Stalls and Turns — Why Pulling Harder Doesn't Turn You

“I’m pulling and it won’t turn.” “It fell out of the sky the moment I rolled in.” This is the most common way to fail in this game — and the real aircraft does exactly the same thing.

What follows is what is actually happening, in the flight model’s own numbers. All of them come from the aircraft constants; 1 unit ≈ 1 m, and 1 u/s = 3.6 km/h.

1. Bank raises your stall speed

Turns here are not auto-coordinated. They are bank-and-pull, the way the real thing works.

To hold altitude at bank angle φ, the vertical component of lift has to balance weight. That takes more lift than level flight does — it takes load factor n.

n = 1 / cos φ
stall speed Vs(φ) = Vs × √n

The 1g stall speed is about 240 km/h. By bank angle:

The stall line on the HUD speed tape moves with bank angle. It is Vs/√|cos φ| shown directly. The game never intervenes in the controls, but in exchange the display is honest about the danger. Whenever you are turning, that is the line to watch.

2. The slower you are, the less you turn

“Slow down to be safe” is counterproductive here. Working out the available G and turn radius by speed:

Two things fall out of that.

① 450–600 km/h is the working range. Below it you cannot pull G, and turn radius falls apart quickly. In an F-2, 300 km/h is approach speed — not a speed you maneuver at.

② Going faster stops helping at 460–500 m of minimum radius. Lift (∝V²) and centrifugal force (∝V²) cancel each other, so “faster turns tighter” is not true.

Speed therefore has a floor and very little upside. When in doubt, take the faster option.

3. At low speed the controls themselves stop working

There is a second trap sitting just short of the stall. Control authority is proportional to dynamic pressure.

authority = (speed / 110)²

Halve your speed and you have a quarter of the authority. Control response also carries a time constant of 0.3 seconds.

Down at the bottom of the speed range, “the input does nothing” and “the input arrives late” happen at once. Grabbing at the controls once you are already near the stall is too late — and that is not a problem with your hands.

4. Recovering from a stall

The order matters.

The problem is that down low you cannot do this. There is no altitude to give away. So in the valleys the question is never whether you can recover: not getting slow in the first place is the only defense you have.

5. Flying it in the valley

The low-level courses are meant to be flown along the river. Give up on the straight-line shortcut and follow the terrain.

There is one rule.

Get the speed first, then a steep bank and a firm pull.

Building speed and changing direction in one committed movement is safer than easing around in a shallow bank. A shallow bank spends time without producing turn rate, and the valley wall keeps coming.

In practice it becomes throttle back just before a bend, throttle up on the straights — because too much speed makes the radar ceiling hard to manage.

6. Where this differs from the real aircraft

The biggest gap between this model and the real jet is thrust-to-weight.

In the real aircraft, getting slow is survivable: light the burner and you accelerate through the turn while you recover. This model takes noticeably longer to come back once it is slow. How easily it stalls is realistic; how painful the recovery from low speed is, is harsher than the real thing.

The flip side is that as long as you keep your speed up, it flies like the real aircraft.

Summary

1. Stall speed rises the moment you bank. 286 km/h at 45°, 340 km/h at 60°.
2. The HUD stall line moves. In a turn, that is the line to watch.
3. Don’t try to turn below 450 km/h. Slower means less turn, not more.
4. Turn radius bottoms out at 460 m. Only the floor on speed matters.
5. Wings level comes first in a recovery. But down low there is no second chance.