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Chock · 07-16-07, 09:30 PM

Tips to avoid stalling (and some other stuff):

Flying smoothly will reduce the chances of stalling, but one thing you need to be aware of is that your 'stalling speed' increases massively when you are banked over at a high angle of attack, since most of your lift vector is going into turning your aircraft instead of keeping you in the sky, which effectively increases your wing loading massively. The chance of stalling is also made much more likely by a badly co-ordinated turn in this situation.

A badly co-ordinated turn will block off the airflow to one of your inner wings (because you'll be flying slightly sideways in a badly co-ordinated turn, so the fuselage will be in the way of the airflow). This can cause one wing to stall early. This will cause a spin, as one wing will still be flying while the other one aint, consequently you'll spin in the direction of the stalled wing. This is exactly what is happening when you see a sycamore leaf 'helicoptering' its way to the ground when it falls from a tree (technically it is 'autorotating' rather than 'helicoptering' but anyway..).

Unfortunately in a simulator, you cannot feel the slip of a badly co-ordinated turn like you can in real life, so you have to rely on the turn and slip indicator on your instrument panel to show you when it is happening (at least until you get used to handling the aeroplane anyway), there is a picture of a turn and slip indicator here:

http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/turn...pindicator.htm

The instrument consists of two elements, the upper needle, which indicates the rate of turn, often it will be marked with something like the following: '1 minute and 2 minutes'. The bottom half of the instrument has a small white ball suspended in liquid, this ball indicates how well co-ordinated your turn is (if the ball is in the centre while you are turning, you are flying smoothly and in a well co-ordinated turn. To keep your turn co-ordinated, you apply rudder to keep the ball centred in the middle. The easiest way to do this is to use a technique known as 'treading on the ball', what this means is that in a real aeroplane, if the ball is off-centre in a turn, whichever side it is off towards, that is the rudder pedal you press down on, doing this will centre up the ball (on a pc joystick with a rudder control, you'll have to do this by twisting the stick in that direction instead of giving it a bootful of rudder as you do on the real thing).

The 'minute markings on the turn and slip indicator work like this: If you put your plane in a bank with the needle on the 1 minute mark, it will take you exactly one minute to perform a 360 degree turn. This is known as a 'rate 1 turn', obviously in a bank on the 2 minute mark it would take you 2 mins to make a 360 degree turn. The point of this is so that you can make accurate timed turns purely on instruments, for things like holding patterns and the like. Most of this not being hugely relevant to combat flying.

Remember that you don't turn an aeroplane with the rudder, you turn it by putting some of the wing's lift vector off to one side, and then co-ordinate the turn by using the rudder to kick the tail outwards so that your nose is constantly facing the airflow.

In combat flying the important thing to bear in mind is that fancy flying will not shoot anyone down, but smooth flying will conserve more energy and keep your speed up as well as causing you to lose less height. Either of these is good. Speed can be converted into height by pulling up, height can be converted into speed by diving. And the one with the most energy is usually the one who will win a battle between aeroplanes.

But, bear this in mind too, the real way to use a fighter plane is not to get into a dogfight at all, instead you should only engage when you have an advantage. This might not seem fair, but the truth is that figher pilots are not in the business of being fair, their job is to kill people and shoot down aeroplanes. The best way to do this is to sneak up behind people and shoot them in the ass, preferably from a much greater height, so that you can perform a hit and run attack and then either zoom back up to height, or dive away and run off. Forget all that 'Knights of the Air' chivalry bollocks. You have to be a sneaky nasty b*st*rd.

If you do get into a turning fight, if both you and your opponent have aircraft with similar capabilities, then whoever can turn in the most efficient manner will be the one who wins (always assuming you can hit what you shoot at when firing a deflection shot). So, two things become important here, the first one is instantaneous turn rate, and the second one is sustained turn rate. Instantaneous turn rate being how fast your aeroplane can actually bank into a turn (the FW-190 is probably going to be the best one at this). Nevertheless, sustained turn rate is more important in a prolonged dogfight, and there is not a lot to choose between many of the famous fighter aeroplanes in this respect, although the Hawker Hurricane is one that has a good sustained turn rate.

This means that knowing your favourite aircraft's capabilities, and being able to use them to best advantage is what will win the day. Of course you have a massive advantage over real fighter pilots in some respects, as you can try out what are likely to be your enemy's aircraft and find their strengths and weaknesses too!

What you should do is get into your favourite aircraft and find out its ideal 'corner velocity'. You can do this by turning yourself into a test pilot for a few minutes and doing this:

Load up your favourite fighter plane, and fly it on a mission with no enemies around. Try several turns at various speeds until you determine which one gets your around in a circle the quickest (this is unlikely to be at full throttle, where your high speed will make your radius of turn very large). you can check your rate of turn for various speeds by going into a turn, noting your compass heading, and timing how long it takes you to get around back to the same heading. Try several speeds and also try it at various heights too, say 25,000 feet, 15,000 feet and maybe 5,000 feet. One of these will give you a better rate of turn than the others (for some aircraft it will be high up, others will be good low down). When you know your best height and best speed to turn fastest at that height, you'll know what height to dogfight at.

If you really must dogfight, the two moves above all other to perfect are the 'High Yo-Yo', and the 'Low yo-yo'. In a high yo-yo, you pull up in the turn a little, then kick down on the rudder, effectively this will 'extend the corner' a little, temporarily giving putting you high, the upwards element of the move will put you into a lag pursuit above the enemy aircraft's wing-line, which means it is useful to prevent an overshoot of your target, kicking down of the rudder, or rolling inverted and pulling back hard on the stick will likely give you a chance at a potshot, or you can barrel roll onto the target to get the nose around further. In a Low yo-yo, you kick on bottom rudder and cut the corner of your turn by chnging the vector of travel slightly, this will increase your speed and your turn rate temporarily, and is helpful if you can't quite get your nose around tight enough for a potshot at your enemy, it's important in a low yo-yo to keep positive G on the aircraft, so when you initiate this move, you will probably be inverted for a few seconds if you are doing it right, eventually rolling level and continuing the pursuit with you closer to the bad guy's tail. The low yo-yo is also a good move to try if you want to make a break for it (for example if you are out of ammo or running out of gas - although doing this is always going to be risky). It can be tricky for your enemy to keep you in sight when you do a low yo-yo.

Low yo-yo: http://www.flightsimbooks.com/jfs/page98.php

Note that some aircraft are not good at this kind of turning fight (P-47 Thunderbolt, F4U Corsair for example), in which case you should not try and dogfight with the aircraft at all, instead going for dive and zoom tactics. The way to do this is to turn away from the battle and climb up to a really high altitude, come right over the dogfight and dive down on enemy aircraft fire at them and then use your massive speed picked up in the dive to climb back up again, then repeat the whole thing again.

If you do this properly, you will be practically invulnerable to most 'turn and burn fighters' and if you do this on a public server, you'll end up with lots of people accusing you of hacking, since you'll most likely kick everyone's ass. Try it, it's funny as hell watching people that think they are great fighter pilots getting their asses shot off by you in a plane that they know turns like a truck!

Chock

07-16-07, 09:30 PM	#7
Chock Sea Lord Join Date: May 2005 Location: Under a thermal layer in chilly Olde England Posts: 1,842 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Tips to avoid stalling (and some other stuff): Flying smoothly will reduce the chances of stalling, but one thing you need to be aware of is that your 'stalling speed' increases massively when you are banked over at a high angle of attack, since most of your lift vector is going into turning your aircraft instead of keeping you in the sky, which effectively increases your wing loading massively. The chance of stalling is also made much more likely by a badly co-ordinated turn in this situation. A badly co-ordinated turn will block off the airflow to one of your inner wings (because you'll be flying slightly sideways in a badly co-ordinated turn, so the fuselage will be in the way of the airflow). This can cause one wing to stall early. This will cause a spin, as one wing will still be flying while the other one aint, consequently you'll spin in the direction of the stalled wing. This is exactly what is happening when you see a sycamore leaf 'helicoptering' its way to the ground when it falls from a tree (technically it is 'autorotating' rather than 'helicoptering' but anyway..). Unfortunately in a simulator, you cannot feel the slip of a badly co-ordinated turn like you can in real life, so you have to rely on the turn and slip indicator on your instrument panel to show you when it is happening (at least until you get used to handling the aeroplane anyway), there is a picture of a turn and slip indicator here: http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/turn...pindicator.htm The instrument consists of two elements, the upper needle, which indicates the rate of turn, often it will be marked with something like the following: '1 minute and 2 minutes'. The bottom half of the instrument has a small white ball suspended in liquid, this ball indicates how well co-ordinated your turn is (if the ball is in the centre while you are turning, you are flying smoothly and in a well co-ordinated turn. To keep your turn co-ordinated, you apply rudder to keep the ball centred in the middle. The easiest way to do this is to use a technique known as 'treading on the ball', what this means is that in a real aeroplane, if the ball is off-centre in a turn, whichever side it is off towards, that is the rudder pedal you press down on, doing this will centre up the ball (on a pc joystick with a rudder control, you'll have to do this by twisting the stick in that direction instead of giving it a bootful of rudder as you do on the real thing). The 'minute markings on the turn and slip indicator work like this: If you put your plane in a bank with the needle on the 1 minute mark, it will take you exactly one minute to perform a 360 degree turn. This is known as a 'rate 1 turn', obviously in a bank on the 2 minute mark it would take you 2 mins to make a 360 degree turn. The point of this is so that you can make accurate timed turns purely on instruments, for things like holding patterns and the like. Most of this not being hugely relevant to combat flying. Remember that you don't turn an aeroplane with the rudder, you turn it by putting some of the wing's lift vector off to one side, and then co-ordinate the turn by using the rudder to kick the tail outwards so that your nose is constantly facing the airflow. In combat flying the important thing to bear in mind is that fancy flying will not shoot anyone down, but smooth flying will conserve more energy and keep your speed up as well as causing you to lose less height. Either of these is good. Speed can be converted into height by pulling up, height can be converted into speed by diving. And the one with the most energy is usually the one who will win a battle between aeroplanes. But, bear this in mind too, the real way to use a fighter plane is not to get into a dogfight at all, instead you should only engage when you have an advantage. This might not seem fair, but the truth is that figher pilots are not in the business of being fair, their job is to kill people and shoot down aeroplanes. The best way to do this is to sneak up behind people and shoot them in the ass, preferably from a much greater height, so that you can perform a hit and run attack and then either zoom back up to height, or dive away and run off. Forget all that 'Knights of the Air' chivalry bollocks. You have to be a sneaky nasty bstrd. If you do get into a turning fight, if both you and your opponent have aircraft with similar capabilities, then whoever can turn in the most efficient manner will be the one who wins (always assuming you can hit what you shoot at when firing a deflection shot). So, two things become important here, the first one is instantaneous turn rate, and the second one is sustained turn rate. Instantaneous turn rate being how fast your aeroplane can actually bank into a turn (the FW-190 is probably going to be the best one at this). Nevertheless, sustained turn rate is more important in a prolonged dogfight, and there is not a lot to choose between many of the famous fighter aeroplanes in this respect, although the Hawker Hurricane is one that has a good sustained turn rate. This means that knowing your favourite aircraft's capabilities, and being able to use them to best advantage is what will win the day. Of course you have a massive advantage over real fighter pilots in some respects, as you can try out what are likely to be your enemy's aircraft and find their strengths and weaknesses too! What you should do is get into your favourite aircraft and find out its ideal 'corner velocity'. You can do this by turning yourself into a test pilot for a few minutes and doing this: Load up your favourite fighter plane, and fly it on a mission with no enemies around. Try several turns at various speeds until you determine which one gets your around in a circle the quickest (this is unlikely to be at full throttle, where your high speed will make your radius of turn very large). you can check your rate of turn for various speeds by going into a turn, noting your compass heading, and timing how long it takes you to get around back to the same heading. Try several speeds and also try it at various heights too, say 25,000 feet, 15,000 feet and maybe 5,000 feet. One of these will give you a better rate of turn than the others (for some aircraft it will be high up, others will be good low down). When you know your best height and best speed to turn fastest at that height, you'll know what height to dogfight at. If you really must dogfight, the two moves above all other to perfect are the 'High Yo-Yo', and the 'Low yo-yo'. In a high yo-yo, you pull up in the turn a little, then kick down on the rudder, effectively this will 'extend the corner' a little, temporarily giving putting you high, the upwards element of the move will put you into a lag pursuit above the enemy aircraft's wing-line, which means it is useful to prevent an overshoot of your target, kicking down of the rudder, or rolling inverted and pulling back hard on the stick will likely give you a chance at a potshot, or you can barrel roll onto the target to get the nose around further. In a Low yo-yo, you kick on bottom rudder and cut the corner of your turn by chnging the vector of travel slightly, this will increase your speed and your turn rate temporarily, and is helpful if you can't quite get your nose around tight enough for a potshot at your enemy, it's important in a low yo-yo to keep positive G on the aircraft, so when you initiate this move, you will probably be inverted for a few seconds if you are doing it right, eventually rolling level and continuing the pursuit with you closer to the bad guy's tail. The low yo-yo is also a good move to try if you want to make a break for it (for example if you are out of ammo or running out of gas - although doing this is always going to be risky). It can be tricky for your enemy to keep you in sight when you do a low yo-yo. Low yo-yo: http://www.flightsimbooks.com/jfs/page98.php Note that some aircraft are not good at this kind of turning fight (P-47 Thunderbolt, F4U Corsair for example), in which case you should not try and dogfight with the aircraft at all, instead going for dive and zoom tactics. The way to do this is to turn away from the battle and climb up to a really high altitude, come right over the dogfight and dive down on enemy aircraft fire at them and then use your massive speed picked up in the dive to climb back up again, then repeat the whole thing again. If you do this properly, you will be practically invulnerable to most 'turn and burn fighters' and if you do this on a public server, you'll end up with lots of people accusing you of hacking, since you'll most likely kick everyone's ass. Try it, it's funny as hell watching people that think they are great fighter pilots getting their asses shot off by you in a plane that they know turns like a truck! Chock __________________ Last edited by Chock; 07-16-07 at 09:59 PM.