Sea Level Acceleration Revised For 2.07

[Widewing]

Since 2.07 introduced a new drag model and some aircraft display significant changes in some areas of performance, I have re-tested all 55 prop driven fighter types for sea level acceleration. Being home with the flu has at least one benefit...

Set-up was simple. 50% fuel regardless of capacity. Altitude of 100 feet +/- 25 feet. Begin at 150 mph TAS, add full power (including WEP if available), measure time required to reach 250 mph TAS. Fuel burn was 0.001 (essentially zero). All times should be accurate within 0.1 seconds. Each plane tested twice and the average of the two runs was used for data.

There are some surprises, such as the SpitI accelerating faster than the SpitV. P-38J and L now accelerate faster than the P-51D, which was not the case with 2.06 and before.

Obviously, variables in fuel weight will change acceleration accordingly. The below listed performance figures are meant strictly as a nominal baseline and will vary with load-out and changes in altitude. For example: At 25,000 feet, the P-38J ranks near the top in acceleration, while the Tempest falls to barely mid-pack. These numbers reflect acceleration performance on the deck only.

Data is sorted in descending order from fastest to slowest.

Plane: Time in seconds

Tempest: 18.51
Spitfire Mk.XVI: 18.72
Spitfire Mk.XIV: 18.81
Bf 109K-4: 18.97
La-7: 19.15
Bf 109G-14: 19.57
Spitfire Mk.VIII: 19.90
La-5FN: 20.06
F4U-4: 20.59
Fw 190D-9: 20.75
Ki-84: 21.56
Bf 109G-2: 22.19
N1K2-J: 22.42
Bf 109F-4: 22.93
Bf 109G-6: 23.18
P-38J: 23.23
Yak-9U: 23.43
P-38L: 23.47
C.205: 23.70
Ta 152H: 24.12
Typhoon: 24.13
Fw 190A-5: 24.34
F4U-1D: 24.50
Spitfire Mk.IX: 24.72
Fw 190A-8: 24.94
P-51D: 25.11
F4U-1C: 25.59
Fw 190F-8: 25.94
F6F-5: 26.35
P-47N: 26.37
P-47D-40: 26.50
P-51B: 26.51
C.202: 26.62
Mosquito: 27.69
P-38G: 28.25
P-47D-25: 28.34
F4U-1: 28.69
P-47D-11: 28.75
Spitfire Mk.I: 28.88
Spitfire Mk.V: 29.87
Yak-9T: 30.31
A6M5: 30.69
FM-2: 30.78
Ki-61: 31.28
Bf 110G-2: 31.84
Seafire Mk.II: 32.38
P-40E: 33.16
Bf 109E-4: 34.60
Hurricane Mk.IIC: 36.62
Bf 110C-4b: 37.51
F4F-4: 41.44
A6M2: 44.37
Hurricane Mk.IID: 46.25
Hurricane Mk.I: 53.88
P-40B: 54.50


My regards,

Widewing

[Hap]

Originally posted by Widewing
Ki-84: 21.56
Bf 109G-2: 22.19
N1K2-J: 22.42
Bf 109F-4: 22.93
Bf 109G-6: 23.18
P-38J: 23.23
Yak-9U: 23.43
P-38L: 23.47
C.205: 23.70
Ta 152H: 24.12
Typhoon: 24.13
Fw 190A-5: 24.34
F4U-1D: 24.50
Spitfire Mk.IX: 24.72
Fw 190A-8: 24.94
P-51D: 25.11
F4U-1C: 25.59
Fw 190F-8: 25.94
F6F-5: 26.35
P-47N: 26.37

thanks widewing.  always enjoy you info though i probably don't make the best use of it.  the list above is part of your report, 2nd tier accelerating planes, some surprises, no?  niki and a8 and f6f ahead of n model jug.  niki ahead of a 9u.  i didn't know that.  also much ahead of the pony.

i wonder to what degree these facts we adequately exploit and to what degree hay can be made of them in the ma.  and look at the franz.  with what you said about its low speed turning, it's looking better all the time.

hap

[DoKGonZo]

Just how much tabular data do you guys have? I just read MOSQ's thread on turn rates too. So I'm assuming there's a bunch.

I've been playing around with a cool PHP-XML-Flash charting package for a project and I think it could be useful to allow people to compare planes. I threw this together in like 10 minutes, but imagine being able to pick 6 planes from the list and compare them this way for accel, speed, climb, turn, etc. ... whatever we have:

Charts Demo

This package also does line charts (it actually does a ton of stuff ... pretty awesome), so it could plot climb/speed v. altitude and stuff like that as well.

Let me know,

    -DoK

[Urchin]

Why on earth does the Spit 16 out-accelerate the Spit 14?  

The Spit 14 should have at least 300 more horsepower... and it weighs the same on the same airframe.  

I'm confused.

[Karnak]

The Spit XIV may well not have more horsepower at that altitude as it is tuned for high altitude performance whereas the Spit XVI is tuned for low altitude performance.

Also the Spit XIV's radiators are deeper and thus a bit more drag, though the XIV does overcome that to have a higher deck speed than the XVI.

[hammer]

Originally posted by DoKGonZo
Just how much tabular data do you guys have? I just read MOSQ's thread on turn rates too. So I'm assuming there's a bunch.

I've been playing around with a cool PHP-XML-Flash charting package for a project and I think it could be useful to allow people to compare planes. I threw this together in like 10 minutes, but imagine being able to pick 6 planes from the list and compare them this way for accel, speed, climb, turn, etc. ... whatever we have:

Charts Demo

This package also does line charts (it actually does a ton of stuff ... pretty awesome), so it could plot climb/speed v. altitude and stuff like that as well.

Let me know,

    -DoK

DoK,

I have speed and climb data from the new charts on a couple of excel spreadsheets. I'm re-doing the climb charts so they are all sitting on a graph with the same scale for easy comparison.

Question: Does your charting package allow for pre-entered data where someone can just pick the planes (like the chart on this page ) or do you have to select data etc? All of those types of charts are available straight out of excel, but you have to manually select the source data to look at it.

Anyway, I've got lots of space at netaces to put stuff like this.

[DoKGonZo]

Originally posted by hammer
DoK,

I have speed and climb data from the new charts on a couple of excel spreadsheets. I'm re-doing the climb charts so they are all sitting on a graph with the same scale for easy comparison.

Question: Does your charting package allow for pre-entered data where someone can just pick the planes (like the chart on this page ) or do you have to select data etc? All of those types of charts are available straight out of excel, but you have to manually select the source data to look at it.

Anyway, I've got lots of space at netaces to put stuff like this.

Yeah ... basically there's a PHP driver to the Flash package, so I can have data aranged any which way and then condense it down to the package at run time. The nice thing is I can do multiple-entry column graphs (i.e. turning radius at full, 1-click, and no flaps) all together on the same display.

What I'm going to do first is rig the plane selector mechanism and then see how it all looks.

What I'm shooting for is a really easy to read display of all the data, kind of like the recent web-stats package, Mint .

[MOSQ]

Originally posted by Urchin
Why on earth does the Spit 16 out-accelerate the Spit 14?  

The Spit 14 should have at least 300 more horsepower... and it weighs the same on the same airframe.  

I'm confused.

It does blow it away...above 250 mph. I'll post the figures later tonight.

[MOSQ]

Originally posted by DoKGonZo
Just how much tabular data do you guys have? I just read MOSQ's thread on turn rates too. So I'm assuming there's a bunch.

I've been playing around with a cool PHP-XML-Flash charting package for a project and I think it could be useful to allow people to compare planes. I threw this together in like 10 minutes, but imagine being able to pick 6 planes from the list and compare them this way for accel, speed, climb, turn, etc. ... whatever we have:

Charts Demo

This package also does line charts (it actually does a ton of stuff ... pretty awesome), so it could plot climb/speed v. altitude and stuff like that as well.

Let me know,

    -DoK

Dok,

I have a scary amount of data all in Excel. The problem is every time I think I'm done HTC changes the FM and the data is out of date!

For instance I have accel times for almost all the planes at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% fuel from 150 to 350 (or their top speed if less than 350). That was done over a long time, but now 2.07 has made it all outdated. Not by much, the change is minor, but enough to cause arguments here. And about the time I update it HTC will change the FM again!

That said, I'm interested in making it graphical and available to the community. If I give you the spreadsheet, what could you do?

[hammer]

Originally posted by MOSQ
Dok,

I have a scary amount of data all in Excel. The problem is every time I think I'm done HTC changes the FM and the data is out of date!

For instance I have accel times for almost all the planes at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% fuel from 150 to 350 (or their top speed if less than 350). That was done over a long time, but now 2.07 has made it all outdated. Not by much, the change is minor, but enough to cause arguments here. And about the time I update it HTC will change the FM again!

That said, I'm interested in making it graphical and available to the community. If I give you the spreadsheet, what could you do?

MOSQ,

Acceleration is the next thing I was planning to test. Thinking about time for 50mph increments at 100ft, 5k, 10k, 15k, 20k (100ft, 10, & 20 first, then back to 5 and 15). Maybe some collaboration is in order!

Along the lines of collaboration, I have tons of web space and can set up individual FTP accounts and even sub-domains off of netaces if anyone needs a place to post plane data.

[DoKGonZo]

What I'm looking at doing is having a semi-flexible way to incorporate new data into the display. Everything would be referenced by some predefined tagging (i.e. "typh" for Typhoon data, etc). Which would be the mechanism for looking up a given plane's data in whatever table there was.

What I should probably do is look for a CSV importer and use that to build data tables on the fly. It's not like the files are that big or the demand will be that high - it's just a little more processing than reading in raw PHP arrays. The spreadsheets will need to conform to some regimentation, though: left-hand column will have to be the plane tag, top row will have to be the column labels, and so on. Give me a few days to track down a CSV importer, I know they're around for mySQL.

Once the data import problem is solved, then it's just configuring the various charts based on what datasets are available. There's just a lot of options to wade through with this thing.

But in the end I think it'd be worth it. To have one page where you can see all the data compared and get a good feel for how Plane X stacks up against Plane Y and Plane Z - would be huge help to newbies. We could do lethality, MA kills/deaths, all of it.

As for where to host this, I don't mind mirroring it to NetAces as long as my copyright and link ain't removed. If people are more likely to find it there then its all good.

I should be able to work on this some more this weekend.

[38ruk]

Thanks for your work WideWing . Its appreciated .

[Nashwan]

Why on earth does the Spit 16 out-accelerate the Spit 14?

The Spit 14 should have at least 300 more horsepower... and it weighs the same on the same airframe.

The Spit XIV weighs about 1,000 lbs more than the Spit XVI.

[bozon]

Originally posted by Nashwan
The Spit XIV weighs about 1,000 lbs more than the Spit XVI.

And carries more fuel. They were all tested with 50%.
This is also important to consider when talking about the P47N. 50% in that monster is about 75% of the D40, which is also the fuel load of 2.5 109s...

Bozon

[Urchin]

Originally posted by Nashwan
The Spit XIV weighs about 1,000 lbs more than the Spit XVI.

HTC's got them at the same weight on the planes page.

This gigantic book I have on Spitfires has a chart with the Spit 14s weight given as 8,475 with 4 303s and 8513.5 with 2 50s (typical takeoff weight).

Same book has the Spit 16 at 8,288.5 (take off) for an LF Mk XVI.

That is what? 200 pounds?  Granted, it isn't nothing, but it isn't a half ton either.  

What is the boost rating on the Spit 16?  This book has 1372 hp @ takeoff on 12 lbs, and 1702 hp @ 3000 ft on 18 lbs, and 1410 @ 9000 ft on 12 lbs.

The Spit 14 is given as 1540 @ takeoff (if it is a griffon 65) 2035 @ 7000 ft (no boost ratings).

Is 300 more horsepower enough to offset 200 lbs of weight?  

Or does our Spit 16 have more horsepower than that?