The problem is competitive advantage. Unless a comparable performing aircraft is available to all participants it aint right. If a freeware B2 or other jet is available with comparable performance then who cares if the Alphasim B2 is discontinued. I don't. Equal access to competitive race aircraft is the issue. Handicapping may be a solution but I think it will be very complicated with its own associated issues.
Personally I think you are applying too much weight to one aircraft based on speed alone. It has an advantage in the speed department but...
Using Gunthers numbers which I will not take time to confirm but I will suggest some are off.
To accurately measure the speed of a jet to create this type of comparison you would need to test its abilities at different altitudes. The common mistake made by most FS Pilots is flying jets way too high. They are typically faster lower although they start to lose range at lower altitudes. Using past race data to compare aircraft speeds is likely to generate very inaccurate data.
3.9% advantage over the F-84/RF-84
8.2% advantage over the Convair 990 <---
Note we will discuss the convair 990 later
10% advantage over the B-47E
14.2% advantage over the A-6 Intruder
14.7% advantage over the F-86 <---
My personal test show this aircraft capable of 505 ktas @ 30,000' I would have to go back and test but it should be even faster at 20,000 and 25,000' but somewhat range limited.
***skip a few
18.2% advantage over the A-7 Corsair <---
I really dispute this number as I believe it should be somewhere around 500 ktas but I do not have the test data on my list. I may just be thinking wrong but will test this one later just for the fun of it. HHHMMM!! just as I thought Tako_Kichi had an average ground speed of 485.9 kts with -1.4 kts of wind on one of our practice legs this year. That is about 10% more than Gunthers numbers or a 15% advantage to the B-2.
So we are really looking at is close to an average of 15% speed difference from the likely aircraft that would be used in the race. It unlikely anyone would ever choose to use the slowest ones so they are completely discounted in my book. Anything less than a Citation X is not competitive.
That 15% difference might seem like a lot until you take into account there are very few legs it could legally be used on in anyone race. We must also take into account that just because one can fly it does not mean it is easy to land. The Convair 990 is a fast plane but I choose not to fly it because I have a horrible track record on landing it.
I would also suggest that the competitive advantage rest more with the FS Pilot flying the plane than in the plane itself. I have been on numerous test legs where I had the faster plane and was leading the way only to be past by another team member in the decent and landing process. I tend to take a somewhat conservative approach at landing and I typically can blow a 15% speed advantage in a heart beat.
Now lets tackle this Convair 990 issue since they announced it would likely see its final race last year.
As I remember the complaint was it had way too much range for as fast as it could go. Well the committee is correct if you are using the original aircraft.cfg file and .air file.
The original aircraft.cfg and .air file will give you around 7,000 nm flying flat out. That is in no way is correct.
Go to Flightsim.com and download gy_fdes.zip by Tom Kohler. This package has serveral FDE's for different aircraft. One of them is the Convair 990A. Tom's cfg will increase the max mach but severely limit its range even with full fuel. To go anything over 2,000 nm you will have to plan very carefully because it becomes the fuel hog it really was. Be prepared to do the normal reading in Tom's aircraft.cfg file. He documents most of his changes in the file. You will also need to manage your fuel and payload section which is correct because if you were full on passengers you could not take a full load of fuel.
Rather than ban this aircraft I would like to see Tom's cfg name the official race cfg for this aircraft. We have done this with Fliger747's airfiles in the past there should be no reason not to do it with this one.
MaddogK;666182 said:
or fix it so it doesn't run full boost all the time. Has anyone considered requiring a reality gauge in this A/C ???
There, I said it (against the wishes of those who didn't want to piss off A2A).
I am not fond of the gauge idea for any aircraft but Gunthers engine gauge project is a good idea. I would much rather see that accomplished by the Duenna. If the gauge direction to generate engine damage is the way the committee would desire to go then I would support and help develop it for this year but the decision better come soon to accomplish that feat.
Heh, just read flightsims thread on this subject and I'm glad I sat out last years race. Seems this whole issue was brought up by a pilot using a B-2 spirit during the race, right? If I had participated last year I would've been at the forefront of the protest simply because the RL B-2 specs are classified, and regardless if the model was available for download or purchase prior to the race the fact of the matter is that there was NO real baseline to judge the FS B2 models performance against, and therefore should NOT have been allowed to participate, PERIOD.
This is why I made the earlier comment
As another commentary lets try to remember that this race is conducted in the MS Flight Simulator World and not the real world. Inherently we will have to accept some inaccuracies and inconsistencies when compared to the real world.
Just because you can not document absolute realism is not a reason to ban any aircraft. Honestly if we went that route we would have to ban all aircraft as they are all missing something in the realism department. The B-2 is probably an accurate representation of how it might fly and I am willing to except that. Again its one aircraft model that makes up a small part of the whole race and does not offer a competitive advantage by itself.
Where we can document realism I like to do it where you can't bold assumptions should be allowable not outrageous assumptions. Whats the real difference in that statement?
An outrageous assumption would put a jet aircraft.cfg and .airfile in a turbo prop aircraft. A bold assumption would put a turbo prop aircraft.cfg and .air file in turbo prop aircraft and keep the flight specs under a jet but over the capabilities of GA aircraft.
) and was banned for that reason last year. Ironically the FSX version has it right. On full after burner it will not go more than a few hundred miles max if that. Where as the fuel burn in FS9 never really increases with after burner use. 
