cougar_1979

If you are flying against a human, you may try some rudder imput when going head on, right before you line up your shot. If done right, it may actually throw his first aim at you a bit off, but don't expect any miracles. You may gain 1/2s to 1s in this way. Aside from that......... it is as Saisran said, with a marker and limited time, he gets perfect situational awarenss, so even ambushing will be hard.

I usually avoid head on passes myself, but then again i usually fly larger planes (relatively) then the opposition. Are you flying against an AI or against a human?

I don't know how the flight models and the weapon systems are modelled in the mobile version, but in other sims the general rules would be: -If the enemy is right behind you and packing a good heat seeking missile, do not light a burner and go up as you would make yourself a juicy target; -the MiG-19 is no slouch by any means, it's actually quite a nice dogfighter for its era, so do not underestimate him; -in an F-104, your best bet is ambush or a bounce from above, engage and flee; if he knows you are here and he is a good stick, there is nothing you can do once you make your initial attack. Hope it helps.

Ok lads. No videos or DACTs this time. Just two familiarization flight. I decided to test the Gripen against the M2000, and just for reference, the other way around too. It looks to me like Gripen is a UFO as well. The supercruising sustaining 9+g at 20000ft kind of a UFO. I have never seen the E-M charts of that plane, but it does seam overpowered to me. The M2000 turned out all right though. Can anyone confirm this? Cheers and safe flying! P.S. I flew both brids clean, full internal fuel and guns only.

LOL! It was me. Yeah The reason why i asked is, that sometimes by the end of a hard fight, i end up with only 2 of the cannons still working.....

I defeintely need to try a DACT with those bags on! I remember them giving me quite the headache in furballs during regular missions :) EDIT: sorry for the double post. EDIT2: Saisran, have you tried the Gripen pack?

Aye, very small and very nimble! If one finds the Vipe a tough nut to crack, then the Gripen is off limits. Makes for a very good gunnery practice That was actually some of the best energy management i've ever seen man. Good job! A question: do you find the cannons in those Korea era birds jamming often?

Now that must have been intense! Good fight with the Raptor too. I agree with your assesment of the Gripen. I must point out that i flew against the C model, but even that seamed quite nimble and energy capable little bird. I am yet to fly with it and i don't have a Raptor in my install, but in your video it shows good turning capability. On those blackouts. What is the difficulty setting you are using for them? I used to fly on the harders, but when test flying i noticed my virtual pilot started to grayout at only 4g and complete instant blackout at 6g, so i changed it to medium. Now he grays out at 6g and blacks out at 7.5-8g. Still a bit low IMO (for a trained fighter pilot) but it does make things more interesting then the hardest mode, when you basicly need to fly in streight lines....

I'd like yo see that one too Thanks mate! I was preparing for it this time, both theoretically and in practice I think i may have taken the entire thing a bit too seriously

Qucik and efficient. If the bandit refuses to play aggressive, try flying right right infront of him and after he engages you, reaquire him. Sometimes they do act passive for some reason. :)

@Saisran; man, you really do handle the F-86 most skillfully. Are you flying it often? For this hop, i decided to wrap up the Gripen engagement, by going at it with SRAMs. After all, engaging guns only is not a very realistic scenario on one hand, and on the ohter, once to "fair" evaluation has been established, i consider the "full ACM" should be much more interesting. So, as i was about to bring along heat seaking missiles with me (in this case "Mikes") and the bandit would be equiped with watever air to air load is available to it, i have to major objectives. The first one is of course, surviving the merge. I have described my prefered method of doing this before so i'm not going to go into much details. Sufice to say, the Gripen has radar missiles in this configuration, so am counting on both jamming and beaming to get withing visual range and then on military power and flairs to survive his SRAM barage. The second objective is much more complex and it involves shoting the guy with a missle. In order to do so with an all aspect SRAM, there are several conditions that need to met (not all of them at once, but at least two would do the trick): - keep a long enough tracking trajectory and lead for the seaker to find its target and the missile to intercept it; - provide enough separation for the missile to have the time to come off the rail, track, maneuver and intercept the bandit; - minimize lateral displacement of the bandit relative to the plane, to avoid missile blond spot and maneuvering limits; - assure favorable aspect, so that countermeasure effectiveness will be at minimum (i.e. full frontal or full rear aspect); - make sure to have clear unobstructed LOS and no ambiental noise for the seaker; - and lastly, provide for as much boost to missile kinematics, by having as much energy advantage as possible (either altitude or air speed). From the previous hop it becomes apparent that the Gripen won't allow us a long enough tracking trajectory (staying in a high G sustained turn indefinitely), so the first method is almost right out. What we are left with is a combination of the other methods. The first and most important of these (in absence of the tracking solution) is the separation. Our missile will never have the chance to track or maneuver if the bandit is much less then a nautical mile from us. But how to provide such separation? One way is of course, pushing for a 2 circle fight. Unlike the once circle method that will lead to "hugging" and potential skissors, a 2 circle method will resault with larger separation and potentially a clear all aspect shot. However, for this to work, we need to complete our own circle faster then the bandit and with enough distance between us. The Gripen being a small hard turning plane is not likely to allow for this to happen. So we need something to give us the edge. If we can get him to turn with us, but we manage out energy wisely and convert the fight from horizontal 2 turns to vertical 2 turns, we can use the F-14's superior lift to drag properties to both complete our turn faster and possibly get a good clear look-up shot at the enemy as it recovers the pull up. Alternatively, if we end up above the enemy, we can give our missile the extra energy to maneuver, thus automaticly reaching at least two of our objectives. Now that we have a general strategy, here is the flight: We start by being locked by the bandit. To counter it we engage ECM, and try to beam as much as possible while building up airspeed as much as possible. We manage to get within visual range without being shot by radar missiles. However we do get fired twise with heat seakers which we manage to avoid with counter measures and some maneuvering. Note that i did try to come out of burner to decrease my IR signature, but the engine did not respond fast enough. After the merge we engage the bandit in a left turn, trying to threaten him with an early nose on. We complete our circle first and do get a good tone and nose position, however the closure is too high and the missile fails. We have however build up a lot of airspeed and as the bandit streaks by us, i decide to take us into the vertical and see if i can get that vertical separation i mentioned earlier. It's a no go this time, as the Gripen has enough energy to follow me up and we end up neutral, with him taking some gun snap shots at me. I let him pass me, contune my dive and then reverse my turn. My line of thinking is, the dive has let me build enough separation and him climbing has made him a good target across the cold sky. I use up my energy and pull up, getting a good nice sight (and tone) on the bandit. Fox 2 again. He lauches some flairs but the missile guides well and explides just behind him. I wait to see what damage has been done to the Gripen as he glides down, but the aggressive manuver (and climb) has beld me out of energy........ and on top of that, the Gripen seams untouched. As i can't sustain a good turning rate while this slow and unloading to accelerate would take forever (maybe long enough for the bandit to reverse the tables), i roll into a dive and start performing a split S. The dive has given me enough separation again, but this time the Gripen is already in a dive, so i don't get a good firing postion. I do get a good energy boost and an over the top position (which the F-14 favors) however. I use it to once again change the plane of engagement, this time from a vertical to left horizontal turn. The Griper driver has been busy himself however and is almost on my 6 bu now. I engage a downward spiral to the deck and use the traded altitude for veolcity to present as myself as as hard a target to get a lead on as possible. It works like a charm and we not just shake him, but bleading some extra knots, actually get a nose on first once more. As he passes us on our left i put the Tomcat in a hard left turn, sustaining my best turn rate and getting the Gripen in my sights. I do not fire however, as i don't think the missile has a good chance, besides the favorable aspect. I am proven correct, as the bandit suddenly goes into a hard break. The break leaves him both slow and up in the sky as i follow him in a shallow dispacement roll. I fire my third FOX 2 and this gets spoofed with even less flairs then the first 2. During all these shots i do notice that my radar did not get a single lock on the target. So being a superstitious guy that i am (like most aviators), i recycle my radar modes and re engage the bandit. I perform a quick break to see of getting my nose on him will allow the radar to aquire a lock and it's a success! I let him pass, unload and re engage once again. We do close in on his tail, but i know where that chase leads. Wanting the save the tax payer's money some JP fuel, i reverse once more. This puts us in the same circle, but allows me a good paralel bearing on the merge, so i can engage the vertical once again. I complete the circle first for the third time and we are on top of him. I get a good tone and i fire off the last Mike this time with 3 conditions met. Energy advantage, minimum (but just enough separation) and a favorable aspect. The missile finally connects and the Gripen's climb out is cut short by a smoky death spiral. Takeaways: besides the above described strategy..... well..... the Tomcat is a very good vertical turning machine, as long as you don't bleed it out too soon. Having a superior lift curve does help completing your turns faster and tighter (especially in a vertical) and having a favorable lift to drag ratio, allows you to recover energy fast in a dive and sustain it superbly in a turn. Never go nose to nose with someone who can out point you. I hope you guys like this, it got me almost an hour to write it all up, and one more to upload the vid, but for me, it was well worth it. One of the most intense 1 on 1 fights in which i did not got shot

You've had a case of them flying with zero fuel?! Now that's a whole new level of AI cheat!

In a way yes. It's one of the last old fashioned "hands-on" planes. You fly it yourself with minimum help from the flight computer. So the plane does allow you to mess up, unlike the more modern fly by wire birds. But, it is exaclty this ability to do things you should not (under normal circumstances) that allows some unique flying properties under extreme conditions.

Yeah, it does bleed like crazy, especially with the stick all the way back. One way to controll it (aside from force feedback on your stick), is to keep one eye on your alpha indicator. The Sparrowhawk HUD equipped cats have a typical angle of attack indicator in the lower left, just below the airspeed and mach values. The windshield projected older era HUDs don't have one, and you need to see it on the Alpha strip (just above your airspeed dial). It should be noted that the strip shows the slpha in units and the HUD in degrees. Generally, when you want your best sustained turn, you keep your alpha between 15-21 units (10-15 degrees roughly). Higher then that and you bleed. Lower then that and you are accelerating. This is for the A model, the B/D might actually have a bit higher sustained alpha capability. But, in either version, once you go above 25-30 units, you will bleed fast (and possibly generate lots of buffet in the process).

Despite the overshoot (were you doing over 500knots there) that was actually pretty good for a first fight. The B/D Cat is quite forgiving to energy bleeds, mostly because of the excess thrust, and you did well to drop the flaps when you dropped below 200.

I decided to test the Gripen last night and see how it behaves in the AI's hands. I flew about 1/2 a dozen hops and won every single one of them, but almost none to my satisfaction. In essence, i keept in defensive until it went out of burner (i would assume because it hit bingo fuel) and then i would shot it down easily. But there was something familiar about all these fights and i decided to fly against a Mirage 2000 once again (the hardest fight i ever had in an F-14A so far).... et voila! The fight was very similar. In fact the Gripen acts somewhere between Rafale and Mirage, however it is not nearly as overpowered as the Rafale, and it never slows down. In fact, the AI uses the Gripen like it uses the Mirage (the M2000 never bleads bellow 300KIAS) only the minimum airspeed it is willing to go to is up in the 350-360KIAS. The only instance in which i have seen it break bellow is when trying to take a shot at you. This makes most of the fights endurance fights. The AI will stay in the Gripen's "goldylock" (350-400KIAS) indefinitely because it won't black out and trying to get a shot in a horizontal fight will be very hard. Do not take any missiles in the fight if you decide to turn and burn with it. You will never get enough lead for them this way. It is possible to trick him into taking a shot at you (thus slowing down), after which you can take the vertical (if you haven't spent your energy already), climb over him and get enough separation to fire an all aspect heat seaking missile at a relatively low energy bandit. But, if you want to fight him in one plane the only way to down him is with guns and even then you are almost certain to need a high defelction shot (like 9 times out of 10). Because the AI won't bleed and won't blackout, you will once again have to time your offensive pulls wisely and always keep at least 50 knots above your best sustained airspeed as reserve. Note that i fought all the fights starting with full internal fuel and at the moments the Gripen went bingo i was usually just above 6000lbs. Also worthy of note is that if you face him with 10000 or less lbs from the stat it is actually a very easy target. In fact the F-14A dogfights very well on half internal fuel. This is the final hop, which i flew after the M2000 re evaluation fight. It's farely borning endurance fight and just like my old M2000 encounter it ends up with a high deflection gun kill. At the end of the fight i have between 9-10000lbs of fuel left. The general directions are: -keep your energy up -keep the pressure on the bandit (but don't expect it to bleed) -line up your shots using rudder and aileron inputs way before you actually take the shot -don't go for a shot at all costs (i.e. if you need to bleed from 350 to 290 just to get a 0.1-0.5s snap shot window, don't do it, let him go and repeat the procedure after you unload) Ihope this helps guys:

Have you tried flying the TMF F-14A? It's a bit less snappy then the TW one, so you may find it easier to sustain desired airspeed/AoA in it. It rolls much better at transonic as well.

For all that is worth mate, i think it was the asymmetric thrust that pushed you into that spin, not your control inuputs. Once you lose an engine in an F-14, it can be real tricky to perform hard maneuvers. Did you use the TMF F-14A or the stock F-14?

A bit on the maintaing of air speed in a Tomcat..... the plain seams to like accelerating and going fast, even the underpowered version (when in burner). So, each time you unload you may pick up extra knots without noticing. It takes some practice to get the feel for it, especially with the tendency to bleed rapidly at high alpha. Lower control sensitivity sure helps to get that fine middle ground between optimum alpha and roll input.

Yeah, if you allow me to quote the aviator: "the tanks stay, unless i'm fighting a MiG-29 and losing" BTW.... i stand corrected..... i took the Rafale last night for a few hops. On the first 2 tries i managed to depart it and crashed in a spin i was unable to recover. On the 3rd try i finally blasted the Viper with a Magic. This plane is snappy and very responsive........ and i am flying with decresed sensitivity and larger deadzone, because i usually fly to Tomcat and i don't want to depart it or bleed too much. Aside from that..... i suspect the Rafale is a UFO. I flew clean with 4 Magics and almost full fuel load at 15000ft and bellow 50% throttle setting i could easiliy hold 9.5-9.7g in a sustained turn. The plane supercruised with ease as well. Just to make sure i got a Super Bug with 4 X-rays and full internal fuel, and at 15000ft i could usually sustain around 5.5g...... in full power and/or burner..... I know the Bug isn't the best sustained turn fighter, but what the Rafale does is just out of this world.... EDIT: i guess this would explain why if you try to fight it in high subsonic, it will chew you up. It can basically stay at 9+g at very low fuel economy.

I meant more on which version of the Rafale :) Here are my 2 hops. The first one is guns only, the second is with close range missiles. I am in an F-14A, early 80's version, the bandit is a Rafale M. We start at around 15-20nm on each other's 10-11 o'clock. Hop#1: I have already flown 2-3 warmups, so my strategy is clear. The Rafale in AI's hands, behaves pretty much like a Mirage 2000, though maybe slighty less over powered. It's far from being a UFO, but the way AI flies i know i will have to fight the blackouts more then the bandit itself. I will fly fast, and expend energy to nose-threaten the Rafale and force him on defensive. I explicitely avoid using hte vertical, because i want to evaluate the plane's performance, no the AI's skill with it. The first few high energy passes reveal that in the high subsonic region, the Viper and the Rafale are farely similar as far as maintaining their turn rates goes. 2 minutes into the fight i get my first clear nose-on and start forcing him to make defensive breaks in order to see how he handles the slow regime. Each consecutive press gets me more and more favorable aspect, however the G's are too high to keep him above my HUD for a long enough period of time. Very soon however, we hit the deck and there isn't anywhere for him to run anymore. On the 4th attack i settle right on his tail and gun him down from close range (0.2-0.3)nm. Hint, in order to keep sight on the bandit during hard turns with lots of lead required, approach him slightly off his plane of turning (above or bellow as shown in the video) and only line up your lift vector with him, as you are going for the kill. The Rafale did last 4 breaks once a bled him down on the hard deck, so i am guessing it handles the slow speed better then the Viper. In fact, seams very close to the Tomcat. Hop2: This time i armed us both with close range A-A ordnance. I got 4 Limas, but i have no idea what the Rafale's equivalent is. What i do know is that it shot me in the face on my first run, when i fogot i need to kick flaires and break during the initial merge :))) The 2nd run was a victory but he just sort of flew streight after i evaded his initial salvo, so it wasn't worth uploading. This is the 3rd run. This time he didn't shoot at all at the merge (i have no idea why). I decided to follow the same tactics as before and only try to shoot a heater at him once he starts recovering from a break. This will require me to time my turn in such a fashion, that my nose is on hime as close as possible to the point in time when he unloads. Something is not right though and my radar seams to have trouble locking him up. I cicle through my radar modes to see if the situation will remedy itself. Finally around 3 and 1/2 minutes into the fight i get my radar to work. Now it's on to the dirst work. 2 more turns and i get what i think is my first good missile chance. Good tone, nose up, fox 2. He kicks some flaires and i don't know if my Lima even started tracking in the first place. The window was very small after all. At time index 5:00 he seams to think his energy state isn't good enough and reverses the turn. I let him pass, try to estimate where the my pipe is and follow suit. On the second break into the right i get into enother nose up position and i get the tone. Fox 2 again, but it seams the g's are too high, or the lead to low...... or both. This time the Rafale doesn't even drop any counter measures. The mssile fails. I continue to follow him and manage to bleed him almost dry in just 2 more breaks. His in the middle of my HUD, good tone, Fox2 again. The missile tracks and almost hits, but the Rafale drops a S*** load of flairs and just manages to spoof the Lima. Now i now what kind of a shot i need in order for the Lima to connect. Unfortunately, the Rafale is in such a low energy state that i end up right behind his tailpipe and this turns into a WW1 dogfight. i have no choice but to select guns and in for the gun kill. I never thought i'd see a Rafale this close up in the air. Basically withing 0.1nm. Takeaways. "Conventional" SRAAMs aren't that useful when turning and burning against high performance targets. The leed requred is foten outside teh missle IR sensor FoV and the vulnerability to counter measures too high. If you manage to force the bandit in a low energy state, you may get a chance though. I would suspect, you would still need at least 2 or 3 shots to nail him though. Under such conditions, personally i would preffer a gun tracking solution myself, as cannon rounds can't be spoofed. Overal, the Rafale is an excellent figther. It is just as good as the Viper in the high speed part of the envelope, and measurebaly better in the lower energy states (though not by all that much). It's still falls a bit short of a Tomcat or Flanker. I need to take it on with a Bug or Super Bug, or better yet, take the jet itself and see what i can do with it. The way the AI flies, i had no idea at all of how it rolls, so there is another reason to try it out. It's somewhat bigger then the Viper, so you can spot it a bit further, and gun it down from a bit longer ranges, but this isn't that great of a diference. All in all, i would rate it just a bit higher as a dogfighter in comparisson to the F-16s, just because you have 2-3 more low energy breaks in it if an enemy forses you on defensive. EDIT: I see Saisran beat me to it!

I would glady try it out. Which link/version would you recommend? @Saisran, i know how you feel. My screen is only 19 inch, 4:3 ratio and and when i switch off the visual aids, i can't spot a fighter sized target at 1nm away, when IRL i should be able to see it anywhere from 4-10nm away, depending on size and aspect. In Falcon, this is solved by the smart zoom function, which magnifies objects of interest once they reach 1 pixel size, but there is no such function in SF2. Also, because of the small screen, i can't always read my instruments well. EDIT: i actually use my flight stick HAT for panning the view in all sims. I once tried a face tracking solution, but the small screen and bad software, made it not very practical....

Good shooting mate! Yeah, going up against multiple bandits armed with all apsect HOBS capable missiles alone is very suicidal. While you can offset the HOBS capability when fighting even odds by hugging the bandit, it's very hard to do the same thing when dealing with many of them. There is almost no way to actually control the engagement in such a way that no shot will be made against you :(

Thanks mate. I think i may have to go against my original advice of getting close to the bandit before gunning him. At least it some occasaions it appears that it's better to open up a bit further away :)

I did a test run and it sort of worked....... but i'm not entirely sure, it may need some more runs before i can make a more "educated" ..... conclusion??? Anyway, i got a clean F-14A (as this is probably the bird i am most familiar with), against a clean F-16C (blk25). i almost forgot to hit the record button, so the video starts 2-3 seconds after the merge and we are already in a left hand turn. Nothing spectacular about the merge itself, 450 knots level, bandit at 10-11. Unlike other engagements, instead of breaking down to 350-360 knots and then sustaining the best turn rate possible, this time i stayed at optimum AoA as much as possible (that is why i often pan the view down, to check on my AoA meter). As a result, i stay above 400 knots most of the time, and the one time i don't the bandit separates across the hud very fast and i get to repeat the procedure once again. The key is not to get too close but to far either. And this only becomes doable when you get tons of flight time in your AC and know how it turns by heart. I'll try giving some pointers. When the bandit starts its break, don't chase after him right away. Wait until he is at the point which coincides with your own planned turning curve (or where you would be when you complete your turn) and then start your own turning (but be careful not to overbreak). You'll know you are doing it right, if the aspect of the bandit decreases as you turn. Anyways, enough of me rattling, here is the vid: