Originally Posted by
Genghis the Engineer
Flown F16s or F/A-18s, no. Flown (back seat) FJ, and studied combat performance, yes.
Max rate and min radius are both primarily down - in any continuous turn - to available excess thrust in a fast jet, particularly at lower altitudes. Higher up you can turn potential energy into continuous turn rate - but clearly will lose height doing so.
Instantaneous are down to the stall margins - but almost always there's not enough thrust to sustain what the wing can, indefinitely.
G
Cheers for chiming in. Looking at the Turn Performance graph it seems like the left edge of the dog house is AoA limited (Cat 1?) so equivalent to an theoretical critical angle? It also looks like potential energy required to maintain the turn is taken into account and overlayed on the carpet plot with potential energy loss/gain represented as Ps in feet per second so Min Radius looks like it occurs at ~-100fps and Max Rate at ~-1100fps? Guessing you would have to go back to the climb data to determine if the turn is sustainable.
So back to square one? It looks like that even with potential energy accounted there is still a huge spread between Max Rate and Min Radius... 8G vs 2.6G
Guaranteed I am missing something here. Just not sure what it is or even if I have already said it...