A-5C is clearly overtiered

Machinery of War Discussion Aircraft
,
41

Are you sure were talking about SPS-K and not S?

SPS-K cant carry gun and pod at the same time and its TTW is closest to MiG-21F-13, a 9.3 BR plane (in ARB). You are slow to accelerate so you really cant pull one circles like you would do in bis.

Not to mention its RWR is rear aspect only.

SPS-K was barely functional at 10.0 with flares and you would want to put it back there without them?

SPS-K is defined by its ability to carry grand total of two good IR missiles for its BR and once you fire them off, youre back to being a sidegrade to MiG-21F-13, assuming you even brought gunpod in the first place.

If you didnt and you took 2x IR + pod onstead, you fire off two missiles and you can only fly back to rearm yourself, meaning that your presence in match is extremely low.

While yes, you can carry up to 4x R-3Rs, they are not worth it over R-60s and definetively not over R-13Ms. While they can take some people by surprise in a headon, remember that they still pull only 10Gs. To get all four of them to land, you need to:

  1. have enough targets at high alt on the first place
  2. all of those targets cant be actively evading your missile
  3. all of those targets cant have chaff
42

Another thing i realized about the a5c is that its flares are bugged rn and drop in pairs instead of single pops, basicaly it has less flares per flare

43

I guess you just like having all aspects facing jets without countermeasures while being in a jet that can out run and out dog fight them. Yeah, that seams REAL fair, god you must be the epitome of shit if you struggle at ALL in the mig 21. I dont even know why i argue with your lot as you obviously just want it to stick low enough for you to have fun without trying. I cant think of a single 12.3 it will truly struggle against simply because it has an rwr, countermeasures and the fm to reverse them.

44

So what your saying is a mig 21 with r60s and the ability to bring flares for the uptiers should able to see a 8.7? Although thinking about it the t2 exists… i Fucking hate this br range because if your not in one of the few meta jets your going to die.

45

Its because it compresses like a bitch, once you get it to lower speeds it starts to pull quite hard while retaining its energy very well. Thats the main problem, it finds it hard to dump speed quick so it requires a little bit of prep before you start to dog fight anyone.

46

I havent touched based R-60s in forever.

R-60M(K)s are only good dueto being all aspect. Tail chase range is non existent. Now consider base R-60 can be only fired in rear aspect.

R-13M1s are geniunely better choice, they acceleratefaster than 9J, 20G is sufficient and god being able to fire them off beyond 800m is great, especially for the playstyle you need to adapt with SPS-K, ie. never lose speed.

sucks, i know. if i ever decide to go trough with my visit to Lešany air museum, I can get access to flight manual for SPS czechoslovakia airforce used and hopefully I will find a mention there stating they can carry P-62-2M missile rack, which would allow it to carry 4x R-60s. Then I can definetively see it go to 10.0. So far Ive only managed to find a single source, a webpage, metioning those. Altough the Lešany museum curator confirmed that czechoslovakian SPSs never carried R-60s during their service.

Same page mentions it could even carry R-60Ms - with those I can see it going to 10.3 to be a sidegrade to MiG-21MF - weaker engine and RWR but all aspect capability + either gun pod or the ECM pod.

Albeit all of that might be technicallity since SPS-K can already carry the P-62-1M rack for single R-60. Double rack requires no further modification as far as I know, and weight limit would allow it (weight of one P-62-2M rack with 2x R-60 missiles is 87kgs, and SPS-K can already carry APU-13U-2 rack on each hardpoint with two R-3R missiles with combined weight of 150.6kgs.).

Think MiG-21S at 9.7. Identical gunpod, SPS-10 instead of SPO-8, and engine that of MiG-21SMT (Tumansky R-13F-300) while being 600KG lighter.

As I said, SPS-K is defined by its IRs. Without those, it would be worse MiG-21S sitting at same BR. Hell, if you take 4x R-3Rs on SPS-K you are larping as objectively worse MiG-21S.

its a mess, whats there to say.

anyway im going tad bit off topic here. Point is, A-5C isnt as bad to deserve going down. IIRC A-5C shared the BR of 10.0 with SPS-K - and Id say 9.0 had worse chance against A-5Cs back then than 8.7 have against SPS-K now.

47

I love the r13m1s, i call them baby pl5s

48

R13m1s are basically an aim 9j clone, although they’re slightly better

49

It compresses at high speed, and if you carry a lot of fuel makes the problem much worse. The A5C has very low fuel consumption so you can get into dogfights mid-match with much less fuel than your opponents, relatively speaking, and still outlast them on afterburning time.

The A5C outrates everything except the j7e, mig19 and some other early 9.3 jets that dont have anywhere near your climb and speed and are also flareless.

The A5C will easily force the rate fight against anything else, the best way to counter the A5C and mig19 variants is to run away and be near transonic speeds and nose counter whenever he lines up a shoot.

It’s also very easy to make them overshoot since it’s risky to drop the engine power on mig19 variants because they take a lot of time to spool up again and it gives you an opportunity to follow them in a vertical loop if they overshoot and try to climb as usual. But it’s always risky because you are the one getting shot at the entire time, not that you would have an option unless you can outrun them past mach 1

1 Like
50

I guess you just like making stuff that I didn’t say or imply. Fighting full uptiers/downtiers was never fair. But as things stand, the mig-21 bis is a 11.0 jet, not 10.7, not 11.3, and it should remain that way.

And no, I don’t struggle with the mig-21 bis, I found it to be a reliable grinder and I even talismaned it, it was annoying to face mig-23s just 0.3 above on a regular basis that you could do nothing against if they played good, but that was about the extent of my issues.

51

would A-5C outrate F8U-2?

52

quite comfortably, but f8u2 imo has better guns and is much easier to throw around

Spoiler

image
image1518×881 331 KB

53

Yes, the F8U-2 is not far behind, but if the A5C goes for a vertical rate fight it will hold rate speeds much better than the F8U-2.

The F8U-2 cannot run away from the A5C but has good roll even at transonic speeds, unlike the A5C so it’s not hard to nose counter while running away and trying to set up an overshoot, but if the A5C isn’t dumb you can’t touch the A5C. Your best hope is for him to run out of ammo while you nose counter.

I’ve clutched an uptier match with the A-4H and the last guy was a mig-19, I kept rolling away from his guns while flying at around 1000kph all match, doing big circles back and forth to ground pound and win on tickets, That’s the best hope if you end up 1v1 against a good A5C/mig19 player

2 Likes
54

luckily havent run into any of those in a long time lol.