"R" wrote in message
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However, I've yet to find one such aircraft that performs in speed
and altitude the way that they're supposed to. The F-16, for example,
struggles to break mach 1.2 at 40,000 feet -- this is a plane capable
of Mach 2 at that altitude. The SR-71 can sustain Mach 3.3 for an
hour at 80,000 feet. The SR-71 I downloaded stalls out at around
70,000 feet -- at 60,000 feet, it's struggling along at 200 kts. (The
U-2 stalled out at 55,000 feet -- that got a good laugh from me.) All
of these planes can tear the MSFS world up at low altitudes -- I had
the SR-71 popping Mach 3 at 5,000 feet (which is also unrealistic; the
plane would fly apart at that speed at that altitude). But get them
to their cruise ceiling, and suddenly they perform subsonically.
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I can't say much about the max speed at different altitudes, but I did
notice one point where you are probably not maintaining the correct climb
method.
You should NEVER EVER allow the SR-71 to slow down to 200 doing a climb. As
you slow down, less air move over the wings - meaning they produce less
lift. To compensate, you have to rise the nose a bit which increase the lift
but this produce more drag, hence slowing the plane further and the cycle
continues - you are heading streight for a stall no matter what kind of
plane you are flying - Cessna or SR-71 - it does not matter the physics is
the same. Of course if the model is wrong it won't work, but you forgot to
say which model we are talking about?? As far as I recall, I manage to get
Kirk Olsson's F-16 over 60000 using this method, and apparently the correct
number is 61500 feet.

If you at full power start loosing speed in a climb, lower the nose
immidiatly to build up speed. Run it as close to the max speed at the
current altitude as you can to get maximum lift. When you are flying at
maximum speed and the plane no longer is able to climb 100 feet per minute
(I think that's the number, but I'm not too sure - might be 300 or another
random number) you have reached the planes maximum altitude (and this is the
configuration where you should compare it to the real world aircraft to see
how well the model is done).

You can play around and rise the nose to see how much higer you can get, but
you should not expect to maintain the altitude gained this way. Again, from
memory I think it was 65000 I managed to get Kirk Olsson's F-16 to for a few
seconds. I used the flaps just before it stalled to buy another couple of
hundred feets, but using the flaps to maintain altitude is like peeing in
your pants to keep warm - it might help for a few seconds, but then you are
worse of than you where before.

Regards
Lars