Perhaps if i was a dwarf, my thumb is little short of 5cm so that would make it two inches…

But only if you have big feet – i’ve got size 47 in my feet (that would be 12 for British, and 14 American, and i have difficulty finding properly sized shoes even here in Large People Country), translating to 31,5 centimetres, which equals to just a tiny bit over 1 foot.

Is a little over a metre in my case, yet a yard is only some 90 centimetres…
Either i am a terrible mutant of some sort, or this “approximating with your body as reference” is a non-starter unless you’re grotesquely misformed.

Nope, the metric system is not based on that. It is standardised as such, but not based on. The metric system is based on the meter (duh), with one meter being one step. Walk a thousand steps and you’ve walked a kilometer, and put one hundred centimeter-sized sugarcubes in a row and you’ve got yourself a meter. Intuitively enough, and better yet: you can immediately relate the size of one object to another. How many yards are there in a mile? What sort of mile are we talking about, anyway?

Better yet with the metric system, is that you can make an immediate guesstimate of an object’s weight and/or volume. You know one cubic meter of water weighs one thousand kilos (a ton, to use one of those intuitive words although i doubt you image the right size of barrel if you imagine a ‘ton’), and work from that on.

Only proper reason (but never admitted by those traditionalist Britons, Liberians, Burmese or Americans) i can think of, is that a pint is slightly more than half a litre. Unless you figure out that water is at it’s highest density at four degrees, and so a lukewarm pint of ale actually contains less beer than half a litre of lager at a more drinkable temperature 😀

How tall are you in “hands”? 😀

Thanks for taking the time to explain things INO.

F-16A versus MiG-23 early 1980s

advantages are for both sides, in agility terms the F-16 wins, in BVR armament the F-16A did not have any, the MiG-23 wins armed with R-24, perhaps you might not know it but some russian reports have said that the early MiG-23MLD agressors could even defeat MiG-29s and Su-27s at BVR

The MiG-29 did enjoy a total advantage in the early 1980s, the F-16 A did not have any BVR weapon.

The F-18 is more or less in the class of the F-16, however early F-16 were in the niche of the MiG-21 and Mirage III

In order for BVR to be useful it has to actually work. My point being is the system couldn’t even make R-27 work later in the E and E war… RuTech BVR up to that point in fighter v fighter = useless.

Early F-16s BTW to inform you better, were like early F-18s, the best day bomber as far as accuracy. Early F-16s had the t-shirt and trophy to prove it from Scotland beating out A-7s, Jags, F-111s which were up to that time damn good at day bombing. Mirage III? You are joking right? Not even in the same class in cockpit man-machine interface. F-16s could power out of turning. MIIIs weren’t tops at accelerating out of turning fights and certainly wouldn’t be in the same class as over all combat ability of an F-16 accept for some BVR that also wasn’t all that great. MiG-21? You are joking right? F-16 outclasses that all the way through including ease of maintenance.
For a niche fighter as you say… in Desert Storm, a Squadron of Guard F-16As with nothing but 2000lb ers and a smile on their face went right after a SA-2 complex and hit it, flak SAMs and all, Would be amusing to see an MIII or a MiG-21 try and do the things A model F-16s did in Desert Storm.

F-15 can go a little slower in WVR and accelerate out of the problem. Note that the “ramps”, at the front of the intakes move into the downward position at slower speeds putting some air over the wing at high AOA pulls …. and of course help with landing approaches too. That statement isn’t some ringing endorsement of x vs. y.

It is all water under the bridge now. There is only money enough in the Super Hornet program for spiral improvements in the existing plan. There are still things like software updates, clearing a new weapon for use here or there ( which btw they are only clearing weapons to hang on the SH that they actually need not nice to have stuff). Right now they are really operating on a shoestring budget. No one in these thin money days is going to stick their neck out and say they need something like a new wing. I think it would be killer to have a new wing for Es with just 4 hardpoints with no toe-out would be nice for air to air. That fantasy will probably never happen. Navy is so tight with funds right now. On paper the Super Hornet program looks really great the way it is managed. Compare that to some of the ship building programs right now that are in trouble and I don’t think you will see anyone in the Super Hornet program stating any radical improvements for Super that aren’t on the plan. I think the only thing recently that popped up was that wideband IRST in the front of a Centerline fuel tank gizmo. That ended up being some perceived need from someone, wasn’t all that expensive and it got funded.

Of course INO could speak better on the topic of the Super Hornet roadmap, but I think he would agree. The story of how the Super Hornet came into being good and bad is a fascinating one.

Mig23,

Here is something the F-15 doesn’t have problems with nor even the F-16…. powering through the vertical with a combat load. Also the contempt of engagement thing. Super wont’ be contempt of engaging anything. I.E. deciding when and how to enter a fight because one possesses the power/energy to do so. Super Hornet is a very nice strike fighter. However the power/acceleration just isn’t there to do sustained power games.

http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/media/approach/vault/articles/2003/0606.htm

BFM Is Always a Good Deal … Isn’t It?

by Lcdr. Frank “Salami” Silebi/ FA-18

Finally, a good deal flight where I would get to be a pilot again and fight against two instructors. (Being short manned of Weapons System Officers (WSOs) in the FRS, pilots seemed to fly in the back seat quite a bit and rarely fly Basic Fighter Maneuver (BFM) flights, so this really was a good deal.) I was in my second year as an instructor at VFA-122, the Rhino (formerly known as Super Hornet) FRS. It was an early morning flight launching from the beautiful California Central Valley, flying over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and into Owens Valley for a 2v1 (where two aircraft cap on station while a third aircraft acts as an adversary and attempts to jump them unseen). I was flying with an instructor WSO in my jet as the adversary and the other two aircraft were two seat FA-18F’s acting as the blue section.

Our initial runs were uneventful and the blue air section easily detected our aircraft and dispatched us quickly. My WSO and I devised a game plan to avoid detection on the last run. We headed to the north and down low into the weeds. As the blue air section continued to CAP, we turned into the section and stayed below them for a little while. As they turned away from us, we decided to get some separation from them to the north, always maintaining sight. When they turned back at us, we immediately began to give them “bogey dope” in hopes of alerting them of some bad-guy presence in the area. Heading south, we climbed up towards their altitude and they continued tracking north, oblivious to our location. With the eastern most fighter in sight, we made a climbing right hand turn into the blue air section. The wing flash gave us away, and they were immediately alert to our presence. The section broke into our aircraft and quickly took away most of the advantage we had hoped for. Still in a climb, we passed the eastern fighter and climbed to merge with the western fighter. At the merge with the second fighter, we were 45 degrees nose high and slowing through 230 KCAS. We could see that the first fighter we had merged with had extended to the north after merging with us. The second fighter decided to drop the anchor and fight while his wingman extended for a shot. My only hope was to continue pulling the nose through the vertical, merge with the second fighter, and then turn north toward the extending fighter. As our nose went through the vertical, our airspeed had decayed to about 120 KCAS. No problem, I was in a Rhino, an aircraft virtually idiot proof, no worries about losing control. We continued to pull our nose over the top to make another merge happen with the second fighter (the one we merged with last). Crossing through 45 degrees nose high, inverted, airspeed indicated slowing below 80 KCAS. I could now see the fighter that had extended to the North. Our nose approached the horizon as the HUD indicated 48 KCAS (it doesn’t go any lower than that). The second fighter was now at the top of his loop pointing his nose back at us. I pushed the stick forward to prevent the nose from dropping too much below the horizon, hoping that I could merge with this fighter and then pitch back to the extending aircraft toward the North and jam any shots that he may have. Our jets left wing started to drop (our HUD still indicated 48 KCAS). I relaxed the stick a little, put the wings back under us (or actually back over us, since we were inverted), and fed the stick forward again. The left wing started to drop rapidly and I realized that I was no longer flying the aircraft. I immediately called “Knock it off, ballistic” over the radio and told my WSO that I was no longer flying the aircraft. The left wing continued to drop until it had flipped the aircraft right side up and then a little more, so that our right wing was pointing at the ground and the left was straight up in the air. We had rolled 270 degrees and were now upright as the airplane shuddered side to side. My WSO followed my call on the radio with an immediate “Knock it off, out of control”. Everyone in the flight rogered up the “knock it off” call and the second fighter cleared our aircraft but continued to monitor us in case altitude would become an issue. In the mean time, our aircraft shook side to side and was falling out of the sky like a leaf falling off a tree (only a little faster). Our right wing was now pointing up 90 degrees and our left wing was pointing at the ground, this was followed by another iteration in the opposite direction. Since the start of the departure, I had already started to verbalize the emergency procedures to the WSO and had only gotten to retarding the throttles to idle when the nose suddenly “broke” and the aircraft was flying again. Pointing down about 50 degrees nose low with the airspeed increasing, I noted our altitude now passing 10,000 AGL. “That was interesting” was all I could muster to tell my WSO. He was a little shell-shocked. We had both flown Tomcats before and neither of us had been involved in a departure in that fire breathing behemoth. Why had we departed? Duh! I had put us in a zero airspeed situation! And then, I tried to keep us there to hold the nose from falling through the horizon. Although my scan was good and I was well aware of my airspeed and nose position throughout the engagement, my decision making process in flying the aircraft was clouded by the tactical game plan. Since basic flight school, all aviators are reminded of the old adage “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate”, but where does tactical employment fall in? It’s part of navigating, your secondary priority! I chose poorly and placed navigation in front of aviating and put us into an airspeed excursion that most aircraft wouldn’t even give you the opportunity to achieve. My complacency and confidence in the flying qualities of the Rhino lulled me into believing it could do more than most. We cannot forget, that as magical as modern aircraft may seem, they are still limited to the laws that govern controlled flight. Never let your scan break down, but most importantly aviate first then Navigate and Communicate.

Lcdr. Silebi is the Safety Officer for VFA-102.

Great! Thanks for posting. Nice napalm drop. 😀