i made a sarcastic comment earlier, part in jest, part in please let this all die, why keep ruffling feathers, whatever...
here is my serious take on the whole thing. seeing as the man who got me into the game, and generally started my flight sim carrer posted comments that are somewhat critical.
HiTech and Pyro have been modeling flight soms for how long? 10, 15 years? my guess is they have researched more than we can imagine in that time. i also assume they have poured alot of hours and money into obtaining and analizing data. have they seen or had translated every piece out there on every plane? i don't think it is possible.
HTC is a smaller company, and does not have the resources available to them that say the US air force has, so there will always be a percieved "lack" of data to support everything they create.
whatever they program, they would be foolish to just post or make available in some way ALL their findings, and data that supports it. why give out those years of work for free? just because i say bah i don't believe you, prove it, they should not have to bow to my wishes. if HTC were to make available free their entire archive, what is to stop someone from "borrowing" it for their own uses, without permission, and without cost.
i would hazard a guess they have data none of us have seen here. data on every plane they have modeled. i have this image of a file room at the HTC office, full wall to wall with bookshelves filled with reports, filght manuals, and other data. heck even at their houses i bet there's stuff. 15 years of researching a topic lends to having alot of things to sift through. add to that new data posted here, that they have to find. what i mean is, sure a page from a book may be scanned then posted. HTC can't very well base assumptions on just they. they must find the book, and get rights to the data to use and archive it i am guessing.
now take all that, and make a performance chart. when you have 2 documents that contradict each other, what do you do? believe just the "good" one? no you end up looking for another thing that backs up one or the other original finding. then you find another, and another, so on.
i could be wrong here, but imagine there is a spectrum from uber to sucky for each plane. there is something HTC actually owns that proves each point. where do you make the performance line go? personally i would take all the data, then use the average of all of it, good and bad.
in reality i think that is the best anyone could do. cold hard facts are rare in the world.
think of it this way. the only way to get accurate flight model data is to travel back in time, and run exacting tests of just what you need on the actual planes piloted by the best pilots of that plane. even if you did that, i bet you could get 3 different results from 3 "exact" planes. look at skuzzy's anecdote. 2 pilots, same plane. 1 crashes, 1 makes it. yes pilot skill comes into play, but also, maybe that plane that crashed just didn't hold together as well as the other.
so what have i concluded about all of this? i think HTC has taken the information they have available, and done the best they can with it. you have the right to not agree, but not the right to claim they are lying about something. yes people lie, but unless HTC as a company are just compulsive voss like liars, what would they have to gain?
well take it for what it's worth. thats just my thoughts on this. oh and 42, bro, i see your side, i also see the other, and just thought i'd say what i thought after all these years.