Turn Performance Figures

[Blue Mako]

Does anyone out there have a list of corner velocities, max sustained turn rates, turn radii, etc. for the AH plane set?

[Blue Mako]

<el punto>


Anyone?   Any plane?

[ispar]

Originally posted by Blue Mako:
<el punto>


Anyone?   Any plane?

punto in Spanish is point or period, bud...

[Kweassa]

I think there isn't much of those data because literally, "turn rate" is an extremely difficult concept to define. What in the world is a "Turn Rate"?

 There's a 'turn angle', which determines how sharp an angle a plane can turn while in its usual combat speed..

 Then there's 'turning speed'.. whether or not the plane can maintain effective speed while turning.

 The 'turn maintenance', a plane might not be able to turn sharp angles, but due to superior engine power, it may maintain good turning speed for quite some time.

 I remember once when I was out turned by a Typhoon in a 109G2 at deck. The Typhie had a bit of speed and so did I. I got careless and just tried to lead turn into the Typhie. Seeing that the Typhie kept on turning instead of escaping, and I am very very close to getting a shooting angle, I just lowered throttle, put out flaps and kept on turning. We went in circles like 8~9 times, and to my surprise, I was out turned. I was really close to getting an angle, but I began top stall out. And the Typhie landed behind my 6, in the final phase..

 All that above combined is I think what we call "Turn rate" or "Turning power".. and even if we sum it all up, the turning rate of a plane still changes dynamically and relatively depending on many situations and elements in combat. A P-47 can actually turn with 109G2 or G6s at 27~28k alt.   Initial speed alters turn rate, and roll rates also effect the turn rate in scissors combat.

 Therefore, 'turn rate' is not quite a pre-determined element of an airplane. Maximum speed, climbing rate, roll rate.. etc etc..  these are pre-determined elements of an airplane which can be charted out in graphs, but "turning rate" can is not.

 Rather, 'turn rate' is more of a situation than pre-determined aircraft ability. Therefore, in essence, turn fighting is essentially same with Boom and Zooming. Turn fighting and Boom Zooming is both management of E, the former in the horizontal sense, and the latter in the vertical sense. Of these two, we naturally choose the latter since it is more effective. But turn fighting also needs effective E management - and these sort of management always comes in more important than the 'turn rate'.

 OOps..   Sorry for the lecture.. me and my big mouth.. I could have just said "I don't think I've seen any data of that sort".

  cheers

[Blue Mako]

Originally posted by Kweassa:
...I could have just said "I don't think I've seen any data of that sort".

Yup (check my profile   ).  Just wondering if there are any charts or figures that people have compiled or HTC have released.

Thanks for your post anyway...

ispar: What is the Spanish word for punt then?  (not that I was even trying to write Spanish anyway   )

[HoHun]

Hi Kweassa,

>I think there isn't much of those data because literally, "turn rate" is an extremely difficult concept to define.

"Turn rate" is angular velocity, the rate at which the aircraft turns (for example in degrees per second). Of course, your lecture applies perfectly - turn rate depends on many parameters!

Accordingly, turn rates are usually provided only for a specific situation: The flat circle "sustained" turn. It's sustained because it uses energy at the same rate it's provided by the engine.

(The Soviets in WW2 actually relied on the reciprocal value - the "circle time" in seconds - as a measurement of an aircraft's manoeuvrability.)

The other interesting turn rate would be the corner ("instantaneous") turn - the greatest turn rate regardless of energy loss -, but since you can't keep it up, the actual turn rate isn't of great interest - it's better to know the corner speed and just pull back on the stick when the moment arrives!

Knowing the sustained turn capabilities will help you to know whether you might win or lose once the fight got low and slow - but since it varies quite a bit with aircraft weight, you couldn't be sure without trying ;-)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

[haa]

Originally posted by Blue Mako:
Does anyone out there have a list of corner velocities, max sustained turn rates, turn radii, etc. for the AH plane set?

First of all, try this link:
http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/air_combat/energymgmt/index-pf.html

Unfortunately, Badboy doesn't provide any details on how he calculates those diagrams. Since I was curious about the rest of the planes in AH (used to play AW so a lot of the planes here are new to me) I did some thinking and came up with a method of my own.
The whole procedure can be done offline, takes 10-15 minutes per plane, and requires no particular flying skill.

1. Go offline, set fuelburnrate to 0.001
2. Select a plane, note armament, fuel etc.
3. Get to desired alt, engage autopilot.
4. Adjust throttle until speed reaches target speed
5. Start film, wait 3 seconds.
6. Pull all the way back on the stick for a few seconds. The aoa will increase and with it the G-force (lift) until the plane reaches a stall or a blackout. When this happens, wait a couple of seconds and then stop film. 7. Repeat from 3, but at another target speed

After these steps have been repeated for a number of speeds (I usually test for all "ticks" on the airspeed indicator between stall speed and top speed), go into the film viewer and look at each film in slow motion. Note the speed and the maximum G in each film (zoom in on the dials if needed). This gives a table something like this:

La5, 25%fuel, 1k alt
IAS   MaxG
125   1.5
150   2
175   2.7
200   3.3
225   4.2
250   5.5
275   6.7
300   8.1
325   8.6
340   8.9   Top speed
350   8.9   Top speed with WEP

How to turn max G into turn rate? I align the acceleration vector so that its projection in the vertical plane equals 1G, and calculate
the projection onto the horizontal plane, which is then equal to a = (maxG^2-1)^0.5. Basic physics for circular motion tells me that the angular velocity (= instantaneous turn rate) w is: w = 1258*a/v, w in deg/s, a in Gs, v in mph. I can then add another column into my table:

IAS   MaxG   Turn rate
125   1.5   11.3
150   2   14.5
175   2.7   18.0
200   3.3   19.8
225   4.2   22.8
250   5.5   27.2
275   6.7   30.3
300   8.1   33.7
325   8.6   33.1
340   8.9   32.7
350   8.9   31.8

This can then be plotted in a diagram. (I would have showed you what it looks like if I could figure out how to put an image here...) Basically you can read the corner speed and turn radius from the diagram.
Getting the sustained turn rate requires some additional information. I have an idea for how to get this also but haven't tried it yet.

Before I do that I would appreciate some feedback on my method. Hopefully there are lots of knowing people who can tell me if I am on the right track?

/haa

[CyranoAH]

Originally posted by Blue Mako:

ispar: What is the Spanish word for punt then?  (not that I was even trying to write Spanish anyway   )

Allow me ispar  

Literally, it would be "patada" (as in kick), but in this context I would use "recordatorio" (as in reminder).

BTW, punto also means "knitwear"  

Daniel, aka Cyrano

[Fatty]

No sustained turn data that I know of, but the best general performance data I've seen for the AH planes is at  http://www.netaces.org/home.html#title .

[Badboy]

Originally posted by Blue Mako:
Does anyone out there have a list of corner velocities, max sustained turn rates, turn radii, etc. for the AH plane set?

I don't think a complete exposition exists at the moment, but it is planned. I'm currently in the process of completing a writing project for a jet sim and as soon as that is done I'll start work on a set of diagrams like this one that contains all of the information you mentioned and much more:

 

I hope to do that for all of the aircraft in AH, They will be made available on the AH web site.

I'm not sure what order I'll do them in, I'll probably do what I think are interesting or historical match ups and build articles around them to make the presentation more helpful.

Also, I think I'd really like to do an AH strategy guide. That would be a good way to present the most in depth performance analysis for the aircraft in AH and cover all the relevant BFM/ACM at the same time. I'm looking forward to doing something like that even more because I believe there is a very good way to teach BFM to sim pilots that doesn't appear to have been published before. I just need to persuade my partner (Andy Bush) and a publisher that its worth doing and it might get off the ground  

Badboy

[HoHun]

Hi Haa,

>First of all, try this link: http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/air_combat/energymgmt/index-pf.html

The longest explanation I've ever seen how to beat an inferior turning plane in a turnfight :-)

>Before I do that I would appreciate some feedback on my method.

Looks good :-)

I think the following conclusion from Bernoulli's law might be useful:

n~v^2

(n = load factor/"Gs")

With the right constant, the curve should run nicely through your data points until maximum Gs are reached.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

[Dweeb]

Originally posted by HoHun:
The longest explanation I've ever seen how to beat an inferior turning plane in a turnfight :-)

It always seems that way when you read something you already know :-)

Dweeb

[ 09-10-2001: Message edited by: Dweeb ]

[gripen]

Some planes had their flight envelopes printed in their manuals, like some F4U and P-38 models (mainly for comressebility issues). It should be noted that the presentation in these is traditional V-G diagram which IMHO is more clear than V-dps presentation. The flight envelope changes with the altitude, I don't know if this modeled in the AH?

gripen

[HoHun]

Hi Dweeb,

QUOTE]Originally posted by Dweeb:


It always seems that way when you read something you already know :-)[/QUOTE]

Direct hit! :-)

I remember how excited I got 6 years back when I discovered the first doghouse plots drawn by Stu Butts on Compuserve's FSFORUM. (Still got them on my HD, too :-)

Badboy was on FSFORUM then, too, and as one of the half dozen top experts there taught me all the important things one's got to know.

Big thanks, Badboy! :-)

Henning

[Blue Mako]

Originally posted by Badboy:


I don't think a complete exposition exists at the moment, but it is planned. I'm currently in the process of completing a writing project for a jet sim and as soon as that is done I'll start work on a set of diagrams like this one that contains all of the information you mentioned and much more:

Sounds great...  I'll look forward to it.