Modelling the F-4 Phantom – a technical treatise
One of our alpha testers recently casually mentioned that he was an Israeli Air Force F-4 Phantom flight instructor; without doubt, one of my favourite aircraft.
I consequently exchanged emails with him about every 30 minutes or so, on average, 12-hours a day for five days or so. As a result, we have been doing dozens of changes to get the F-4 Phantom in X-Plane flying perfectly. And the success we’ve realised is beyond my wildest expectations. So here we go.
Creating a high-fidelity F-4 flight model
First off, thanks to this intensive, minimum sleep, once-in-a-lifetime week, we now have an F-4 flight model that is accurate enough to be used for actual F-4 flight instruction. It flies just like the real plane through its huge flight envelope: from dirty, low-speed, approaches to high-G manoeuvring, to Mach 2.2 travel at FL500, to the ceiling of FL600, with acceleration, deceleration and gliding all representing the real aircraft as close as an instructor pilot can tell by flying it.
