Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29 Fulcrum - History, Design, Performance & Dissection

Machinery of War Discussion Aircraft
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2081

So, I think we can all agree that the Mig29 has a number of technologies that greatly improve its sustained turn rate at high angles of attack that together make up the 4th Gen standard such as large automatic leading-edge droop flaps that drop down to allow controlled airflow to pass over at high angles of attack preventing airflow separation and increasing lift in wing camber thus delaying the stall point.

The Mig29 also equipped with one of iconic 4th generation enhancements such as the very large leading edge root extensions (LERX) that extend up the wing root up fuselage to almost the nose of the aircraft. The Mig29s are actually curved and cambered. LERX directs large amounts of airflow over the wing and fuselage at a very highspeed. The vortices generated here will not separate from the wing and fuselage easily and will stay attached to the wing well past the point stall/boundary separation greatly increasing sustained turn rate at high angles of attack without suffering any loss to lift. Mig and Su would be incapable of the supermaneuvrability without it.

The Mig29 is further enhanced being designed with an integral aerodynamic layout, where the fuselage is creates up to 40% of the total lifting force. All 5th generation fighters are designed with this layout as foundation.

The Mig29 is also actually a very decently light fighter weighing in empty at 24,000lbs/10886? With a thrust to weight of 1.09:1 right? Insanely powerful.

So, my question, why does the Xi’an JH-7A not having a single one of these technologies in 4th generation wing and fuselage design with a vastly inferior thrust to weight still able to generate more lift, higher angles of attack and sustain turns at those higher angles of attack for a longer period in a smaller turn radius over the SMT?

Because of weight??

The JH-7A’s is extensively made up of many types of composite materials, I find that it is true. However, the JH-7A empty weight was only reduced by 881lbs and the only noticeable effect was stated to be maximum takeoff weight increased by 10%, and the range increased, nothing more.

The JH-7A weighed 31,086lbs empty made up of composite materials.
The SMT is 26,6204 empty after upgrades.

So why is the SMT quite literally struggling to stay in the air being the much lighter, smaller aircraft and having the superior wing and fuselage design as well as vastly superior thrust to weight over everything that the JH-7 pretends to be?

Why aren’t the F-16 reporters freaking out over such a UFO? while its greatly heavier doing everything the SMT should do but cannot?

2082

Does the JH-7 even perform as well as you claim? I’ve not been able to test it yet. Seems to me it’s not nearly as good as you think in comparison.

2083

idk man at that point i just gave up on the SMT, just waiting for them to add r73s for the 9.13 or for some new lighter fulcrum (mig29m plz gaijin)

2 Likes
2084

Allow me to explain, just by researching the technology see you need not to fly the thing to know it was never meant to dogfight and is nothing more than a freak of a naval strike fighter severely over buffed to be a dogfighter because GJ needed something to sell about it with such a limited loadout they were not interested in truly modelling.

The JH-7 has swept-back high mounted wing, dog tooth leading edges and marked anhedral.

Starting with High Mounted Wings.
Very high drag design and stall characteristics are of great concern in the low-speed handling regime. Assuming an aircraft’s horizontal tail is mounted at or near the bottom of the fuselage, the high wing aircraft’s turbulence from the wing at high angles of attack may be more likely to interfere with the aircraft’s tail. This wake interference is dependent on flap position and a number of other design factors; however, two primary effects can be surmised.
The high mounted wing aircraft are more likely to encounter a strong buffeting effect near stall deterring the flight crew from slowing down. The interference of the wing with the tail may decrease the effectiveness of the elevator due to the effect of “downwash.” The downwash effect, in production aircraft is highly dependent on specific design criteria, but ultimately this effect reduces the angle of attack on the horizontal tail, reducing elevator effectiveness. With stronger pre-stall buffet and decreased elevator effectiveness the high wing aircraft will exhibit stall characteristics in pitch that both discourage stall entry and increase the pilot effort required to achieve stall. The low wing aircraft in contrast will exhibit stall characteristics in pitch that provide less warning to the pilot of impending stall.
Additionally, the high mounted platform is very drag inducing. It’s probably why an aircraft has engines capable of a staggering 20,520lb of afterburning thrust each and is barely a 1.5 Mach capable platform.

dog tooth leading edges
It’s nothing but one of the earliest forms of leading-edge designs suitable for swept-back wing like the Hawker Hunter and F4C. However, the dogtooth is largely irrelevant to the performance of the JH-7A as this jet’s high mounted wing design came with literally no leading-edge flaps to allow airflow to pass over the already difficult high mounted wing at any angle of attack and not separate from the wings and immediately stall. The aircraft is not meant for high alpha. It is not meant for dogfighting.

Anhedral (downward) angled wings.
These wings are nothing special, yes, they do offer better instability however, once again stability is greatly increased with these high mounted wings as well as drag, roll is greatly hindered in high wing aircraft, the center of gravity sits below the wing, meaning that the fuselage of the aircraft acts as a pendulum to increase roll stability relative to the low wing aircraft, whose center of gravity is balanced above the wing. Anhedral angled wings in this situation are merely there as attempt counteract the pendulum like stability of the high mounted wings of such large and heavy aircraft with no leading-edge flaps.

There is nothing on this aircraft that ever suggested it was once remotely capable of dogfighting, especially performing the Star Wars maneuvers it does in game. The combination of technology in the airframe is nothing modern at all, but actually comes from way back in Vietnam, found in the F8 Crusader having the exact same high mount swept back wings, dog tooth and Anhedral (downward) angled wings.

The difference here is that the Crusader had actual gigantic leading-edge flaps to perform sustained high angles of attack that are completely nonexistent on JH-7A however it just magically performs right there with a spaded Crusader though the crusader is vastly lighter at 18,000lbs empty both spaded roughly carry the same thrust to weight ratio.

I do not care about nerfing the JH-7A to be clear.
I am merely point out how the hell does the SMT remain this heavily nerfed with a clear lack of lift, but a crap ton of drag all because of 2000lbs of upgrades? while at the same time we have a much heavier mutant naval strike fighter flying around like it’s a super flankers on min fuel with a wing set up designed from the early Vietnam War.

2085

I’m just asking about how it performs in-game, it didn’t seem like a very dogfight-able aircraft.

2086

I do not think its that great. But it perform quite well. It dominates its BR and I had no issue with up tiers.

Its dies out in 3 turns if pulling to hard, but if you maintain a good angle the jet can fly circles around people and the SMT. It’s like every other Chinese jet low key they turn supernaturally good and die out if pulling to aft and drag kicks up. The difference seems its better at recovery.

what else… its fuel/weight greatly affects performance. 10-15 min is drastically different from 16min and up etc.

Thats about it. no HMS. climb is decent not the best. Its got magical “combat” flaps where the regular flaps just deploy couple degrees and it all of a sudden can pull more alpha from the extra lift. No leading edge nothing required.

Prolly going to go play it now a couple and back to the SMT.

1 Like
2087

Pulls 14g like nothing. 12-13g sustained from what I’ve seen

2088

Even the Mirage 2000 out-rates the lighter MiG-29 series currently, so I’m not surprised if something like the JH-7 can beat the SMT. I just really doubt it.

Would like to do testing when I’m next able or see some proof I suppose. I need to check on the M2K, cuz that seems to be in a good position to smack around MiG-29s in the 1v1 thanks to the poor STR at low speeds and high turn radius at higher speeds for MiG-29.

2 Likes
2089

It handles like a Japanese T2 with a lot of thrust (9k Kgf per engine iiirc) and is a monster at low speed, even if from my personal experience the SMT behaves well nowadays, the JH7A is as good if not better in terms of Flight performance

2090

Is the mirage really out rating the 29 ?? I mean it’s a delta wing with leading edge flaps and a good engine, but it should not by any mean out rate a MiG-29…

2091

It’s a relaxed stability airframe design, when my report corrected that behavior it improved the low speed performance and handling. Mirage 2000 beats the MiG-29 generally at the moment in flat rate.

1 Like
2092

I don’t really see the point in nerfing the spo15 when its already the worst rwr st top tier. At some point rwr will start affecting br and the idea of a 11.7 mig is terrifying.

2093
  1. Its a realistic limitation of the system and is well documented
  2. It balances out the complete and utter dominance that the MiG-29 currently enjoys in BVR due to how much better the R-27ER is compared to any other missile in-game (as currently modelled, seeing as both the AIM-7M and AIM-54 are badly modelled (as is the Skyflash though I don’t know as much about it), directly affecting their performance negatively)

Modelling the SPO-15’s realistic limitations is also a non-issue in cqb anyways, as HMD PD could and should be used to acquire locks when in close proximity to other jets. It would therefore balance out the MiG-29’s overperformance in BVR while not impacting other facets of its gameplay, and is incredibly easy for gaijin to implement as a feature.

3 Likes
2094

A patch nerfing the mig rwr and the Viper FM would be the way to go

2 Likes
2095

I think a general fix of a lot of top tier features would really help tbh.

  • Nerf the SPO-15 to be unable to be used while radar is on. This will tone down the dominance of MiG-29’s in BVR slightly, but will leave the SMT and the general mig-29 performance in WVR untouched.
  • Nerf the F-16 FM to be more in line with reality.
  • Reduce the absurd level of multipath error radar missiles currently deal with so as to prevent players from being able to easily abuse low alt flight and offer players spacing tools
  • Fix BVR missiles such as the AIM-54C, AIM-7M, and presumably Skyflash variants as well
  • Reduce team sizes back to 12v12 instead of the current 16v16 and/or put more full sized EC maps (Afghanistan, Spain EC, Vietnam EC, Rocky Canyon) into the map rotation (these maps just have outright better map flow to them at top tier due to their size and spread out objectives)

All of these changes would reduce the issues with the on the deck furball meta, super short games, and the impact of the AIM-9M and R-73 , while also promoting diversity in aircrafts, as currently the only meta viable aircrafts at top tier are the MiG-29 and F-16, seeing as the aircrafts which rely more on radar weapons (F-14/Tornado) aren’t particularly effective in the current meta as radar weapons are in a horrid state, allowing the F-16/MiG-29 to close in for a dogfight with literally no risk to themselves, and in the case of the 29, just wins the BVR fight anyways.

I’d also personally like to see 2 seater jets receive this mechanic, which should make them a bit more comfortable to use in the high paced environment seen in WT and offset some of their downsides a tad.

Top tier in general is in a horrid state imo, with radar missiles in one of if not the worst state they’ve ever been, team sizes being too big for the maps commonly played on, overly sensitive RWR, and very high performance airframes with highly flare resistant short range missiles, all wrapped up in the little bow that is constant mixed battles, I’ve heard tons of players and CC’s besides myself state that top tier is just downright unenjoyable, and I’ve personally moved away from playing air RB almost completely because of how arcadey and terrible it feels…

1 Like
2096

imo, from everything in this list, what matters to me is nerfing the f16s fm lol, spo-15 nerf doesnt make so much sense, if we try to apply the -is realistic- for every small thing that every aircraft has, the game will stop being a game, imagine for example if the tiger tank starts to break in the middle of the match cause idk, transmission failure, or engine, stuff like that that happened irl, you can say it is realistic so why not put that in the game? cause its loose the fun part of being a game, making the 29 -blind- while using its radar doesnt seem a welcome change for 12.0 br.

i dont understand very well why ppl here are talking about nerfing the spo-15 while the f16 rn is flying in pure arcade fm, i dont see anyone trying to nerf the f16 with bug reports or something like that, maybe i miss something idk -im not talking about the old f16s bug reports-
(sorry for any english mistakes, it is not my main language)

1 Like
2097

Removing the ER completely from the 9.13 (and every E and T model from germany) is just better for gameplay. GJN doesn’t model faults like that either way

3 Likes
2098

Component reliability is not a feature in-game, RWR functions and limitations is. Its also not hard to implement and a good balancing tool as previously stated, theres not exactly much reason NOT to add it imo.

It has the uncontested best radar missile in-game to the point where BVR against a MiG-29 is nearly pointless because the 27ER just wins against all other missiles with by FAR the best kinematic performance and afaik the best seeker as well. Limiting the SPO-15 equipped MiG-29’s performance in BVR by limiting their information is a good way to make players more careful when using their MiG’s in BVR instead of just having 2 free “I win” telephone poles making everyone else irrelevant.

For example, a SPO-15 equipped MiG-29 wouldnt be able to pressure an F-14B safely in BVR, as keeping the radar lock on it to guide the 27ER would make it blind to a potential incoming AIM-54, as it would never get a launch warning, and would be unable to get a lock warning when it went pitbull if it has its radar on.

This is peak whataboutsim. Firstly, this is a MiG-29 thread, not an F-16 thread and we already have wanabe moderators forum flagging anything they can find the smallest justify flagging so staying on topic is a rather obvious decision. Secondly, people are talking about nerfing the F-16 FM. Hell, my own post you are replying to states the F-16 FM should be nerfed. You’re clearly trying to deflect the convo away from a realistic and fair nerf to the MiG-29 and ignoring the rest of my comment entirely.

2099

They’ve already said they wouldn’t do that, and that would honestly start the biggest cry-fest from both russian and german air players simultaneously.

Itd also lead to all but the SMT to get their BR dropped most likely, and I dont think any MiG-29 should be below 12.0 personally. The jet is way too good and compression is already really bad due to just the MiG-29 and F-16 crushing everything else in-game in effectively all aspects.

2100

No one from the thread wanted this missile, everyone was asking for the R-73. And now all the bitching about the ER comes from the average usa main who also constantly bitched about not adding the r73

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