I got to do a little flight time in the Dark Star this evening. Nice…!
I will need to learn how to punch through the sound barrier. I didnt make it tonight, turned around and tried for a landing. Not easy when you cannot see the runway. Even flying from outside, she is a little bit like Concorde, flying on approach with high nose angle, close to stall. Unfortunately, I went into stall and dropped like a beautiful, shiny, black brick. But… A fun flight.
Well done, Team Asobo.
EDIT: I found the plane in the hangers section of the simulator. If you cant find it, its under ‘Experimental’ as the manufacturer.
One thing that I found stunning that caught my attention, was the amazing terrain of Nevada, the mountains with their high detail, running fluid on my computer. So beautiful. This sim has shown me what a beautiful planet this is. Those mountains around Area 51 must be loaded with minerals, judging by the colors.
This is how to go MACH 9.0, you can do the challenge but following the objectives will not get you very far.
Take-off with full power + afterburner
Rotate at 180 kts to 10 degree pitch
Retract the gear, maintain 10 pitch-up
Reaching MACH 0.9, pitch up to 20 deg
Maintain MACH 0.9 to about 26000 ft
Roll inverted, then pull at +2g to -20 deg
Altitude tops at 30.000 ft before descent
Just before -20 pitch, roll to wings level
Then start to pull up at +1.2g to +10 deg pitch
Reaching +10 deg pitch MACH will be 1.5
Maintain +10 deg pitch until MACH 3
MACH 3 will be reached around 100k ft
Press fuel cell switch, then engage scramjet
Start a slow level off at 120.000 ft
I don’t remember the descent exactly, but it’s important not to descent below 80.000 ft until speed has come down significantly. I believe it was something like 10 deg pitch down, at MACH 10 reduce thrust to idle, pull the yoke full aft as to not descent below 80.000 ft and slow down. Landing was at 200 kt I remember.
Well, for my first try, I had to sort out the after-burner switch by doing a search for it and binding it to a switch, then after that went fairly smooth, made it all the way to Cape Canaveral and over stressed the plane by pushing the stick too much forward to lower the nose, but it was great fun especially with VR! I love the new Maverick add on, and I hope they improve on the carrier landing system, and takeoffs from carrier. I would like to try the tomcat with the carriers too. It only gets better! I took my grandson to see the movie the same day it was released, so that helped with the sim.
The Darkstar is indeed already a standard hanger plane, you can select it and free-fly it just like all other aircraft. The manufacturer is “Experimental” so it’s a bit further down the aircraft selection list when the planes are sorted alphabetically.
I had some fun tonight in this sleek bird. Never got over Mach 1.1, but will find out how to engage my afterburners tomorrow, hopefully.
I found I can barely see forward if I slide sideways as far as possible, then tap SpaceBar key to move view up high for landing view, and I have a edge view of right in front. Great for taxiing and setting up landings on final. I safely landed in a hop from Kyyv Ukraine down to Odessa on the coast. Fun bird…
But… A fun flight.
