ZachariasX

True that. But it is also about the amout of lift the wing profile can generate. Without going into XFOIL, the wing of the Spit and the Zero differ quiet a lot. The Zero has as in apporximation a ClarkY profile that gives you a max lift coefficient of slightly more than ~1.5. The Spit has a very thin wing that has isome 20% less max lift. TL, DR: Even in a SpitV accepting a Zero's fight is still really asking for it. For the early Hurricane, the slow speed contest its almost the only hope it has, and worse, it is only very marginally an even fight given the poor power to weight ratio. With a Merlin XX high up where the Zero runs out of breath, tables turn. Numbers don't lie. Let's have a look at documented stall speeds (note, from here I take over the thumb values, as all aircraft differ some kg in weight anyway): SpitV: wing area 22.5 m2, weight 3000 kg. Stall speed 120 km/h, -> Clmax 1.92 (as Gav mentiond in your quote) Zero5: wing area 22.44 m2, weight 2800 kg, Stall speed 105 km/h, -> Clmax 2.27 With the book values, both lift values are idiotic for given profiles, and Gav is quite right that these figures are fantastic as they are fishy. Point is that it is tremendously difficult measuring accurate stall speeds for various reasons and those figures are usually way lower than what they actually are or they reflect in aircraft speedometers. As mentioned in theory, the ClarkY can reach a Clmax of about 1.5. the Spitfire wing has in theory about a Clmax of ~1.3. In reality, as the profiles are never perfect and the wing of finite span, so it is even less. For an all up configuration, taking the mentioned lift coefficients, simple physics tell us the following: SpitV: wing area 22.5 m2, weight 3000 kg. Clmax 1.3 -> Stall speed 146 km/h (91 mph) Zero5: wing area 22.44 m2, weight 2800 kg, Clmax 1.5 -> Stall speed 131 km/h (82 mph) All down configuration surely lowers the speeds, but they are not a configuration you'd have in regular combat. That the Spitfire gets iffy below 90 mph in clean configuration, that I know because I've flown it. Actually, you pop the flaps at 110 mph and take her from there. In case of the Mustang, (25.3 m2, 3950 kg, assumed Clmax 1.4) we get a clean stall at Flying the Mustang shows a clean stall of 152 km/h / 95 mph or 82 knots. Here, you can see how exact you you can predict those speeds: In the video, they have the stall just above 80 kt. (Keep in mind that the TF-51 flown is probably a bit lighter then those 3950 kg, hence the wing has even less lift than the Clmax of 1.4!) It is of note that for instance this speed difference reflects very well in the approach speeds that in the Mustang are about 20 mph higher then even in the Spit9. Long story short, please take those stated stall speeds in the manuals with a grain of salt, they have more contex than what meets the eye. Looking at the Hurricane, with an assumed same ClarkY wing and Clmax of 1.5 (for consistencys sake), wing area of 23.92 m2 and a weight of 3000 kg you get a stall speed of 132 km/h (82 mph / 71 kt) Hence the Hurrcicane very much matches the Zero. But is it equal in a fight? The Zero can, according to @NightFighter's posted reports loop from 160 mph level. This is almost outrageous for such kind of aircraft and makes the Zero a VERY special proposition. I vehemently doubt that such is possible with aslug as the Hurricane. You wouldn't even try that in a Spitfire if you didn't have to. The aerobatic capabilities certainly outclass the Hurricane significantly. The advantage of power to weight ratio of the A6m5 over the Hurricane is significant, (all best cases: ~2.35 kg/hp vs 2.8 kg/hp). The Spitfire V gets near 2.14 kg/hp and is indeed a hard match, even though slow speed agency is below that of the Zero. Getting slow comes with issues of several kinds, one is that drag increases to unhealthy levels. To picture this I can refer you to one of Gregs videos, as I think he does a great job in walking the audience through a non-trivial matters: It is of note though that also he at times gets things wrong, same as everyone. But on average he can read his source material (unlike many others) and it shows in his videos. Long story short in the video, we see that on both ends of the speed range, drag rises exponentially. This is why there is such a thing as "coffin corner" for heavy aircraft, like the Thunderbolt: a speed below where even full emergency power will not be enough to accellerate you again and downwards it goes. Now, how much the drag rises on the slow side is mostly determined by the span loading when comparing similarish aircraft. This means, that when you turn and you pull, the threshold speed from where you will see the airspeed drop varies as well as how much it drops by g pulled. The more pull, the pore power you need to offset this added drag. Flying the Mustang, this is very much felt vs when flying the Spit. In the Mustang, you have to be faster then 200 mph indicated for not starting to bleed too much speed during light aerobatic maneuvers. The Spit9 on the other hand will not let you feel that down to some 150 mph, it just pulls on the turn. I have no doubts that the Zero would EASILY pull away from the Spit in a slow speed turn, same as the Spit pulls away from the Mustang in such a situation. This means that just minute differences in span loading will have a significant effect on how much you can maneuver at slower speeds. One aircraft will easily maintain the speed while the other, with a similar engine, will just hit the brakes and fall out of the sky. THIS is for instance the reason why the Sopwith Camel is considerably superior to the Dr.I, because three wings srews up your span loading. You can even go forther and make a narrower wing like in the Simens Schuckert D.IV to decrease your span loading and you get an aircraft that in terms of performance is head and shoulders over the competition, even with a similar engine and similarish weight. Span loading makes the difference, much more so than mere wing loading when comparing similarish aircraft. The less energy you bleed in flying slow, the better your cards are in a one circle turn fight. Now, the issue of turning circe and instantaneous maneuverability. As you point out, this does not affect diameter of the minimum turn your aircraft can fly theoretically, but this is largely irrelevant in the real world, as all that matters to you is the state of the enemy aircraft and what he can do from there. The turning circle is determined by your flight speed and the accelleration you give inside your turn. For all aircraft, this works the same and the structural limits of the aircraft decide the higher end of the speed, meaning the amount of g's you're capable of pulling without losing the wing define your tightest circle. Your turn is just defined by F=m*v2/r. As we have learned, flying in circles works as an airbrake and you lose speed doing so, some aircraft faster than others. At some point the airspeed will fall below the speed required to pull max. g and then your max lift coefficient along with the wing area will decide how tight you can pull. So, it is not just your wing loading. Span loading will decide how much you slam the brakes. The aircraft with the lower span loading will leave the other aircraft in the dust during just that maneuver and pull away from it. Conversely, if slowing down is what you want to do (in the one circle fight to force the overshoot), the lower span loading will make it easier for picking up speed again, once you reached a favorabale position, given equal engien power. Weight does in no way really impact your ability to control your aircraft. What determines how "lively" your aircraft reacts (and encourages you to go close quarters in a real aircraft) to control is deretmined by CoG and thus how aerodynamically stable the aircraft is. The Spit is very nippy on the elevators due to being a tail heavy design. The Mustang requires more force to pull the nose up. However if you fill its rear tank, things change and it becomes very delicate on the elevator, but not in a way you want to take it into a fight. Weight does not matter here if you have the power for it, see an F-22. Theoretical minima and maxima don't matter if you can't reach that state. Like a game of poker, the better cards help for sure, but since the players are not all showing their cards right after receiveing them, the better card sometimes don't win. In air combat, it is the same. You want to force your opponent in a fight where your cards are better, you NEVER accept a fight on his terms. If he has in principle the smaller circle, you rate him if that is what you are good at. If you have the smaller circle, you force the one circle fight. He plays along in either case, he's dead. Any plane is better then the other when flown to its strengt, where you have the better cards.

It is commonly quoted if you google for it. If it is a bogus circle quote, that might me (there are many of those), but I'd say it is on the plausible side of things. The Hurricane stall speed reference is quoting people who are actually flying the aircraft. Loadout surely has an influence, but I assume those values come from normal T/O weight. (Whatever that is, given circumstances.) Either way, the Hurricane turns (or: can be forced in a turn that is) considerably tighter than the Spit. And if the Spit is a good match, then this looks promising for the Hurricane, as oposed to the Brewster that has a higher wing loading and considerably higher stall speed. It is of note that with excess speed, alomost any aircraft can turn inside the other. The question is just, how fast does it bleed speed doing so? Tight turns equal slamming the brakes. Span loading usually becomes the determining factor in this moment in deciding how hard you brake (vs. the other), before the stall speed contest is started. On the other hand, how good of a rate fighter you have would depend on the (turbo charging of) the engine and is usually then also a question of altitude when comparing aircraft. Hence, the Hurricane II with a Merlin XX can surely a pest for any Zero encountering it at 6000 m altitude...

The (early, or lightly loaded) Hurricane stalls at 60 mph, identical to the A6M5 and it also has a tighter turning circle than the Spitfire V. Also, using that shotgung vs. the tin can should be fun. Singapore gives us what we need.

That's the sad thing, they *could* actually be funny and entertaining. I feel still a bit uneasy about the fact that basically only second level content creation really profits from the situation.

I prefer the 80's feeling:

I haven't considered that point as such, true. But thinking of it, it does hold a lot of merit. In the real world with those aircraft, if you need to "break", you get out of the sights of the one attacking you by pulling back on the stick with all your might while standing on one of the rudder pedals. Controls can get VERY heavy and that is basically the way to exert most force on the controls. Adding roll subtracts from your ability to pull hard. Hence, the slipping turn of somebody ahead of you, as mentioned by @GrungyMonkey, I would say is absolutely plausible be a common sight, hence I do not really doubt his source mentioning those. But it is impossible that in that exact moment, the plane was creating "more lift". It is more that the pilot could pull harder and yank the plane in a tighter circle well inside the actual enveloppe, rather than expanding it. I think this was another exercise about that there can be a great lot of context to first hand accounts and they must be dealt with a good sponnful of salt, not because they are necessarily wrong, but that we as reader can't imagine all teh actual context te writer faced. I seem to remember however that Amerinan pilots would alledge the Japanese pilots to fly in very coordinated manner, which actually makes them an easier target, as their trajectory is more predictable. Given the best way for lead shots was centering on the bandit, pull the trigger and then just walk up the tracers on the other guy until he disappears under the nose. Rudder is the best way to escape then. So yes, in this context, it all makes perfect sense.

If going sideways was a more benefical way for flight, every airliner would go sideways in level flight to save fuel. In a "tight circle" you are at maximum lift. Any slip will do one thing: it will increase total drag and it will reduce total wing lift. Both effects expand and prolong your turning circle. If the air flows over the wing at an angle, the distance from root to trailing edge will be longer, hence the aerodynamic profile will be thinner, reducing max. lift coefficient. (That is also a reason why wing sweep is nice when going fast.) Frontal drag will increase with both the increase of frontal silhouette scaling by the square!) and by the reduced aerodynamic drag by having a lesser aerodynamic shape in the airflow. The people you refer in that link to don't prove at all that side slipping increases total lift, they actually admit that they don't know and some of their musings are preposterous in context of a maximum turn maneuver. And to answer the question they raised, the lift and drag are changed when slipiing that with progressive sideslip, drag is increased and lift is decreased as well. You don't need CFD for that. That in case of dihedral, that the leading wing will have "more lift then the other" is certainly true, but in total it is a loss over any wing when flying straight. It is true that fuselages can produce a lot of lift (like in the F-15 or a Su-27), but those round fuselages like the one of the Zero don't do that for any practical purpose. Slipping is a standard maneuver for a purpose. There is nothing mysterious about it. The side slip is a maneuver to steepen your approach. It acts as an airbrake. It steepens an aproach, because the aircraft performs progressively worse aerodynamically with a progressive increase of the side slip angle. You should really close that book and never open it again. I'll leave it at that now.

I would really be careful taking anectotal evidence as an aerodynamic propperty. In almost all cases, the actual situation that led to a given account was way more circumstancial than what they usually convey saying. I'm absolutely certain that some flew tighter circles after kissing their rabbit foot as well. But this is not how aerodynamics work. As mentioned before, the Zero was an unusual plane for the Japanese pilots when it came out because it represented the antithesis of their flying and fighting style, and they had to adapt for it. The Oscar was what they were used to and it is logical that they were better at flying that one (at least initially) than riding the edge of the enveloppe in a Zero. Petty grievances among services certainly don't help either. But you really don't get better turn times by going crabwise, despite tons of anectotes alluding to such or similar "tricks". Given almost any plane can outturn the other depending on crcumstances, the true performance to pilots is usually obscured by several scares and close shaves.

That is actually a nice idea, like the "lean forward" (to look through the gunsight command in certain Jet simulations for the Mig 15 etc.) maybe that would be a way to do it @Jason_Williams? But I am not sure how readily such a feature would be accepted bythe players. It is for sure a prominent feature of the Zero and a reason why I was insistant not to go slow vs a Zero, because why??? Besides an Oscar, there is no better ride in the sub 200 mph category. But above that speed, the Zero nowhere near lives up to what it could do because of these limitations. I also assume that back then, the maneuvering snapshot was not really in the mind of the designers. But a slashing attack run and then fire. Even though controls get hard, you can still move the stick to take good aim. But aerobatics are a different thing althogether then.

This is indeed a very good point. I still chose to do it because of the tremendous impact the brand supposedly has on business. There would heve been no reason for paying billions for this brand, if it was not assumed that it actually could attract more business for the sheer fact that it is Star Wars. My presumtion was, if Star Wars was a great brand, It would make a difference. From what I see, it doesn't. And it does not even help them losing subscribers in a time where the put brand content out there. That's all. Aside from that, I could even speculate that the subscriber loss would be overall similarish, whether or not they put our SW content because the streaming busines model is in a crisis of it's own kind. But both assumption show the the brand is essentially dead.

I was just wondering about the common interest in the franchise and looked up Google Trends, querying for "Star Wars". What a godawful result. 100% is the maximum number of searches, all other engagement scales to that. We have two main peaks, one at the release of "Revenge of the Sith" in 2005. The next and largest peak is "The Force Awakens", where everyone was starved for another of those movies. Great expectations! How we got railed is visible at the successive 44% peak for "The last Jedi" in 2017 and 2019 "The Rise of Skywalker" with another decline to 39%. What is interesting is how little interest "Rogue One" spurred in 2016 with only 29%. I actually liked that movie, even though it is a tad grim for what was usually a rather lighthearted story across the Star Wars movies, even in its more sombre moments. However, Rogue One is still a story where heroes face real threats and the characters are somewhat interesting. I think that shows how much the fanbase got nuked in Dec. 2015 by KK and Jar-Jar Abrahams. From then on it all circles the drain. Losing money on Solo was a stunt Wile E. Coyte couldn't have pulled off better. It also didn't spur any engagement to speak of. All the streaming content produced for D+ later on just show up as noise in the chart. Was Ashoka a success? Looking at the Google searches we see that Ashoka (red line) doubled the searches when it first was aired, but then it dropped such that there was only a very marginal uplift in basic searches (blue line). So yes, the little residual interest there is got about doubled initially, from where it almost dropped again. The normal base "noise" in search queries is about at 10% of maximum engagement. From a busines point of view I conclude that there is no measurable effect in getting customers attention and drawing new customers to D+. Given the show cost 100+ million USD to make and there is absolutely NOTHING pointing towards added revenue to Disney (in streaming, you can only really adding revenue by adding subscribers), I wonder how much longer they can keep on bleeding. What are the numbers? Ah, we're actually losing subscribers for producing content. Who puts their money in such a company, I mean, seriously. While it is true that the remaining subscribers are important, saying that the purpose of this show was just to retain subscribers on D+ would not only be a spectaculare excercise in moving the goal post, but actually moving it over the cliff. Question: Which of the shows did then spur interest in the brand beyond existing engagement over the last year? Search terms: Blue: Star Wars Yellow: Andor Green: Mandalorian Red: Ashoka Answer: None. The peak in the blue line is Star Wars Celebration. Of course this has to be prominent as it is directly linked to the search term and in this sense skews the whole picture and thus has a disproportinate effect on the general involvement with "Star Wars". (And what of a cl*sterf*ck that was.) Telling from this, it is clear to me that the general residual interest in the Star Wars brand is largely unaffected by any of the streaming content that has been released. Some might zap in but in general interest is disproportinately low for what once was such a huge brand. Now, who's on D+ already might last through those episodes (viewer numbers say most don't) but in effect any good series or movie will easily surpass the engagement from the audience. What is of note hwoever that the interest in those shows specifically is way below the residual interest in Star Wars. This means, all shows fail at their most important task, and this is pulling merch. People who don't care anymore about your series having turned off their telly don't go to Walmart buying a set of action figures. And that is why Rey is still on the shelves. In other words: The brand as such is dead. All we could hope for is that Disney at some point tries to make nothing but just a good TV show or better, a good movie. (Star Wars is movies, Star Trek is TV shows and they better understand that.) Want a good and recent comic adaptation for the screen? There's One Piece. It even shows you how you can build a world for an entire series populated with relatable characters in a singe and first episode. And I am not required to go back and watch dozens episodes of children shows. That is how it's done.

I wouldn't be surprised. Many YT require "active skipping" to non-redundand parts of the vid. But I thought it was a good compilation of imagery.

Another YT vid that might be of interest to some:

A great interview indeed! took a while to listen to everything. Thanks, that was indeed good info! Really looking forward to this sim! 🫡 I have to add the term "geo spacial system" makes me sleep well tonight...

Ehm... first?

Star Wars 1923 Doing these things with AI is probably gonna get old soon. But i find it rather impressive now.

Luke, Did I Ever Tell You About Ahsoka Tano? (Just for the grown ups, but it is YT safe) The great thing about D+ content is that it enables content.

I so much hope you are right!

Now they buried Dieppe for IL2GB… 😒

I don't think it is about "hate everything". It is much rather about the content that is slushed out is so bad, that it actually feeds enough trolls on the content creator front, as there is basically free food for everyone. One brain cell will do. One can hate them or not, but in the end, the audience is voting with their feet. Worse, a franchise with a cultural impact does much more than selling theater tickets. It turns out merch and entry tickets to amusement parks. It is fair to say that anything other than the original trilogy and - with lots of goodwill - george Lucs's prequel don't sell merchandise at all currently. Want to find your favourite rey action figure? Another baby Yoda? Go to Wallmart and get it for pennies. Next year, you find Ashoka there as well. How can you get engaged, when nothing matters, because nobody can die. They just don't stay dead. We should have been warned: Ew, thrown down that drop into the ship, then exploded with the explosion of an entire deat star... and huh? If anything can happen, where is the suspense? Then what's-her-name got killed twice with a lightsaber, not once but twice. And still she shows up to in the end state she was only pretending to be bad, in order to get close to and kill Vader. Goering should have though of that defense in Nürnberg and see how that goes. I really tried to watch it, but it doesn't take long until I decide I better watch scenery passing by in MSFS. As for Ashoka, it looks good on the first look, then I almost regreed not watching Clone Wars and Rebels with my kids (who watched them forth and back a gazillion tmes) because I honestly have no idea about who does what and why. You can guess, but their actions and lines are not consistent at all. Is it realy a good business model selling something that only a tiny audience can understand? Then this: That's original material, they are even proud of wasting screen time. I won't put a folding-arms-gif. Serously, what was Filoni thinking? That? Yes, that is movie history and for good reason, the other thing is just wasting anyones screentime. Women are really bad at being men, even if some don't like it. They do stare each other however, but more like this: Seriously, I am a big fan of women staring at women, every single day. I get lots of gratification from that. But do I have to watch what is essentially some incompetent screenwriting for the mere purpose of seeing them taking a deliberate piss on what I like? If taking that piss on what I like is their business for asking for my money, that's a tough sell. Hollywood is even quiet clear that taking that taking a deliberate piss at the audience is their main goal, as opposed to just MAKING GOOD MOVIES THAT ENTERTAIN PEOPLE. It is their own words. Angry with them? No. Just shrug and turn it off. At least I gave it a try. There are other things to do in life. As for them, "the invisible hand of the market" will take care of it. Viewer numbers are abysmal and the merch is landfil. This is not me hating, it is their existential problem. We well might get used to the idea of a world without Disney as we currently know it.

AvAngel has a video out: I really, really love the navigation kneeboard that can be pulled out. I really hope @Jason_Williams can make something from that, not only use it as a stand in for the iPad to configure planes, but really for a way to let us navigate the way it was done. And this hopefully in conjuction with various degrees of control assist, like level AP or HDG AP. I find the presented model sightly bland, but a great starting point to make a geat and fun item for a combat sim. Seeing that, I don't think we have to wait too long for modules with a DM to appear in MSFS. I mean, "they don't have weapons in that sim", yet already I can fire guns and drop bombs that actually splash when they hit the water...

Some more voices to that find: @Jason_Williams Some interesting stuff for model builders: https://www.youtube.com/@EVNautilus

See here: https://nautiluslive.org/video/2023/09/17/first-visual-survey-ijn-akagi-chicheng-historic-battle-midway-shipwreck

Not a joke: https://www.amazon.de/Pearl-Harbor-Date-Infamy-December/dp/B0CHG8SZSC/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_de_DE=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&crid=E0CVBMAH7GDQ&keywords=pearl+harbor+a+date+of+infamy&qid=1694784681&sprefix=pearl+harbor+a+date+of+infamy%2Caps%2C82&sr=8-1 You gotta love the paid for reviews.