The Jaguar project for X-Plane has been a long time in the making. The overall aim is to realistically simulate the Sepecat Jaguar aircraft in many of its guises and to a high visual quality.

I began developing this model back in 2007, and since then I have spent many hours, and a fair amount of money researching and gathering data to ensure the flight model is accurate as possible within the limitations of X-Plane.

Assistance has been sought from ex Jaguar pilots, and from current Jaguar technicians and museum restoration teams. Some very kind and skilled people have provided me with dimensions, access to a real Jaguar, and documentation to aid systems and flight modelling.

The entire flight model has been rebuilt multiple times, and the 3D model had a few iterations before good progress was made.

This blog will document the build process, and updates will be posted when decent steps are made.

This is a long term project, and it will be available to buy upon its completion.

29/07/2010

Aspect Ratio Take 2

After trialling the wing selection i made in the last post, i found the accuracy of the Jaguar at meeting the landing and takeoff speeds was very poor. So much for that idea then!

I have now built the wing to follow the actual shape in real life, (played with the chord offsets etc in planemaker) and the accuracy on the first flight was fairly decent. I need to experiment with Flap settings a little more to fine tune the landing speeds, but I am happy to say that as it stands, the model meets a lot of the speed requirements in flight!
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20/07/2010

There's More Than One Way To Skin A Cat!

I mentioned previously that I have been experimenting with some different wing layouts to see which gave the most stable flight in the Sim. I had three different layouts, which all met the Aspect Ratio and external dimension targets. The centre section of wing was the part I could alter, and by altering the offset from the centre line of the aircraft, I could alter the length of the wing root. Making the wing root longer has the useful effect of bringing the centre of lift forward.

Short Root
Medium Root
Long Root
I *think* i will be using the short root version. It may look like the obvious choice, but I first built the jet with the Medium/Long Root layout to try and minimise the amount of wing area which was buried in the fuselage.

Testing is looking promising at the moment. I have recently been trying to tune out some Dutch Roll that was occurring frequently by altering the vertical CG location. That was until i noticed the following in the Plots Manual;



Now its time to tune the artificial stability to get nice stable performance, and finalize the aero settings for accurate flight performance. Still plenty to do!
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02/07/2010

All The Drawings Were Wrong!

Aaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh

All of the drawings i have found so far have two major problems - the canopy, intakes and possibly the wings are set too far back!

I noticed this when i imported a photo of a Jaguar GR1 into planemaker to aid weapon placement for the drag and CoG tuning, things just weren't lining up! Then I tried overlaying each of the side profile drawings I have over a photo, and found the problem.

Its not turning out to be as big a problem as i make out. I have already made my own side profile drawing, from photos, and I'll do the top and bottom ones asap and then alter the planemaker model accordingly. Because the main structures are already built in planemaker it should not be too difficult to align everything properly.

All this in the quest for accuracy and realism. It will all be worth it in the end, I hope!
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