Author Topic: whats wrong with hammerheads and elevators in AH? (Read 934 times)

Citabria · « **on:** August 17, 2003, 04:49:24 PM »

been playing wb a lot lately, and i noticed how much i missed doing hammerheads in 109s and 38's going to near 0 or 0 airspeed and ruddering around rapidly pointing down at my would be atacker.

ive done this in real life in many planes some not designed to do such maneuvers and in AH it seems so difficult and unnatural to do this maneuver. the plane wallows and stops responding with the heavy engine up front still pointing at the horizon or in some sort of wierd giration around the horizon even with power off.

and elevator authority is separated into up and down with a lag going between the two. try doing a rapid -g pushover in ah and the plane just sits there like its waiting for somthing. at least 109s should be able to do this but even they cant do it without the lag.

so it seems ah has great ailerons and awful elevator and rudder

and wb has awful ailerons and great elevator and rudder.

and i really miss doing hammerheads(real ones not AH style flopovers)

Citabria · « **Reply #1 on:** August 17, 2003, 04:53:18 PM »

anyone else notice this?

shouldnt hammerheads be much easier to acomplish?

brendo · « **Reply #2 on:** August 17, 2003, 05:06:46 PM »

Hi citabria,

If I remember correctly, this is a know limitation of the AH1 modelling.

There have been discussions about this in the past, and there are some corrections and enhancements for the AH2 modelling, that should fix this.

I dont have any links handy, but torque and propwash I think are getting changes.

Someone I know in RL could hamerhead to the left beautifully, but couldnt get the plane to the right without autorotating. Why would that be? Is that because of the torque and spiralling airflow over the rudder? Possibly?

I think this is whats being changed in AH2

GRUNHERZ · « **Reply #3 on:** August 17, 2003, 06:23:21 PM »

Yea hammerheards are really bizzare in AH, planes just sit there hover for a bit and then flop uncontrollably.... This really hurts E fighters on a rope as you have no real control and I know from RC planes that rudder maintains a great deal of authrity in just such a situation.

Rollio · « **Reply #4 on:** August 17, 2003, 08:04:45 PM »

Agreed. Aces High's low speed/stall physics leave a lot to be desired. Not only are hammerheads difficult and come out looking wrong, but whipstalls don't work either. The tail just seems to stop working in the AH planes at very low airspeeds. What I've always wanted to do in a P47 is climb straight up (with enemies trailing me, bleed off airspeed till I start falling tailfirst and rapidly whip over on them for a shot. I did this all the time in RC planes and have seen several full scale planes (including warbirds) doing it. The closest thing you can do in Aces High is more of a pointy topped loop.

SFRT - Frenchy · « **Reply #5 on:** August 17, 2003, 08:13:30 PM »

Yep ... definitly... but now that Hitech is practicing them in his RV, he will probably try to recreate "the feeling" in AH:cool:

In Cessna's/Pipers, you go almost vertical, bleed your E, put ur bank in, float for 1 - 2 secs then zooooooooo the nose falls down, wiggles like a pendule for a sec and there you go down screaming:D

SFRT - Frenchy · « **Reply #6 on:** August 17, 2003, 08:15:07 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Rollio
What I've always wanted to do in a P47 is climb straight up (with enemies trailing me, bleed off airspeed till I start falling tailfirst and rapidly whip over on them for a shot. The closest thing you can do in Aces High is more of a pointy topped loop.

You can do this in AH, ask Funked

Citabria · « **Reply #7 on:** August 17, 2003, 09:03:41 PM »

well what makes me concerned is that warbirds wich is much more outdated flight modelwise has always had the vertical low speed aspect down perfect. will AH by getting more advanced fix this control anomoly?

is there some mathematical error causing this wierd behavior in the planes? sure a hammerhead can be done but planes ive flown almost want to hammer over with just a simple kick of the rudder and it does a perfect vertical 180 with almost no effort just like in warbirds. in ah i can almost get it to look like a hammerhead but its just not right.

Blue Mako · « **Reply #8 on:** August 17, 2003, 09:55:10 PM »

Yup, hammerheads in AH can't be performed like in RL.

beet1e · « **Reply #9 on:** August 18, 2003, 02:33:22 AM »

Slight vernacular problem here. I understood "hammerhead" to mean pulling up, nose pointing at the sky till speed was almost all gone, then pushing the nose over with elevator. Have done that in gliders, and we called that a hammerhead. What Citabria describes is what I understood to be a "stall-turn". I've done that too - in a powered plane but not a glider, and the end result was influenced by the engine torque, so they were easy to do to the left, harder but not impossible (I am told) to do to the right. Of course the engine torque issue should be moot in the P38, unless operating the engines separately. But this has got me thinking. I'll go and try a few things offline...

ccvi · « **Reply #10 on:** August 18, 2003, 02:50:03 AM »

I don't think it's just the lack of control at slow speeds. Apart from that it seems to work nice till the nose starts dropping. When it's half way down (e.g. just passing the horizon) the angular momentum of the turn comes to a stop as if there was no conservation of momentum, seems to be forced to a stop by either wings or fuselage (depending on where the nose dropped) beeing level.

GRUNHERZ · « **Reply #11 on:** August 18, 2003, 03:19:58 AM »

I have heard hammerhead and stallturn used interchanably, but either way both are not very elegant in AH as opposed to my experiences in RC planes and watching all manner of RL planes.

Rollio · « **Reply #12 on:** August 18, 2003, 03:29:22 AM »

the question is... has anyone here flown a double-hammerhead? (the best my RC zero did was 1 and 3/4 but it was grossly overweight)

SunKing · « **Reply #13 on:** August 18, 2003, 03:51:52 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Blue Mako
Yup, hammerheads in AH can't be performed like in RL.

What about with duel throttle control? Cutting rpms to an engine as you fall over?

Kweassa · « **Reply #14 on:** August 18, 2003, 04:06:52 AM »

This has been discussed many times, including this thread, which I think is the most recent one.

Simply put, almost every plane in AH except the Spits, N1K2, Hurricanes, Zeros and the P-38L.. needs to save a considerable margin of speed prior to the reversal while vertical, or it will fall under the dreaded flat spin. Which means, around 100mph, you have to start heading your nose down.

Usually this tendency is a lot higher on combat trim than manual, but in some planes like the F4U-1 series, it is dangerous to try a pure vertical even with manual.

..

It is also one of the reasons why friggin' N1K2s and Spit9s can snipe you out of your vertical - they don't need to save the '100mph' like other planes. Just nose up straight, aim and shoot until your plane absolutely cannot nose-up any longer(which is around 30~40mph), and then ease a bit on the controls and gain some speed, and they recover control of the plane almost instantly. When you have to go through the reversal, and start pointing your plane nose to the ground at about 70 mph, the Spit9 and the N1K2 is still pointing the guns at you..

but that's for another thread...