Heh, I don’t know why but the fact that @bunyap2w1 voices the ground crew just makes me happy. Thanks for the compressed air crewman! 
PS What roll rate!
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The F-5 is a rolling scissor monster for sure.
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Hey, what are you doing?
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I don’t disconnect anymore just to hear that and to imagine him running next to me while trying to unplug his headset.
Fearless, not much to learn about something so simple. But if I may, I would like to impart a little tidbit that took me weeks to figure out. Set power at climb or cruise using fuel flow. Try to find that little sweat spot between burner and Mil. Because if you just go to pure Mil with any load, You’ll be spending all your time at 300 knots. Also, assign “aileron spring” overide (or whatever its called) to a button so that you can enjoy the full roll rate. Many noses have been broken against canopies in F-5s and T-38 due to the shocking roll—thus the spring.
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Really with the 21 it’s best you consider it to be some sort of two stage weapon with the aircraft being the first stage told what to do from the ground up. Stage 2 being the actual missile 
It looks like a space thingymajigger really.
Wow, that is far more thanks than I ever received from a pilot in real life. This sim is totally unrealistic.
And yeah, this is a very fun aircraft.
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Aw man, thanks for nearly ruining my monitor with spat-out coffee. 
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That’s good advice. It seems to either like afterburner or ‘stiff breeze MIL’ but not much in-between.
I’ve thrown my neck out this afternoon flying this thing and trying to chase F-14’s around the desert. Huge aches now but a lot of Gooses got cooked. The radar (head on aspect especially) is awful, and the AIM-9P would be more effective if I fly alongside and just threw it at their cockpit, perhaps wielding it like an axe. I think once merged I got more gun kills than anything else. It took me a while to realize that the 9P really needs the uncage button held to actually do anything dangerous FOV wise, plus a bright reflection in Maverick’s Bremont watch would probably spoof it. It feels all quite agricultural but fun.
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If you’re around tonight, lemme know. I always love screwing around in the tiger.
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The radar is crap. You cannot think of it like the beefy fire control sets found in the F-15 or Su-27. It’s closer akin to the search sets of the 1950s found on the F-8 and F-100. Think of it as allowing you to find a target and maneuver into position for a visual attack. You should be doing the majority of your scanning outside the cockpit
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So I don’t know what the AIM-9P is up to these days. I’ve noticed some things I can’t exactly endorse as proper. That said, the AIM-9P also requires more work of you than the AIM-9M. The P is rear aspect only, can handle fewer Gs, and is less maneuverable. That means you need to pay much closer attention what the target is up to. Aspect is hugely important here. Ideally you want to see a target that is wider than they are long. The longer they get, the greater the change in their LOS, the harder the missile has to pull to achieve intercept. If it pulls too hard, it’s possible that the seeker will lose track of the target and go dumb.
- Consider how the F-5E wants to fight. It’s got a great STR, but the smallest afterburning engines in an operational aircraft. It’s surprisingly pointy, as in the control surfaces will allow you to point the nose far more than you think it will, but this costs you enormous speed. Optimally you want to conserve your speed as much feasible, wait for your opponent to give you an opportunity, and then cash in your speed for a quick kill. Also note that AoA gauge to the left of your VVI, the peg at 20 units represents the optimum angle of attack. That’s the angle where you will generate the best lift, and thus the best sustained turn. Any lower than that and you’re leaving performance on the table, any higher and your sacrificing speed to induced drag (though getting a tighter turn circle… to a point).
I love the F-5. It’s high enough performance you can practice modern BFM, but it’s low enough performance that the fight develops slow enough you can observe and internalize what’s going on.
EDIT: This has got to be like the fiftieth time I’ve posted it. Here’s the USAF Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals documentation. Learn to fly the F-5 like a T-38 like a real (zoomie) fighter jockey.
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That’s a fantastic writeup!
That 20 degree reminds me of what a teacher once told me, that is that on average wingchords like a 22 degree AOA in the airflow. And given that the F5 wings are almost straight edged in the airflow, well then the numbers seem to work out.
Keep in mind that these are units AOA and not degrees though (I have never understood what bright idea these units are supposed to be).
Regarding the AIM-9P Sidewinders, I always found them to be perfectly adequate (due to historical preferences, I never fly with the all-aspect AIM-9P5). Since this aircraft requires visual identification of the target, I have never felt the need for an all-aspect missile. When approaching a target head-on, I can’t shoot it because I don’t have a clear ID. I visually ID the target during the merge and then its a dogfight, where any valid Sidewinder shot is from the rear-hemisphere anyway, And shot in parameters, the AIM-9P is deadly. I don’t think the AIM-9P5 or even AIM-9M would change a lot for the F-5E (unless you set up a controlled 1v1 and want to shoot to other guy in the face).
Here is some interesting (at least to me) trivia: During the Falklands War, the Sea Harriers were famously supplied with all-aspect AIM-9L on the way south (up to then they have used AIM-9G). Still, every Sidewinder shot during that war was launched form the rear, from the same position the AIM-9G would have worked as well. I am not aware of any documented engagement during the Falklands War where the all-aspect capability of the AIM-9L has actually been utilized.
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Better resolution without resorting to decimals i think.
Thanks Mr. Blind for posting that manual for the fiftieth time. THIS time happens to be the first that I have taken notice and I have learned a bunch. One is that the T-38 has a turn performance beeper (SRB) presumably similar to the F-15 and A-10. If our F-5 has it, I’ve been too scared to ever hear it in a fight. I wonder if its absence is correct or an oversight.
Nah, we don’t. The -38C has some goodies meant to bring it closer in line to the F-16 and F-15. Our F-5E-3’s avionics are threadbare 60s fare.
That said I’m also not 100% sure what pertinent differences there are between the T-38C and F-5E-3s performance. I’d take any specific performance metrics with a grain of salt and internalize the axioms on how to work the turn circle.
Alpha/AoA is measured in degrees. EDIT: When you say “not degrees though” are you talking about degrees of pitch angle?
I think @TheAlmightySnark 's teacher was talking about the angle between the chord line of the wing and the velocity vector of incoming airflow rather than the aircraft’s alpha, which is the angle between the plane’s longitudinal axis and the vector of incoming airflow. The two aren’t necessarily the same and depend on how the wing’s bolted onto the fuselage (a level fuselage might have wings pointed up slightly).
F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F111 F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!! F5 now!!
Did anyone see what I did there ?
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What I meant is that in US military aircraft, AOA angle is not displayed in degrees but in arbitrary “Units”, which are unique for every aircraft. So while an AOA of 5° might be 19 units in an Eagle, it’s 20 units in the Tiger (numbers totally made up).
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Sale on F5, the keyboard combination to refresh your browser is F5, and 60% is the sale, and 5 times 60 is 300, which is what you get if you arbitrarily add the tens and ones column to the hundreds column of 111.
Eagle Dynamics’ message is clear: Refresh your browser until you see an F-111 in the store page.
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And now he’s gonna spend the next decade spamming F5. Look what you did!
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Yep exactly! Although the comment about units probably made my comment completely redundant.