You have a good eye for overall shape/dimensions and I like many details here...also, the LG looks like it was a bear to build. Nice. Interesting design choice to use flaps for trim...why did you go that way?
A pretty nice build, clearly much effort went into this one. I would throw down the gauntlet, though, and challenge you to start building built up wings, as that’s the only thing this build lacks.
Very nice, it also flies nicely. I've often thought about building a Peashooter, as it's actually one of my favorite little planes from that era, but it's miniscule size has often dissuaded me from making one. This is a nice example, though its just a bit larger than the real thing and seems a bit heavy, about 3-4 times heavier than it actually was in real life.
@AerialSus those are interesting suggestions, surely, and I appreciate your interest in SP. Having played SP for almost 3 years, I’ve tried all those things, and they don’t work. For you, though, let me attempt to convey something I’ve learned about SP: It’s a simulator that merely uses a series of algorithms to emulate aerodynamic effects...there is no air in SP...not even something that emulates air. An object moving at a certain speed in SP generates a drag value based on its velocity value, size, shape and, in many cases, simply what that object is (in this case, a beacon light). That is why a fuselage piece which is angled into the wind generates zero lift, unlike in RL, where it would (the best examples of this are NASA’s lifting bodies from the 1960s-1970s). Also, “burying” an object in a second object, placing it “out of the airflow” does not effect drag at all. Merely it’s presence in your design will add drag. That’s why a custom landing gear, which looks great, doesn’t reduce overall drag when retracted, it generates a value through its presence in your design. My complaint here was that the relative orientation of that beacon light in a design causes a huge drag increase in SP, which is unrealistic. Also, when building a replica, such as this F-4, you’re quite constrained by your RL design. In this case, I got around the relative orientation problem by turning the nav lights on the design ...it worked and wasn’t really noticeable at all. I should thank you, because after having given you this explanation, I realize I shouldn’t be surprised about this inaccuracy.
@AerialSus uh, huh. Thanks 😑. Yeah, I built that thing almost 2 years ago, now I XML to reduce drag in cases such as this. You have any other ingenious suggestions besides?
Aha! Here’s the viewsight bubble under the nose. Between the two pitot booms. This is an R model, most likely. The S version was simply a re-engined R model and the Block 20 is the S model with the new “glass” cockpit...and no viewsight :(
I never learned cel nav as a pilot, so it didn’t matter that the U-2S version didn’t have the sextant. We used INS/GPS for navigation and, should that fail, we used dead reckoning (headings and timed turns), as well as the viewsight (as long as we had it) to crosscheck our position over the ground and get back. The older pilots who had flown the C version hadn’t been taught cel nav in pilot training either, but the navigators assigned to the unit did the pre-computations on the ground prior to takeoff. That way the pilots only had to sight the celestial body and refer to the charts to indicate if they were on or off course and timing.
Your photo is the C model, which also had a sextant for celestial (“cel nav”) navigation (pre INS and GPS days, after all). You can see the sextant pull (and the sextant filter—for sighting the sun during daytime) knobs, which flips a mirror inside the viewsight, and allows you to use the bubble on top of the nose (vs. the bubble underneath) and sight the sun (daytime) or the moon and/or specific aiming stars (nighttime).
If you look here, you can see the hand controller for the viewsight, it the triangular piece that’s on the lower right console. It was really hard to find this photo, BTW.
Well, it’s not that. It’s called a “viewsight”. It’s a reverse periscope—all optical, no electronics involved—that allows you to look directly down, as well as around the bottom of the jet. The closest under you can see out of the cockpit, under the jet, is around 22 miles, so if you want to see directly downwards, say for missiles or AIs trying to intercept, or to simply navigate over geographic points in case you lose INS and GPS, you can do so. In fact, take a really close look at the viewsight in your photo...you’ll see it has crosshairs and a little aiming box at the center. Also, either the photo was originally doctored to put the “map” in the viewsight with the crosshairs, because it’s definitely a high altitude shot of a port area, or they put a photo under the viewsight for display purposes (though I’m fairly certain it would be out of focus if they had done that).
I realize this was built for a tourney and the colors are off, it probably accelerates too swiftly and turns too well, but I can’t help it: I really like it! It’s pure Simple Planes joy! Nice!
Recommend you relax your limitation on four guns...why?: The P-47 had eight guns, the P-51 had six guns (most versions), the P-38 had five guns, the P-40 had six guns (most versions), the Hurricane had eight guns (albeit smaller caliber than the U.S. planes), the Spitfire had up to eight guns, the Me-109 has up to five guns in later versions, the FW-190 had six guns, the Wildcat, Hellcat and Corsair all had six guns. Of the major combatants, only the Japanese and Italian fighters normally had fewer than six guns, normally to save weight and maximize maneuverability.
@ChiyomiAnzai are you describing SP or real life? Because “only if your plane is balanced” does not make sense. SP only emulates real life, so don’t take what happens in SP as an education in aerodynamics or physics. Since I have over 4,000 hours of flying time, I do know that when you lower flaps, the nose of your aircraft pitches down slightly. When you raise your flaps, you have to raise the nose, otherwise you sink due to the reduction in lift. There are many dynamics which occur in flight, singly and combined. Power changes, bank, configuration changes, etc. all combine to affect lift, drag and thrust, and gravity is ever present, though its pull depends on many things and is not always static at 1 G. However, generally, flaps extend and nose pitches slightly down, not up.
@ChiyomiAnzai and no, sorry, but you are incorrect on your understanding of aerodynamics. Been flying for 30 years now and that’s not what flaps do, sorry.
@ChiyomiAnzai actually, flaps decrease an aircraft’s pitch attitude and lower the nose, provided the pilot is trying to maintain level flight when he extends the flaps. Why?, you may ask? Flaps increase a wing’s lift, so the angle of attack required to maintain level flight at that airspeed lessens, requiring a slight reduction in nose up pitch to maintain level flight.
Just wanted to throw in another piece of info for your consideration: As the F-5 was intended as a relatively exportable and cost effective jet, it's main competition was the MiG-21, which begs the question, "which one is better"? The Soviets actually evaluated captured examples and concluded it was a great jet, very capable against its intended nemesis, the MiG-21. The Ethiopians operated the Tiger against the MiG-21 in the 70s and were very successful, you can read about this little known story here.
@ACEPILOT109 the F-5E "Tiger" version depicted here is actually a more sophisticated development of the orginal Skoshi Tiger F-5A/Bs, themselves really just straightforward fighter versions of the T-38; also note the A/Bs actually carried the moniker of the "Freedom Fighter", not the later "Tiger" name. Anyway, the F-5A/Bs served in Vietnam with the USAF for the trial, with the (South) Vietnam Air Force and captured versions by the People's (North) Vietnam Air Force after the war. All the F-5 versions were widely exported and used extensively by NATO, Norway, Canada, Turkey, Greece and Spain flying them in both fighter and tactical recce (reconnaissance) roles. Besides NATO, many Latin American, Middle Eastern, African and Pacific nations fly them to this day and they have a number of upgrades available these days. They're relatively inexpensive to operate, don't kill their pilots like the MiG-21 and F-104 tend to do and relatively capable for what they are. They really are a great jet.
Pretty nice F-5, I really do like it. If I might (humbly) make a suggestion, this would have been that much better with trim. It flies fine at full throttle, level, but in RL, the F-5's the afterburner limitation on the ground is 5 mins and in flight 15 mins, not that you would have enough fuel to actually do that. And, typically, we don't just blast around at full throttle. This is where trim comes in, as any pilot would rapidly be annoyed, then fatigued and finally unable to hold the nose level for long. Anyway, normal cruise power settings are typically 80-90% RPM (and this is all without going into AB), then higher as needed for takeoff, maneuvering (BFM, etc.) and go arounds. Anyway, nice build, good to see a fairly descent F-5 on the site.
@EngineerOtaku enter what? The 1950-1060 Fighter Tournament? This challenge never happened...the idiot who sponsored this never flew off the airplanes against one another and never decided on a winner. Hosting a challenge is a lot of work, should have known that this guy would have flaked out on it.
@randomusername there isn’t really a name. Right after the instructor teaches the student how to fly straight and level (first lesson, part one), the next thing he teaches is to note how the nose wants to rise and the plane wants to climb when adding power (thrust). To counter this and remain in level flight, trim forward (first lesson, part two). Part three is how to slow while remaining in level flight. There’s no real name for this tendency for the aircraft to climb or dive in response to power changes, as it’s really more about remaining in equilibrium.
@randomusername besides, "autopitch" isn't a thing, changing aerodynamic forces induced with speed changes results in the nose rising or falling as the aircraft attempts to gain or lose airspeed IAW the current trim setting. That's why, when I add power without changing the trim setting, the nose rises, the aircraft continues to fly at the same airspeed, but climbs, exchanging the extra energy from the thrust increase to increased altitude.
Hmmm, the Starfighter is always a tricky subject. The NF-104 (which is the version here) was a research aircraft, no operational use and no armament. But still fun, to fly, nonetheless.
@randomusername in case I caused you to think "whaaa….?", the idea was that if you put enough rockets in the air (say 20-120 rockets) and enough bombers are there in the air approximately in front of you, chances were better than not that you might hit a bomber or two. Besides, that's how guns work, it's just done on a rocket scale (fewer projectiles, bigger boom).
So, I have yet to understand this...you set Infernos to "function=AirToAir", I'm not really sure exactly why as Infernos are the standard air to ground missile in SP; but there is probably some attribute that makes them ideal for this purpose. I tried the same trick on a rocket pod, but to no avail, the rockets stubbornly refuse to be used for air to air, in spite of the fact that in the 1950s, some air forces experimented extensively and a few deployed them as anti-bomber weapons (F-86D Sabre Dog, F-89 Scorpion, F-94 Starfire, CF-100 Canuck and F-102 Delta Dagger all were armed with FFARs).
I like the look and clean lines a lot. Some nice features and obvious you did some good work here. Performance/flying characteristics pretty good...except for slight auto-roll that gets worse with speed. There are ways of correcting that, of course. Nice overall.
Its clear you did some research on this one and it roughly matches the dimensions, weights and outline of the RL jet. Plus the loadout is fairly realistic. Needs trim though. Try stacking two rotators, one set on pitch and the second set on trim.
@AnoniMosu yeah, that was a very small detail that you incorporated; most builders would haven’t put it into their build.
What actually caught my attention was the small lip you left at the back of the sliding canopy.
You have a good eye for overall shape/dimensions and I like many details here...also, the LG looks like it was a bear to build. Nice. Interesting design choice to use flaps for trim...why did you go that way?
A pretty nice build, clearly much effort went into this one. I would throw down the gauntlet, though, and challenge you to start building built up wings, as that’s the only thing this build lacks.
Well, it takes off about as well as the real thing.
Very nice, it also flies nicely. I've often thought about building a Peashooter, as it's actually one of my favorite little planes from that era, but it's miniscule size has often dissuaded me from making one. This is a nice example, though its just a bit larger than the real thing and seems a bit heavy, about 3-4 times heavier than it actually was in real life.
Wow, this is absolutely superior, very nice!
@AerialSus those are interesting suggestions, surely, and I appreciate your interest in SP. Having played SP for almost 3 years, I’ve tried all those things, and they don’t work. For you, though, let me attempt to convey something I’ve learned about SP: It’s a simulator that merely uses a series of algorithms to emulate aerodynamic effects...there is no air in SP...not even something that emulates air. An object moving at a certain speed in SP generates a drag value based on its velocity value, size, shape and, in many cases, simply what that object is (in this case, a beacon light). That is why a fuselage piece which is angled into the wind generates zero lift, unlike in RL, where it would (the best examples of this are NASA’s lifting bodies from the 1960s-1970s). Also, “burying” an object in a second object, placing it “out of the airflow” does not effect drag at all. Merely it’s presence in your design will add drag. That’s why a custom landing gear, which looks great, doesn’t reduce overall drag when retracted, it generates a value through its presence in your design. My complaint here was that the relative orientation of that beacon light in a design causes a huge drag increase in SP, which is unrealistic. Also, when building a replica, such as this F-4, you’re quite constrained by your RL design. In this case, I got around the relative orientation problem by turning the nav lights on the design ...it worked and wasn’t really noticeable at all. I should thank you, because after having given you this explanation, I realize I shouldn’t be surprised about this inaccuracy.
Very nice build.
+2@AerialSus uh, huh. Thanks 😑. Yeah, I built that thing almost 2 years ago, now I XML to reduce drag in cases such as this. You have any other ingenious suggestions besides?
Aha! Here’s the viewsight bubble under the nose. Between the two pitot booms. This is an R model, most likely. The S version was simply a re-engined R model and the Block 20 is the S model with the new “glass” cockpit...and no viewsight :(
I never learned cel nav as a pilot, so it didn’t matter that the U-2S version didn’t have the sextant. We used INS/GPS for navigation and, should that fail, we used dead reckoning (headings and timed turns), as well as the viewsight (as long as we had it) to crosscheck our position over the ground and get back. The older pilots who had flown the C version hadn’t been taught cel nav in pilot training either, but the navigators assigned to the unit did the pre-computations on the ground prior to takeoff. That way the pilots only had to sight the celestial body and refer to the charts to indicate if they were on or off course and timing.
Your photo is the C model, which also had a sextant for celestial (“cel nav”) navigation (pre INS and GPS days, after all). You can see the sextant pull (and the sextant filter—for sighting the sun during daytime) knobs, which flips a mirror inside the viewsight, and allows you to use the bubble on top of the nose (vs. the bubble underneath) and sight the sun (daytime) or the moon and/or specific aiming stars (nighttime).
If you look here, you can see the hand controller for the viewsight, it the triangular piece that’s on the lower right console. It was really hard to find this photo, BTW.
+1Oh, yeah, they took the viewsight out of the Block 20 cockpit, now there are three big color Multi Function Displays (MFDs).
Here’s a photo of what it looks like in flight.
Well, it’s not that. It’s called a “viewsight”. It’s a reverse periscope—all optical, no electronics involved—that allows you to look directly down, as well as around the bottom of the jet. The closest under you can see out of the cockpit, under the jet, is around 22 miles, so if you want to see directly downwards, say for missiles or AIs trying to intercept, or to simply navigate over geographic points in case you lose INS and GPS, you can do so. In fact, take a really close look at the viewsight in your photo...you’ll see it has crosshairs and a little aiming box at the center. Also, either the photo was originally doctored to put the “map” in the viewsight with the crosshairs, because it’s definitely a high altitude shot of a port area, or they put a photo under the viewsight for display purposes (though I’m fairly certain it would be out of focus if they had done that).
@Destroyerz117 ha, ha. No. That’s not what it’s for. Would you like to know what it is?
So...what’s the “mirror” for? ;)
It’s just too pretty to NOT upvote!
I realize this was built for a tourney and the colors are off, it probably accelerates too swiftly and turns too well, but I can’t help it: I really like it! It’s pure Simple Planes joy! Nice!
Recommend you relax your limitation on four guns...why?: The P-47 had eight guns, the P-51 had six guns (most versions), the P-38 had five guns, the P-40 had six guns (most versions), the Hurricane had eight guns (albeit smaller caliber than the U.S. planes), the Spitfire had up to eight guns, the Me-109 has up to five guns in later versions, the FW-190 had six guns, the Wildcat, Hellcat and Corsair all had six guns. Of the major combatants, only the Japanese and Italian fighters normally had fewer than six guns, normally to save weight and maximize maneuverability.
+3Really great job on this one!
+1@ChiyomiAnzai are you describing SP or real life? Because “only if your plane is balanced” does not make sense. SP only emulates real life, so don’t take what happens in SP as an education in aerodynamics or physics. Since I have over 4,000 hours of flying time, I do know that when you lower flaps, the nose of your aircraft pitches down slightly. When you raise your flaps, you have to raise the nose, otherwise you sink due to the reduction in lift. There are many dynamics which occur in flight, singly and combined. Power changes, bank, configuration changes, etc. all combine to affect lift, drag and thrust, and gravity is ever present, though its pull depends on many things and is not always static at 1 G. However, generally, flaps extend and nose pitches slightly down, not up.
@Kakhikotchauri1 flaps generally increase lift, but that’s different from the nose pitching up or down. If you don’t believe me look it up here
@ChiyomiAnzai and no, sorry, but you are incorrect on your understanding of aerodynamics. Been flying for 30 years now and that’s not what flaps do, sorry.
+1@ChiyomiAnzai flap limiting speed on the Boeing 737–which I fly—is 250 knots (flaps 1, 2 and 5), that’s around 465 kph, so, no.
@ChiyomiAnzai actually, flaps decrease an aircraft’s pitch attitude and lower the nose, provided the pilot is trying to maintain level flight when he extends the flaps. Why?, you may ask? Flaps increase a wing’s lift, so the angle of attack required to maintain level flight at that airspeed lessens, requiring a slight reduction in nose up pitch to maintain level flight.
@ACEPILOT109 what can I say? I wasn’t doing anything else at the time!
Just wanted to throw in another piece of info for your consideration: As the F-5 was intended as a relatively exportable and cost effective jet, it's main competition was the MiG-21, which begs the question, "which one is better"? The Soviets actually evaluated captured examples and concluded it was a great jet, very capable against its intended nemesis, the MiG-21. The Ethiopians operated the Tiger against the MiG-21 in the 70s and were very successful, you can read about this little known story here.
+1@ACEPILOT109 the F-5E "Tiger" version depicted here is actually a more sophisticated development of the orginal Skoshi Tiger F-5A/Bs, themselves really just straightforward fighter versions of the T-38; also note the A/Bs actually carried the moniker of the "Freedom Fighter", not the later "Tiger" name. Anyway, the F-5A/Bs served in Vietnam with the USAF for the trial, with the (South) Vietnam Air Force and captured versions by the People's (North) Vietnam Air Force after the war. All the F-5 versions were widely exported and used extensively by NATO, Norway, Canada, Turkey, Greece and Spain flying them in both fighter and tactical recce (reconnaissance) roles. Besides NATO, many Latin American, Middle Eastern, African and Pacific nations fly them to this day and they have a number of upgrades available these days. They're relatively inexpensive to operate, don't kill their pilots like the MiG-21 and F-104 tend to do and relatively capable for what they are. They really are a great jet.
+1Pretty nice F-5, I really do like it. If I might (humbly) make a suggestion, this would have been that much better with trim. It flies fine at full throttle, level, but in RL, the F-5's the afterburner limitation on the ground is 5 mins and in flight 15 mins, not that you would have enough fuel to actually do that. And, typically, we don't just blast around at full throttle. This is where trim comes in, as any pilot would rapidly be annoyed, then fatigued and finally unable to hold the nose level for long. Anyway, normal cruise power settings are typically 80-90% RPM (and this is all without going into AB), then higher as needed for takeoff, maneuvering (BFM, etc.) and go arounds. Anyway, nice build, good to see a fairly descent F-5 on the site.
@EngineerOtaku yes, ouch. I thought it was a great idea for a challenge, so I was a bit disappointed that it never actually happened.
@EngineerOtaku enter what? The 1950-1060 Fighter Tournament? This challenge never happened...the idiot who sponsored this never flew off the airplanes against one another and never decided on a winner. Hosting a challenge is a lot of work, should have known that this guy would have flaked out on it.
Nice build.
Ok...
You really went all out on this one, very nice. I like all the incorporated features.
@DaKraken I used Discord instead of Imgur.
+1Wow, that was easy.
+10Ok, freaking cool build!
@randomusername there isn’t really a name. Right after the instructor teaches the student how to fly straight and level (first lesson, part one), the next thing he teaches is to note how the nose wants to rise and the plane wants to climb when adding power (thrust). To counter this and remain in level flight, trim forward (first lesson, part two). Part three is how to slow while remaining in level flight. There’s no real name for this tendency for the aircraft to climb or dive in response to power changes, as it’s really more about remaining in equilibrium.
@randomusername it ain't called that in the flying world. Can't rename something that already exists.
+6@randomusername besides, "autopitch" isn't a thing, changing aerodynamic forces induced with speed changes results in the nose rising or falling as the aircraft attempts to gain or lose airspeed IAW the current trim setting. That's why, when I add power without changing the trim setting, the nose rises, the aircraft continues to fly at the same airspeed, but climbs, exchanging the extra energy from the thrust increase to increased altitude.
+2@randomusername no such thing. Not in RL, anyway. Present me a plane that doesn't need trim and I'll tell you it's not realistic.
+5Hmmm, the Starfighter is always a tricky subject. The NF-104 (which is the version here) was a research aircraft, no operational use and no armament. But still fun, to fly, nonetheless.
+1@randomusername in case I caused you to think "whaaa….?", the idea was that if you put enough rockets in the air (say 20-120 rockets) and enough bombers are there in the air approximately in front of you, chances were better than not that you might hit a bomber or two. Besides, that's how guns work, it's just done on a rocket scale (fewer projectiles, bigger boom).
@randomusername they were unguided in the 1950s as well.
+1So, I have yet to understand this...you set Infernos to "function=AirToAir", I'm not really sure exactly why as Infernos are the standard air to ground missile in SP; but there is probably some attribute that makes them ideal for this purpose. I tried the same trick on a rocket pod, but to no avail, the rockets stubbornly refuse to be used for air to air, in spite of the fact that in the 1950s, some air forces experimented extensively and a few deployed them as anti-bomber weapons (F-86D Sabre Dog, F-89 Scorpion, F-94 Starfire, CF-100 Canuck and F-102 Delta Dagger all were armed with FFARs).
+1I like the look and clean lines a lot. Some nice features and obvious you did some good work here. Performance/flying characteristics pretty good...except for slight auto-roll that gets worse with speed. There are ways of correcting that, of course. Nice overall.
+2Its clear you did some research on this one and it roughly matches the dimensions, weights and outline of the RL jet. Plus the loadout is fairly realistic. Needs trim though. Try stacking two rotators, one set on pitch and the second set on trim.
+1