I didn’t research this in the past and am currently half way through the yak-30. I forgot how much fun using the LA15 was. Thank you for making this amazing content! I’ve learned a lot from your videos!
I bought the premium yak-38 when it came out and the VTOL hype was huge. I have to say it’s been one of the most enjoyable planes I’ve used. I just use its insane thrust to climb to uncontested altitudes the dive down behind approaching fighters, let off as many r60s as i can lock then get out. Don’t know if i agree with the fact that its not the best in air combat, it can easily put a big dent in the opposition and definitely wins games.
Thats really the most viable tactic with it, use its climb rate, hope nobody has SARH, and swoop in for boom-and-zoom. I only showed a little of it in the vid, but its probably the best the Yak-38 can do for air combat.
Question, The 38 has weaker engines but is slightly lighter so in theory the 38m performs the same (stronger engine and hevier weight balance each other?) except in turn time because worse wing loading?
@@TimsVariety yeah and in any kind of dog fight your done for, only way you might net a kill is a bit of luck or good use of thrust vectoring. Definitely going to change my bind for vectoring to the mouse wheel like you mentioned in the video, reckon it will help a lot, can’t believe I’ve been letting go of wasd to change it 😂
@@albertogiavani75 Yep. According to the wiki both have the same thrust to weight ratio. Yak-38M just turns worse because of the additional mass. Literally 0 reasons why the premium is 0.4 BR lower except premium players.
Nice. I agree with you, this plane looks GREAT but its performance in reality, not so much. The Harrier will always be one of my first loves in aviation, but once I learned about the existence of the 38 when I was a kid, I was fascinated. I played MicroProse F-117A an awful lot as a kid, and the 38 showed up a lot, which I thought was odd but OK whatever. (especially the Vietnam campaign in the game) One of my favorite models as a kid was the Revell kit, it felt like you had access to "secret" intel on the plane, as the kit was designed mostly from photographs. Although even as a kid, without much knowledge in aerodynamics and physics, I thought it was a bit odd to have the 2 small lift engines, dead weight, etc. For years I thought the 38 was a uniquely Yak/Soviet design, and then I found out about the VAK-191 and OK now I see where they got the idea from, and short-lived Yak-141 And of course years later / now we have the F-35. Hmmmmm.
Quick recommendation, for the pros and cons in 13:29 you could try using green (pros) and red (cons) to look a bit more visually appealing, nice video btw i hope to get the Yak-38 someday
I hope I'm not the only one who caught you running R-60s on the inner pylons at 3:15. As far as I know, that's the typical arrangement for the Yak-38, with the actual payload on the outer pylons. Nice detail if it was intentional.
honestly the way gaijin is destroying air RB balance by constantly feeding in premiums with super strong missiles speaks volumes of the fact that they either don't play their own game or don't care if anyone has fun so long as they make loads of money.
Another forgotten (outdated), once champion, from the past... Just like most of the new top premiums. 9.7 game is still 90% 10.7 do to that single event Tornado, and do to some of the new premiums. So I just no longer take off in any uptier, and quit. Yes, i only get 1 game in every 3 hours, on rank 6 air RB!
Would you say that’s there’s much of a place for planes without flares around that BR bracket? I’m pretty new to air, and I’ve been trying to grind with the premium T-2, but I find once I get bored of getting two kills from BnZing the onslaught of US attack jets I can’t last more than 30 seconds at low altitude without getting 9L’d. Any suggestions to remedy the painful grind?
All this is telling me is AIM-9Ls should not be at 10.0 (or R-60M at 9.7 either), because plenty of the jets I'm grinding through atm don't have flares in that BR bracket.
I try not to be one of those youtubers who just complains all the time, but ... yeah .... the AIM-9L and R-60M at BR 10 are pretty frickin game breaking :-\
G'day Tim, While it's a struggle bus the hover sausage is a joy to fly but yesss the Yakovlev Yak-38 can be a pain but now with the 4× R-60's it can be quite mean at BR or below. On the plus side the test range is a Pr.1143 Heavy Aviation Cruiser Baku which still to this day since 2.01 I wish it was a TT ship.
i always loved how Kiev Aircraft Carriers was made as an Aviation Cruiser instead of true Aircraft Carriers, so unlike most western Aircraft Carriers which relies on their aircrafts as offensive armament while having other ships to protect the Carriers, the Soviet Cruiser could handle all of that by itself, and the planes are there as Patrol, Interceptor, & Anti Submarine Warfare to protect the Carrier itself. the reason i played this plane is because of that, it wasn't great, but it's interesting to play, surely makes me play in different playstyle. also Yak-38 looks amazing, though the trainer version is a bit goofy lol. also Hyped for the Yak-41M!
This thing was actually pretty fun when it was originally added all those years ago but now that more planes at that tier have either flares better missiles are faster or all of the above are swarming that BR it’s really not enjoyable anymore
Tim do the dev streams always reveal all the new vehicles cause I have been waiting to long for a Israeli top tier SPAA and we receive nothing yet again
This isn't actually that bad in Sim. You can look like a 104 or Harrier at distance and the R60s perform much better due to the situational awareness required in Sim battles.
Yeaahhh, thats why i love the Harrier, it is such a quirky Jet that, while being subsonic, can pull flaps a 400mph AND VTOL at anytime you want and my god i can out turn Mig 21's in any Harrier in the game, and oh my, the british harriers SRAAMs, what a missile
The Yak-38 has its flaws but you can still use it effectively if you fly correctly. Used this jet for my grind through tier 6 and into 7. One of my favorite planes I flown so far.
The claim that you can't use the lift engines to boost turning performance isn't completely true. You can use them at low air speeds below ~500kph. With manual engine control the main engines can maintain forward thrust while the lift engines can provide vertical thrust. This improves turning ability by a great deal and can catch people by surprise.
For yak players below 400kmph you can use vtol to dogfight (with minimum fuel) but only in specific situations, but your heat signature is brighter than the sun at that point so use vtol wisely.
The prem one? It’s a good plane man.. I played it back in the day when it came with just two r60’s. Play it like a spear.. always maintain 1000 kph whilst turning.. just take the time to turn. Boom and zoom, low and fast. It’s exceptional roll rate allows you to dodge missiles but you will bleed speed, I can dodge two maybe three before being caught.
Gunpods on ground units, then bombs on bases and gun on ground units. Occasional R-60 as the opportunity arises. When I originally got this plane, I ground most of the upgrades just through groundpounding on the AI units in air RB. I didnt bother with air combat until I had it almost spaded.
@@TimsVariety i got the 2 R-60s now, and I find that I can actually get air to air kills with it, assuming someone doesn’t wipe me off the face of the earth with radar guided missiles. I’ll try the ground-pound method though.
@@spingebill8551 "Back in the day", I wasnt able to build custom loadouts so the options were more limited. If I had to do it now, perhaps 1 R-60, and bombs, would probably be my grinding loadout.
I found a neat trick to deal with missiles without flares. If you got missiles but no flares... turn on the missile lock button & if someone is about to fire on you headon lets say an Aim-9L like in this Yak-38's case from the A6E's... if he fires the 9L then, its a weird system in WT, missiles can lock on to other missiles easily even if they are rear aspect, they lock on to enemy missiles from the front easily. Just fire your missile quickly when it locks the 9L & roll out the way. You got 4 makeshift flares at your disposal LMFAO! I have survived like this consistently.
I am still not sure why they didn’t include the lift turbines in a passive turbine that generates lift all the time. Increasing the angele of attack a little and fitting intakes like race cars do when the cooler is in the back. At least you wouldn’t have 2 turbines constantly offline and just as 2 metal blocks sitting around
I suspect there's some engineering reason, but I agree that it seems like an obvious way to help the thing turn - keep the forwardmost engine idle or something and let the pilot crank it for a couple seconds if needed.
specialized aircraft built in small numbers to fill like two ships. They were still learning, by the time they got something good with the Yak-41 the ussr collapsed
Useless aircraft IRL, as proven by their performance in Afghanistan, where they could barely carry 2x 100kg free-fall bombs. One of the few aircraft on which soviet pilots straight up refused to fly, because of high accident rate.
