The performance of MiG-29

At the beginning I must say, that I’m without doubt a true Fulcrum fanboy, but I will do my best to not be biased.

From the very beginning of the MiG-29 history, there was a certain legend surrounding this plane. It was established early by its spectacular airshow performances in late 80′ and early 90′. Of course big part of the myth was debunked when MiGs from the East Germany were introduced to the inventory of the Luftwaffe. However, the part concerning the superb WVR performance of the Fulcrum remained intact for several more years.

I must say that I grew up on the Fulcrum legend and the fact that it was a mainstay of our Polish Air Force until arrival of the F-16 certainly had something to do with this. However, after lecture of multiple exercise reports, pilots interviews etc. I realized that it is extremely hard to distinct the airframe performance from the performance of aircraft’s systems, most notably R-73/HMD combination, which for years remained unmatched by the Western counterparts even in the opinion of the US exchange pilots (I remember that one of them said, that in MiG-29 he is “untouchable” in the visual range, while being very critical on the aircraft itself).

In the case of for example teen fighters the situation is much clearer – for e.g. the F-16 multiple manuals and E-M diagrams can be found. For the Fulcrum we have the aerodynamic manual in Russian, which unfortunately is completely useless for me due to lack of language and aerodynamic skills necessary to extract any useful data.
Now let’s put aside all other factors: pilots skills, cockpit “switchology”, missiles, HMD, radar performance etc. – how does the MiG-29 compare in terms of pure aerodynamic performance to the contemporary fighters, like F-16, F/A-18 or Mirage 2000? To make it clear – I am not interested in the answer “who wins the dogfight”, as we all know that it can have very little to do with the airframe performance. What I would love to know, are simply the numbers: STR, ITR, corner velocity, acceleration etc. While as I indicated, I do not have skills do extract the data myself, I know there are multiple people in here, who have enough expertise to help me with this.
To be more specific, here are some of the most important questions:
– Does anyone have a reliable E-M diagram of MiG-29 calculated basing on its manual?
– How much truth is in the statement, that MiG-29 enjoys its advantage mainly in the low-speed region, as I’ve read that it both exhibits spectacular nose-pointing ability and is extremely sluggish in terms of handling in this region.
– How greatly the MiG’s performance is influenced by the fact, that it’s limited to 7G for speeds higher than 0.85M?
– What are the real advantages and disadvantages of the lack of FBW system?
– How does its roll rate compare to other fighters?
And one more thing – while I know that there is a lot of X vs Y debate in my topic, please do not turn this into a flamewar of “my fighter is better” type. Let’s focus simply on the physics.