I agree with you, this build is of high quality and deserves more attention. I'd say your biggest problem is the screen shots. It's clear you wanted to create realistic pictures showing off the night/all-weather capabilities of this plane, but because they're dark it's hard to make out all the details you included. Also, for some reason you only uploaded it with one preview pic instead of three. Always use three, always show the plane from three different angles. After working on something like this for weeks and weeks, you're not looking at it the way someone here on the website looks at it for the first time, you know about all the details but we need to see them.
Lastly, and I know this isn't fair, people tend not to upvote stuff that says "Based on" even if it is based on something you yourself made! Again, unfair, but that's how people are.
Big part count builds like this need BOLD, crystal clear images to show off all the work you put in, especially considering how few people download builds with more than 800 or so parts.
@Mustang51 Thanks! I just added some specific info that may be helpful, sorry I didn't get that up there when I first posted this thing. And thanks again for the kind words and spotlight.
Hey, can you link me when you post this? I need to learn to to build good flaps and I think I can learn a lot from your build. I'm pretty good at making good looking wings, but the hidden "real" wing is often frustrating.
If something gets hit with a torpedo, that thing is going to explode. Torpedoes often carry an explosive charge equivalent to more than half a metric ton of dynamite and explosives are even more powerful underwater than above. Large vessels have been torn in half by a single torpedo hit.
@MarinoYeet The concept is fine, rain small bullets to terrify infantry. The USA eventually perfected it with the AC-47, AC-130, etc. But the Soviets should have brainstormed over their design a bit more before building such a deeply flawed design.
As for planes that could usefully bring many guns to bear, here's a photo of an A-26 Invader firing 14 .50 caliber machine guns at once. The USAF would end up using that plane until the the 1970's because it was so good at ground attack.
@brians1209 Put it like a block length ahead of the front glass, paint all the parts really bright orange and make sure all the parts are so skinny that you can't see it unless you're in cockpit view
@brians1209 No. I oversimplified. The sight had an auto-rangefinder to assist with aim, and several useful indicators. This video gives a pretty good idea of what it looked like.
The key takeaway here is that most fighters were equipped with radar that could tell you if something was in front of you, and how far. They could tell you if they were higher, lower, or off to one side but only within a narrow cone, like very large flashlight beam sticking out your nose. But it wasn't easy to use. If your target was between you and the ground, he was basically invisible because all the radar screen would show you was the ground. And the screens were terrible.
It wasn't until the F-4 Phantom II that fighter planes were given really advanced radar, most other stuff in the 60's relied on help from ground based radar or AWACS.
Radar itself was pretty advanced in the 1960's, there were even experimental aircraft that had built-in ground avoidance. But the actual radar display was exceedingly primitive, not any where close to what modern people associate with a radar screen. Here's an image of the radar screen from a MIG-21 Fishbed, one of the best fighters of the 1960's. No fancy "heads up" display or anything, just a WWR style holographic gun site and a crummy looking CRT screen down by your knees.
Radar was generally used to locate enemies, but heat seeking missiles usually proved to be more reliable than radar guided ones when it came to the actual fighting.
UK fighters came in 2 flavors:
supersonic interceptors that were extremely fast, extremely short range, and only good at shooting down other planes seeE.E. Lightning
Or
Slower, subsonic multi role jets that had longer range and traded some air to air power for the ability to do a variety of jobs like ground attack seeBlackburn Buccaneer
Airplanes are a balancing act. The further apart the yellow ball (lift) is from the red ball (mass) the more force is required to pull the nose up. You can increase that force by building larger elevators on your tail, by flying at a higher speed, or by increasing the size of your wings. Or you could just move your main wings forward or whatever heavy stuff you crammed into the nose a bit further back.
Large attack jets such as this are assigned two syllable B names (for Jet Bomber) like Blackjack, Bison or Backfire. A two syllable F name means "jet fighter."
I like the details here and you really got the feel of early supersonic bombers. This is very nice to see and I look forward to your next plane.
You can learn about the history of the real life Top Gun program here.
Long story short, in the old days, US pilots weren't trained to dogfight and it was a disaster over Vietnam. So the Navy opened a dogfighting school and used American planes painted as Soviet ones in mock dogfights. The Northrop F-5 was the American stand-in for the Mikoyan-Gurevich MIG-21. When the movie TOP-GUN was made, the film makers used footage of the real-life instructors flying their Soviet painted F-5's and called them "MIG-28's"
@ChiChiWerx If Simple Planes does one thing, it lets everyone be a test pilot. Few other games or simulators allow you to experience bugged flight controls, murderously slim performance envelopes, or the simple joy of half your aircraft mysteriously disintegrating for no apparent reason.
My lizard brain just went "Oh, left is right and right is left whenever I try to do something stupid. Ok." Eventually I was able to translate that into "Stop doing stupid things" but for the first five minutes I was perfectly happy just using reverse inputs while twisting around in ways that would probably have drained all the blood from my head IRL.
The master of biplanes builds the mother of all biplanes for his final project. I know it's been a long time, but I hope you return to build some more.
What a pleasant surprise. I logged in to see what's new and boom, there's an F5 on the front page. I love F5's. Ooh, it's the elusive Tigershark. Chichi made it? I had to try it out!
I was quite disturbed when the fuel tank flew off the belly (I had no idea that could happen in SP), but I didn't have much time to consider the matter because it was around that time I was introduced to some vicious aileron reversal. (Not sure if that's the proper term for it, but pitching all the way up certainly causes roll input to get very tricky). You've been making great looking jets for a long time on here (especially your 1950's designs) but this flight model is very sophisticated by SP standards and I am mightily impressed. Thank you for taking the time to build this and share it.
@ChiChiWerx @Freerider2142 The USN version of the F-5 is known today as the F/A-18 :b
@JumpingJack oh jeez, I made that comment over a year ago... I think it has something to do with multiplying the dimensions as opposed to assigning them all a number. But I could be very, very wrong. I don't build anymore.
@Nerfenthusiast In the early 50's technology was moving pretty fast. The Starfighter represented the cutting edge of aircraft design, especially in terms of performance. Tensions with the Soviets and the threat of nuclear war made it imperative to utilize science as quickly as possible. In this case, it created a jet dangerously ahead of its time. Pilots weren't ready to handle that much speed, leaders weren't clear minded enough to utilize the jet properly and finally, designers had sacrificed too much practicality for the plane to be safe.
@RedRoosterII They had to make quite a few sacrifices to achieve mach 2 performance, engines back then weren't nearly as powerful as what is available today and a lot of the design knowledge we take for granted had to be learned the hard way.
@RedRoosterII It was literally the first combat plane that could hit mach 2 in level flight. In an era when speed was everything, she was the fastest. It just so happened that WW3 never happened and for that we should all be grateful.
@RedRoosterII These planes were literally the best in the world when they were designed. Unfortunately, they were very difficult to learn, and used in ways they were never intended. A high altitude interceptor makes a very poor ground attack platform, and the bleeding edge fighter technology of the early 1950's was incredibly short lived. There are a lot of good ideas in this design, the M-61 Vulcan, Boundary Layer Control System, and J-79 engine, for instance.
@RedRoosterII The WINGS doc mostly covers the F-105 model G , the two-seater SAM suppressing "Wild Weasel" variant.
This version is the D variant, it made up the bulk of the production run and also handled the majority of Airforce strike sorties during Operation Rolling Thunder. They also talk about it on WINGS but for more specific info, I reccomend this guy.
You should build whatever inspires you! You do good work and I think a lot of people really admire your skill, so don't worry about what you should or shouldn't make. Just make what you really like.
@Minecraftpoweer I mean blow through the straw so you don't have to put your head inside your computer case! lol
I understand broke. Seriously though, don't touch anything inside the case. Just putting a finger on a stick of RAM can damage it and make it slower if you don't know how to properly ground yourself. Anyway, fans make noise, as long as it's spinning, it's still good. Just get some of that dust out of there.
@Zoomzoom999 Some parts can use multiple paint colors at the same time. The sections of the part correspond to the different names, some parts have more sections than others, some can only use one.
I prefer accuracy over detail. Some people spend weeks adding stickers and signs and textures to their plane, then put the landing gear in the wrong place and make the wings too small. FIRSTI look for the features of the plane that make it unique. (The huge afterburners on the Mig-29, the long nose and gull wings on a Stuka, the moving nose on a Concorde)
Second I look for performance. Can it land safely? Does it fly properly? Does it turn way too fast?
THIRD I look for authenticity. Is it the right shape and size? Is it proportioned well? Does it carry the right weapons?
FOURTH Last is detail. Detail is extra. It doesn't do anything but it looks cool. Cool looking stuff that doesn't work is not cool to me. Building replicas means learning about how something works, how it was made, not just slapping a shark mouth on the nose. Building creative, imaginary things should still be about making something that works, that is believable, that visually matches what it is supposed to do.
I agree with you, this build is of high quality and deserves more attention. I'd say your biggest problem is the screen shots. It's clear you wanted to create realistic pictures showing off the night/all-weather capabilities of this plane, but because they're dark it's hard to make out all the details you included. Also, for some reason you only uploaded it with one preview pic instead of three. Always use three, always show the plane from three different angles. After working on something like this for weeks and weeks, you're not looking at it the way someone here on the website looks at it for the first time, you know about all the details but we need to see them.
Lastly, and I know this isn't fair, people tend not to upvote stuff that says "Based on" even if it is based on something you yourself made! Again, unfair, but that's how people are.
Big part count builds like this need BOLD, crystal clear images to show off all the work you put in, especially considering how few people download builds with more than 800 or so parts.
+1@Mustang51 Thanks! I just added some specific info that may be helpful, sorry I didn't get that up there when I first posted this thing. And thanks again for the kind words and spotlight.
+1@TrislandianAlliance @trolman Let us pray the Sealord hears our plea
+1Zhou, you're a legend.
+1@bps21 I don't think I'll be able to do that. The plane I was considering would be THIS
+1SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY...
+1Thanks.
+1@OliveAerospace I know the feeling, I just came back from a years absence
+1Congratulations on your first build
+1The people are pleased by your achievement here, comrade! Allow me to congratulate you on a job well done.
+1T Solidarity, comrade!
+1Hey, can you link me when you post this? I need to learn to to build good flaps and I think I can learn a lot from your build. I'm pretty good at making good looking wings, but the hidden "real" wing is often frustrating.
+1If something gets hit with a torpedo, that thing is going to explode. Torpedoes often carry an explosive charge equivalent to more than half a metric ton of dynamite and explosives are even more powerful underwater than above. Large vessels have been torn in half by a single torpedo hit.
+1Sounds like your mobile is bad.
+1@MarinoYeet The concept is fine, rain small bullets to terrify infantry. The USA eventually perfected it with the AC-47, AC-130, etc. But the Soviets should have brainstormed over their design a bit more before building such a deeply flawed design.
As for planes that could usefully bring many guns to bear, here's a photo of an A-26 Invader firing 14 .50 caliber machine guns at once. The USAF would end up using that plane until the the 1970's because it was so good at ground attack.
+1@brians1209 Hmmm, that's a good question. Not sure.
+1@brians1209 Put it like a block length ahead of the front glass, paint all the parts really bright orange and make sure all the parts are so skinny that you can't see it unless you're in cockpit view
+1@brians1209 No. I oversimplified. The sight had an auto-rangefinder to assist with aim, and several useful indicators. This video gives a pretty good idea of what it looked like.
The key takeaway here is that most fighters were equipped with radar that could tell you if something was in front of you, and how far. They could tell you if they were higher, lower, or off to one side but only within a narrow cone, like very large flashlight beam sticking out your nose. But it wasn't easy to use. If your target was between you and the ground, he was basically invisible because all the radar screen would show you was the ground. And the screens were terrible.
It wasn't until the F-4 Phantom II that fighter planes were given really advanced radar, most other stuff in the 60's relied on help from ground based radar or AWACS.
+1@randomusername Clamp is so lovely.
+1Radar itself was pretty advanced in the 1960's, there were even experimental aircraft that had built-in ground avoidance. But the actual radar display was exceedingly primitive, not any where close to what modern people associate with a radar screen. Here's an image of the radar screen from a MIG-21 Fishbed, one of the best fighters of the 1960's. No fancy "heads up" display or anything, just a WWR style holographic gun site and a crummy looking CRT screen down by your knees.
Radar was generally used to locate enemies, but heat seeking missiles usually proved to be more reliable than radar guided ones when it came to the actual fighting.
UK fighters came in 2 flavors:
supersonic interceptors that were extremely fast, extremely short range, and only good at shooting down other planes see E.E. Lightning
Or
Slower, subsonic multi role jets that had longer range and traded some air to air power for the ability to do a variety of jobs like ground attack see Blackburn Buccaneer
+1Could be a few days for me, @work.
+1Airplanes are a balancing act. The further apart the yellow ball (lift) is from the red ball (mass) the more force is required to pull the nose up. You can increase that force by building larger elevators on your tail, by flying at a higher speed, or by increasing the size of your wings. Or you could just move your main wings forward or whatever heavy stuff you crammed into the nose a bit further back.
+1Large attack jets such as this are assigned two syllable B names (for Jet Bomber) like Blackjack, Bison or Backfire. A two syllable F name means "jet fighter."
I like the details here and you really got the feel of early supersonic bombers. This is very nice to see and I look forward to your next plane.
+1I've been working on one of these myself, a very interesting bird and quite ahead of its time.
+1Mikoyan-Gurevich only make fighters, but yeah, looks good.
+1You can learn about the history of the real life Top Gun program here.
Long story short, in the old days, US pilots weren't trained to dogfight and it was a disaster over Vietnam. So the Navy opened a dogfighting school and used American planes painted as Soviet ones in mock dogfights. The Northrop F-5 was the American stand-in for the Mikoyan-Gurevich MIG-21. When the movie TOP-GUN was made, the film makers used footage of the real-life instructors flying their Soviet painted F-5's and called them "MIG-28's"
+1@ChiChiWerx If Simple Planes does one thing, it lets everyone be a test pilot. Few other games or simulators allow you to experience bugged flight controls, murderously slim performance envelopes, or the simple joy of half your aircraft mysteriously disintegrating for no apparent reason.
My lizard brain just went "Oh, left is right and right is left whenever I try to do something stupid. Ok." Eventually I was able to translate that into "Stop doing stupid things" but for the first five minutes I was perfectly happy just using reverse inputs while twisting around in ways that would probably have drained all the blood from my head IRL.
+1The master of biplanes builds the mother of all biplanes for his final project. I know it's been a long time, but I hope you return to build some more.
+1@Freerider2142 Pretty much. The engines, radar, 20mm cannon and payload were all perfectly adequate in the 50's and 60's but tech moved forward..
+1What a pleasant surprise. I logged in to see what's new and boom, there's an F5 on the front page. I love F5's. Ooh, it's the elusive Tigershark. Chichi made it? I had to try it out!
I was quite disturbed when the fuel tank flew off the belly (I had no idea that could happen in SP), but I didn't have much time to consider the matter because it was around that time I was introduced to some vicious aileron reversal. (Not sure if that's the proper term for it, but pitching all the way up certainly causes roll input to get very tricky). You've been making great looking jets for a long time on here (especially your 1950's designs) but this flight model is very sophisticated by SP standards and I am mightily impressed. Thank you for taking the time to build this and share it.
@ChiChiWerx @Freerider2142 The USN version of the F-5 is known today as the F/A-18 :b
+1@JumpingJack No problem at all, I am glad to hear you figured it out.
+1@JumpingJack oh jeez, I made that comment over a year ago... I think it has something to do with multiplying the dimensions as opposed to assigning them all a number. But I could be very, very wrong. I don't build anymore.
+1@AtomicCashew He's a NECROMANCER!
+1@Nerfenthusiast In the early 50's technology was moving pretty fast. The Starfighter represented the cutting edge of aircraft design, especially in terms of performance. Tensions with the Soviets and the threat of nuclear war made it imperative to utilize science as quickly as possible. In this case, it created a jet dangerously ahead of its time. Pilots weren't ready to handle that much speed, leaders weren't clear minded enough to utilize the jet properly and finally, designers had sacrificed too much practicality for the plane to be safe.
+1AWWWW YISSSSS
+1@RedRoosterII They had to make quite a few sacrifices to achieve mach 2 performance, engines back then weren't nearly as powerful as what is available today and a lot of the design knowledge we take for granted had to be learned the hard way.
+1@RedRoosterII It was literally the first combat plane that could hit mach 2 in level flight. In an era when speed was everything, she was the fastest. It just so happened that WW3 never happened and for that we should all be grateful.
+1@RedRoosterII These planes were literally the best in the world when they were designed. Unfortunately, they were very difficult to learn, and used in ways they were never intended. A high altitude interceptor makes a very poor ground attack platform, and the bleeding edge fighter technology of the early 1950's was incredibly short lived. There are a lot of good ideas in this design, the M-61 Vulcan, Boundary Layer Control System, and J-79 engine, for instance.
+1@jamesPLANESii lololol
+1@RedRoosterII The WINGS doc mostly covers the F-105 model G , the two-seater SAM suppressing "Wild Weasel" variant.
This version is the D variant, it made up the bulk of the production run and also handled the majority of Airforce strike sorties during Operation Rolling Thunder. They also talk about it on WINGS but for more specific info, I reccomend this guy.
+1I wonder if Fiat had a good reputation back when they mostly made airplanes. lol
Anyway, another beautiful bird, nice work.
+1You should build whatever inspires you! You do good work and I think a lot of people really admire your skill, so don't worry about what you should or shouldn't make. Just make what you really like.
+1@Minecraftpoweer I mean blow through the straw so you don't have to put your head inside your computer case! lol
I understand broke. Seriously though, don't touch anything inside the case. Just putting a finger on a stick of RAM can damage it and make it slower if you don't know how to properly ground yourself. Anyway, fans make noise, as long as it's spinning, it's still good. Just get some of that dust out of there.
+1@Zoomzoom999 Some parts can use multiple paint colors at the same time. The sections of the part correspond to the different names, some parts have more sections than others, some can only use one.
+1@CoolPeach You've done a great job, and I think he agrees.
+1I want to give you extra upvotes just for making Bogdanx fly something with so many parts!
+1You like his posts because he was stealing them from our most talented builders.
+1@Chancey21 Yeah. I made one plane with working dials, but I don't think it's worth all the issues so I don't do that anymore.
+1I prefer accuracy over detail. Some people spend weeks adding stickers and signs and textures to their plane, then put the landing gear in the wrong place and make the wings too small.
FIRSTI look for the features of the plane that make it unique. (The huge afterburners on the Mig-29, the long nose and gull wings on a Stuka, the moving nose on a Concorde)
Second I look for performance. Can it land safely? Does it fly properly? Does it turn way too fast?
THIRD I look for authenticity. Is it the right shape and size? Is it proportioned well? Does it carry the right weapons?
FOURTH Last is detail. Detail is extra. It doesn't do anything but it looks cool. Cool looking stuff that doesn't work is not cool to me. Building replicas means learning about how something works, how it was made, not just slapping a shark mouth on the nose. Building creative, imaginary things should still be about making something that works, that is believable, that visually matches what it is supposed to do.
+1You make all those dials yourself? Very nice.
+1