Toryu

Which limitations? The ones you already brougt up? I don't see how those are of any signifigance - especially when comparing the bird against the F-5, which was the initial argumentation. Despite some shortcomings in the total payload-area, I've already pointed out while time-till-bombs-on-the-ground can be more signifigant than the actual payload-figure. I've also pointed out that using twice the number of aircraft for the same job may actually do the job just as well or better than using less but larger and heavier aircraft. This hasn't been dreamt-up by me during a feverish night, but it actually has been suggested by people like Boyd and others before me. Why the issue of being able to carry a heavy and most of the time unreliable missile that could easily be substituted by lighter and slightly more reliable one should be of any major signifigance is also beyond me: SEA didn't see the BVR-engagements that would have made a difference you claim to be there. It was see-identify-shoot in about 99% of all engagements. By those standards the F-8 is also quite a limited bird - it strangely racked up an impressive A-A record - despite the lack of AIM-7 compatibility. ROE can mix your cards quite a bit. Also, a lot of fighters did great without BVR-capability - fighters downing each other in BVR is just a relatively recent devellopment (Iran vs Iraq had the first widespread use of BVR-missiles in fighter-fighter engagements). Did I mention the 104 had a gun right from the start (well, not quite, but almost)? So did the F-5, the Mirage III and the Draken! Quite a limitation on the F-4's side, wouldn't you think? Where is the advantage of being able to strap both, A-A and A-G ordnance to the airframe at the same time? Should the fighter be engaged before reching the target, the A-G ordnance is going to be jettisined anyway. The M61 was enough of an asset for self-defence on a 104, clearly being shown by the F-105 that managed to squezze a positive kill-ratio out of an airframe that was, after all, anything but a fighter. BTW: I'm not finding the "insulting"-part you're claiming to be hidden in my posts/ argumentation. Maybe you can point me out the stuff that's insulting to you. So far, the only thing I recognize is that my opinion is different from yours. Exactly. Those dehedral-canads and ventral-fins aren't exactly proposing a groundbreaking design in terms of stealthyness. Given the chinese experience on high-performance engines and the use of composite (or even RAM) material, we won't see any one of these things in operational use in the near future. So far, nothing indicates the J-20 of being the new edge in technology. The most obvious reason for pulling out a shiny new "fighter" duringthe visit of US representatives is propaganda - everybody likes showing their newest toys, especially when it makes you look goo. And boy, have you seen the press-coverage? The Chinese have had a very hard time developing their WS-10 engine - there were a couple of J-11 (chinese Su-27) pictures that showed at least one WS-10 (shorter nozzle than on the AL-31) installed. The nozzles on the J-20 look similar to those of the WS-20 on the J-11 demo-bird. This suggests they have gotten at least most of the bugs out of the engine - they wouldn't install it on their single-engined J-10, despite indications that the engine was designed with the J-10 in mind. This is not intended as a blow to the chinese aircraft-industry - their J-10 seems to be quite a capable design (despite obvious links to the IAI Lavi which was sold to China). But one shouldn't forget that the PLAAF still has large quantities of MIG-19 and MiG-21 derviatives in use, which is not going to change for another couple of years - be that with or without the J-20 going operational in it's current form. The conclusion would be the J-20 is a tech-demonstrator, showing what China is curently able of building in limited quantity (which is gonna change, no question). In the end, China is another country with the same problems and challanges as everybody elese's country. If there's a neccesity for a high-tech-fighter (this includes industry, logistics and tech-support beind the aircraft) other than scaring Taiwan and showing off, we'll propably see a couple of new-shiny J-20 descendants in a couple of years, however, I'm not completely sold on that: China still has quite a mixture of aircraft in their inventory. Incorporating an entirely new one is costly (especially when operating it in a low-quantity oddball-role such a high-tech, high-price fighter usually gets thrown into) and thus ineficient. That leaves the question of which role this aircraft is supposed to serve in. It's rather big for a fighter and it's wing-area is quite small by today's standards. So maybe it's layed-out for the stike-role, which is already taken-up by the Su-30MK within the PLAAF. Another option would be naval-strike against carrier-groups (that one stealthy first-strike wave to knock out the air-defence assets, or maybe even going for the carrier itself with a newly-developed missile) in the Taiwan-Strait. So far, nothing has proven or disproven any of this. The J-20 is just a black jet with a funny shape, having shown it could fly. It surely won't skip the years of stealth-fighter experience amassed by the US and other countries in a couple of months. Neither will there be any experience-breakthrough with composite materials, RAM or engine-thenology in that time-frame. Building new fighters is a process of many years and a lot of projects do get cancelled or short-funded - that's not different in China. We only haven't had quite that much insight and interest in their projects before (I don't remember the press going wild over the J-10 despite it being a major leap from the J-7 and J-8 family). While certainly having a more healthy budgt than the Russians, we haven't heard much of the T-50 lately, let alone the MiG 1.44 that used to be called the next rusian super-fighter a couple of years ago. Chances are, the J-20 is just going to share their destiny.

Das wäre allerdings sehr gefährlich - ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, dass die Neocons das so einfach auf sich sitzen lassen würden... Zur Not kann man immernoch Krieg machen - dann werden die Karten neu gemischt. ...ein Schritt mit unvorstellbaren Ausmaßen und Folgen.

Konzeptionell ist die F-22 sogar noch einen Schritt hinter dem €-Fighter: Damals (Kalter Krieg) konnte man es sich noch leisten, getrennte Flotten für Luftüberlegenheit und Angriff zu unterhalten. Heute ist das schlichtweg zu teuer - ein Krieg in Irak oder gar Afghanistan rechtfertigt die Beschaffung der F-35 nicht. In den USA wird ja die Angst vor China künstlich aufgepuscht ("Vielleicht können wir unsere Raptors noch brauchen..."). Solange da keiner aus ideologischer Beleidigung ("Die Kommis haben uns nass gemacht") den Cowboy raushängen lässt, werden die Chinesen einen Dreck tun, irgendjemanden anzugreifen. Außer für konventionelle (oder nukulare) Erstschläge ist die F-35/ F-22 nicht brauchbar. Um Kamele zu bekämpfen reicht eine Hornet allemal - das Problem ist weniger die (nachrüstbare) Avionik als die Flugstunden, die gerade den legacy-Hornets mächtig zu schaffen macht...

Keine Starts mehr auf der RWY - hab ich was verpasst? Kommt das durch den Add-On 2 Patch? Blackbird: Als "Simulation" sollte man SFP und dessen Ableger auch nicht begreifen - eher als Zeitvertreib, ein Spiel. Mich frustriert die KI am meisten - früher konnten die sich wenigstens meistens am Leben halten, aber bei meinem momentanten Patchstatus scheinen die sich nichtmal aus einem feuchten Umschlag befreien zu können... Zurück zum Thema: Zum Titel "Simulation" fehlt der Eintaucheffekt und der Realismus - das ist aber wie schon gesagt wurde enginebedingt. Ungeschlagen ist es immernoch bei der Möglichkeit, verschiedenste Konflikte und Epochen der militärischen Fliegerei (mehr oder weniger genau) darzustellen. Da wird in dieser Beziehung auch so schnell nichts rankommen... Ein bißchen gespannt bin ich auf Jet Thunder auch - weiß jemand, ob dort nur die Mirage, oder auch die Dagger fliegbar sein wird? Ersteres wäre ein wenig mager, da die Dagger wesntlich mehr mitgemischt haben.

Yeah, maybe it's time for a thread like "Lightweightfighters - now and then" :) You'll never hear me saying that. I'm aware of the a/c's limitations - I'm just trying to shed a bit of light on issues that have been written about the 104 that are plain wrong.

He has put up several esays on the 104's relative performance. In one he states, the the only fighters that could provide some trouble with the OLD ENGINE were the F-8 and the F-106 (and of course the Lightning, but that one wasn't around). The 104 is in no way unsuitable for SEA - it's all down to the mission and requirements set up by the "customers". There wasn't any fighter that could get four bombs, 600 rounds of 20mm and some decent playtime quicker to the target after CAS-alert. The F-4 could carry more, but would require more time to get to the place of action. Talking of carrying more stuff: I want to see the onslaught of people that couldn't be convinced of stopping and reassessing their situation after having been bombed by eight (= two F-104s) 750lbs eggs. While carrying more fuel, it has about twice the weight, twice the number of engines and a whole lot more drag. Overall, the fuel-flow is at least twice as much as in the 104. So if the F-4 deosn't have at least twice as much fuel aboard than the 104, things look quite bad. As I said before: carrying twice the amount of ordnance looks good on paper, but it's not always all about brute numbers. All bombed-up, the F-4 will have the endurance of a 60 year old chain-smoker - it either needs extensive tanker-support, or it won't be able to bomb the end of it's own runway. The jury is still out on whether it's better to send off a couple fighters more in the first place, or bombing less aircraft up so they'll need tanker-support every other minute. The WSO couldn't help much on that - that's what statistics show. Almost all Sparrows were fired in WVR conditions, where a Sidewinder would have been a better option, yet was unavaliable because strike-Rhinos were only armed with one Sparrow in each of the rear semi-recesses. Of course, most of those kills could also have been achieved with a gun... The Sparrow's unique feature (range + headon-capability) was useless in 99% of all engagements, thus the unability of carrying one is a non-issue. Hardly - the 104 was flying blind and got sneaked-up from behind. The MiG-19 almost ate a return-Sidewinder, but the a/c's hydraulics gave away before the pilot had a good tone. The NVAF only chose to fight when the conditions were favourable - such as an escort of F-4s heading to the tanker because their clients are flying at to high speeds for them to cruise efficiently. Not giving the enemy such an opportunity, saves aircraft. Whether the NVAF didn't chose to fight because they knew about the 104s is of secondary relevance. See the findings of projects Featherduster and the Navy's F-104/F-4 maneuvering/ ACM trials. The F-4 vertically didn't play in the same league as the 104. In order to getting back towards the initial argumentation: The F-104 would have fit much better as a lightweight-fighter to support it's heavier brethren in SEA than the F-5.

From somebody who actually flew both, the Rhino and the 104: http://www.916-starfighter.de/Ruminations%20on%20the%20F-104.htm The other source would of course be the venerable Tom "Sharkbait" Delashaw, who flew the 104 in SEA, made record-intercepts and finally flew for the "Starfighters" Demo-Team before being killed in a Hunter-crash: http://web.tiscali.it/F104-Starfighter/Zip.htm That's quite generic - it never states the profile/ altitude, nor does it specify the speeds. The 104's range-superriority comes in the L-L-L arena. The 104 also had a signifigently higher cruise speed - a reason why 104s were favoured by Wild-Weasels (Thuds), because they were a lot closer to their cruise than the Phantoms. The AIM-7 armament proved close to useless in Vietnam as it would a) malfunction b) be too fiddly to employ in a quick squeeze-off c) seldomly (read: almost never) conditions actually favoured a 20NM Sparrow head-on engagement. Neither were the crews correctly taught in using the Sparrow at first, nor did the missile perform up to specs. Airplanes not being cleared for a BVR-shot in the first place was another Sparrow show-stopper. There just weren' enough "Combat Tree" IFF-boxes around to allow the widespread use of the Sparrow's standoff-capability. The 104 of course always had a gun for self-defense - an option which only came into play for the F-4 community in 1968. The 104 hardly needed the Sidewinder to defend themselves. BTW: the seekers being damaged was the lesser evil: the catamaran-rail on the lower fuselage had a bad impact on yaw-stability - that's why it usually was kept off the planes. What Andy Bush doesn't tell you is that the 104 does have the better options in the vertical than the F-4. The second seat is a useful asset, but it isn't neccessarily needed when doing ACM.

MiGB, the 104 doesn't have any shorter legs than the F-4; he contrary is rather true. In SEA, it was mainly used as Escort for either EC-121 or Wild-Weasel assets, where it never lost a protegée - other missions included CAS and MiGCAP. Both missions were fulifilled to the fullest. The in-comission-rate was at around 98% (not quite bad for such an oddball on the flightline). The 104 was killed by USAF-politics, not by performance or ability. Speaking of the MiG-17: Controllability issues include: - very high stick-forces above 450KIAS or M.85 - resulting very slow roll-rates and pitch-authority - Dutch-Roll tendency above 375KIAS and generally poor yaw-stability in turbulent air The MiG has a better lift-coefficient and more wing-area than the F-5, combined with a higher aspect-ratio. I'm not quite sure if the F-5A has automatic leading-edge flaps, though.

Im WW2 (nach der Invasion) haben die Amis auf alles geballert, was sich bewegt hat - egal ob französischer Bauer, deutsches Schulkind oder belgischer Güterzug. Chuck Yeager hat in seiner Autobiographie eine nette Passage darüber, dass sie ausdrücklich den Befehl dazu bekamen - und einer der beim Breifing beteiligten Piloten zynisch anmerkte "dann gewinnen wir diesen Krieg besser..." Bei 10-20 facher Übermacht gegen schlecht ausgebildete Piloten in den Kampf zu ziehen ist nicht unbedingt eine Heldentat - auch wenn viele Missions sicherlich alles andere als Zuckerschlecken waren. Vergleichbar mit der Halbwertszeit eines 1944 frisch an die Front kommenden dt. Piloten (3-5 Missionen) war es jedenfalls lange nicht.

Acc to Andy Bush, the F-5E (with auto-flaps) is a very close representation of the MiG-21F's energy-envelope. I seriously doubt the F-5A will go anywhere near the MiG-17 in terms of turning. At 400kts maybe - but at that speed the MiG can merely fly straigt due to it's lacking hydraulic-system. There's no chance an F-5A will turn with a MiG-17 at 250kts and below. The point about the 104 is it being rated best ACM-platform of the entire US inventory during the 60s (Project Featherduster). Imagine they built the 319FIS' 104A-birds ("G"-flaps, "S"-engine) in actual production. That thing was a world-beather.

The US did have a far more capable lightweight-fighter than the F-5 (even before that term was invented!) - the F-104. It outperformed the F-4 in many missions, but that was propably it's fault, so it had to go away...

Das hat damit nichts zu tun. Es gibt ein Primärradarecho, das ist die tatasächlich vom Flugzeug reflektierte Radarenergie - ergibt einen "Blip" auf dem Rararschirm. Das andere ist das Sekundärecho, welches vom Transponder/ IFF ausgeht. Das ist auch bei Stealth-Flugzeugen (wenn angeschaltet) prima auf dem Radar zu erkennen. "Stealth" heißt darüber hinaus nicht, dass man unsichtbar ist, sondern dass in bestimmten Bändern des elektromagnetischen Spektrums die Auffassungsreichweite dramatisch verkürzt wird.

Why would that be? Europe is an agglomeration of friendly states, with no valuable threat luring in. There is just no need for developping a tech-arsed fighter to win a fight that never comes up. Unless you want to invade some country every once in a while, sealth is just a useless performance-killer.

Das Problem ist nicht der Winter, sondern irgendwelche BWL-Hansis *zwinker Blackbird*, die meinen, man käme auch mit weniger Streumaterial aus. In Aachen hat man die letzten zwei Wochen keine Notwendigkeit zu Streuen gesehen - trotz spiegelglatter Straßen. Heute habe ich zum ersten Mal Streusplit gesehen, aber in einer Dichte, die einfach nur lächerlich war - da hatte jeder Pflasterstein seinen eigenen Kieselstein...

Bild liefere ich nach, wenn ich mal wieder in Windoof bin. Es zeigt den modifizierten "Sitz" mit EL 73 und EL 70.

Klaro! Bitteschön: (Quelle: F-40 - Die Flugzeuge der Bundeswehr "Alpha Jet")

Scheint '84 eingeführt worden zu sein. Jedenfalls habe ich keine Aufnahmen von Flugzeugen vor '84 mit den Antennen gefunden. Der Antennensatz umfasst die beiden kegelförmigen Antennen hinter dem zweiten Cockpit und unter dem Rumpf, sowie die Antenne direkt über dem Seitenruder(vgl Flugzeuge ohne Kegelantennen) und eine Hornantenne an der Nasenspitze. Recht gute Abbildungen in "F-40 Alpha Jet", S.119.

Schickes Teil. Hast du eine ECM-Version geplant?

Problematisch für den A380 sind die Dimensionen der Taxiways, daher gibt es nur ein paar Ausweichflughäfen (Alternates) in Deutschland, die angeflogen werden können. Der Anflug ist dabei eher weniger problematisch - der lässt sich prima im Sim üben. Dafür muss man nicht extra so viel Geld verpulvern und mit dem "echten" Flieger nach STR fliegen. Das Ground-Handling hingegen ist im Sim nicht so leicht zu üben - dafür sind die Margen einfach sehr klein. Ist auch sehr wahrscheinlich, dass das einfach Ausbildungsflüge sind, bei denen die Bude voller Umschüler (Kapitäne) sitzt und jeder mal ein paar Platzrunden fliegen darf.

Aber es wird ein A/ LNU, oder?

Der arabische/ Export Fulcrum-Pack wäre cremig :)

Hatte hier mal was vonnem geplanten Alpha Jet gelesen. Gibts dazu Infos?

Sind 3ds max-Dateien rückwärtskompatibel?

Gibt es ein gmax-Plugin für TW? Habe das neueste in den Plugin-Ordner geschoben, kann aber nicht initialisiert werden (Fehlermeldung beim Öffnen).

Die Amis haben im Moment garnicht die kapazitäten, den Iran anzugreifen - und das wird auf absehbare Zeit auch nichtmehr anders aussehen. Der Iran ist nicht nur wesentlich größer als der Irak, er ist auch wesentlich unwegsamer und die Mehrheit der (Land)Bevölkerung steht hinter der Regierung. Dort reinzugehen ist blanker Selbstmord. IIRC hat die IRIAF bereits einige SA-10 von den Russen bekommen und es liefen Deals (?) über SA-20 und manch anderes Albtraumgetier. Momentan hat Israel nicht die Möglichkeit, Iran anzugreifen, da kein einziges Land (siehe letztes Abenteur mit den Türken) bereit wäre, Überflugrechte zu gewähren. In allen Nachbarländern Israels herrscht in der Bevölkerung eine mehr oder weniger antiisraelische Stimmung und die Regierungen können es sich eigentlich nicht leisten, Zugeständnisse an Israel zu machen. Alles in Allem dürfte auch mit ein paar F-35ern der (gezielte) Angiff auf die (weit verstreuten) Atomanlagen alles andere als machbar sein. Das ist nichtmehr '81 - jeder rechnet mit Israel, und jeder wird wild entschlossen sein, die Brüder vom Himmel zu putzen - speziell nach Israels aktionen im Libanon, in Gaza und jüngst bei der Hilfsflotte. Später vielleicht mehr, momentan muss ich die Bisspuren in meinem Keyboard beseitigen, nachdem ich 3-4h an gmax saß und nichtmal die Dreiseiten-Anansicht importiert bekommen hab