# Help deciphering maximum rate of turn



## orion549 (Jan 20, 2008)

I originally posted this in the Aviation forum, but realized perhaps this is the best place to post this request.

I've been working to write a set of Universal Tabletop Dogfight rules, and I've run into a bit of a wall, mostly due to my lack of advanced math skills. I was hoping someone more knowledgeable will be able to help me here.

For those that aren't entirely sure what I mean by Tabletop Dogfight, basically you use model aircraft (I'm designing it at the 1:350th scale, but you could use any scale, once I'm done, the first thing that makes them Universal) on a flat surface, the altitude simply represented by a number. There's plenty of games available like this, but all represent a certain number of aircraft during a certain era. What I want to do is build a rule set that allows you to take any existing stats for any aircraft and turn them into stats you can game with (the second thing to make them Universal).

I need to know the maximum rate of turn (in degrees) that most aircraft could accomplish. First, what I do know:

1) rate of turn will become greater as speed increases. I plan to work this out by making the turn per percentage of speed, allowing 2-4 "corrections" per move. (ex. aircraft may make a 20 degree correction every 25% of a move. So an aircraft that moves 400ft may turn up to 20 degrees at 100', 200', 300' and 400', of course that would be an 80 degree turn in one second, which I'm sure is much too sharp)

2) stall speed increases as radius of turn closes, and the angle of bank increases. To work this effect in, each turn which is greater than 50% of the maximum turn rate will double the stall speed of the aircraft. I know this isn't 100% accurate either, however I think it makes things simple to calculate and adds the extra bit of realism to it.

Just remember, I'm not going for 100% accuracy here. More like a "general truth." I don't want players to have to pull out a calculator with trig functions on it each time they want to make their aircraft turn a few degrees. Please help me, I really have been racking my brain to figure this out and I just can't wrap my brain around the numbers...


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