GAHAHAHAHHAHA, I admit, I did it....

What makes you think I'm not doing this?



Would be cool to have this in the sim, have the aircraft have their own personalities...

Your posts?

And that..is the definition of putting a square peg in a round hole. Theory vs. reality. If your plane can't do it - you can't do it - regardless of whether you are Walter Mitty or Chuck Yeager.

Beach, while I can't claim to be working on military aircraft, I do happen to know people who do, like I imagine you do as well. The maintenance guys should probably tell you something like this: Sure, every airframe will have acquired some 'personality' in that you have to trim one a click to the left, the other two clicks to the right - the engines however are trimmed accurately to spec, and there will be nothing impossible about the situation I described - the aircraft will fly like they're supposed to, ie. more or less the same. These aren't airliners, they're high-performance fighter jets that are constantly tightened up to deliver consistent performance.

And I'll add this again - these pilots train to stay together at 100% power, be it military or afterburner. If something happens and one can't keep up, that's the way life goes, but reality still is that those aircraft can, and do, on a regular basis

The military must be significantly different than civil aviation then. Because I can 100% guarantee you that different aircraft with the same engines perform significantly different. Heck - even the same engines on the same airframe perform significantly differently. Our current Citation V (JT15D-5A engines) has engines that differ by 40 lbs. of fuel flow side to side and 20C of ITT split. The only thing that ever matches up perfectly in flight are the N1 RPMs (assuming the engine sync is working).

I've also flown different serial numbers of the same aircraft (Citation S/II) that had very significant flight characteristics. The S/II I flew for the textile company I was employed by was 30 knots faster than the same airframe/engine combo that was only a few serial numbers away from another S/II I flew (for Alltel communications). The Alltel S/II had the nickname "Old Smokey" because it had an engine that would smoke significantly after shutdown. If the Alltel S/II were in cruise at 100% power it wouldn't be able to keep up with the other S/II. Same with our different serial number King Airs. We have one that is 20 knots faster at the same power setting. There are so many variables to a jet engine that no two are exactly alike.




Except when they can't right?

I'm just giving my direct observations from my thousands of hours in aircraft. I'd be curious what a military pilot thinks about (if) military fighters also have performance differences between serial numbers.

You work angles. At least that's my understanding. Lead usually gives you some area to work with though if it's straight. In training environment...

"WC, how *fast* are you going?"

WC: "Oh, sorry! OK, Fan RPM is now (back) at 75%."

I'm not disagreeing or saying that you're wrong when it comes to those aircraft. What I -am- saying is that if you're dealing with an F-15 for example, the crew chiefs will be tightening the screws to make sure the engine is at spec (incidentally, BTW, the engines are typically trimmed to less than full rated power in order to extend their life - IIRC for a -220 the typical trim is 97% as an example).




You can have an engine problem, you may have expended far fewer munitions, you may have burned a lot less fuel. All that means that you'll end up staying with lead anyway, but probably at lower altitude since you give up pitch for speed. In a turning situation you go inside the circle. There are limitations to everything, but one way or another, you have to keep up.



They do - military pilots will or should probably tell you that each airframe has to be trimmed a little different etc.
Fact is that there is a necessity of being able to keep up at 100% in certain situations. In some cases they are relatively short (ie a maneuvering dogfight lasting 60 sec) to a 5 minute high-spped dash to intercept. If you can't maintain formation, the tactics that you want to use can become ineffective. Nothing is perfect of course, but you get the idea

Ok then. I will assume that you missed all the bits I've said about having fun doing formation landings and #%&*$# about leads who leave their wingman behind.


Yes, but what if those limitations are exactly the things that prevent you from keeping up? How hard is it for lead to just putter along at 95% throttle so you at least have 5% to play with for catch-up? Surely the waypoints are not set up so that the flight has to be at 100% all the time.


It used to be that you'd have to ask the lead for speed and altitude checks every so often in order to "keep up." But as skills improve, the wingman can learn to position the lead on one area of his cockpit and keep him there. At first, I had to stare at the lead's aircraft like a serial killer fixating on his next victim, but as time wore on, I could relax a bit and enjoy the scenery while keeping lead in check. The "scan" we do with instruments and systems during flight, I just needed to add "check the lead's position" on that sequence, once it got second-nature, it was fun.