I don’t know why you guys keep necroing this topic, but I want to correct this statement.
In warthunder the jet engine builds thrust “slowly” and the fuel consumption is only dependent of the thrust being produced.
So if you are going full burner on the runway you aren’t actually using much fuel for the initial time the engine is building is thrust, the afterburner you see is just a scripted visual effect and has nothing to do with the thrust or fuel consumption that the actual jet is doing.
Most the jets with afterburner spool up pretty fast. Either way it’s not much fuel but if you’re not carrying bags it could make a difference (assuming you live long enough to run out of fuel).
I tested my advice earlier and found it accurate…
If you’re rolling whilst on the runway you’re wasting runway, holding brakes mitigates that. When you release the brakes you are gaining speed faster than if you didn’t, and thus you are going faster. The earlier you can hit a good speed to hit the flaps, then you are going to take off faster.
Yes they spool fast, but what I mean is that while it is spooling it isn’t “wasting fuel”, it will still consume far less than after you get over max static thrust while doing so.
I would argue that it is more efficient to go full burner till you get to around mach and then cruise at 101% afterburner if time and traveled distance are taken into account too.
On top tier jets, I like to climb full afterburner till around 5km and then cruise at low afterburner while still doing high mach and being far more efficient with fuel.
For example, with an F-16 I can cruise up there doing 1/4 of the fuel consumption at a even higher speed than I could reach near ground going full blast 110%
man we are still arguing over a post I showed the answer to with a god damn video test just under a year ago?
ffs.
heres the answer: If all you care about is the shortest time from the moment you start moving, to the moment you are airborne: Hold the brakes, as FlyingDoctor argues.
If you want the quickest way to get in the air from the moment you SPAWN on the runway, just throttle up and don’t worry about the brakes.
There, argument solved. Everyone is happy. Everyone gets to be their own version of correct. Done? Done.
Honestly, when I wrote up this post, it was to know the most efficient way to take off at the start of a match. Efficient meaning the highest speed / altitude ratio. So a test to answer that would need to try out using the whole runway vs taking off asap.
I usually use the whole runway, but is the drag of the landing gear making it less efficient than quick takeoff and pulling in the landing gear?
No testing done, but did that for a few dozen matches. Didn’t feel like it made a difference, but was a safer way to take off.
Here we go again ahahah
Would you rather have slightly more drag from gear retracted later, or have more drag from higher AoA to lift off early?
It is more efficient to not use flaps and just pick enough speed to lift off with as little AoA as possible while retracting the gear later as a consequence.
I am a bit OCD’ed with that stuff and I like to test a lot of stuff in game just for curiosity.
fastest is probably to get wheels off the ground and up quickly, then stay mostly level and accelerate before pulling up. That way you get a bit of the best of both worlds
My procedure:
As long as the runway is long enough to take off without flaps, don’t use them.
Planes with tail wheel: Put your cursor a little bit low so tail wheel comes up. Redruces drag because of lower AOA.
Get speed and pull up not until speed is high enough for a low AOA takeoff.
Stay leveled or shallow climb till you reach your climbspeed.
asap once your in the air your no longer having to deal with drag from moving on the runway
I am a professional pilot, and holding the brakes while spooling the engines is only done on short fields or days where performance is limited. Lots of people roll onto the runway while advancing the power or briefly hold the brakes to make sure that one does not get ahead of the other, but only for a couple seconds. The fastest way to takeoff is to absolutely roll onto the runway and advance the power as you go
This is why you should do it in WT (if you have 2 engines, anyway), as they do start (if you need to start) and spool up at different rates in the game - and at high altitudes you might need the whole runway.
And in the game I have found that you often need to leave flaps retracted until ready to rotate (again only needed at high altidues).
There’s a lot of people saying pull up immediately, so which is it?
Well less drag is better, but im unable to quantify the difference between gears & drag.
Does it matter which plane it is? F111 has giant flat surface that would produce massive drag when the gear is down.
The aardvark has the airbrake deployed whenever the gear is out, but it’s just a visual thing and it doesn’t act as an actual deployed airbrake. (It should)
In general for modern jets, if you want to move as fast as possible after spawning (like a straight line race), just accelerate till around 400kph and lift off gently while immediately pulling the gear up, if you rip the gear on the runway while taking off and pulling it too soon that’s even better because the small drag penalty from the gear is instantly removed instead of gradually decreasing as the gear retracting animation is played.
Some jets like the mig29, flankers, F-15 etc, will lift off naturally at around 500kph without ripping the gear, so just let the jet lift off at that speed and retract the gear.
Early jets will be around 300-350kph, mostly due to their wing design that will make more lift sooner and their gear also ripping easily at higher speeds.
Props just try to level the plane on the runway, the best take-off speed will be highly dependent on the plane itself.
While on the runway all planes will suffer actual drag from the wheels rolling, and the air friction on the gear itself. But the gear drag is not meaningful till very high speeds in most cases.
Still, it is best to deal with the rolling drag and the extra drag from the gear out, than tilting the whole plane to get lift earlier which causes the whole fuselage and wings to suffer a lot of drag at slower speeds. Especially for modern jets.
Everything I said above is about what is represented in the actual game.