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First off your joystick calibration better be spot
on....any spikes or
other crap will make this much harder and trust me its hard enough
already. Then go into your F-15 Joystick Calibration and turn off
filtering and find out about the scaling of the inputs of pitch, roll
and yaw....getting these correct will save you bunches of headache and
much frustration. What is right? That is up to the pilot in
command....you.
Here are my settings but I doubt that they
will help you very
much...as these vary from joystick to joystick and puter to
puter....fun fun fun...ahh incompatibilities are wonderful eh.
Here are my latest settings...yes I change mine as I either get better
or a change of heart...,<VBG>
pitch 8,12,20,29,38,50,67,80,90 with a dead band of 8
roll 10, 14,,20,30,40,50,60,75,90 with a deadband of 5 (Ive changed
this again since writing this...the roll is now set in increments of
10 with the final setting being 100 deadband 5)
yaw 5, 8, 12, 21, 32, 47,60,76,90 deadband of 8
First off this is NOT a how to manual...Aunt Mary is away in the
bahama's and pretty much she only flies the Pink Plane....this is just
some observations from Auntie Mary's flunky.
Going into the merges at 30,000 feet ALT in Instant Action. My plane
weighs around 46600 into the mission.....loaded with only 9600 pounds
of fuel and ammo for the gun....(there is a bug there
as the weight does NOT increase with the addition of ammo or chaff and
flare)...
We are heading into the merge against 2 F-15c set to expert...these
are some of the speeds Ive written down...and by no means are these
scientific cause I KNOW Im not a Flight Test Engineer<VBG>. With a
entry into a Flat turn with a speed of 450IA (indicated airspeed)
heading of 0 degrees by the time Ive come around to 200 degree's Im at
an AOA of 26,5 (borderline of a bad thing) speed has bled down to 381
and altitude to 29,054, at 9.5 g's.....its taken around 15seconds to
do this much. By the time Ive come around 360 degree's my AOA has shot
up to 39.5units, my IA is down to 250 but Im still pulling 8.8
g's....control of the jet has passed onto the realm of OH
MY....meaning that it is basically out of control which is regained by
of course reducing the AOA. Thru this all my feet have been flat on
the floor....pretty much the way they stay thru out this little flight
test...no rudders and unless the AOA is abused and additionally turns
are attempted the ball stays fairly dormant...some minor movements but
nothing to worry about....but if the AOA is high say above 26 units
and bank is attempted before the AOA is reduced then problems ensue.
This I feel is much of the cause of peoples discontent. Well ok
besides being able to land on the roof.
The moral of this story ....watch that AOA....it really does matter.
The plane is steady as a rock until you start abusing the AOA limits
by going much past 26.5 units. After that the control of the plane is
progressively worse. It can be regained by FIRST reducing the AOA,
make no attempts at turning until this is done....after the AOA is
taken care of I have flown this sim steadily at very low airspeeds. Be
aware that the AOA will shoot up very very quickly at low airspeeds.
So below 150 all of your movements are really gentle....you are NOT
flying some wonder plane....
Now to attempt the same Flat turn at a slightly higher speed...500
kts. At 180 degree's Im at 450kts Ive dropped from 29950 to 28,736
(hazard of trying to watch to much at one time) Im at AOA of 21.0
(very sweet spot for the F15E) and the G's are 9.5. By the time of a
full 360 degree's Im at 334 Kt IA, back up to 29,357, AOA has shot up
to 30.5 units, and pulling 11.1g's. But near the end of this turn with
the AOA at such a high number if I dont ease up before I try to level
my turn the I will get a large yaw...but if I just reduce it to 21 or
so then the roll out is solid and secure. Again no rudders and because
I reduced AOA before roll out no need for them.
Now one of my favorite ways to enter the merge in H2H used to be the
straight pull up then rotating my lift vector to pull lag pursuit once
I regained tally. I wondered how effective that might be at 30,000
feet in the F-15 it didnt strike me as a terribly brilliant thing to
do at 30,000 feet...but hey you cant die in here. So anyway...what
speed and technique would allow me to pull up at the merge. Turns out
its similar to a flat turn....in that AOA is extremely important. But
here the speed is pushed up for entry. After some experimentation I
found that 545 kts IA would allow me to pull thru the vertical
allowing me to reverse my direction...with minimum of problems of
losing control. My altitude at the end of the manuever is 42,546....I
found that by going into the merge at 545 and then just banging the
joystick back until the AOA reached 20units then attempting to not
exceed the 20units resulted in a very much controlled immeleman. Its
the not allowing it to exceed 20 or so units thats the trick. Again
there was no need for rudder...as the ball didnt deviate significantly
enough to require my sloppy ass to adjust it.
So in the end Ive found a new way to have a most intense amount of
fun. The concentration required to stay within the parameters of the
sim are keeping me up late at night. Ive managed to kill 3 experts at
30,000 once. The fight at one point reached 45,000 feet and also ended
up around 500 feet. High altitude fighting is fun fun fun.
PAPA DOC
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