No weight lost from lost parts

[moot]

Just rammed a Ta152 against a CV's gun batteries, and it doesn't seem to lose weight from it. 
Lost parts: all wing parts on both sides, gears, broken prop.  No visible weight loss.

I suppose all planes do this, but will check others too, later.  We really should have weight accounting for missing parts..

[Spikes]

I do wish that if you break off your gear you lose some weight...

[moot]

Yeah, but that's a minor detail compared to losing a wingtip, but not its weight.  Even losing just an aileron and its surface area, but not its weight, is a pretty bad flaw.

[moot]

I can't tell for sure, but in the bit of time it takes for the server to count me dead from firing cannons or rockets into walls at point blank, the weight reading on the E6B doesn't change when parts fall off.

[BiPoLaR]

m00t are you flying around killing yourself to figure this out bro?

[moot]

Only time-effective way to do it, yep...

[BaDkaRmA158Th]

To get a reliable weight measurement one would need to weigh each and every single part for each and every single plane.

Anyone care to get started?

[hubsonfire]

Except that the individual parts aren't modelled, so only structures-wings, tail assemblies, gear- would have to be weighed. I'd venture a guess that the weight of the parts is already known, but even a ballpark estimate would be close enough for this.

[moot]

Yeah.. I couldn't get my head around all the possible ways the aerodynamics could work out, but when losing a 262's wingtip on only one side, the plane will dip wings to the side of the missing wingtip, very quickly if you go beyond a certain negative roll angle  on the side of that missing wingtip. 
When it happens, the quickest way out of it is to roll with it ~one full 360deg. roll.  It looks like you can't stop it with opposite aileron input.. I think it would be a very different story if the weight of the wingtip was removed, rather than just its aerodynamics.

[Krusty]

Good point on the wingtips...

That may explain why planes in WW2 were able to make it back missing large chunks of wings but it's very hard in AH.

Although I disagree that HTC knows the weights already. How much of (say) 10,000 lbs is the wings alone? Of that fraction, how much of that weight is distributed in the center (inner) part of the wings? What if there are wing radiators like 109s and spits? That's surely a lot more weight in the root than in the tip.

There's no way to really know these things, and they're not commonly recorded in WW2 weight charts.

It would be arbitrary, but I think some sort of weight reduction would be nice!

[EskimoJoe]

Also take into account your fuel, machine guns/cannons, and ammunition.

[RTHolmes]

Also take into account your fuel, machine guns/cannons, and ammunition.

it does already

[Strip]

Moot,
    I dont think its a flaw.If you want to lose some weight you could very easily overspeed your gear and lose hundreds of pounds. The next thing you know you would everyone breaking thier gear off to get that extra bit of speed. Other than that I dont think it would really effect anything. 95% of the pilots would crash with some of the damage your talking about and almost all of them would be out of the fight.  I agree its not right or accurate compared to RL but I have to wonder is it worth the grief?

Even if you did count the weight up Krusty has a very good point. How many man hours would be lost on a failure mode that few will even notice or care?

Strip
 

[Murdr]

Lol, somehow, I can always remember keywords even if its been years since I read it.

Actualy it sounds like we now agree Casca. Just understand most planes in AH are setup with a fairly aft CG and that when the tail is removed no change in mass takes place.

Hence why they go nose up, and nothing is wrong with the physics.

My basic agument is always about how a plane can still be stable with CG behind the main wings CL.

One question how do pick off the speed from that document? I saw the CL and density, didn't convert it to speed.

One other thing that suprised me is the positive tail load in the 3g loads.


HiTech

so the physics are correct but incomplete in that the plane with no tail still has the total weight and weight distribution (the weight of the missing tail remains and CG is unchanged)

I am curious if the change in CG and the lost weight of the tail would indeed push the CG forward on the aircraft whos tail was removed.

surely such a large amount of fuselage missing would make a large impact on the CG of the remains of the plane.

can you clarify HT?
that CG change and weight loss of the missing tail is not calculated.

but the missing lift of the removed tail is calculated?

That is correct Citabria.

Removeing the tail on a real plane would obviosly move the CG forward, how much it would be moved could be calculated.

But in AH it realy is not worth the effort to do that caculation.

HiTech

[moot]

So just ommit the gears from the modeling.. What else would anyone rip off to gain an advantage?  Everything else is essential.

I'm willing to bet that it does have a noticeable effect, like in the 262 example.  Try it out for yourself, break one wingtip, settle into level flight, then roll to the side of the missing wingtip.  The aerodynamics are there, but the weight reading is the same.  
Even if the weight is relatively small, it would be exactly where there's an aerodynamic "hole", and here's the sticking point, meaning that you've got some weight out there beyond the aerodynamic absence of wing area.
That's flat out wrong, if I may say so, with all due respect, etc

As for grief.. They could just give each breakable part an average weight.  That would already be a good enough stop-gap solution to last for a long time.  Till someone comes up with accurate documentation of each part's weight, at least.

OOps, and there you have HT saying that the aerodynamic absence of a wing's portion isn't a good enough reason to also model the ghost weight of that wing.  Grats Murdr.

I think tail parts missing when you've already lost control of the plane are not worth doing.. But an aerodynamicaly missing wingtip which still weighs as much as it did whole, isn't negligible detail IMO.  The buck stops at HT though.