First I'd like to thank you once again for the outstanding quantity and quality of applications to Beta. I'm sorry I had to left out the vast majority of them, but I had to keep the test group to a manageable size.Yesterday I've finished replying to all of the emails. I'm sorry it took so long, but they were so many that it took several hours to read them, evaluate and reply to each one. By the way, a couple of the replies were bounced back as spam - my apologies if you did not get one.
Also, I've compiled an Alpha build which will be distributed to the testers tonight. The visual model is complete and so is the virtual cockpit model.
Flight model is "almost right" in terms of numbers (meaning think I entered the right ones and had a resonable guess to the rest) - with possible exception of some aerodynamic data. After loading the model with 2 JDAMs and 2 AMRAAMs, I'm under the impression that the plane seems underpowered. Maybe I should relax the wave drag vs.Mach table.
This will be an Alpha just because it is still missing some of the planned features, mainly in terms of cockpit functionality. But I think it is good enough to get some useful feedback from it.
6 comments:
Some initial observations, although I haven't had much time to test tonight. I will post more feedback towards the end of the week.
1. The country flags on the starboard front cowling are flipped horizontally, thus showing them flying the wrong way.
2. When adding power with main brake system OR parking brake system, they seem slightly underpowered as the aircraft will move at just over 65%-70% power. Additionally, when the aircraft does move, the front wheel rotates correctly but the main undercarriage does not rotate at all.
3. Port and Starboard navigation lights seem to be both colored red, although I'm not sure if they are not meant to be anti-collision lights. If they are, then nav lights are missing, I believe.
4. When pulling G, over-G sounds at 6G while the wikipedia entry for the F-35 rates the A-model at 9G.
5. I believe the aircraft loses an excessive amount of speed when pulling G, this makes doing basic air-to-air combat maneuvers difficult, if not impossible. It is not possible to do a basic loop with an entry speed of less than 275 knots(a rough figure, not an exact one there), for example.
6. I find the yaw plane to be very twitchy on the ground, while the aircraft has a pretty wide undercarriage, so I wouldn't expect it to be so twitchy. On the takeoff roll, it is pretty difficult to maintain heading initially and requires considerable correction if one moves the controls at all during the roll.
7. The HUD resolution could be increased so as to make it smaller, although I know this is a temporary measure and you're working on a custom one!
8. The top speed of the aircraft was in excess of 1350 knots indicated at 2500' AMSL, making that Mach 2.05. The rated top speed is M1.67. So while overpowered in forward flight, it is underpowered in maneuvers and it is also nearly impossible to climb with a high nose-up attitude, regardless if whether the AoA is low, such as in a full-power climb with 85° nose-up.
Paul
2 further observations.
1. I can not seem to climb past 45000' AMSL (65% fuel remaining). I will try again tomorrow with less fuel.
2. I also found that the aircraft performs more normal in air-to-air with less fuel and at 55% fuel could perform most air-to-air combat sequences as expected for a 4th generation fighter. So perhaps it isn't as unbalanced in power/weight as I first thought.
@ tutmeister
1 - Flags are correct. By common pratice, painted flags are to be represented as "real" flags with wind blowing - meaning the "post" is towards the nose.
2 - Will check. Does wheels move if you release brakes? They should.
3 - I was unable to find navigation lights in the F-35 AA-1. They are collision lights. Different story for AF-1 and the other prototypes.
4 - Will check
5 - Keep in mind that the a/c is loaded with 4000 lbs bombs.
6 - Agree. Cause unknown.
7 - Partially agree. Need to find a compromise between readability and screen resolution. Still it is a temporary solution.
8 - New wave drag table will fix that. However, if playing with maxiumum realism, I found hard to achieve speeds above Mach 1.8.
@ all the testers:
If you wish to report via the blog, use the post below:
http://indiafoxtecho.blogspot.com/2010/01/f-35-alpha-test-work-in-progress-post.html
Thanks Dino
well, I like the pict of this aircraft, I just know about it..
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