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Something for your consideration: you may want to make two models with different sets of animation, land and carrier. The carrier version should keep wings in oversweep until cleared for takeoff and put them back in oversweep immediately upon completing landing roll. But you probably are thinking of all this already.
Something for your consideration: you may want to make two models with different sets of animation, land and carrier. The carrier version should keep wings in oversweep until cleared for takeoff and put them back in oversweep immediately upon completing landing roll. But you probably are thinking of all this already.
Misha,
Already on my mind. I am going to make 2 versions. "WET" and "DRY". The wet one will be equipped for carrier ops, i.e. the tailhook extends during landing and the catapult arm lowers for take off. "DRY" will have none of those animations and will be for land ops. From the photos Ive seen, they lok like they taxi with wings swept anyway so Ill be modelling that.
Thought I'd share some of the latest shots from this afternoon for you. Nearly there, the exterior model is almost complete, apart from a few cosmetic gear arms, and the like. Then onto the cokpit.
The Tomcat swing sweep had 4 modes, automatic, manual, emergency and ground attack. The 2 commonly used were automatic and ground attack.
In flight the Tomcats wing sweep was variable from a minimum of 20 degrees to a maximum of 68 degrees. In automatic mode, the wing sweep angle for both takeoff and landing was 20 degrees and at speeds of less then mach 0.4 the wing only sweeps through 2 degrees. It then remains constant at 22 degrees up to mach 0.72 and then begins to really sweep back reaching its maximum of 68 degrees at mach 1.2.
Manual sweep mode could over ride automatic mode, but was seldom used and was programmed to prevent over extension at high speeds.
Emergency mode was hopefully seldom used, but would allow full wing extension at any speed.
Ground attack mode locked the wings at 55 degrees and was used for both bombing and strafing runs.
In addition the wings had an oversweep position of 75 degrees for carrier parking.
When the wings were swept back 68 degrees in supersonic flight the Tomcat began to become excessively stable and lose much of its maneuverability, so what were called glove veins were added to the leading edge of the wing glove. These small retractable triangular shaped surfaces extend at mach 1.4 destabilizing the forward area of the Tomcat and actually allowed the Tomcat to pull a 7.5 g turn at mach 2.
For the purposes of the NBAI F-14D the glove veins are probably only of significance in that they are automatically extended their full 15 degrees in ground attack mode at speeds in excess of mach 0.35.
If you need any more information on other aspects of the F-14D such as speed brake, slats, flaps and spoilers, etc., please let me know.
Mike
Last edited by mikewmac on 11 May 2007, 19:14, edited 1 time in total.