Turn rate hierarchy correlation from actual flight tests

[morfiend]

Badboy,

  Would you please post your graphs that show flap useage in turns!

 I recall seeing those graphs and they clearly showed that more than 2 notches had diminishing returns.

  

[FLS]

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,271266.0.html

[thorsim]

an excellent post badboy i would also like to know how you make the charts.

i have a couple of testing questions ...

can the conditions offline be made the same as the online arenas, and if so how?

is there an effects package that shows "air show smoke" permanently? so a flight path record can be recorded.

can that smoke be applied to a previously made film?

will an ai fly the most efficient way possible for the flight model?

 

[Raptor]

i thought the spitfire only had one deployment setting, not the several cited in this report.

I was referring to the split flap design. Several other planes in AH have them as well and may be more similar to the report you are referring to (Baumer's proposal to test the Brewster flaps is a good idea).

HiTech isn't the kind of person that constantly thinks he is right and not willing to listen to anyone. I remember in version 2.07 when the P38's flaps were causing excessive issues. People from the community provided data supporting how a real P38 with full flaps extended would perform and what their tests resulted in in Aces High. Hitech took a look at them and fixed them to accurately represent real P38 performance.
I couldn't find any of the technical threads I remember reading, but here is a thread from that time frame:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,175185.50.html
Followed by the fix:
http://www2.hitechcreations.com/frindex.html

What you have in your head and what happens in Aces High is not that far off, I am slowly starting to see. In aces high when you deploy full flaps, you lose airspeed. When you have little airspeed, you have less energy or "E." The less E you have the more susceptible to planes with higher levels of E.
So if you are flying a 190a8, it is not advisable to deploy your flaps. 190s were designed for speed, although early 190s were more agile than later 190s, they were also slower. If you were to drop your split flaps in a 190, you will turn slightly better. But because they were not designed for maneuvering, they will hurt you because you will lose E and your turn radius will not increase enough to turn inside a P38 using fowler flaps. However, now that you have deployed your flaps, your airspeed is low and you are vulnerable to the P38 or another aircraft (say a P51) coming in at a higher airspeed.

I will try to use my flaps and out maneuver spitfires and zeros in a P38. I will never turn tighter than them, so I will try to use my assumable better knowledge of ACM against them. More often than not I underestimate their abilities and find that zero coming around on my 6, so I have to use my airplane's better dive rate and top speed to regain E and rethink my strategy. Most of my kills against zeros I end up using E instead of flaps.

The 109K4 is an example of a german plane that benefits from using flaps. It is a beast in the proper hands.

[Raptor]

an excellent post badboy i would also like to know how you make the charts.

i have a couple of testing questions ...

can the conditions offline be made the same as the online arenas, and if so how?

is there an effects package that shows "air show smoke" permanently? so a flight path record can be recorded.

can that smoke be applied to a previously made film?

will an ai fly the most efficient way possible for the flight model?

 

On your clipboard go to Options-> Arena Setup-> Environment -> Arena Settings

The conditions offline are the same as the Main Arenas except the Main arenas have a fuel burn of 2.0 and offline has a fuel burn rate of 1.0

There is no wind in the main arenas, offline there is no wind... Make sure you go to Preferences -> Flight and have the stall limiter turned off. The stall limiter prevents you from getting your plane in a state that it is going to stall, you may still see stall characteristics but not a full blown stall. This option sometimes helps new players with the learning curve. Most advanced players turn the stall limiter off so that they can push the plane to its limits (stall limiter is a handicap)
I cannot think of any other settings you would need to know of, you should be able to simply go offline and fly the same as if it is the Main Arenas.

Smoke is activated using "r" for me, it is individually mapped under controls. The film viewer has an option called "show trail" which will give you a grid trail following your aircraft. You can do this in new and old films, just make sure it is marked and press play.

Edit:
Just wanted to add I feel like you are more open than before to testing these concepts and respect how your mannerisms seem more respectful and open.

[thorsim]

well the main difficulty i find about the flaps in the FWs is not how well they work closing up a turn.  
the problem i find is the lengthy and troublesome zone of flight between good stability speeds and the allowed first notch deployment speed.  it is in that part of the flight envelope where the 190s imo really suffers vs. the rest of the plane set.  that is where most fights are lost.  if the fight is destined to be a slow one and i can get my flaps out without stalling first the 190 is still competitive.  if you get caught in between though it is very difficult to manage that situation.

i suspect that is the same with all the very low speed small deflection flap deployment planes,  changing from POH number to a force load determined flap speed deployment would do wonders for all those planes IMO.  

i like "Mr. K" it is a very good plane indeed.

+S+

t

I was referring to the split flap design. Several other planes in AH have them as well and may be more similar to the report you are referring to (Baumer's proposal to test the Brewster flaps is a good idea).

HiTech isn't the kind of person that constantly thinks he is right and not willing to listen to anyone. I remember in version 2.07 when the P38's flaps were causing excessive issues. People from the community provided data supporting how a real P38 with full flaps extended would perform and what their tests resulted in in Aces High. Hitech took a look at them and fixed them to accurately represent real P38 performance.
I couldn't find any of the technical threads I remember reading, but here is a thread from that time frame:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,175185.50.html
Followed by the fix:
http://www2.hitechcreations.com/frindex.html

What you have in your head and what happens in Aces High is not that far off, I am slowly starting to see. In aces high when you deploy full flaps, you lose airspeed. When you have little airspeed, you have less energy or "E." The less E you have the more susceptible to planes with higher levels of E.
So if you are flying a 190a8, it is not advisable to deploy your flaps. 190s were designed for speed, although early 190s were more agile than later 190s, they were also slower. If you were to drop your split flaps in a 190, you will turn slightly better. But because they were not designed for maneuvering, they will hurt you because you will lose E and your turn radius will not increase enough to turn inside a P38 using fowler flaps. However, now that you have deployed your flaps, your airspeed is low and you are vulnerable to the P38 or another aircraft (say a P51) coming in at a higher airspeed.

I will try to use my flaps and out maneuver spitfires and zeros in a P38. I will never turn tighter than them, so I will try to use my assumable better knowledge of ACM against them. More often than not I underestimate their abilities and find that zero coming around on my 6, so I have to use my airplane's better dive rate and top speed to regain E and rethink my strategy. Most of my kills against zeros I end up using E instead of flaps.

The 109K4 is an example of a german plane that benefits from using flaps. It is a beast in the proper hands.

[Raptor]

i suspect that is the same with all the very low speed small deflection flap deployment planes,  changing from POH number to a force load determined flap speed deployment would do wonders for all those planes IMO.  

Sounds like you shold join Ack Ack in his campaign for HiTech to remove the "Auto Retracting Flaps" and replace them with a damaged flap system. Hitech looked at what the aircraft flight manuals said was a safe operating speed for flaps and imposed the auto retract code instead of the flaps being damaged or falling off in excess of that recommended speed (like the landing gear)

[thorsim]

it doesn't really seem like the same issue, the flaps damage model would be even more complicated and the POH issue would even be less popular if malfunction was replaced with blow-back.  it might be interesting and i suspect an error that resulted in an asymmetric flap deployment or two per pilot would certainly discourage the nonchalant flap use in combat.  i think the first few days would be like say thinning out the air density or turning on friendly collisions, i suspect it would get very loud down at the suggestion box 
 

Sounds like you shold join Ack Ack in his campaign for HiTech to remove the "Auto Retracting Flaps" and replace them with a damaged flap system. Hitech looked at what the aircraft flight manuals said was a safe operating speed for flaps and imposed the auto retract code instead of the flaps being damaged or falling off in excess of that recommended speed (like the landing gear)

[Angus]

F4U would be the king of flaps
Deployment time and physical effort if modelled would also rule some out, for example the 109.

[thorsim]

F4U would be the king of flaps
Deployment time and physical effort if modelled would also rule some out, for example the 109.

i don't hold much with that video, the guy does not seem that good at it, in very good shape, or trying real hard ...

also if 45 seconds is all it took that guy to raise and lower full deflection, which as we have seen is not helpful anyway, it seems to me that a person familiar with the system would only need a few seconds to get to a meaningful amount of deflection.  the flaps movement is immediate with the wheel and we know the trim wheel was used which is in the same place and operates the same way ...

i suspect the flaps were used if needed and probably even deployed every once in a while unintentionally by the pilot adjusting trim, as the controls were designed to work together very easily.

[Karnak]

I've never heard of flaps deploying asymmetrically, but I suppose it would be possible.  Certain types did have settings for combat maneuvers, but these seem to have been only American or Japanese, on only some types for each nation.

The P-51, P-38, F4U, Ki-43, Ki-44 (Ias I recall) and Ki-84 all had a maneuver setting.  The P-38, Ki-43, Ki-44 and Ki-84 all have Fowler flaps.

The N1K1-J and N1K2-J took it a step further than any other WWII fighter and had combat flaps that automatically deployed and retracted based on the angle of attack detected by a crude sensor.  The system is not modeled in AH as far as I know.

[thorsim]

well it would depend on the damage model, i have heard of pilots having to deal with a broken flap on one wing
as they are not connected.  they model the damage from guns that way in the game, i don't see why the stress damage would be handled differently, but i guess it could be.  but evenly stuck flaps would not be that big a deal, i mean where is the fun in that

I've never heard of flaps deploying asymmetrically, but I suppose it would be possible.  Certain types did have settings for combat maneuvers, but these seem to have been only American or Japanese, on only some types for each nation.

The P-51, P-38, F4U, Ki-43, Ki-44 (Ias I recall) and Ki-84 all had a maneuver setting.  The P-38, Ki-43, Ki-44 and Ki-84 all have Fowler flaps.

The N1K1-J and N1K2-J took it a step further than any other WWII fighter and had combat flaps that automatically deployed and retracted based on the angle of attack detected by a crude sensor.  The system is not modeled in AH as far as I know.

[Karnak]

Oh yes, I did once have one of my Ki-84's flaps jammed open.  Visually it had been shot off, in the flight model it was jammed open and trying to force a roll to the right.  It was a pain in the seat to fly that thing home.  Landing wasn't bad though because the issue went away at low speeds when I could deploy the functional flap.

[boomerlu]

LOL... back to the flaps. Well since we're here again, I have to once again offer my suggestion of corner velocity auto-retract flaps.

Simple concept:
1) Perform calculations and/or find data to support the idea that flaps on most of our airplanes can withstand airspeeds far in excess of their corner velocities (I'm talking e.g. 250 mph corner velocity pulling 6gs and the flap can withstand say 350 mph pulling 6gs).
2) Set the first setting of flaps to be deployable at corner velocity.
3) Set the second setting to be deployable 20-30 mph below that
4) Etc...
5) Of course autoretract would be at these same velocities.

Again, this gives us high enough deployment speeds to be useful, but not so much that we could violate structural limits. It also shortcuts the lengthy and expensive process of constructing structural damage model. It would not impair planes that currently have combat flaps, but it would give something extra to everything that doesn't. Of course as with any flap deployment, there's the tradeoff of tighter turn radius/better turn rate vs bled airspeed.

[Angus]

i don't hold much with that video, the guy does not seem that good at it, in very good shape, or trying real hard ...

also if 45 seconds is all it took that guy to raise and lower full deflection, which as we have seen is not helpful anyway, it seems to me that a person familiar with the system would only need a few seconds to get to a meaningful amount of deflection.  the flaps movement is immediate with the wheel and we know the trim wheel was used which is in the same place and operates the same way ...

i suspect the flaps were used if needed and probably even deployed every once in a while unintentionally by the pilot adjusting trim, as the controls were designed to work together very easily.

I asked Rall if he ever used flaps in combat, and he shook his head and said "NEVER".
45 seconds is more than 2 circles in a Spitfire by the way.
Now compare that with the P51, just flick a switch.....