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Eurofighter Typhoon

Previews, discussions and support for projects by John Young.
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John Young
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Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by John Young »

I know I vowed never to do a project as big as the Tornado’s or F-35’s again, but a new Typhoon has been near the top of my list for a while and it’s an aircraft I have often thought about modelling. It was requested by Steve (Firebird) who provides so much help and support here, I'm pleased to oblige. Having had a go at it in Gmax, it wasn’t too difficult and it is quite striking:

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The problems are the numbers and the potential number of load-out options. I really don’t want to get bogged down in a long “factory” process of painting up multiple aircraft for each national user, tweaking flight plans and testing them in scenery for 3 sim versions – it’s just too much on my own. So, my offer is – I’ll make the models and provide a specimen paint for each country if people here would also like to get involved and take on some of the work.

I’ll take on the RAF aircraft and set them up at their home airfields. What I’m looking for are “country” individuals who could do like-wise. This would involve any or all of these tasks:

- Researching current serial numbers.

- Deciding load-outs. I am prepared to provide a standard day to day load for the single and two seat models, a QRA fit, plus a maximum of 4 air to ground loads. I’m not looking for a long list of what could be loaded – I have a feel for that already. I need to keep the options manageable.

- Painting up the individual serial numbers and tackling any special paint schemes (please save me one or two to end the monotony of RAF plain grey).

- Bringing existing MAIW flight plans, or any others that people would like to contribute, up to date with current aircraft and locations.

- Finding the scenery and verifying sim version availability.

- Helping me assemble the country packages and documenting them.

- Anything else you can think of that might help.

I’m pleased to say that Steve (Firebird) has already offered his help and has been beavering away on a new FDE set with some great results.

In actual fact, I’m quite a way ahead from that first Gmax screen shot. I have the RAF FGR4 and T.3 built (single LOD FS9 so far) and I’ve been experimenting with test weapons loads (not necessarily definitive at this point}. Here are some screen shots in FS9:

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Steve’s work on the new FDE is seen here with a high alpha landing, typical of the Typhoon:

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The air brake on the top of the fin has caused me to watch a great many videos. I’ve concluded, I think, unlike the F-15 also with a high alpha landing, that the air brake is rarely used in that phase. I have seen it used once for a few seconds on the approach and occasionally on the runway, especially with display aircraft that might be landing very light. I’m not sure if that’s to brake the aircraft or to increase the engine power so there is a better reserve for a go-around, much like a carrier landing,under power typical of naval aircraft. I’ll provide a sprinkling of air brake model assignments just for variety:

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Brake chutes also seem to be rarely used, but again, I’ll provide that model for the T3 only, again to assign sparingly:

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So, I hope this has generated interest and if this has whetted your appetite, let me know if anyone would like to be involved and we can discuss further.

John
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Tranquil
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by Tranquil »

They look fantastic John, i started a couple of the German specials on Nicks model, but due to lack of hi-res images and no airshows to show them i come to a stand still. i guess its a good job now i diddnt do them as there is a good few hours work needed on each design.

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Much thanks

Mark
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by hawk_sh »

Hi John,

wow, what a surprise!

They look awesome.

What catches my eyes are those air to air missiles on the fuselage stations:
These fins look quite large for AIM-120 Amraams.
They look like Aim-7 Sparrows to me?
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by f4nutter »

they look bloody awsome John, can i help at all ?
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by John Young »

Thanks Mark, I hope I can give you a better opportunity if we are able to produce the German package.

Hartwig, I did say the weapons load was not definitive. I was just using what I already had for now until I decide how far the MBOA Meteor has penetrated the ranks since they first appeared on an RAF Typhoon in December 2018. I'll mod whatever appears current.

Ray, thanks for that, I'm sure you might like to paint something. Hold fire just for a moment though until I've made the FSX/P3D models.

John
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by Garysb »

John a Typhoon does not normally use its burners on a normal take off, generally only on "Performance departures"
Otherwise it looks great! :)

Cheers

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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by miljan »

Sweeeet, one of two I was expecting to see this time . Looks amazing.
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by petebramley »

WOW, what a nice suprise :-)

Not sure how much help I can give but if you need an ADE tweaking or flightplans amending (P3Dv4) to reflect new serials then I can certainly do that. The only time I held a paintbrush was many years ago at the family home and My dad soon took it off of me and told me to do something less destructive !!
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by Firebird »

Gents,
It occurs to me here that if you volunteer for take on a particular air arm that you could help John. When you do your research and if you find that the Austrian AF, for example, always uses the chute on touchdowns or always uses the brake on landing then let him know.
From a user point of view you will get a more accurate package and if any force does have SOPs for landing then it could well enable John to reduce the number of models slightly and therefore save time and effort.
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by John Young »

Garysb wrote: 15 Jun 2020, 18:04 John a Typhoon does not normally use its burners on a normal take off, generally only on "Performance departures"
Otherwise it looks great! :)

So is that to be with or without afterburners?

At the moment the afterburners are specified in the aircraft.cfg file for FS9 and will be the same for FSX when I come to make those models. However P3D will need embedded afterburners to avoid the "fireball" effect. Users can simply delete the AB light entries if the burners are not wanted in FS9 and FSX. To have both options would require the doubling of aircraft folders from say 8 countries to 16. For P3D and the embedded afterburners, that's potentially 8 countries x 8 models = 64 models or 128 if they are to be with and without afterburners, unless I do some sort of mix over the models.

Can you see why I need to constrain this?

Nick's models have used afterburners for many years now. Has anyone switched them off?

John
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by hawk_sh »

Regarding reducing the number of models I have a suggestion:

In case that there is no SOP regarding the use of air brake and/or drag chute would it be possible to add a condition regarding the day of the week: so on certain days it would use one or the other?

The weapon loadouts of the AI Su-22 for FS9 by Rainer Mehlin were modelled in that way.
Depending of the day of the week one model would show different loadouts.

Would something like this also work in FSX and P3D?
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by geoffj »

Hi John,

I have sent a PM with an excel file containing disposition of UK Typhoons as at Apr 2020, credits to Air Britain and Scramble

cheers,

Geoff
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by Jobza Guddun »

RAF Typhoons very rarely use the airbrake, it's not SOP but used as required. The chute is streamed every 28 (IIRC) days for checking, unless used as a box-ticking stream for the pilot or really needed during a landing. Basically, both systems only used if absolutely necessary. You may have also noticed that they fly touch and goes with the gear left down, once down.

Very simply, all to do with airframe fatigue management.

Italians seem to cycle all those systems whenever they like! Can't really speak for the other operators. Hope this helps.
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by TimC340 »

We talked about the airbrake/chute thing. Interesting that they're currently doing gear-down circuits - that's something we did on the Hunter for a while many years ago, but there were so many gear overstresses (the gear limiting speed was 250kts which was also the downwind speed - doh!), they pretty quickly realised that wasn't a sustainable technique.

The Typhoon, with its reasonably sophisticated fly-by-wire system and a delta wing, is able to manage drag vs power on the approach very well, unless it's very light. The F-15, in contrast, is much heavier, doesn't have the low speed lift/drag advantage of the delta, and is a very clean aircraft drag-wise (unless loaded). Hence the F15 will use airbrake on the approach when the Tiffy won't. The power lag for the go-round is a significant issue for military turbofans; they really don't want to have to use reheat for a go-round if they don't have to - it uses lots of gas and pisses off the neighbours - but the spool-up from idle takes an age, so it's often preferable to use high-drag techniques on the final approach so the thrust is relatively high, and the increase to go-round thrust is quick and quiet (for a certain value of quiet, obvs).

The F100 engine of the F-15 is 1960s technology, and a very early example of a military reheated turbofan. The EJ200 of the Typhoon is 20 years younger, much smaller, lighter, with far less rotating mass, and accelerates far more quickly - and it's controlled by a far more sophisticated FADEC than the EECU of the F100. This means that the Typhoon driver can rely on fast responses on the approach, and a very quick spool-up for the go round, even with highly disturbed intake airflow (ie manoeuvring close to the ground). Add to that the lower approach speed allowed by the delta wind and more sophisticated flight control system, and you get some idea of why the F-15 uses airbrake routinely while the Tiffy doesn't.
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by Jobza Guddun »

Tim,

They've done gear down circuits since very early days in service. At least 15 years that I can think of - is it me or does it seem like they only entered service a few years back!

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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by f4nutter »

to add my 10 cents worth John, i would prefer to see the burners ON you cant beat a tiffy in full power
could the burners be turned off in P3 by deleting the effect file ? for users that want them off !
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by TimC340 »

Jobza Guddun wrote: 15 Jun 2020, 21:51 Tim,

They've done gear down circuits since very early days in service. At least 15 years that I can think of - is it me or does it seem like they only entered service a few years back!

Jobza
Indeed! They were really just coming into service (and then really just the OEU) when I left the RAF in 1998, so I really didn’t see much of them at that time. I did later visit 11 Sqn Typhoons at Coningsby on occasion with my Dad (and later without him after he died) and I was very much impressed with the beast. I never got to fly it, though I did fly the simulator - though my Dad managed to get a back seat ride in a two-seater at the age of 78! Certainly from the sim, I got the impression that it was a very easy aeroplane to fly, though obviously very complex to operate beyond its basic capabilities. Interestingly, the sim graphics were rather less good than Orbx FSX/P3D stuff, but there were enough similarities that I wouldn’t be surprised if they were involved in that software.
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by Joseph29 »

Wow that is looking beautiful!!

I don't have a lot of NBAI Typhoon's installed so retiring them should be rather quick for me.
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by John Young »

Thanks for the feed back, most useful.
hawk_sh wrote: 15 Jun 2020, 19:40 Regarding reducing the number of models I have a suggestion:

In case that there is no SOP regarding the use of air brake and/or drag chute would it be possible to add a condition regarding the day of the week: so on certain days it would use one or the other?

The issue is not the number of models as such Hartwig, it's the length of time required to produce them for all 3 sim versions. I already have the air brake cut out and animated, so the work is done. A simple part name change (FS9) or a different animation tag (FSX and P3D) determines how the brake is deployed - approach or runway. Deleting the animation will seal it down. It's then a case of just allocating each of those compiled models to just a few aircraft in the aircraft.cfg files. That's very different to additional models requiring, say, new weapons parts.

By contrast I have no idea how to apply day of the week conditional animation in all 3 sims. It could take a few weeks of playing with code and repeated testing, waiting for a circuit to complete each time to see what happens, if anything. It's really not necessary if I use the method I've already set up.

I'm really keen to offer the air brake and chute as model options, because the animation in the Typhoon is limited compared to other models and would otherwise be quite a boring model. The Typhoon doesn't appear to use flaps for landing, but the flaperons/spoilerons do seem to deflect upwards after touch down to act like spoilers I think. I've animated that. The leading edge slats were also a puzzle to me for a while because they are not used as expected. They don't appear to be used for the take-off run, but do extend immediately a high alpha pitch up follows after rotation. I suspect that's software controlled. The same thing occurs in combat maneuvering I believe. The slats also don't appear to be used for landing. Because of all that, the AI engine can't really make use of the feature and users wouldn't really see the movement anyway, so I haven't modelled them.

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Tim, thanks for your explanations. The added drag and engine power for a lightly loaded Typhoon using the air brake on the runway was not an obvious thought when I was trying to understand what I was seeing in the videos. It's a bit similar to the Red Arrows using their brakes to increase power to generate more smoke perhaps.

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Ray, executive decision. I'll keep the afterburners. It might be dangerous for P3D users to delete the effect file that will be embedded in the P3D models. The sim will call for the file and if it's not there, it may object.

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Geoff, many thanks for the RAF serial numbers. Your spreadsheet is really useful.

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John
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Re: Eurofighter Typhoon

Post by bismarck »

What a wonderful suprise!!! :shock:

John, I can search for the Italians. Serials and scenery, that are for sure all available for FS9. Some of them where already converted for FSX.
I Vote for AB on.
Will search for the most common payloads.
As you all know, unfortunately I'm not able to paint, and I'm still on FS9.

PM you when I'll have something useful.

Thanks, Giorgio
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