1.0 CHAPTER 1
by Eyeballs
In order to fight, you must know how to fly. Flight simulations let you "drive" an aircraft around, pretending to be maneuvering and fighting. But to get the most out of your aircraft, you must fly it, and to fly it you must understand it. Experienced pilots may want to skim this discussion of basic concepts, but don't skip it entirely. There may be a nugget worth your time. This chapter covers basic aerodynamics (lift, weight, thrust, control surfaces, etc.), instruments, taking off, landing, basic maneuvers (including basic aerobatics), and basic gunnery.
1.1 BASIC AERODYNAMICS
Four forces act on an airplane if flight: lift, thrust, weight, and drag.
Lift is a force exerted by the wings. It is considered to be exerted perpendicular to the wingspan and the relative wind. The relative wind is the air moving in relation to the wing. Lift is generated by the interaction of the wing and the air. The end result is that air is displaced downward. Newton's 1st law says that for every action there is a reaction. So if the wing forces air downward, then the air forces the wing upward.
The angle of attack is the angle between the relative wind and the anterior-posterior line of the airfoil. Since the wing is tilted slightly upward in relation to the relative wind, the lift vector is pointed slightly backward. Lift will increase as you increase the angle of attack but not forever. Eventually the angle of attack becomes so great that the air can no longer flow smoothly over the top surface of the wing. The loss of smooth flow of the wing causes a decrease in lift and an increase in drag. This is called the "stall." You have lost control of your aircraft. The stall will come at a certain angle of attack no matter where your nose is pointing. The only way to recover from a stall is to reduce the angle of attack.
Increasing the angle of attack increases the lift for any given airspeed. So as an aircraft slows down, the angle of attack must be increased to maintain flight. Maneuvering requires increased lift so the angle of attack will be increased to create the force that causes the aircraft to change direction. Increasing the angle of attack to maneuver makes the pilot feel heavier and is called "pulling g's" since the maneuvering force feels like increased gravity. The most important message here is that you slow your aircraft down every time you maneuver.
Thrust is furnished by a propeller or a jet. They take air and move it backward. This resultant force pushes the aircraft forward. Thrust is controlled with the throttle. Thrust decreases with altitude because the engine develops less power and the propeller is less efficient. Supercharging of the engine helps it maintain power at higher altitudes, but the propeller still suffers.
Drag is produced whenever an object is moved through a fluid (such as air). Drag acts parallel to and in the same direction as the relative wind. The total drag is made up of two components: parasitic drag and induced drag. Parasitic drag is the drag created by the aircraft being pushed through the air. Parasitic drag increases with the square of the airspeed. Double the airspeed and the drag increases four times. Induced drag is created by the lift vector being tilted backwards. It is related to the angle of attack, so that the slower you fly or the more g's you pull, the more drag you induce.
Gravity is a force acting downwards. It does not always act opposite to lift.
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1.2 AERODYNAMIC CONTROLS AND SURFACES
Aircraft have the freedom to move in all three axes. The axis that runs down the middle of the aircraft from nose to tail is called the roll axis. The line from wing-tip to wing-tip is the pitch axis. The line perpendicular to these other two is the yaw axis.
Pilots control the aircraft around the roll axis with the ailerons, a set of movable panels set near the tips of the wings. Moving the stick to the side causes the panels to move up on that side and down on the other. When the aileron goes up, the wing is forced down. The opposite action occurs on the other wing. The resulting motion is called roll.
The pitch axis is controlled with the elevators, a movable flap at the tail. Pulling the stick backwards raises the elevator. This forces the tail down and the nose up. Forward stick does the opposite, forcing the tail up and the nose down.
Yaw is controlled with the rudder, a movable surface oriented perpendicularly to the elevators. Pushing the right rudder pedal cause the rudder to move to the right. This pushes the tail to the left and the nose to the right. The rudder pedals are also connected to the steerable nose or tail wheel on the aircraft and can be used to steer while taxiing. The rudder pedals are not used to steer the aircraft in the air. Turns are made by rolling the plane into a bank and using the lift vector to pull the plane around. Also note that the rudder pedals work exactly backwards when compared to the steering pedals on a sled or some childhood riding toys.
Flaps are a set of movable surfaces on the bottom or rear edge of the wing that can move down or back to change the shape of the wing. They increase the lift of the wing. They are used primarily for taking off and landing. Some aircraft can use them for better slow-speed maneuvering. The use of flaps is directly related the type of flap and the type of installation on each aircraft. Some flaps produce nearly all drag and are used only for landing. Others have settings that produce more lift and are very valuable in a fight by lowering the stall speed and increasing your ability to turn at slow speeds. You need to study each type of aircraft you fly to determine the proper use of flaps for each one.
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1.3 INSTRUMENTS
Air Warrior uses English dimensions of feet, yards, miles, knots, etc. for measurements. Aircraft that had instruments calibrated in meters, kilometers, etc. will use the English units to avoid the confusion of trying to convert meters to feet, knots to kilometers per hour, etc. in your head while flying.
The altimeter is an aneroid barometer calibrated in feet instead of inches of mercury. It tells you how high you are above sea level, not how high you are off the ground. Since the Air-Warrior world always has the same barometric pressure, temperature, and relative humidity, our altimeters need not be adjusted like real ones. It always measures a true altitude in feet.
The airspeed indicator measures your speed through the air. It compares the pressure created by air rammed into a tube as the aircraft flies forward with the ambient pressure. This is converted on a dial to speed in nautical miles per hour (knots). This system works just fine at sea level. But as the air density decreases with increasing altitude, the ram pressure will be lower and the airspeed will appear lower. This lower air speed is called "indicated airspeed" (IAS) and it is always less than true air speed (TAS).
Just as the ram pressure decreases for the airspeed indicator, the dynamic pressures on the wing decrease. IAS then becomes an accurate measure of how fast the wing is "flying." Stall speeds stay approximately the same at all altitudes with IAS, but decrease as altitude increases with TAS. Air Warrior lets you chose to use IAS or TAS in your aircraft. Except for some testing conditions, you should use IAS.
The rate-of-climb or vertical-speed indicator measures your rate of climb or descent. It maxes out at about 4000 feet per minute climb or descent. It does not have any of the errors inherent in the real instrument.
The compass is a magnet attached to a display with directions from 0 to 359. As the airplane turns, the magnet stays oriented to the North pole exposing a different part of the display. This indicates the true magnetic heading of the aircraft. Air-Warrior compasses suffer from none of the errors of real aircraft compasses and always indicate true heading.
Air Warrior gives you a choice of having an attitude indicator (artificial horizon) or a control position indicator. The second is a hangover from the days when pilots flew with mice instead of joysticks. A pilot could see what type of control input he was using by looking at the position indicator. Nowadays almost every one uses a joystick and the artificial horizon. The artificial horizon shows a circle with blue on top (sky) and brown on bottom (ground). The line between them (horizon) will always stay parallel with the real horizon. A quick glance at the artificial horizon will help you orient yourself during maneuvers when you literally don't quite know which direction you are pointing.
There is a rudder position indicator for nearly the same reason as the control position indicator. If you do not have rudder pedals, you will be using a mouse or keyboard to control the rudder. You then need the rudder position indicator to tell you what you are doing with the rudders.
There are also fuel and oil-pressure gauges. The fuel gauge needs no explanation. The oil-pressure gauge can be important because certain maneuvers can cause loss of oil pressure. If you continue in the maneuver too long, your engine will be damaged. Also, combat damage can cause you to lose fuel or oil. So keep an eye on these gauges if you have been hit. When either gauge reads zero, the engine stops running.
The landing gear and flaps have indicators on the panel to show their positions. Trying to lower either of them at too high a speed can damage them so that they cannot be raised or lowered from an intermediate position.
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1.4 BASIC MANEUVERS
Flying an aircraft in Air Warrior is easier than flying the real thing. The computer provides stability that many of these aircraft lacked. In addition, many tasks required of real pilots are handled by the computer. You do not need to monitor the temperature of the engine and operate the systems used to control that temperature. You do not need to watch fuel gauges for many tanks and switch tanks during flight. The power settings are handled with one control, not two or three.
Real aircraft require the coordinated use of rudder and aileron in banking. At different speeds and engine power settings, rudder is used to counteract yaw produced by the ailerons or engine. This coordination is automatically done by an experienced pilot without a thought. His clue to the need for coordinating rudder is a pressure on his body. Literally the real pilot uses coordinated rudder by using the "seat of his pants." The Air-Warrior program does it for us.
Aircraft change speed by changing their pitch attitude. They go faster when the nose is lowered. This takes constant pressure on the stick. Real aircraft have a control that allows the pilot to substitute for this steady pressure. By adjusting this control, called "trim," the pilot can adjust his aircraft to fly in a constant state without applying pressure to the controls. This state can be a climb, descent, or level flight. The Air-Warrior program automatically trims for you. Whenever you move the controls and adjust the pitch and roll of an aircraft, it will stay there when you release that pressure. So flying straight either level, climbing, or descending requires no input. Climb (or descent) rate is governed by the throttle setting.
Turning an aircraft requires banking in the direction of the turn and then applying back stick to turn. The amount of back stick varies with the angle of bank. More bank requires more stick. Too much or too little stick will cause the aircraft to climb or descend. It takes a lot of practice to be able to turn tightly and maintain altitude. This becomes real important when you are fighting someone at low altitude!
Basic aerobatic maneuvers are rarely used in combat but can help you learn to control your aircraft when it is no longer in a normal flight attitude. The loop is an exception. It is regularly used in combat. The maneuver takes the nose of the aircraft through a full circle vertically. The advantage over turning horizontally is that the loss of speed due to gravity on the up side is paid back on the down side. A horizontal turn has gravity taking from you all the way around. Combat pilots do not turn in the horizontal unless their speed is too low for the vertical. You must have sufficient speed at the beginning of the loop to get the nose all the way up and over. You will lose speed until you have achieved inverted flight and have the nose pointed down again. During the downward half of the loop, you will gain speed. Making loops round takes a constantly different amount of back stick throughout the loop. Combat pilots don't worry about that.
You need to know the minimum speed required to loop. If you are just a little too slow as you reach the top of a loop, you can use flaps in some aircraft to get you over the top. As you dive down the back side of the loop, you may get going too fast to pull the nose onto your target. Decreasing the throttle can help there.
Half a loop can be done going up or down. Both can be used to change direction. Going up in a half loop with a roll to upright at the top is an Immelmann. It is better than just turning around because as you slow down, you turn faster. The speed you lost going up is gained as you dive back down. Doing the roll first and then diving through the second half of a loop is a split S, named for the fact that it could be seen as the bottom half of an S. This maneuver is not so good a way to reverse direction because the speed gain in the dive slows the turn rate and the extra speed produces more drag. The extra speed therefore can not be used to get back as much of the altitude loss. The split S is good for avoiding pilots in faster planes who cannot follow you in this maneuver because they speed up more than you in the dive.
Rolls come in different varieties: barrel, aileron, and snap. The barrel roll is done by applying some back and side stick at the same time. This causes the aircraft to roll and pitch and follow a corkscrew path. It is said that you roll around the outside of a barrel. At all times the wings are parallel with outside circumference of the barrel. This maneuver is valuable in combat to keep your aircraft from being shot by one that is right behind it. A secondary gain from this maneuver is that it slows you down and it takes longer to fly around the barrel than straight through it. Cutting your throttle and barrel rolling can make an enemy overshoot. When he gets in front of you, then you are no longer defending. Be warned though, keeping track of just where the enemy is while you are barrel rolling is not easy.
Aileron rolls are performed with all the controls constantly changing to make the aircraft roll around the roll axis which continues to point in the same direction. This maneuver is used for victory rolls over your home field and has no other use in combat.
Snap rolls are performed with full back stick, aileron, and rudder. The aircraft stalls and rotates violently, making this a good evasive maneuver. But since it slows you down, it probably only postpones your death if you were in enough trouble to try it in the first place.
Taking off is usually easily accomplished by applying 100% throttle and allowing the aircraft to accelerate to flying speed. Aircraft with tail wheels will fly off on their own. Tricycle landing-gear aircraft will require back stick to rotate the nose to takeoff attitude. Takeoff speed is about 130% of the stall speed. You can look this up for each aircraft in the flight manual. Remember this is for the aircraft at maximum gross weight. If you do not have full fuel and bombs, you will be lighter than this. In any case, flaps are not normally required (except on takeoffs from short fields or aircraft carriers).
If you find that you cannot get a particular aircraft to take off from a given field, probably because it is too short, then up to half flaps can allow the aircraft to take off at a lower speed and therefore shorten the takeoff run. The ultimate example of this is taking off from an aircraft carrier in some aircraft with heavy fuel and bomb loads, but that is an advanced subject.
Landing aircraft is much easier in Air Warrior than many other simulations, but you still must keep the airspeed, rate of descent, and attitude of the aircraft within reasonable limits. But then Air Warrior gives you so many visual clues that an experienced pilot can easily make landings using those clues alone, without needing to rely on instruments at all, just like flying for real.
The first consideration in landing is to determine the final approach speed. There are two types of approaches to landing in Air Warrior. The first is landing with enemy on your tail. This is not a basic technique. It will be covered later. The second landing is the routine return to base in a secure environment. The speed for this approach should be about 130% of the stall speed at your current weight. 130% of the stall speed in the manual is OK but not ideal. You might want to practice stalling different aircraft to figure out what the stall speed of each is at a light weight.
As you approach the landing field you should be descending. A simple technique is to just aim at the end of the runway. If your airspeed gets too high (over 300 knots in a fighter or 250 knots in a bomber), you can reduce throttle. When you are about as far away from the runway as the runway is long, you can reduce the throttle to idle. When your airspeed drops below 200 knots, lower your landing gear. Keep the nose pointed at the end of the runway. If the airspeed starts to drop below the approach speed, add throttle to keep the speed up. As you descend through 50 feet, level the nose and chop the throttle. You should be striving to keep the aircraft straight down the runway, the wings level, and the nose level or slightly high. You should settle on gently. Hit the brakes and stop. You may exit the aircraft when the plane comes to a complete stop.
If you find that the aircraft will not slow down with the throttle reduced to idle and the nose of the aircraft pointed at the runway, you are too high. You can make a 360 degree turn while descending to correct that. If really high, do two or more. You can also try turning 90 degrees to one side and then turning back toward the runway. If you pull back hard on the stick and pull high g's, you will slow down very fast!
If you cannot get stopped on the runway, you are landing too fast. Slow down. You can try aiming at a point in front of the runway, so that you perform the slowing down as you settle in a level attitude maneuver before you get to the runway. If the screen goes red and if you get the crashed message, you either touched down too fast, in a non-landing attitude, or tried to turn after touchdown. If you touch down and if you crash but not right away, you were probably going too fast. If you think the speed was OK and if you were not turning, then your attitude at touchdown was bad. Flaps are not necessary for most landings, but they are a help getting the speed down on landing. So if you have trouble with running off the end of the runway, try flaps.
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1.5 BASIC GUNNERY
The object of fighter combat is to shoot the enemy with your guns. You get into a position to do so by maneuvering your aircraft. But just pointing your guns at him might not be enough. Air Warrior models the flight of the bullets, and you must make them collide with the enemy aircraft. If you are shooting at a target from the side, you must lead the enemy aircraft like leading a quail with a shotgun. You must also take into account the effect of gravity on the path of the bullets. The bullets drop as they travel away from your guns. When you are pulling g's (back stick), the bullets seem to fall below the nose of your aircraft. In fact they are flying straight, but you are moving your nose up away from the bullet stream. So if you are pulling g's you must increase the amount of lead to compensate. Or you can pull the nose ahead of the target, release back stick and let the enemy fly through the bullet stream.
Obviously, if you get behind your target so that the angle between his flight path and yours is small, there is little need to lead. It is easier to get more hits. In addition, as you get closer your bullets will not spread out so much. The bullet density will be higher and more will hit the target. Air Warrior models these effects, so being on your enemy's tail and up close will result in more damage per second. You will hear pilots speaking of lethality, which is the term used to quantify the killing effect of your guns.
Aircraft with guns in the nose have different gunnery characteristics from the planes with guns in the wings. Wing-mounted guns were not set to fire straight ahead. This would have produced a very low bullet density. They were instead aimed to converge at a point several hundred yards ahead of the plane. This convergence is modeled in Air Warrior so that wing-mounted guns have good lethality up close, more at the point of convergence, with a rapid drop off beyond that range.
Nose-mounted guns have a very high lethality up close, dropping off gradually to maximum range. Their relative lethality is better than that of wing-mounted guns except at the convergence range.
Cannons have much greater lethality than machine guns, especially for big, tough targets like bombers.
Lastly, each gun has a specific load of ammunition and firing rate. You will see that some aircraft have more ammo for some guns than others. As guns run out of ammo, the lethality drops off. In some aircraft, the effect is so pronounced that you might as well return to base for ammo after shooting 50% of your ammo.
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1.6 CHAPTER 1 EXERCISES
by Brooke
1.6.1 TAKEOFFS AND LANDINGS
Taking off is easy. Practice enough landings so that you can land without crashing or running of the end of the runway.
1.6.2 BASIC AEROBATICS
Practice doing loops, rolls, Immelmans, and split s's. You should be able to do all of these maneuvers without stalling, spinning, or blacking out. Practice continuous looping, many loops in a row. You should be able to do this without losing much altitude from the bottom of one loop to the bottom of the next.
1.6.3 BASIC GUNNERY
Take up a fighter and shoot at the corners of the roof tops of buildings. Pick one corner, shoot at it for a couple of seconds, then switch as quickly as possible to another corner, and so on, until you have to pull out. Do many passes on buildings.
1.6.4 VIEW KEYS
Effortless use of the view keys is essential to effective fighting in AW. If you can't use the view keys as easily and naturally as you would look around in real life, you WILL get shot down by enemies whom you lose sight of in combat. To get initial practice with view keys, do continuous loops over the top of a building and keep it in sight whenever possible as you loop the plane. You will look forward, then as you go into your loop, look back until the building comes into view, then look back and up, then up, then forward and up, then forward, etc. Do many loops in a row. Then fly over the building and do a roll, again keeping the building in sight whenever possible (e.g., looking left, then left and up, then up, then right and up, then right, etc.).
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