On Tuesday 05 December 2006 12:46, Jon S. Berndt wrote: > > Jon S. Berndt wrote: > > >> Boy that Mig 29 sure is interesting. This weekend on the History > > >> Channel there has been a lot of US War Planes but this Mig 29 and its > > >> rear trust controllers and its hover ability is neat. > > > > > > Flashy, yes. Neat, yes. In a dogfight, that ability to hover > > > would make it an easy target. > > > > > > Jon > > > > That was not the experience with the Harrier in the Falklands, the > > ability to hover gave it a distinct advantage even with air-to-air > > exocets on board the Argentinian jets. When you can slow to let the > > other guy get nicely in your sights, it's a turkey shoot. > > Regards > > Sid. > > Clarification: I was referring to the vertical "hover" for the MiG 29. The > Harrier can hover horizontally very nicely, and can "bow", or hold another > stable pitch attitude, and while hovering it can also be rotated about a > vertical axis, under control. Yes, that gives it capabilities like a > helicopter, in some ways. Still, is that really useful in air-to-air > "dogfighting", or in preparing to launch a missile while beyond visual > range, beyond the range of the enemy's missiles, and while not closing the > distance to the target aircraft? > > BTW, the Exocet is not an air-to-air missile, but an air-to-ship missile. > > Jon
I'd have to say that the vertical hover ability, in itself is not a useful ACM but being able to pull up into the vertical, take a shot, and then regain controlled flight certainly is. The 'Cobra' maneuver, where the a/c is pulled up to > 90 deg AoA and resumes controlled flight can also be performed in the horizontal axis (I believe this is called the 'Hook' maneuver) allowing it to bring it's weapons to bear across the turning circle. In practice, a pilot would be reluctant to use these maneuvers frequently because they do burn a lot of fuel - apparently in the 1996 SU-37 demo at Farnborough the SU-37 took off with 4.5 tons of fuel and landed with 1.5 tons - but the SU-27 family starts off with quite a long range for a fighter. The SU-37 has a low altitude range @ 800 kph of 750 nm, a high alt range @ 950 kph of 1782 nm and single aar range of 3510 nm. Fuel is always an issue, but less so in such a long legged aircraft. I've seen some stuff on some proposed aircraft that are intended to maneuver solely by thrust vectoring, doing away with the control surfaces altogether, which would simplify and strengthen the flight surface structures, but one thing I found very interesting while working on the SU-37 for FG was that thrust vectoring is of little use at relatively low power settings - it had negligible effect. That might just be down to me not getting it right though :) Re the Harrier, it has only a marginal hover ability, especially in hot climates, and is only used in practice for landing, when most of the fuel load has been burnt off. I believe that on occasions, in hot climates, unused weapons have had to be jettisoned before the Harrier has been able to recover vertically. VIFFing (Vectoring In Forward Flight) is primarily a very fast deceleration maneuver with the additional effect of translation along the changed thrust axis. It's greatest use is to force an overshoot by a pursuing aircraft but the Harrier's thrust vectoring doesn't permit attitude control. LeeE ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Flightgear-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-users
