Originally posted by Andy Bush
Spatula
If I use flaps, I expect to see something improve. What improvement in performance do you see when using flaps at these speeds (250-390)?
Maybe HiTech or someone could answer this also. What performance increases are to be expected from using flaps in AH?
Andy
Andy,
Well flaps give us some additional lift at the penalty of additional drag. Asking what performance increases to expect will depend completely on the plane, the altitude and speed, and what you are trying to accomplish. In my experience the flaps in AH add various ammounts of additional lift and drag when deployed, so they should work as you would expect. By that I mean a notch or two of flaps will give you a bit more lift with a bit more drag to go with it, and you may find that usefull. Max flaps will give more drag and more lift, but not necessarily in proportion to one another, so if your goal is to turn at a higher rate, the additional drag may not be worth it at some point. HT or Pyro are not going to lay out exactly what the effects of each notch of flap deployment are, they'll leave that for us to discover I'd wager.
In my view the benefits of using flaps are three fold. 1. You can use them to gain additional lift if you can live with the additional drag that goes with it. So, if you are attempting to follow a breaking bandit and you are quite fast and want maximum initial turn rate, popping a notch of flap will give you a bit more lift... so a bit more turn rate, at the penalty of slowing you faster. If your craft is travelling faster than it's best initial turning speed, you may benefit from the additional drag as well as the bit of extra lift. 2. You can use flaps to slow your plane to either force or try to prevent an overshoot situation. 3. You can use the additional lift from flaps to lower your stall speed and either maintain control at low speeds, or perform a maneuver such as a loop when withou the flaps you wouldn't have enough speed to complete it without stalling.
Flaps are a lift/drag trade-off as I'm sure you know. Exactly when that trade-off is "worth it" in a given situation is up to the player to figure out. If you are wondering how flaps will affect your plane's performance at various settings... test it. Go offline and do sustained turns over a base and time each circle at different flap settings for example.
Optimally, I'd love to see Badboy's EM diagrams for all planes in AH, including various flap settings. That's really what we need to even start to answer your question authoritatively. That's a LOT of work though, and HTC will (IMO only) leave that work to the users to do. It's part of really learning the game and the plane you fly, it's part of the challenge.
