For fun I decided to test the Harrier Gr.5 (11-61 engine) time to climb record. From a vertical take off a 45 degrees climb to 3,000 feet and a near vertical climb it reached 30,000 feet in just 1:21 seconds. (Water injection on take off lift dry for flight)
The Harrier in game following the same profile can only achieve 18,000 feet this is likely due to the massive amounts of missing thrust.
Was a report made on this?
Kind of, in the works.
however i should point out that even while missing buckets of thrust i can outclimb an F-15 in the FA2 sea harrier, its very amusing watching jets drain fuel through reheat just to keep up with the little hover jet
Well sort of. Most people don’t understand climb profiles and will just point the jet up really high and bleed off most their speed.
However a F-15 climbing at a maintained .90-.92 Mach will easily out-climb the little hover bug. Even at low level, where it should absolutely not.
The VIFF phase 2 trial stated that the harrier at 15,000 feet can get to within 5,000 feet of a lightning in a zoom climb. (Lighting starting the climb at 1.2 Mach and the harrier at .8 Mach)
I tested this in game and the harrier falls out some 15,000 feet below or so.
What does the harrier’s straight line acceleration look like compared to irl?
I’ve not found any charts for straight line acceleration.
However there’s a few pilots who stated it’ll out accelerate things like the F-16/F-15 to 400-500 knots.
Here’s something from a really old brochure, Gr.1 days. Max thrust acceleration from 350-450 knots being 10 seconds. Normal lift increases excess power some 50%. Wouldn’t be surprised if the war rating harrier Gr.1 could accelerate from 350 to 450 knots in 5-6 seconds.
