Dino Cattaneo's F-14D beta released

Hi,

I initially had problems with MFDs and realised it needed FA-18 guages from FSX Acc. I have tested in P3D and so far the only anomalies I have seen, apart from the stuff reported, is that the AOA indexer is "beaming" out of its housing when the aircraft jolts or is reloaded in the sim. There's also a red light appearing on the lower instrument panel when the gear is retracted, possibly an external one.
Apart from that the aircraft is behaving very nice in P3D and looks very nicely modelled and textured.


Best
DagR
 
Sundog said:
A lot of high performance aircraft aren't thrust limited at low altitude, their q limited. Of course, that partly depends on loadout. But in a clean relatively clean/a2a configuration, they're definitely q limited.
Click to expand...

Loadout/weight would factor into G-limit, however altitude wouldn't make a difference. 6.5 Gs on the deck is 6.5 Gs at altitude. Saying it was thrust limited is not accurate but I think what fliger747 meant was Airspeed Limitations. If I recall correctly, the F-14 was airspeed limited to 800kias at sea-level and M1.8 at altitude. This would be depending on stores also. Some stores would limit the airspeed further. Even though there were limitations, the Tomcat was quite capable of exceeding those speeds.
 
As to speeds: I fly with a lot of ex F-4 FA-18 and F-14 drivers and will have to ask them if I run into one. Certainly the plane I fly is "q" and Mach limited and is quite capable of exceeding those values at eithr SL or at altitude, but then it's an airliner....

Many thanks again to our top freeware designers, to mention Dino, and of course Milton for their contributions to us all.

Cheers: Tom
 
Previously mentioned landing gear strength is not fully sufficient for normal no flare deck landing. Currently it is set at 1500 FPS, which by real numbers should be sufficient. However experience shows a value of 2500 FPS is necessary as FS does not compute such dampening as from tire squish. The real plane would experience some excitement if landing on steel tires!

cheers. Tom
 
fliger747 said:
As to speeds: I fly with a lot of ex F-4 FA-18 and F-14 drivers and will have to ask them if I run into one. Certainly the plane I fly is "q" and Mach limited and is quite capable of exceeding those values at eithr SL or at altitude, but then it's an airliner....
Cheers: Tom
Click to expand...

BTW, When I say low, I'm talking down near S/L. At the altitudes you're talking, it gets tricky without having the engine deck and airframe q limit handy. Since you're still in the relatively thick part of the atmosphere (Below 36k ft), I can see the altitudes you're talking about (30K ft or so) being thermally limited more so than q limited, since the density is still much lower there than at S/L. Unfortunately, I only have one good engine deck and it's for a newer engine and powerplant manufacturers don't just go around handing those out. Though I wish they would release them for the pre-J79 engines at least.
 
About to FCF her from Oceana, wish I could find my "D" NATOPS hard copy. I'm sure any Tomcat fan will confirm stories of the jet exceeding Mach 2.3, getting the FSX to use the numbers of the flight dynamics is another story.
 
Victory, I'll find the quote somewhere in the many Tomcat books I have but I read an A model at M2.4 was still accelerating when the pilot pulled the throttles back. Here is something I did find... Aviation Week & Space Technology
December 17, 1990

Flight Test Evaluation F-14D

i quote,
At this point, we rejoined the F-14A so Miles could demonstrate the D’s acceleration.
Starting at a speed of 245 kt. at 10,000 ft., he selected military power as Altman did the same in the A(F-14A).
We quickly accelerated away from Altman, reaching 420 kt. in 30 sec. and 500 kt. in 46 sec.
The A lagged at 400 kt. at the same 46-sec. mark.
Miles and Altman then slowed to 250 kt. and went into afterburner power.
The D accelerated through 350 kt. in 10 sec., 400 kt. in 15 sec., 450 kt. in 19 sec. and
achieved 500 kt. in 21 sec.
The A was indicating 400 kt. at the last point.
Miles also demonstrated some of the improved maneuverability afforded by the added thrust of the F110 engines. At 11,800 ft. and 180 kt., he went into burner and pulled a 4g loop.
We topped out at 15,700 ft. at a speed of 140 kt. The F-14D was back level at 12,000 ft., at a speed of 220 kt.
He said that on almost any maneuver, the F-14A would have to begin 50 kt. faster than the D to achieve comparable performance.
He then pulled 6.5g in pitch to the near-vertical, starting at 300 kt. and at 15,000 ft. in military power. He was able to pull the aircraft over at 70 kt.


Further more,
i qoute
reaching Mach 0.89, below 5,000 ft. and until we were clear of an altitude restricted area.
He then selected afterburner and we climbed at Mach 0.9 at a 55-deg. pitch attitude to 35,000 ft. We had traveled less than 7 naut. mi. over the ground to reach that altitude.
The F-14D was held at 35,000 ft. so we could perform a speed run at supersonic levels. Miles again selected afterburner and we rapidly achieved Mach 1.5. The F-14’s operational limit is Mach 1.88, but the aircraft is capable of speeds near Mach 2.3. Miles then retarded the throttles to military power and the F-14D maintained supersonic cruise at Mach 1.1.
An idle speed lockup feature in the engine fuel control does not allow the pilot to drop below military power at this speed, to prevent a potential engine stall. The Navy, Grumman and General Electric are evaluating this feature to determme if it can be modified to allow the pilot to slow down faster.
Miles made a sharp turn and pulled gforces to slow the aircraft to a subsonic speed.
The Navy has achieved supercruise in a clean F-14D with a slightly uprated F110 engine, without the use of afterburner.
 
evvatc, I have read that in one of my many references at one time, thanks for the refresh on the numbers. 1st checkflight complete, after reading Dino's blog on current issues and the status of each. The RIO pit was very cool to actually use, the TID was fun to do mock intercepts, although I had to PWR on/off to recycle the display. Great to see a purpose built HUD. Looking over some RW pics, is it me or do the drop tanks and IRST/TCS seem too small?
 
Still cant D/L! I give up. Google says the file is too big to scan. Whatever that means. Download anyway doesnt work! Sucks!
 
All, thanks for the appreciation.

As per the instructions in my blog, please, if possible if you have a bug to report, please go through the known issue list and if it is not there add a comment to the Beta 1 post - this makes bug tracking easier for me.

The F-14D Natops can be easily found by Googling for it. I am not attaching a direct link as I am not 100% sure the document is not classified as of today.
From the NATOPs it is clear than the F-14D can exceed Mach 2.0 in certain conditions, although operating speeds are lower and depending on the loadout. In many cases it is Mach 1.6.

Regards

Dino
 
Thanks Dino. Nice job. New Toms are always welcome in FSX and she's a beauty.
As for high mach; Few years back a Tom crew relayed thoughts from the top end of the flight envelope. One incident. failure of an inlet damper during a "lets see how fast we can go" brain cramp (inspired by a little extra gas ) at M1.5 that scared the s--t out of them ! Fortunately not much more than a scare, but it gave pause for thought on the ride home. What might happen should the Stability Augmentation System fail at high mach ? It was decided such a thing would might result in the airframe coming apart. A contract was made not to push that end of the envelope again unless operationally required. Lesson learned.
 
Many thanks for yet another superb aircraft Dino. I have just one observation to make, and that is that the reflection in the HUD makes it difficult to see the carrier clearly when landing in anything other than perfect visability.

Regards,
Ian.
 
Actually, there is a scary video on youtube of an F-14 (-A version I believe) which basically explodes after a high-speed pass nearby a carrier...

The Tomcat has been aa wonderfully complex and fascinating machine - but had its own share of problems... Still the best looking aircraft ever IMHO - but maybe it is because I grew up watching Top Gun :)
 
Dino, that was actually a D model from VF-31. On the bug list, like the drop tank size, do you want those kind of bugs listed on the blog? Do you have a suggestion box as well?
 
First, great model Dino! I'm more partial to the early model A/Bs, but your work is of such calibre that I had to give the beta a go.

Separate from the aforementioned issues, I just wanted to add

1) the canopy appears to have the pilot helmets' reflections painted it. It looks ok, but in external view, when the canopy is open you can still see the reflection of the pilots in the canopy, which looks really strange. Sorry - don't have a screenshot - if this doesn't make sense, I'll take one later.

2) the contrails appear to emmanate from about 2-3 feet outboard of the actual wing tip (in fully forward position) - don't know if the variable sweep coding causes problems, but at least, the contrail should not be much, if at all, outboard of the wing in the fully forward position.


It's looking superb, and looking forward to the next round - again, thanks for some truly epic work!


DL
 
@Victory103

Well, I check SOH quite often, but I'd prefer to have "one stop" for bug reporting...makes things much easier for me. Anyway, tanks have already been enlarged and bug is already on the blog.

@delta_lima
- reflection is painted on purpose for better (IMHO) rendering... but then of course if you open the canopy reflections are looking wrong....so it is a (questionable) design choice rather than a bug

- as for the wing contrails I'd probably do better to get rid of them...

Suggestions are welcome in any form.


@All the others, I had no time for individual replies, but the blog is updated with bug findings and fixes.
 
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