Pilum

The paper linked below analyses the performance of the Kh-47 M2 Kinzhal, and how likely it is that this type of missile can be intercepted by air defenses. However, in order to keep this post free of information that could be construed to be politically sensitive, the linked paper has been redacted so that only the parts focused on the technical analysis remain. I did this paper because there have been so many rumors regarding the actual performance of this missile, not in the least in this forum, where there have also been some simulation scenarios posted which in some cases in my opinion have been overly optimistic about the Kinzhal’s capabilities. Link to page with the paper in pdf format. On my homepage I also have a page with a description of the simulation model used. Note that I in no way claim this paper to be the gospel truth, and this is just my assessment based on my simulations and the assumptions I outline in the paper. Consequently, I would welcome any constructive input on it. However, please remember to keep it all related to the technical aspects in order to comply with forum rules. Front page of paper:

I tried to fix this yesterday by using bootloader and their tips under FAQ with no luck. Sent ticket to Thrustmaster tech support but autoreply say's 8 days handling time.

I have the exact same problem happening at the same time so hardly a coincidence. So this must be some windows update thing. Not very likely that both out units had the same HW issue at the same time is it? If you get it fixed let me know how. If I find a solution I will let you know as well.

I know that it has been prematurely said before that the age of the dogfight is over but today missile systems are extremely capable and the way to avoid being shot down is more and more about avoiding getting into the envelope where missiles are kinematically difficult to outmanouver. Secondly, there have been huge advances in radar and electronic warfare lately so older semi-analogue systems would not fare well against modern SW flexible systems. For example, a modern fighter with an AESA radar and state of the art ECM like the JAS39 Gripen with a mix of Meteors and AMRAAMs would make short work of an older system no matter if it has better platform manouverability.

As usual: Clear and concise instructions presented in a suitable format that let's you get up to speed quickly. I make a note of downloading all your guides Charley_Owl. :book: My hat is off to you Sir for yet another great guide! :thumbup:

@grabby: I agree that missing the acceleration part makes it difficult in sims. From my own experience in gliders and private planes, the seat of the pants feel really helps to control your flight path. Over at IL-2 there is a discussion about roll-yaw-pitch coupling and wobbliness and how realistic this is and while many think more wobbly = more realistic in a sim I think the "on rails" flight model that many are derogatory about is actually closer to IRL: Just watch this clip with F-18's doing AR: Notice (about 4:50 into the clip) how crisply the jet responds to input and the lack of wobbliness. In addition, notice the relatively large control inputs the pilot is using at the connect. If you ever try that large control input in DCS for AR you are in for a surprise! In DCS it's minute veeeeery small inputs or else you are gone..... And do stay in the clip to around 6:30 when they do a couple of supersonic fly-by's.....BOOM! :smilewink:

I guess there are many ways of cracking this but here are my tips: First of all, I usually have linear on all planes and choppers but for refueling the Mirage that does not work for me so I use an S-curve of about 25% IIRC. Then ensure that you get the tanker flying as fast as possible, plus 300 knots IAS 20000 ft. Then approach with a little bit of excess power, I set up the mission with circa 20% fuel in the Mirage and in that case its around 25-27% throttle for slightly above 300 knots IAS. The more speed the easier it is to control. Try to figure out what the throttle position is for co-speed with the tanker. Use about 1% more in thrust and then touch your airbrakes to control speed as you approach. The airbrakes gives you a bit of pitch oscillations so you need to use then a bit before you connect. Then once you are connected, keep a slight excess of thrust, say 1 % then eyeball that you are in a good position and as soon as you get too close, touch the brakes to reduce speed a bit. Repeat until you are told to disconnect! Probably not the way French AF pilots do it or are taught to but in DCS world it works for me....:smilewink:

Also: I did a few quick take-off and landing tests with the Me-109K4 with tailwheel unlocked and you have to be pretty quick on the toebrakes there as well if you don't want to scrape a wing so I don't know if I agree that the Spitfire is so much worse? After all it does not have a lockable tailwheel like the Me-109.......

Maybe I should clarify: The reason I got rid of my old rig was that the pots were giving up: the stick was shaking like crazy and the throttle was not constant: Using the throttle as collective for the Huey or Mi-8 required constant attention since the pots were drifting. I do however think the MFG Crosswind would have helped even if the used pots instead of hall sensors: They are wide apart and for the rudder does a similar job to your nifty broomstick extension. :smilewink:

First of all let me say I love the DCS Spitfire! A bit twitchy in pitch but that is as it should be as far as I can tell from historical sources like the NACA report L-334 which is a good read if you have not seen it so far. Anyway when it comes to the ground handling I think the biggest problem we face was very well put by Zimmerdylan in this post: The lack och acceleration input simply makes it more difficult in general in sims which is also my experience comparing flying IRL: the acceleration cues tell you things are moving before you get the visual cue but by the time you see things moving you already have a problem in that you are already behind the game since you now have a swing going that you could have stopped earlier if you had the acceleration cue input. Also from control theory we know that controlling a system through feedback things get more difficult if you introduce a delay in the feedback loop which we are essentially doing by being cut off from the acceleration input like we do in a sim. Does not make it impossible, just a bit harder and taking a longer time to get used to that’s all. So yes, I think Zimmerdylan has a point that it is more difficult in a sim. He is in the post I linked referring to IRL experience but I think control theory supports him as well. In addition, sorry to have to say this but in order to get full enjoyment there are no shortcuts in terms of controllers: I flew for years with pot based plastic controllers but lately indulged: I now got a rig with hall sensors only: Warthog with 10 cm stick extension, MFG Crosswind pedals with the width extension and it makes a world of difference: Of course this does not eliminate the lack of acceleration feedback but it does make things easier to control. That being said, when it comes to the current wing dipping tendencies in the Spitfire, did not the DCS Fw-190 go through a few iterations after it was released that tuned the ground handling and made it less prone to ground loop? At least I seem to recall that or maybe that was just me getting better at handling it through practice…..:smilewink:

Nice to see a shot of how barrage jamming is presented on the Viggen display. Will be interesting to see this animated and if more sophisticated jamming modes will be rendered later on. :shifty: You can compare the display shots to actual IRL footage of chaff and barrage jamming effects on a Swedish surveillance radar linked in this post. Its in Swedish but I did a quick translation and summary of what you are seeing.

Gotta love the attention to detail: The Rb 04 skimming over the water leaving the “speed boat” trail, the contrails coming off the canards even in close to level flight (just like IRL), the pilot, rivets and weathering in jpg pic 4. Really, really nice! A minor correction to the OP though: The Viggen is a canard configuration not a double-delta…..:music_whistling:

In the IL-2 Sturmovik forum a member (II/JG17_SchwarzeDreizehn) was kind enough to make the following figure and text available from a full scale test of a Fw-190 in the Chalais Meudon wind tunnel outside Paris performed by Focke-Wulf in 1943. As can be seen, the figure shows a Clmax figure of 1.3 at Re=4.6 M (See attached figure for "Leerlauf"=idling engine). It is reasonable to look at the idling curve since this represents the same conditions (comparing apples with apples!) at which a Clmax of 1.36 for Spitfire and 1.4 for Me-109 was measured by the British RAE. I think it is good to reference the Spitfire and Me-109 to get things in context since these Clmax values are AFAIK more generally accepted while the Fw-190 Clmax has been the subject of some controversy both here and in other forums and figures as low as 1.17 and as high as 1.58 have been mentioned. My attempt at translation of the attached text from Focke-Wulf Bericht 06006, page 12 conclusions (See attached excerpt): “Conclusions In the large Chalais-Meudon wind tunnel, a full sized Fw 190 was tested. Without split flap deflection the Camax turned out to be 1.3 and with 58 degrees split flap deflection Camax=1.55. These values are 0.3 to 0.4 lower than those of smooth/polished models. The deviation is due to the influence of fuselage, supports, and deviations in the wing profile shape.” So at the Chalais Meudon wind tunnel Re of 4.6M the Clmax is 1.3 which given that an IRL stall speed Re is around 6.4M makes a Clmax at that Re in the order of 1.35-1.4 quite plausible. So, it looks like this report backs up Yo-Yo’s choise of a Clmax in the range of 1.35 to 1.38 quite nicely! :thumbup:

There was actually a discussion about the Viggen turn rate earlier in this thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2769114&postcount=1781 The turn rate discussion goes on for some pages after that including some nice climb and acceleration charts on page 182. :)

If I interpret what Yo-Yo is saying correctly in post #1, then a nice aspect of introducing this feature will be that when you lower or raise the flaps in the DCS Me-109K4, you will then have to turn both wheels (flap and trim) in the same direction to maintain trim just as it was IRL! :thumbup:

Sorry for being late to the party but my vote is that lowering flaps should affect the elevator hinge moment meaning I think the virtual stick should move to a new position as governed by the altered downwash due to the new flap position. I think this would make sense since this is what happens already if you trim a virtual aircraft that has trim tabs on the elevator (like the DCS P-51): Even though you don’t move the position of your controller, the virtual stick moves due to the trim tab deflection. So I think if the elevator hinge moment is changed, be this due to a trim tab deflection or flap deflection, the result should be the same. :)

I got curious about this and had a look in the AJS 37 SFI because I suspected there was a ground mapping mode and it looks like there is: The attached picture is given for "radaranfall" and to me it looks like you can designate ground targets much like on any other attack aircraft via the "markör" designator. I think these images show ground only because they come from a section with images of the Viggen over ground only and there are in other portions of the SFI attack examples in a sea environment and in them the scope image looks distinctly different. Maybe someone can confirm or has more info on this? Really look forward to testing this mode in combination with "sprängbomb m/71" :smilewink:

Well the Viggen EW suite, everything from RWR, jammers and chaff dispensers are covered in the link I provided. If you read about KA, KB, U22 and U22A you will see that that the focus is on deception jamming, not noise jamming. In fact the jamming model in DCS is very crude: It is basically WW2 level technology barrage noise jamming which means that the radar burns through at long distances. This is very different from more advanced modern techniques where the victim does not even realize he has been deceived, such as the RT-02 navigation jamming renhanxe linked to. I agree it would be nice with a more sophisticated jammer model but I don't think that is going to happen since even if the U22 etc are modeled with the deception modes detailed in the doc I linked the crux is that that needs to be translated to how the radar model in the target aircraft would be affected and how this would look on the display. There are clues to how this could be rendered in the doc renhanuxe linked, showing how deception jamming could be presented in the affected aircraft but since this would involve updating how this is rendered in ALL aircraft in DCS I seriously doubt it's gonna happen...:smilewink: The doc renhanuxe posted is IMHO a gem if you are interested in EW and the first time I saw it I was surprised to see active illumination of chaff for deception, towed decoys and advanced deception jamming techniques so well described. All this is a bit different from the current wait until burnthrough then turn and notch and dump chaff modus operandi DCS fosters...... How good the Viggens EW suite actually was is to some extent covered in the doc i linked. However, when it comes to the effectiveness of the Gripen EW suite, I think I will pass on that one.....:smilewink:

I guess many of us who have worked with the systems can but the problem is that even after so many years and the Viggen decommissioned and all it's still difficult to know what is open info now days and what is still classified which is why I tend to stay away from discussions involving these systems. All I can say is that I almost choked on my coffee when I first read to what level of detail the Viggen and Gripen EW systems were described here: [ame=http://www.vikingroost.org/pdf/MMrapport__utg_2.pdf]Svensk Motmedelshistoria[/ame] . I think it's a very good read. :smilewink: EDIT: I know it's in Swedish but for those of you who, as renhanuxe so eloquently put it, do not speak "ärans och hjältarnas språk" there is always google translate to lean on!

@Robban and renhanxue: Thanks for the info posted and the elaborations on what Mr Yeager had to say on the Viggen. If he was relegated to backseat driver I can see that coloring his assessment ;). Also, a special thanks renhanxue for the SFI parts and translation posted: Great info and hope your request for the complete AJS 37 SFI gets processed and “avhemligad” so we can see the turn rate and other performance goodies for ourselves. About the Gripen: OT for sure, but since the subject came up: Those of you who can, either read the whole story in “Ridders reservation” published by Mach magazine May 1989, or the Royal Institute of Technology report “Flygtekniska problem med canardkonfigurationer”, KTH AERO MEMO FI 192, by Sven-Olof Ridder more prosaically known as “Ankdödaren” (The canard killer) in the Swedish aeronautical community (in some parts anyway :)). There is a 13 point “canard killing” summary listed in this report which has never been successfully refuted by the acolytes of the canard and which is worded so it's accessible both to laymen and professionals alike. Highly recommended reading. All this may come across as too negative but make no mistake I’m not dissing the Viggen’s combat effectiveness: It’s just when it comes to the merits of a canard I side with professor Ridder that’s all. As my avatar and sig implies I have worked with EW systems, including the Viggen’s, and when it comes to the combat effectiveness it rates high IMHO opinion but that is more due to the system capabilities in terms of datalink, radar and EW systems etc. all working in synergy rather than the aerodynamics.: I mean the other guy can have a tremendous turn rate capability but how will it help him if he can’t find or lock up his enemy due to a confusing radar display or if his first warning of a Viggen in the vicinity is a RB 74 up his tailpipe? :music_whistling:

Yes, and I calculated that while it is theoretically possible for the Mig-23 to do 17.5 deg/s sustained at M=0.8 from an aerodynamic standpoint since it would require a T/W ratio of 0.83 which is reasonable BUT the g-load would be 8.7 g with fully forward wings which would most likely snap them right off....

Thanks for posting those figures Robban. Have to confess I'm pretty pleased with my ballpark estimate for the AJ at 12.3 deg/s.....:smilewink: You can actually get decent turn performance in an attack aircraft as well if you choose the right configuration. It's history now but there were many proponents of a more conventional Gripen swept wing design both internally at SAAB and at KTH, FMV and FFA but the canard faction won out in the end. I happen to side with the former but then I'm a big fan of professor Sven-Olof Ridder......:music_whistling: In a sense yes but sustained turn rate is very much dependent on span loading and aspect ratio and if a Mig-23 spreads its wings...... Assuming the T/W ratio is in the same ballpark as the Viggen then it may be reasonable. It's STR for the Viggen anyway: In my calculation the return value on Cl is around 0.45 for STR. A canard like the Viggen should have a trimmed Clmax of more than 1.1 at 18 deg alfa and a good pilot should be able to go a bit higher than that. :) Footnote: As I heard it, Chuck Yeager tried out the Viggen and his comment was something like this goes the legend: "Well, it's a nice plane but I have never flown one that slows down so fast when you try to turn it!"

Thanks MYSE. I actually had that and it's an interesting analysis but I'm not sure to what extent the data there for RM8B can be used for RM8A though. In addition, we need data for the Mirage 2000 engine at 15000ft as well to do a comparison.

Yes, I think you may be right about the Mirage 2000 being higher IRL because it does have an impressive suite of leading edge slats and I don't think the SAAB doc had those in mind. It actually only mentions LE devices in conjunction with the swept wing estimates IIRC. And as to altitude influence: there is no problem when it comes to the aerodynamics but the problem is what kind of thrust do the engines give at M=0.8 at 15000ft? Anyone have links to that kind of data?

Yep, I did see some parts of the SFI were posted earlier but sadly I have not found any turn data either but since these parts of the SFI are AFAIK now no longer secret then maybe some kind soul could scan them? :music_whistling: