Who wants to buy this? (MiG-29)

Adam, where are you !?!

;-))

This link is interesting. World records climbing to 30,000 meters (98,425 feet).

This is apparently the record today (it seems?), and the rather non-intuitive flight path. (F-15)

Isn’t that what’s referred to as a ‘zoom climb’. where the inertia of the airplane is used to attain the highest possible altitude? IIRC the Soviets used that technique to shoot down an U2. The U2 was considered invulnerable as it flew above the max alt of the Soviet fighters. Worked until someone had an idea…

U2 was shot down by a SAM.

That particular ROC is tricky and certainly a value we don’t take into consideration when flying.
Those 65k fpm are just a max instantaneous climb.

In the F18, the stby VSI goes up to 6k fpm so above that you won’t be able to see your VS. If you select NAV as master mode, you can see your VS in the HUD but only up to 16k fpm
In my aircraft, flying a normal climb you set 350kts up to M.83 and that should give you around 10-12k fpm. If you are flying in a clean configuration (no ordnance, external tanks, etc) or you are using burners, you might be getting at around 20k fpm while keeping 350kts/.83

Regards

That’s fascinating. Thanks for posting that, speed

speed wrote:

Those 65k fpm are just a max instantaneous climb

I guess if you fly along 5km runway, get 350kts then pull 9Gs should give you around that 65k climb number while bleeding some speed going up (your initial ROC will be roughly 0.5*V^3/G^2 all in m/s units)

Doing the same “pull up” at 140kts, 3G should give 8k fpm, on continuous climb at constant IAS or Mach, I think you will get something along the limits of the VSI

Ibra wrote:

I think they mean 6500ft/min? unless you VS = 1000ft/s which is higher than speed of sound !!

65.000 ft/min is correct, unloaded Mig29 an break the sound barier in vertical flight, its a widely known fact.

Like the EE Lightning.

Off_Field wrote:

Like the EE Lightning.

I think Falcons, Hornets, Typhoons or Mirage2000 are better comparisons to Mig29

I doubt the Lightning could do a sustained vertical climb, let alone exceed mach 1 while doing it, because I have spoken to an ex RAF guy who told me one Lightning pilot was showing off and pointed the plane vertically up after takeoff, and it did a tail slide and crashed.