At sea level, the usuable CLmax is about 1.02 over the entire subsonic speed range until it is limited by max load, the lowest co-efficient of 0.90 is at Mach 0.8 at 30,000 ft. For a fixed speed, the aircraft which can pull more g will turn tighter. Mach 0.6 is about 396 kts, which is a good speed that both aircraft would want to use in combat. The g load is = CL * q * S / W, since both aircraft are at the same speed and altitude, the only variables that matter are CL (lift coefficient), S (wing area), and W (weight), so to compare the two aircraft, lets ratio the F-8 to the F-4 and if the resulting number is 1.0, the aircraft turn the same. If it is greater than 1, then the F-8 is pulling more g (number - 1 x 100 to get percent advantage), otherwise, the F-4 will pull more g. Using S and W from above and using the sea level number for the F-4: ( 0.9 * 385 / 25,000 ) / ( 1.02 * 530 / 38,000 ) = 0.974 Keep in mind, this does not affirm that the aircraft can sustain this many g's, this is max instantaneous. But note, that at sea level, the F-4B actually has a 2.6% victory over the F-8E. Factor in the F-4s thrust advantage, and I think you will find that the F-4 will not only be capable of pulling more g, but also of sustaining it. Also note, that engine thrust has not been included in the thrust equation. Both aircraft are pulling about 20 degrees of AoA, which means 34% of the thrust can be added to the lift and gives the F-4 another edge. If g's being pulled are around 7, the F-4 might be pulling 7.30 including thrust while the F-8 would be pulling 7.06 including thrust. At best, a negligible 3.4% advantage for the F-4. This isn't speculation or some kind of wild ass guess. These numbers are real. If you want to do the math, you can actually figure out exactly how many g's each aircraft is pulling. Per the F-4 manual, it should be pulling 7.6 g at that speed and altitude at CLmax, so my approximation was close enough to make my point. Now, let's put the F-4 up high, where it does the worst: (0.9 * 385 / 25,000 ) / (0.9 * 530 / 38,000 ) = 1.104 Notice that since the CLmax numbers are the same, this is really just a ratio of wing loadings. This is why wing loading is used to predict relative performance. But it only works well when both aircraft have similar planforms that result in similar aerodynamic coefficients. At this altitude, thrust will be about 30% of what it was at sea level, so it will contribute less than 1/3 of what it did at sea level. This leaves the F-8 pulling at best a 10% g advantage. At this altitude and speed (about 344 kts), the F-4 will be pulling 4.4 g, which cannot be sustained. That puts the F-8 at about 4.875 g. At medium altitudes, the performance should be close enough, that neither pilot would be able to tell which aircraft has the advantage. But, the F-4 pilot has to be alot more careful about using his max lift, if he overshoots too far, he will depart controlled flight and probably lose the aircraft. The F-8 will do a nasty roll and stall if pushed to hard, but is far less likely to end up in a non-recoverable flat spin. Aside from stability differences, it would seem the two aircraft are aerodynamically very similar. Not surprising since they were built by two companies that had been continuously offering competing designs to meet the same types of specifications. Now all of this is based on that one simple AoA chart in the F-8 manual. If someone can produce a V-n diagram similar to the one in the F-4, I will gladly overlay the two for direct comparison. But I have never seen such a thing for the F-8. If you want to prove that the F-8 was better, "show me the money". I am sure there is some sort of manual that has the data I want, but good luck finding it.

The MiG-21 and MiG-17 were both more maneuverable than the F-4, yet the F-4 could and did beat both with whatever weapon the pilots could get to work. Agility makes it easier to convert angles, but does not win dogfights, otherwise, how would the much less maneuverable F-8 consistently beat the MiG-17 that could clearly out turn it and get out of AIM-9 parameters at will. My argument is that the F-8 was not a very agile fighter. It was probably marginally more agile than the F-4 in the same way that the F-4 was marginally more agile than the F-104. The key to the F-8's success was neither its guns nor its "agility". It was flown by pilots that utilized its strengths. Now, if the F-8 can beat the MiG-17 because it is a better enegry fighter, why wouldn't the F-4 beat the F-8 for the same reason? Is the F-4's energy margin large enough to overcome its turn rate disadvantage against the F-8. The answer lies with the MiG-21 and F-5E. The MiG-21 is smaller and faster than the F-8, but suffers sustained turn performance disadvantages due to its delta wing. The F-5E has about the same speed capability as the F-8, but is much lighter and far more agile. F-4 pilots were trained to smoke A-4s and F-5s as proxies for the MiG-17s and MiG-21s they would actually face. So how is the F-8 going to consistently beat the F-4 with agility if the pilots are equal and the F-4 has already proven that it will win most of the time against aircraft that are far smaller, lighter, and more agile than the F-8? The aircraft that the Israeli F-4 pilots feared was the MiG-21bis and any other derivatives using the same engine that beat the F-4 at its own game with superior power to weight AND was more agile. If the better MiG-21 pilots in the mid east had ever gotten a missile comparable to the AIM-9D/G/H to use against the F-4, the F-4's air-to-air record would have been much worse. I have the pilot manuals for the entire F-8 series and quite a few other fighters. Like most other aircraft, there are no detailed performance tables that would permit me to create an accurate flight model, or I would gladly do so. I have great data for the F-4 and F-104, though. They can be modeled to the limits of TK's game engine. Most other aircraft prior to the F-15 have limited turn data. An overlay showing the relative turn and climb performance of the MiG-17, MiG-21, F-8, and F-105 would tell a great story. MiG-21 data is somewhat available, but the early variants I only have in Russian. The bis I have in English. I don't just know a lot about the F-4. I have studied all the aircraft. It's not like I am claiming that the F-4 should be able to clobber the F-16 in ACM. I will say that an experienced F-4 pilot could hold his ground against inexperienced pilots in the F-14 and F-15. The F-14's performance advantages over the F-4 were similar to the F-4's performance advantages over the F-104-better across the board, but not by a huge amount. The F-15 was crippled in agility by a lack of a leading edge high lift device. It turned little better than the F-4, but could match the F-4's best turn rate using only military power, which meant that with afterburner, the F-15 could climb while the F-4 struggled to maintain a level turn. If you design an aircraft to have low transonic/supersonic drag in the quest for speed, you will not get an agile fighter. The F-16 uses modern technology to maximize the lift of a delta design in the form of LERX, body blending, high thrust-to-weight turbofan, and lightweight construction to make it agile despite the supersonic capability. It also omitted variable geometry intakes knowing that the engine was so strong that even at reduced efficiency the aircraft could push Mach 2. No matter what the Navy called the F-8, it was a Mach 1.5 limited equivalent to the MiG-21. Lacking the tables I prefer, consider the following: F-4B: 38,000 lbs combat weight, 530 ft^2 wing area, 34,000 lbs A/B -----> 71.7 lbs/ft^2 wing loading and 0.895 T/W F-8E: 25,000 lbs combat weight, 385 ft^2 wing area, 18,000 lbs A/B -----> 64.9 lbs/ft^2 wing loading and 0.720 T/W MiG-21PF: 15,000 lbs combat weight, 247 ft^2 wing area, 13,490 lbs A/B -> 60.7 lbs/ft^2 wing loading and 0.899 T/W At a glance, the MiG-21 should be dusting both aircraft, but these numbers don't reflect the effects of drag, aspect ratio etc. Suffice it to say that the F-4B took all the time-to-climb and speed records because its specific excess power outclassed anything flying at the time by a safe margin. the MiG-21's delta wing made for good supersonic drag and good climb. The induced drag was higher than a straight wing like the F-8, but even with that penalty, it still managed better sustained turns at altitude against the F-4. The MiG-21 could be out turned by the F-4. With the F-8 having a wing loading about midway between the F-4 and MiG-21 while at the same time having drastically less power available, I would question the F-8's ability to sustain much higher rates of turn than the F-4 over certain portions of the envelope, particularly at the higher subsonic speeds where I would expect the F-4 to have its most signficant power advantage. I am not arguing that an aircraft is better because I like it best, I am arguing that the F-8 has an overhyped reputation for agility that would be easily deflated to a large extent if the pertinent data was available. Would it be fair to say that most WW2 fighters were built to be close combat day fighters? The US always chose speed and power over agility. The F-8 was built to win using speed and power, not turn fighting. Whether you are talking about WW2 or Vietnam, the US almost exclusively fielded larger/heavier, longer ranged, faster/more powerful fighters versus smaller, lighter, more agile opponents. We beat the A6M with boom-n-zooom, pilot quality, attrition, and tactics. The F-104 and F-8 were supersonic successors to the single seat boom-n-zoom air superiority fighters minus the bubble canopies because no one wanted to pay the drag for them. If the Navy were trying to make a turn fighter, shouldn't it be able to out turn at least one opponent it was expected to face? You will never sell me on the idea that the F-8 was built with the goal of agility being a priority. Speed, rate-of-climb, and range were the big three for most US designs until the F-16/F-17.

While I love the F3H as an ancestor of the F4H, the F4D is simply an elegant aircraft. All tailless deltas have major aerodynamic issues, but they sure look cool. The F3H may look a bit odd, but if it had the engine power and weight it was supposed to have, it would have been a decent design. As things turned out, the F4D was better. But both quickly became irrelavant. Once you have the F-8 and F-4, you have aircraft that are among the best for over a decade instead of just 2 or 3 years (look at all the fighters that came and went between 1945 and 1960!). The point of my thread is not to bash the F-8. Its combat record speaks for itself. I simply disagree with the assessment that it would have been a better choice for the fleet than the F-4, especially based on the idea that it was somehow magically more agile than it really was. For instance, by the numbers, I can show how the F-4 is significantly more maneuverable than the F-4. But Andy Bush is a fighter pilot who flew both extensively. In his opinion, the turn performance differences between the F-4 and the F-104 were negligible. He actually preferred the F-104 and even beat an F-15 in a mock dogfight while flying one. Now does Andy's anecdotes override published data from the manufacturer's? I doubt it. He may have been one of those rare pilots who would win no matter what aircraft he was flying and would be happy with the performance of his aircraft since he was able to win. Steve Ritchie praised the AIM-7E2 and F-4 Phantom, but how many other pilots got the results he did when given the same opportunties with the same equipment? The F-8 pilots in Vietnam were almost the only well trained air-to-air pilots on either side. The USAF had some awesome WW2/Korea veterans mostly at the beginning, and both the USAF and PVAF had some lucky and/or talented newbies, but by far, most of the pilots flying F-4s, MiG-21s, and MiG-17s were inexperienced and poorly trained leading to a lot of missed kill opportunies and/or unnecessary losses. The fact that F-4 pilots who completed Top Gun generally did as well or better than the F-8 pilots make it painfully obvious that you don't win a dogfight because your aircraft turns a little tighter or climbs a little faster, you win it by making better decisions than the enemy in the tradeoff between speed, altitude, and angles given the particular aircraft being employed and the initial conditions.

Ok, lets flip the coin. Instead of just two aircraft having a fight starting at the ideal range and altitude for the F-4 to win, lets take 4 F-4Bs versu 4 F-8Es all armed with only 4xAIM-9Ds. Are you going to claim that 4 angles fighters will beat 4 energy fighters? Even underpowered, less agile F4F Wildcats could successfully take the skies from A6M Zeroes when flown with mutual support. The agility of the Zero was largely nullified when you used more than 1 vs 1 scenarios. The four F-4s with 2 crewmen each could fight in the vertical, maintian better situational awareness and would probably win. Of course, if the F-8s truly have such awesome agility compared to the F-4, the battle might be a draw until someone runs out of gas and has to try to disengage... Like quite a few of the F-8 kills against MiG-17s (and surely a similar percentage of the F-4 kills). So which aircraft would have better endurance while using lots of afterburner for sustained hard turns and zoom climbs? In Top Gun, F-4 crews were taught to beat souped up A-4s and F-5Es in exactly the same sort of situations (as F-8 crews had already known how to do from the start). As I have never flown either aircraft in reality and can clearly show that the flight modeling in sims like the SF2 series is no basis for comparison, I can only judge by the historical record. Given everything I know, if I had to pick one aircraft to fly in combat any time from 1958 to 1975, it would be whatever the best F-4 variant that was available to me. If my mission might range from ground attack to air superiority, I would lean toward USAF variants as they always had better avionics for bombing in a given time frame while retaining the air-to-air capability. But, if my primary mission was air superiority, clearly, the Navy's access to better AIM-9 variants make the F-4B and F-4J the best choices. The F-4E would be much easier to fly and had a gun, but the F-4J's AWG-10 radar was greatly superior to the F-4E's APQ-120. Unlike the APQ-120, the look down feature actually worked and could find F-8s down in the weeds. While the Navy ultimately admitted that the slats were needed for safety, they never added the internal gun. It wasn't worth the weight, space, vibration, or loss in radar reliability (APQ-120s didn't like being vibrated by 100 rounds per second). SF2 makes the F-4E look better since its radar works just as well as the F-4J in the game, and it has slats and a gun, but consider the fact that in reality, even after the F-4E was widely available in Vietnam, that the F-4D was the aircraft of choice for USAF sweeps and CAP because of its superior radar. The SF series has come a long way, but aside from the slats and gun on the F-4E, all the F-4s seem about the same as long as they have been upgraded with a RWR. But in reality the F-4D was almost as good at ground pounding and a better air superiority aircraft than the F-4E and much better than the F-4B or F-4C in either role... as long as it isn't stuck with AIM-4Ds!

I can assure you France would gladly have traded their F-8s for F-14s or a French equivalent. F-4s are still in service because the countries flying them couldn't afford F-15s and F-16s much less F-22s and F-35s. The USAF and USN weren't even permitted to completely replace the F-4 with the F-14 adn F-15. Look at the Navy's budget in the 1960's though. They gladly replaced the F-8 with the F-4, only keeping some F-8s to serve on the smaller carriers. They Navy clearly believed the F-4 was the better fleet defence aircraft and had even learned to use it very well for air superiority, and once the skies were clear, it was a much better bomb truck. Apparently, things haven't changed much. When faced with major budget limitations and forced to pick one aircraft to perform every job, they picked the F/A-18E... a 60-foot long twin-engined aircraft with a 500 ft^2 wing, weighing 30,000 lbs empty, and an optional 2nd seat. Sound familiar? The F-4 actually had a bit more wing area (530 sq ft), but is darn close to having the same dimensions. The F-14 was not only too expensive, but too large and the F/A-18A/B/C/D was too small. The F-4 sized F/A-18E/F was just right. They were quite willing to give up some agility for the size increase, too. By giving up the cost of stealth and improving an existing airframe rather than trying to develop a new one, the Navy got a useful number of new airframes instead of being stuck flying the old ones untily they start breaking in half during ACM training.

Show me the data from the manufacturer or NASA that shows F-8 turn performance at specific heights, loadouts, and speed ranges before claiming how it was more maneuverable. I have have never seen more than pilot anecdotes. Anecotes can't accurately specify heights, speeds, weights, or how well each pilot hit their aircraft's performance sweet spot whle denying the opposition his. Plenty of pilots from WW2 will tell you how plane x was better than plane y during one or more of their engagements while another group of pilots will tell you they experienced exactly the opposite. From the cockpit in a close-in dogfight, pilots cannot accurately ascertain angular rates, velocity vectors, or even ranges, much less specific excess power or other key ACM parameters. They are too busy fighting for their life to act as flight test data collectors. In certain specific geometries and initial conditions, a more agile aircraft will appear or even actually be out turned by a less agile aircraft. Likewise, a less powerful, slower aircraft may appear or even actually out accelerate or out climb a much more powerful, faster aircraft. Aircraft performance cannot be estimated accurately enough to compare relatively similar aircraft based on weights, sea level static thrust, stall speed, max speed, etc. Even detailed wind tunnel data doesn't fill in all the blanks. It takes carefully collected flight test data to draw valid conclusions. Air combat ranges like Red Flag measure all this data then replay it for all pilots involved so everyone can learn what really happened instead of just what they thought they saw. The F-8 wasn't even close to being optimized for ACM. Was it as maneuverable as an F-86 or MiG-17? Did it have a bubble canopy? Like all post WW2 jet fighters until the F-16, it was designed for speed and climb first at the cost of maneuverability. The F-8's wings were clearly swept for speed. For comparison, the F/A-18's nearly straight wings are far more optimized for ACM. Its swept wing and high wing loading gave it landing characteristics that were absolutely terrible, even worse than the F-4 despite having the variable incidence wing (which really only enhanced visibility by lowering the nose and screwed up manually moving the engine throttle to vary rate of descent). Above landing speeds it was a lot more stable than the F-4 at combat AoA, but that came from not being designed to fly Mach 2+. So, the F-8 gave up supersonic drag and a bit of power-to-weight to have a less delta like wing which meant a bit less induced drag. Now, did the savings in drag overcome the lower power-to-weight? Ps charts partially answer this, but it would really be nice if Vought had provided tables in the same format as the F-4. The one envelope you get from an F-8 pilot's manual is the Height-Mach diagram showing the 1g steady state flight envelope, which fits neatly inside the F-4 envelope. Where the F-4 was limited by dynamic pressure and temperature (if had enough excess thrust to go faster than Mach, but without modifications, the engines would melt down if it did), the F-8 was limited by drag (not enough power to exceed Mach 1.5). This implies that at higher altitudes and higher speeds, the F-4 would actually have better sustained turn performance than the F-8 as its lesser power-to-weight was cancelled out by zero-lift drag. Without much better data than is available to me, all I can do is speculate which aircraft would handle better at a given height and speed based on aspect ratio, wing loading, thrust loading, etc. If someone else has better data that can prove my best guesses wrong, feel free to post it here. As for the F8U-3, it was apparently superior to the F-4 in every performance aspect, but the Navy wasn't buying a dog fighter or a drag racer, it wanted the best fleet defence interceptor it could afford to protect its most valuable asset: aircraft carriers. The Navy concluded that for an interceptor to be effective, it had to have the best radar available and carry as many as practical of the best missile available that could be hauled up to high altitude and reach Mach 2 as quickly as possible. Equally important, the Navy decided that the aircraft must have a dedicated radar operator to ensure the narrow windows of time and distance between detection, lock-on, and minimum firing range were not missed. Apparently, the F8U-3 lost the competition because it had only one seat and carried at most 3 Sparrows to the F4H's maximum of 6 Sparrows. The same formula that led to the selection of the F-4 led to the rejection of the Missileer (too slow/underpowered despite having an early version of the AWG-9/Phoenix system). The F-111B almost met the criteria, but it weighed too much and Grumman had leveraged their inside knowleged and newer technology to wrap the engines, radar, and weapons of the F-111B in a lighter package that out performed the F-4 it was to replace in all aspects (F-111B performance was inferior to the F-4 in all ways except speed). The F-14 was the F-4 concept with better radar, better missiles, supposedly better engines (TF30s ended up never being good fighter engines), better cockpit visibility, and variable geometry wings. Notably, the F-14 retained the 2-seat configuration. The Navy was sure that the additional weight of a RIO was a huge advantage in both radar interception siutations and close-in visual range knife fights. The Navy really didn't give up on the fluid four formation, they just made the welded-wingman an integrated part of the element leaders, permanently in formation 1 meter behind them. USN F-4 pilots that successfully utilized their back-seaters had proven their worth. The F-4s had a 2nd set of eyes, which helped greatly in both defensive and offensive situations. Notably, the F-15 reverted to the single seat configuration, which the USAF justified by the digital improvements to radar operation. The USAF never wanted a 2-seat in the first place and waited a long time before doing anything to encourage a good relationship between the pilot and the "navigator" in F-4s. The F-15 was the size and configuration of a heavy interceptor/multirole fighter bomber (like the F-14 and F-4) but retained the single seat and lack of ground attack systems that would be expected in a small lightweight day air superiority fighter. Meanwhile, the small lightweight day fighter, YF-16, was purchased to replace the F-4 as a heavy multirole fighter-bomber. I am I the only person confused by these decisions? In my opinion, USAF leadership criminally negligent in their duties to defend our nation as best as possible within the available budget constraints during the 1960s. The USN did a lot better job of identifying and correcting its mistakes over the same time frame. In 1972, USN F-4s almost exclusively went straight into close range dogfights while USAF F-4s struggled to achieve BVR kills. It is pointless to argue which was more effective, since the most effective course of action would have been to use both. The USAF and USN finally came to this realization after Vietnam was over, working together in the AIMVAL/ACEVAL tests to explore the effectiveness of various weapons and tactics on the outcome of an air combat engagement. What took them so long? Shouldn't this have happened around 1966?

I much preferred the way OFP/Resistance provided a continous platform with lots of free upgrades until Resistance came out and tied up most of the loose ends. Going from ArmA to separate addon to ArmA2 to another addon in a much shorter time frame has left me behind. But if that's how they have to do business to survive, so be it. There are no other shooters of any interest to me. OFP won me over with its unique and realistic styles of gameplay. Open maps with open ended solutions to mission accomplishment with very challenging AI. I still play OFP/Resistance with friends. I would like to be able to do the same with ArmA2, but I only have 3 PCs that can even run it and I don't think any of my friends' PCs can run it at all.

OK, I have reached the fun limit of FC2 for me playing 1 vs. 2 heater only missions. The MiG-23s were nearly impossible to beat. You cannot stay out of firing parameters for both and can't make a mistake in terms of throttle, flares, altitude or you get popped by an R-60M. I did beat them, but it took quite a few tries to get to the point where I could kill one without the other killing me immediately afterwards. The 2nd MiG-23 was always right on my butt while I was shooting the first, so I learned to go to idle and pull g to bleed speed. Forced the overshoot, killed him with my choice of guns or heater. I could get the AI to go for this every time, but I still had a high probability of getting popped by an R-60M. The MiG-29s were even more difficult: add helmet mounted sights with off-boresight capability and much greater maneuverability. The whole time you are tracking/killing one, you need to be popping flares and even then you will get killed by the one of the two before even killing one of them quite a bit of the time. I can dodge about 3 out of 4 R-60Ms, but they each carry four, so typically they have fired 1 to 5 R-60Ms by the time I am dead. I did "win" one time by hosing the first one quickly with a solid gun burst then snapping up the other one with a heater. But, after quitting, I discovered the guns kill wasn't a kill yet. I didn't see him flying around anywhere, but he had not hit the ground yet. The AI did not impress me that much with 1 vs 2 gunfights, but with R-60Ms, they are pretty damn mean. The only problem is, realistic or not, it is no fun to get popped almost every fight. I want to dogfight, not fly around near the ground at idle popping flares steadily until I get blindsided by an R-60M.

I never get tired of F-101 Voodoo screenshots, especially ones that look as good as that :)

F-8s could not get onto the tail of a MiG-17 any easier than an F-4. If they were getting onto the tail of a MiG-17 in a level turn, the MiG-17 wasn't turning or had hit speeds where it couldn't turn. Statitics such as kills per engagement reflect the entire war. The F-8 had good pilots the entire time. If you look at USN F-4 units in 1972, you will find that they did every bit as well as F-8 units. The three principal reasons F-8s did so well compared to the F-4 over the same time frame (1966-1968) were: 1) They got most of their kills with the AIM-9D, a missile far superior to the AIM-9B. 2) While their guns did not directly contribute to their success, the extensive training they received on how to dogfight to use the guns got them into position to use the AIM-9D despite being far less maneuverable than their MiG-17 targets. 3) They rarely had to fight MiG-21s. Even the F-105 got a significant number of kills against the MiG-17 almost exclusively with guns. Maneuverability was not the key. Being aware of the MiG-17 and taking the correct course of action to counter it was the key. Tecnically, F-105s got more kills than F-8s, so we should get rid of the F-8 and F-4 and switch to the F-105? Put those same F-8 pilots in F-4Bs with AIM-9Ds and you would have gotten the same or better results in the same engagements. Take the USAF pilots and throw them in F-8s and watch them do as bad as they did in the F-4C despite having AIM-9Ds, because they still won't have the ACM skills it takes to beat an angles fighter with an energy fighter.

I completed the 1v1 heaters only. The MiG-23 got my several times before I solved my problem. I had rear aspect AIM-9Ps vs all-aspect R-60Ms, so I had to survive the merge to position for a shot. Performing missile avoidance tactics made it difficult for me to maintain visual contact. I would merge, lose sight of the MiG-23, then end up getting shot while circling/looping to look for him. Or, while maintaining visual contact I would get hit by one or more R-60Ms. Finally, I learned to zoom in visually and use trackIR to maintain visual as I dove low in idle tossing chaff and flares, after the merge, I select afterburner and pull through the vertical, then look for the small dot moving against the terrain. If I spot him, I out perform him, line up for a tail aspect, and win with a single AIM-9P shot. The MiG-29 got me first time, but all the practice against the MiG-23 ensured that I nailed the MiG-29 on the 2nd try using the exact same formula. The Su-27 brought a new surprise: armed with R-73s, but I gained AIM-9Ms. First try, I dodged two R-73s, but as I realized I had AIM-9Ms and nosed back up for a point blank face shot, I died of a point blank R-73 face shot. Second try, I knew I had AIM-9Ms, dodged two R-73s and scored an AIM-9M face shot at point blank range. He never even had a chance to pop a flare. As I had expected, FC2 plays the same as its predecessors once missiles are back in the fight. The entire fight is about correctly employing missile avoidance maneuvers. If you can master that, then the focus shifts back to the fun twisty close-in dogfights.

The F-8 didn't "perform" better than the F-4, it simply had pilots well trained in air-to-air combat tactics. Something US Navy F-4s did not have until Top Gun and USAF F-4s never got until after Vietnam. All the way back to WWI, people in the know knew it wasn't the crate that determined the outcome but the pilot unless there was a huge gap in technology or problems caused by mandatory doctrine. USAF pilots in Vietnam were not the only ones who suffered as a result of doctrine and rules of engagement. NVAF pilots got roasted a few times due to the limitations and failures of their GCI system. Operation Bolo being the most famous case. Had the MiG-21 pilots not had to wait for GCI instructions to run for cover, they probably would have lost only 1 or 2 instead of 6 or 7 MiG-21s that day. The weather was horrible and it was easy to hide in the clouds and go home. But GCI was stunned by the discovery that the inbound flights were air-to-air F-4s and not strike F-105s. They hesitated way too long before issuing orders to run for it. If there had been more officers like Robin Olds and they hadn't been forced to do things like fly Fluid Four and switch to AIM-4s rather than adapt their aircraft to AIM-9Ds, the early years in Vietnam probably would have gone so well that there wouldn't be much to fight by 1972.

I only have the demo for now. I could never get ArmA running fast enough to be fun on this rig, so it is a pleasant surprise how well ArmA 2 runs on my ancient rig. Win 7 64 + HD 4890 is giving me the same benefits in this game as it did in SF2. It seems to capture the best points of OFP AND add the best points of ArmA while otherwise working much better. I am tempted to buy it, but I already have two copies of ArmA I will never use because ArmA 2 came out before I could get around to buying a new rig. I am sure missions in the full version will load down my single core A64 3800 too much. So I may settle for the demo until I either get a new rig or ArmA 3 is released.

Meteor cockpit? If someone is cranking out pits, I would think having high quality correct pits for every non-flyable stock aircraft would be a great direction to go :)

Keep in mind, you still need to get the latest DirectX 9 updates as well to run the old SF1 series.

Not really surprising. Entertainment in any form that appeals to the masses has been reduced to simple easy to repeat formulas: movies, sitcoms, reality shows, books, etc. With music being more akin to mathematics than any other form, it makes sense the those seeking to make millions selling music figured out a formula that works and haven't failed yet. Consider all the '60s pop/rock'n'roll hits. There were a handful of writers cranking out most of the hit songs while the groups that sang them were often composed of random people, some of whome were not even talented in any way shape or form. Some of the girl groups swapped out members as necessary to keep the group cheap and on the road. At best, Peter and Mike of the Monkees were actually musicians. Need I mention later versions like Milli-Vanilli? There are some greats that are wholly original that lead the new waves of music rather than followed. David Bowie constantly went down new paths and stayed on top for almost 20 years. Like her or not, Madonna was a trend setter for about the same length of time. At the other end of the spectrum are groups like the Beach Boys who were stuck singing the same ten songs for their entire lives with very few exceptions. I did find it interesting comparing their list tof my own CD collection. I counted about 38 songs in their routine and I have 17 of them. While the chords may be similar or even the same in all of those songs, chords are not unlike percussion. Most songs could be reduced to chords and a drum beat and sound very similar. What really stands out in most songs is the melody and/or the voices used to sing them as well as the arrangement of instruments used to play them. Musical styles that focus on the beat with little or no melody all sound the same to me. My wife is from Colombia and all Latin reggaetón songs sound the same to me: loud obnoxious percussion accented with some periodic catch phrase. There is even one song I have heard at every Latin party or club I have ever been to with the reptitive catch phrase being "gas-o-li-na" pronounced "gas" "oh" "lee" "na". There are other lyrics being mumbled under the Latin reggaetón drum beat, but they are wholly inconsequential. My all-time favorite group is Pink Floyd. Anyone who has listened to their complete catalog of music has experienced a dynamic range of sound. But their most popular albums Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall more or less evolved into a formula centered on Roger Water's themes. So much so, that Roger Waters went his separate way since he didn't need the rest of the group to continue his music. Meanwhile, the remaining members spit out two more albums where they did their best to infuse the themes of their best albums with an updated sound to bump up their pension funds. I still like their post Roger Waters albums (as well as Roger's and Dave's solo work), but how much does that say when I am the type of person who likes Lady Ga-Ga's Poker Face?

It doesn't change how the RWR works, just allows it to be displayed on the screen at all times.

Aside from learning where the key commands are, the game is meant to be learned by trial and error while flying, though there is a pdf instruction manual and my SARH tutorial listed above is a quick shortcut. I have made keyboard map for the latest SF2 mappings as well: http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6892&hilit=keyboard+layout

Much needed? I already have a Skyraider pit I enjoy using :)

Nice work! I know many have asked how to do this. With radar and RWR displays always visible, SF2 becomes a bit more like Jane's Fighters Anthology that typically had four popup windows across the bottom showing radar, rwr, targeting video camera, and performance envelope.

Completed the 1 vs 2 DACT. Cleaned the pair of MiG-23s clocks with no resistance. Had to play MiG-29s twice, 2nd time got into a really good groove and smoked them both quickly. Su-27s almost went down on the first try, but I lacked the finesse I needed when I dropped my nose in a stall and missed the shot. By the 4th try, I killed the first one as fast as a MiG-29 and didn't take too much longer to get the 2nd Flanker. I am guessing the pilot quality in the opposing aircraft is dumbed down slightly for training purposes in these missions? or is there a setting I am missing where I can increase the AI skill level? I don't think I should have even a 50/50 chance against a MiG-29 in a knife fight and I can beat a pair of much superior Flankers, too. If by chance this is the best the AI can do, I think SF2 is much better than FC2 in dogfighting AI. Now, I could see that the Flankers were very maneuverable, but they didn't take advantage of it very well nor did they take advantage of 2vs1 tactics very well. They should split well before the merge and force me to pick one or the other or fly straight through. Instead, they only split after the merge. If I take too long to kill the first one, the 2nd will convert on to my tail and kill me. But the AI seem far too susceptible to being suckered into an overshoot while leaving me with plenty of energy to paste them with gunfire after they slip into my forward quarter. Tomorrow, I will try to complete all of the heaters only DACT missions. I expect I will get clobbered in that unless I learn how to employ flares correctly.