Was just playing the FRS.1 at 11.3 with a squamate in the T.10 and even at 11.3 you can beat almost everyone.
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How can you do that? I’m genuinely curious because I’m getting out turned by phantoms at lower speeds.
Overall the buffs have made it much better to play, but the airframe is still worse than stuff like the Mig-19/Q-5s, but it feels on par with the earlier mig-21 variants.
I have no ideas what you are doing if you are being out turned by a phantom the Harrier outclasses it by every metric but speed.
One issue I will say is that in mouse aim it cuts the AOA to 16.5 degrees when the IRL maneuvering tone was around 20-21 degrees AOA.
Therefore when going slow the mouse aim is not letting you turn as hard as you should be.
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For me the use of flaps and thrust vectoring is extremely important.
When fighting a Phantom you should never be getting out-turned at low speed as Matrix said. In my eyes you should be initially using combat flaps and then transition to landing flaps and 15-25% nozzle angling. Keep turning and don’t be affraid to go vertical as you have tons of thrust.
With landing flaps and 15-20% nozzle the Harrier has some pretty crazy low speed turning.
I’ve had more trouble with the first turn with Phantoms, as they can pull quite hard, but after that they’re just a brick. Only the agile eagle Phantoms really pose any threat in a dogfight, even then, you can win reliably.
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You pretty much hit the nail on the head. The only thing I have to add is when at high alt 15,000 feet and up do not use flaps as they create a huge loss in speed unrealistically. Just use 20 degree nozzles and pull into a shallow vertical spiral.
Once you are both slow if you have enough angle off to know you are safe you can combat flaps with NEVER MORE than 60 degree nozzles for max ITR.
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The Harrier needs 8 flares to beat an R-60MK
Thanks again to @AblativeKitten for the help with testing.
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R60 or r60m? I find it hard to believe it’s this hard to flare a r60
It was an R-60MK on the German MiG-23
The all aspect one non-IRCCM
That’s impressively bad.
You could probably use less flares if you dropped them later too.
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Makes no difference I’ve tried all types of things in testing this is just the averages of that.
Anything less that 4 sets of 2 flare bursts will just not be enough to avoid a hit.
R60MK lmao
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Massive disadvantage.
Wait. Gaijin has the Harriers modelled as hot as a full after burning Typhoon? I knew it was too hot but christ thats ridiculous.
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Yes basically lol
Here’s a good example video. The Harriers FM as it is right now is better than even the T-2
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I’m still getting the hang of how it flies, but it’s definitely better than almost anything at speeds below 600ish kmh. I’m quite happy that they’re worth playing now.
I still think that the Q-5s/Mig-19s, and the J-7E all have a better FM, but those are all some of the best at their respective BRs.
You can have your own opinion ofc.
However with me flying the Harrier the only chance any of those planes have is to stay fast and run away lol.
Gaijin uses thrust (plus I think some unknown modifiers) as the figure used for the IR signature on aircraft. This is actually kinda clever way to avoid having individually model exhaust temps for every aircraft as you can get double duty out of the thrust curves and it even models the IR signature “reducing” when you throttle down. In 99% of case, I think it works actually quite well, or at least… well enough.
The problem.
Harrier’s have a lot of thrust and gain more thrust at lower air speed. If you are down to around 400kts which is pretty typical for the harrier to be at or around. You are very very hot. To the point of it being nearly impossible to flare most missiles.
To date, there has been no solution because the proper solution would be to model said exhaust temps (directional exhausts would be very good too) but that is a massive undertaking. But the F-117 has added an option. It has code that modifies the IR signature of the aircraft and applies a (iirc) 0.5x multiplier to the IR signature. This same code could be the Harrier’s salvation in these regards as a short(ish) term solution.
The most permanent solution is the temporary one. At times, we should be careful what we wish for. Might fix it now, but could set it up for disaster down the line as it is “good enough”.