Build-up speed on the runway, or take up as soon as possible?
Which one is best for speed?
Is it different for jets vs props?
Using the full runway should be the best for speed, but it’s hard to tell.
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I suspect that, at least in “real life”, that’s going to depend on the aircraft.
Fixed landing gear? It doesn’t so much matter.
Retractable landing gear? The sooner you can lift off, the sooner you can retract your gear.
Underpowered? Wait until you’re a bit over 200kph before lifting.
Quick to accellerate? ASAP so you can lift your gear before overspeed snaps something off.
For jets it is usually faster to get to 400-500kph and then takeoff hugging the ground and build speed up to initiate a climb whenever you reach optimum thrust
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I agree, the faster you are on the ground, the better. There is less drag on the ground compared to lifting off.
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When you lift off you pull AoA which drastically increases drag. So if you take off at higher speeds you don’t pull so much AoA.
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Really aircraft depended. For my Tornado F3 I usually accelerate towards 280km/h and take off with a slight angle of attack. Switch to combat flaps and if I’m around 350 raise the flaps completely. The gear is really holding back your acceleration in my experience. For the F14B I accelerate towards 250km/h and do the same thing.
So just take off and fly in a straight line/slight climb and pull gear and flaps as soon as possible. Just to make sure you counter the drop in lift when raising the flaps so that you don’t fall into the ground.
I personally take off ASAP (at a good speed) so i can put up my landing gear to have less drag, and be even faster
Gear deployed barely has any impact on acceleration on heavy and powerful top tier jets, unless we’re talking about 600kph+ but that would rip the gear anyway.
Propeller aircraft (ignoring turbo props) don’t benefit from accelerating on the ground past their rotate speeds.
Turbine aircraft often generate more thrust the faster they go so they do benefit. In a jet, gain as much speed as possible before lifting off and before breaking your gear off.
Flaps aren’t really necessary unless you are in an underpowered aircraft with a heavy bomb load on one of those maps with stupidly high mountains right next to the airfield.
The simple fact that not a single person in this thread even mentioned brakes, is indicative of the crowd you’ve found…
You can slam the throttle wide open, and you’ll be rolling along wasting thrust while the engine actually picks up.
Always hold B, wind the throttle up, bit by bit until it JUST starts rolling, then let go of the brakes, get to ‘speed’ being about 180-200 kmh, and flick out your tagkeoff flaps.
You’ll then be airborne.
That will result in a slower take off because you are wasting time not moving at all. OP asked about the fastest way to take off, not the shortest takeoff or drag race. Fastest way is spawning ASAP and start rolling at full wep immediately
Actually, you are incorrewct as a lot of the time that your engines are winding up, props and jets alike, will make their takeoff longer…
Whilst we’re going slower, we’re getting a more efficient usage out of our engines, hence why jets hold the brakes on the tarmac and wind up, before letting themselves start rolling.
It’s not a race, it’s about knowing what you’re doing rather than just jamming full open throttle, and going ‘fast’ ignorantly.
That doesn’t make any sense. As soon as you throttle up, thrust builds up, if you are holding up you are throwing that thrust away. Just use that thrust to start rolling.
By the time you are waiting for the thrust to build the other dude who you call ignorant will be halfway his takeoff speed.
I know in real life pilots do that, but OP asked the fastest/most efficient way to take off in a game, so stop insulting people and spewing nonsense. Taking more or less runway is irrelevant.
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There’s a reason why real life pilots do it…
I’m wondering if you even wonder why you find runways to be too short.
I never had any issue with it, ever. I can imagine running short of runway in a heavy and slow bomber while going to rearm and not getting an air spawn. But doing that thrust buildup while holding brakes won’t probably save you. Piston engines build thrust very fast anyway. Never had an issue with jets either, only on a test drive with an a7d with full fuel and max load just to see if it could take off.
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Probably because they’ve put in longer runways everywhere because people kept complaining about having short runways because they genuinely didn’t know how to take-off…
There is a reason why jets spool up on the runway with the brakes on, and it directly relates to this.
Also the timing of you deploying your flaps is also crucial to the efficient take-off.
A more efficient takeoff, will result in better speeds to altitude, and shorter runway usage, and knowing all of this, isn’t just a single point of reference to the stage of just getting airborne.
My point is, if we do a race with the same plane from spawn to an arbitrary point and you do your spooling thing with brakes and I just press w and roll away, I will get there faster all the time
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Ive never in my life seen a single player complain about runways being too short.
Real pilots do it because sure, you may have a shorter runway, or you want the quickest way to gain speed from the second you start rolling.
That is not what OP is asking. OP is asking from the moment you spawn, to the moment you are airborne, which is fastest.
I have tried both methods, from the second you spawn, just powering up and rolling along will get you in the air fastest, because by the time your engine is spooled up with the brakes on, his engine is also spooled up but hes halfway down the runway doing 200+kph.
The only time in war thunder that you really need to hold the brakes to spool up is for some carrier takeoffs, and on some of the exceptionally early jets with extremely long spool up times (and only really when the game gives you the shorter prop airfield)
For the OP, I throttle to wep and just go on takeoff, pull up usually as soon as im going fast enough to raise my gear and flaps to gain speed. In a prop ill usually just start power climbing, in a jet ill hold it level just after takeoff to gain speed before pulling up into a zoom climb.
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The real question is: Is rolling down the runway as fast as if you where going horizontal mid-air?
In reality, rolling down the runway, all the thrust is horizontal. Once you take off, some of that thrust is used to climb/stay horizontal. But eventually, natural lift come into play at speeds.
But in-game, if I roll down the runway, am I being more efficient at building up speed? Versus pulling a slight climb? What about early take off then horizontal?
Then you haven’t been here long at all then…
Engine temps are a thing too, which no-one has even touched upon, so I’m confident I have more knowledge and information than the pair of you currently. @HighRiskNoReward I’m looking at you…