Prototype, Production, or Captured War Booty?

[Vermillion]

The left hand column is the prototype, the right hand column is the production. Its in the header of the table if you look    

The major difference is in max speeds. At sea level prototype = 370 mph, production = 356mph.

At altitude the prototype = 403 mph, production = 385 mph.

Source for both is Soviet Combat Aircraft of the Second World War, Vol 1: Single Engine Fighters, by Gordon and Khazanov. Which is the best source I have, or have seen, for Soviet aircraft.

I had the empty weights correct, just the wrong units     Those were kilograms, in pounds it should be 5,692 and 5,903 respectively.

Turn times are a measure of performance that I see usually associated with German and Soviet aircraft. Its my understanding that it means a full 360 degree turn, and I assume at Sea Level. If its not explicitly stated, its in the direction of best turn.

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Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure
Carpe Jugulum
"Real Men fly Radials, Nancy Boys fly Spitfires"

[This message has been edited by Vermillion (edited 04-24-2000).]

[jmccaul]

What is the difference between the acceptance testing models and the production models. If there was a differnce it would render any acceptance testing useless as you would be approving a different speced plane to the one that was going to be produced.

[Vermillion]

jmccaul, what you have too do is to ask why was the flight test conducted? Was it to test what an aircraft could do? Or was it a quality assurance test.

If your looking at what can the aircraft can do (prototype/acceptance), you test the aircraft, and if something isn't quite right, the engineers try to figure out what the problem is,  you fix it and test again. Till you have what you believe is the optimum for that aircraft. Thats the numbers you record.

If you testing quality off the production line, you flight test an aircraft. And you record the numbers. Then you try to look at what is wrong, and tell the production line that they need to improve quality in such and such area's. But the data recorded is still any data with problems, because that was the purpose of the test, to find those types of problems.

Here's another way to look at the difference between production and prototype.

Say the company you work for has a large fleet of cars. Now if Mr. Average Joe Salesman needs a car, he gets a random car out of the "pool" of available vehicles. It may be a good one, it may be a bad one, its a random draw.

Later that day, Mr. Corprate Vice President needs a car. What you want to bet Mr. VP gets a nice new car, with very little mileage, flawless engine, and it is maintained pristinely.

Thats the difference. And if you have ever worked for a company with fleet cars, you will immediately know what I mean  

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Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure
Carpe Jugulum
"Real Men fly Radials, Nancy Boys fly Spitfires"

[jmccaul]

The point i was trying to (clumsily) make was assuming the plane is made in the same way as it would be on the production line (i.e. not specially built or somehow tuned for whatever reason) you could consider the data to be more or less the same (i'm sure there were batches of substandard components on all planes but it would be silly to try and legislate for those in less they effected a large proportion of the planes produced)  

[gatt]

Vermillion,

take a look at the differences between the prototype and the production Yak-9U ... the latter was an excellent fighter ... the former was a real monster. If HTC will model the prototype we all know what to fly for the rest of our AH life ...  

[Vermillion]

Gatt, I admitt the Yak-9U is a sweet aircraft, no denying that  

But I can't see how the Prototype numbers are any different than the P-51 Mustangs, or the Bf-109G10's, in fact they're right in the same class of capabilities.

   

In fact the Yak-9U prototype is slower than the G10, has similar climb, accelerate slightly slower, turn slightly better, similar armament, and the G10 can carry drop tanks. To me they're very comparable.

Now in comparison to the Pony, it has almost identical max speed but the Pony does it higher, true the Yak can outclimb it, outturn it, and out accelerate it (so does the G10), but the Pony has better guns, a much bigger ammo load, better range, better hi-alt performance, and can carry a crap load of air to ground ordinance and droptanks.

And anyways, the Pony and the G10 numbers come from prototypes as well , so its only fair  
(ducks.. runs.. falls in same hole as Gatt did)

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Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure
Carpe Jugulum
"Real Men fly Radials, Nancy Boys fly Spitfires"

[This message has been edited by Vermillion (edited 04-26-2000).]

[Hristo]

2000 hp for G-10. I thought our G-10 has 1850 hp, since it uses DB 605D. Sigh, confusing.

Interestingly, P-51 has lower wingloading than G-10 in most cases (except the fully loaded weight). So, in arena all P-51 I meet have better wingloading than my G-10 ? Thank God they didn't know that  

[Vermillion]

Hristo, that 2000hp number came from the first source I picked up, my Bf109 In Action Series Book. So take it with a grain of salt. Your number sounds more correct to me.

Yup the 109 has suprisingly tiny stubby little wings.

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Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure
Carpe Jugulum
"Real Men fly Radials, Nancy Boys fly Spitfires"

[B-Town]

Just to make things even more interesting for you, I can tell yall for a fact that the Typhoon is not set up correctly. The typhoon that they have in AH is a "MARK 2" Yet the mark 2 did not have anything like as much tork as it does in aces high. I KNOW. My old gramps did 247 ops in them. He saw it and said that there was way to much tork for a Mk 2. It has the tork of the mk 1b with the mk2 frame. Also the mk2 DID have drop tanks. There are a few other little niggling details as well  

[Jekyll]

F4UDOA .. hmm, as a mad guess, I would say that the turn radius chart for the AH aircraft should read as follows, from best to worst.

Spitfire V
C.202 Folgore
Bf-109F
Spitfire IX
N1K2
La-5FN
C.205 Veltro
Bf-109G2
P-38L
F4U-1D
F4U-1C
P51-D
Bf-109G6
Typhoon
Fw190A-8
Bf109G-10

Have I left any out?

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C.O. Phoenix Squadron
http://www.users.bigpond.com/afinlayson/index.htm
'feel the heat .......'

[SnakeEyes]

Good topic Verm.

In any event, I don't think that the answer to this one is totally straightforward.  I think there are a few factors to consider (in no particular order):

1) Consistency/Fairness - If particularly the Allied numbers correspond to prototypes, then for the sake of consistency/fairness, you have to give serious consideration to doing this for all aircraft.

2) Play balance - You can argue about it all you want, but if the prototype specs for a given aircraft would make it overwhelmingly better than the majority of its counterparts... well... this would have to be seriously considered as well.  Would you rather have the production model, or no model at all?

3) Historical impact - Which numbers best enable the aircraft to simulate the historical impact which it had during the war (in terms of air combat, not winning and/or losing the war).  

This is best illustrated by an example:  The Ki84 was tested after the war using high octane gas which the Japanese had little access to.  As a result, its performance was astoundingly better than the Japanese manufacturer's statistics.  Combined with the fact that none of the flight sim manufacturers are going to simulate random engine fires, a Ki84 based on the American test data would not accurately represent the Ki84 that the US encountered in the Pacific (the same would probably be true for the George also).  And that has a domino effect on other historical aspects we can only guess at... had the George and Frank had access to high quality gas, you can bet that planes like the F4U-4, P-51H, and F8F would have reached the PTO much sooner in response.  In short, if you choose data which over- (or under-) represents the performance of the Real Life aircraft vis-a-vis its peers, that can cause huge problems.

4) Resources and future game growth - Can HTC (or any other sim manufacturer) afford to model both versions?  Again, while it has the cost of the company spending the time to model the additional "variant" and create features that enable these variant models to be turned "on" or "off" (for scenario use, for example), the benefit is flexibility and a wider range of "options" for the user base (not to mention if HTC gets into doing Scenarios).

Again, no value judgement on any particular aircraft here... just my thoughts on the various decision-making factors involved (as I see them).

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SnakeEyes
o-o-o-
=4th Fighter Group=