Engine extremely smokey

I think the amount of black smoke produced by the JF-17's engine is not very accurate and is far too much.

I am aware that the JF-17 has the essentially same engine as the MiG-29, however comparing videos of each aircraft in flight shows that, while the MiG-29 makes a tremendous amount of smoke, the JF-17 is quite clean and is comparable to something like an F-16.

I am sure I have heard about newer RD-33's having improved smokeless combustors.

The RD-33MK does have reduced smoke. This engine has had the gearbox put on the bottom and sold to China as RD-93MA. However no operational JF-17 has this engine, all have the original have the vanilla RD-93 with just as much smoke as original RD-33. It is merely half the smoke of the MiG-29, but that is it. China in the meantime is using RD-93MA for their drones and FC-31. Pakistan has said they are not using WS-13 so as to maintain logistic costs. Would make little sense for them to pay lots of money to rush a single crystal turbine engine into service replacing the engine in over 100 JF-17s that currently have normal RD-93.

To see a JF-17 with less smoke in engine, wait for block III with RD-93MA or exporter to buy WS-13

The RD-33MK does have reduced smoke. This engine has had the gearbox put on the bottom and sold to China as RD-93MA. However no operational JF-17 has this engine, all have the original have the vanilla RD-93 with just as much smoke as original RD-33. It is merely half the smoke of the MiG-29, but that is it. China in the meantime is using RD-93MA for their drones and FC-31. Pakistan has said they are not using WS-13 so as to maintain logistic costs. Would make little sense for them to pay lots of money to rush a single crystal turbine engine into service replacing the engine in over 100 JF-17s that currently have normal RD-93.

 

To see a JF-17 with less smoke in engine, wait for block III with RD-93MA or exporter to buy WS-13

I could have sworn Pak did something with an electronic fuel control system to allow the RD-93s to have more accurate fuel flow/combustion and therefore less "smoke" but I an unable to find it. That might be what he's mentioning, and would be a reason they "smoke" less, as the smoke is just unburnt fuel AFAIK.

If I can find a link to it I will post... but until then its just a rumor as far as I am concerned. (About my above statement)

The base RD-33/RD-93 have digital engine electronic control. The RD-33MK/RD-93MA have FADEC. The engine is delivered in the fuselage of JF-17 by Chengdu. I believe Pakistan developed their indeginous over haul capacity recently, and no over hauled jets are being modified as far as is public!y confirmed. I would be very surprised if a DEEC modification was done by Pakistan to decrease smoke on RD-93.

The base RD-33/RD-93 have digital engine electronic control. The RD-33MK/RD-93MA have FADEC. The engine is delivered in the fuselage of JF-17 by Chengdu. I believe Pakistan developed their indeginous over haul capacity recently, and no over hauled jets are being modified as far as is public!y confirmed. I would be very surprised if a DEEC modification was done by Pakistan to decrease smoke on RD-93.

Yeah I am unable to find what I was referencing. Though I'm pretty sure I saw it somewhere, I'll keep an eye out for it. Either way, I'm sure there is more than enough real-life footage to deduce if the smoke trails are different enough to warrant a change.

One of the interesting things about JF-17 I find, is how much false information about it online. Until very recently when this DCS module became publicly available, there is actually very little concrete information in many places like you find with other planes. Without going political, I think publicly available information for it has fallen to the information war. Until the pre release videos there was a book being sold saying the MAWS is 360 degrees and shows TTI on HUD and without special knowledge you couldn’t say it was wrong.

I find it really refreshing that all of us now have the module to dig into and find these things out. I’m certainly going to try what was mentioned on the fighter pilot podcast in the MiG-29 interview of going into WVR supersonic then coast at idle to hide your visual signature against someone expecting to look up and see a a mini Kuznetsov:)

If you look at the videos, the engine doesn't seem as smokey as in game tbh. E.g. On any of the airshow videos, you hardly ever notice a faint trail of smoke behind the aircraft. Is this an altitude thing where it smokes at higher altitudes?

If you look at the videos, the engine doesn't seem as smokey as in game tbh. E.g. On any of the airshow videos, you hardly ever notice a faint trail of smoke behind the aircraft. Is this an altitude thing where it smokes at higher altitudes?

yes true,

You can hardly see any smoke even when the engines are not in Afterburner like from high alpha pass then transitioning to afterburner for muscle climb (5:11). even when the plane is come for landing you can only see a smoke trail when it passes by the white clouds(6:50).

This is what I am concerned about, below I have linked 2 videos, one of a JF-17 demonstration and one a MiG-29 demonstration, you can clearly see the dark smoke the MiG-29 leaves behind while the JF-17 is relatively clean.

MiG-29 demonstration video:

JF-17 demonstration video:

edit: nevermind, but there's 1 plane out there with the WS-13, and it's hard to find block-1 videos!

If there's even one plane out there with WS13 that should be enough for deka to put it in DCS

I also though it was a bit too smokey, but recently I watches this video:

at the end of the video, look how smokey it is...maybe it depends on the block/version of the plane?

I dunno why you couldn't see the smoke from the front but only from the back. Once again I think altitude and weather plays a role. Maybe high moisture conditions? Whatever I give up. It's still only HALF as smokey as mig29 so there's that.

Light and background also affects the visibility of the smoke, in DCS does not affect it.

So the difference is the smoke seems to show on videos made in 2010 or 2011, but not seen at all (or slightly as speed changes) in later videos. I'm assuming that's when they updated their DEEC to reduce the smoke.

I talked about that in another desolate post. The smoke should be there but not in every second.

Slightly changed in expression.

2022/4/11 AM8点44分，Torbernite说：

I know the smoke is already binded with RD-33/93. That comes from small fuel drops in rich fuel condition (roughly low altitude and high or suddenly increasing throttle set, which is mostly the condition in airshow and maneuver display video), which can not disperse well and get carbonized in anoxic atmosphere near the combustor fuel nozzle, instead of well burn in the whole centrifugal combustor, and sprays the carbon particles from the nozzle. In more ideal operation conditions, the smoke should be thinner or invisible.

But at least intuitively, the smoke could be solved with DEEC tuning and more importantly, shouldn't appear in the same thickness in all operation condition, all altitude, all speed. In video of JF, MiG-29 and FC-31 prototype, you can see the smoke appears and vanishes with the change of operation condition. Even the DCS MiG-29 have this changing feature. If our JF still has the smoke, the thickness variation would still be an interesting detail.

 

Yes, the video you referenced was from 2011, and since then it looks like that issue has mostly been solved.