Lockheed F-37A Super Pit Viper+
[Fiction]
In nearly 5 years, the world has seen many advancements in materials and manufacturing, a fact that Lockheed has put to good use through making the Super Viper+ into an even more lethal machine: The Super Pit Viper+.
She's been given cleaner lines, substantially reduced drag, twice the armaments, and a reprofiled nose. This has allowed our engineers to not only squeeze more speed out of an already quick bird, but do so while reducing engine power by 25%, even while increasing its number of Air-to-Air missiles!
The hard points have been adjusted to allow for an extra missile at the wing roots, but the Ordinance Lab managed to also pack all the same punch of the inferno into a slightly smaller footprint! Meaning after everything's said and done the Super Pit Viper has 2x the firepower, offering unrivaled air superiority when combined with its already impressive feature package!
[/Fiction]
[Credit where credit is due, to ChiChiWerx for having originally created this. I simply unleashed my OCD on it to make it look even better. It seems to fly about the same as before, though I took extra pains to tweak out as much of the self-roll as I could, so all it needs is some trimming in flight to keep it flying straight. It also has a bit more fuel (only just), which paired with the lower engine power (but substantially higher top speed) means it lets you go much further.
I share their advice of not adding fuel to the wings, to keep it from misbehaving, but the wing root fuselage are all empty and are OK to add fuel into. Or, you know, adding a "Fuel Tank" and setting it to zero-mass with a boatload of capacity works too... lol ENJOY!]
EDIT: Forgot to mention to check out ChiChiWerx's original page for this plane (link at top of page) to see the original lore I was expanding on, AND also for explanations of Action Groups.
Specifications
Spotlights
- ImperialJapanese 3.5 years ago
General Characteristics
- Predecessor Lockheed F-37A Super Viper+
- Created On Windows
- Wingspan 31.1ft (9.5m)
- Length 35.9ft (10.9m)
- Height 10.4ft (3.2m)
- Empty Weight 9,134lbs (4,143kg)
- Loaded Weight 15,835lbs (7,182kg)
Performance
- Power/Weight Ratio 0.851
- Wing Loading 44.8lbs/ft2 (218.5kg/m2)
- Wing Area 353.9ft2 (32.9m2)
- Drag Points 3296
Parts
- Number of Parts 337
- Control Surfaces 6
- Performance Cost 1,540
Thanks @IndonesianMan :)
@Formula350 thanks. Yes, this one was created a long, long time ago when I was just learning and before dragScale zero was enabled, so one had to accept drag from even small details, such as the insignia. Also before I figured out how to avoid the dreaded auto roll! Anyway, appreciate the work, nice job!
Thanks @Clutch :D
@ChiChiWerx Hopefully you approve of the work! :}
To reduce the drag so much, I disabled
calculateDrag
on a lot of the things that were rather unnecessarily/unrealistically being calculated, such as the USAF roundels, tail-fin decorations, and a ton of internal components that were still being calculated despite.... being, well, internal! I also disabled it on all the hard-points simply to help remove some of its tendency to roll, since for some reason the physics engine refuses to considered mirrored parts as having the same drag profile... *epic-shrug* It can be lowered a bit further if the wing's leading edges are removed, but that wouldn't have been right! And disabling drag on them seemed to result in them wanting to flail about during maneuvers, which just looked horrible >_> (rather the opposite effect one would expect...).
I had to leave the Input "Max" at 5 it seemed, in order to get a 'smooth' animation on the exhaust and to keep that those beautiful mach diamonds! Though, I did re-orient the thruster nozzles inside the vectoring unit so that they looked a bit better *(I think in an update, it must've changed how they auto-orient so they looked weird), and THEN I angled them so the 4 corners focused on a center point, which resulted in a great cone shape just as I had hoped.
.
Oh, and I fixed one that was inverted when using AG7 and VTOL, as well as set their max angle at 45deg instead of 90. Not that I'm too sure of the purpose of using their rotation for additional pitch?
Which on that note, I'm also not sure the point of the two inner-most thrusters being assigned to "brake", given when you apply brake it throttles down, and renders them facing forward (ie reverse thrust) pointless it seems? Nevertheless, I left all of that as-is, and chalked it up to there being a reason that I was simply not understanding! :D