Hard time keeping up with an A-50

In the missions where I need to escort a "normal" plane like an A-50 awacs, I find myself going in AB in order to keep up while climbing to 9000m.

At mil power, it walks away from me during the climb.

Is that normal or is the SFM of the A-50 responsible for this ?

The Su-27 feels strangely "underpowered" a lot of times at high altitudes.

In the missions where I need to escort a "normal" plane like an A-50 awacs, I find myself going in AB in order to keep up while climbing to 9000m.

At mil power, it walks away from me during the climb.

Is that normal or is the SFM of the A-50 responsible for this ?

The Su-27 feels strangely "underpowered" a lot of times at high altitudes.

For the Su-27, accelerate to 860 TAS go to full military power and maintain 860 TAS until approaching your desired altitude adjusting pitch as necessary. That gets you to altitude quickly. From there, adjust for whatever it is you need to do.

Not knowing the particulars of the mission just keep an eye on your IAS, too. After 11,000 m your IAS can end up being dangerously slow. So you need to watch everything and fly smart.

Shouldn't IAS be refereed as primary speed reference?

Yes it should be.

To the OP:. A Su 27 can out-climb an A50 at MIL power, but you have to fly the correct profile which will typically have you cooking at a much higher speed than the A50.

At slower speeds, his wings are King of lift. Airliners are made to be very efficient climbing to cruise and cruising. No trade offs like a fighter must make, in particular if you've got every single pylon occupied by drag. I mean missiles.

Shouldn't IAS be refereed as primary speed reference?

Just stating how it’s referenced in the manual, though I think I’ m wrong about mil power. The manual references TAS for the climb. Doing it that way, I was amazed at how quickly I got to 11K meters.

Edit: A TAS of 860 keeps you out of trouble up through about 11K meters. But at that altitude you IAS is sufficiently low that you don't want to climb much higher using that approach. At around 9K yourvrate of climb begins to drop. That the point at which I start transitioning to a horizontal speed regime by gradually flattening my climb. That way it takes less time to get M 1+.

For the Su-27, accelerate to 860 TAS go to full military power and maintain 860 TAS until approaching your desired altitude adjusting pitch as necessary. That gets you to altitude quickly. From there, adjust for whatever it is you need to do.

 

Not knowing the particulars of the mission just keep an eye on your IAS, too. After 11,000 m your IAS can end up being dangerously slow. So you need to watch everything and fly smart.

Thank you for those information ! Interesting !

How do you look up the TAS ? Using the HDD or going into BVR mode in order to have it on the HUD ?

To the OP:. A Su 27 can out-climb an A50 at MIL power, but you have to fly the correct profile which will typically have you cooking at a much higher speed than the A50.

 

At slower speeds, his wings are King of lift. Airliners are made to be very efficient climbing to cruise and cruising. No trade offs like a fighter must make, in particular if you've got every single pylon occupied by drag. I mean missiles.

Yes, the SU-27 had missiles on every single pylon. Also, the AOA was quite high because of the speed, generating a lot of drag I guess..

Thank you for your input :)

Thank you for those information ! Interesting !

How do you look up the TAS ? Using the HDD or going into BVR mode in order to have it on the HUD ?

Either works. Depends on whether you want Nav or BVR on the HUD. With the latter, you can use the deviation index on the HDD to keep track of the WP.

Just to be clear, you aren't playing with the throttle during the climb. You set the throttle, pull slowly into the climb and let your pitch control your speed to keep it at 860. If you start speeding up, climb a bit more steeply. If slowing down, drop your nose a bit. The run from around 3K to 8-9K will happen very quickly. After that your rate of climb begins to slow. That's when I start looking to generate speed by keeping the velocity indexer on the HUD just positive and start paying attention to Mach.