near_blind

Oh no, are the 'Zone 6' methods multiplying again?

It's an option in the controls, but you have to map a control or joystick button to it.

With Easy Communications turned off, you have four communications options. \ is for shouting at the ground crew, and is generally disabled after take off in high fidelity modules. Shift + \ is your intercom, in single player it really doesn't do anything for you. RAlt + \ broadcasts over the pilot's radio. Rctrl + \ broadcasts over the RIO's radio. Looking at how the missions seem to be generally set up, you should be able to talk to your wingman using either the pilot or RIO radios (they're both tuned to the wingman's frequency).

Yeah, that'll do it.

I've heard it referred to as the Tomcat, the Bombcat, the Turkey, the Flying Tennis Court, and the 'Geographic Center of any Dogfight', but I've never heard it referred to as a river. Nicknames come from any number of places. Western aircraft manufactures tend to give an aircraft a name for marketing purposes. As they get tested and put into service, a slew of other ones will arise from physical appearance, flight performance, safety records, or even word play. The Tomcat was the Turkey because it looked like a turkey with the spoilers, flaps, and speed brakes extended when landing. The Fighting Falcon started being called the Viper because it resembled a prop from a popular TV show at the time, and as the Lawn Dart because there were flame out issues with the early engines that lead to a number of crashes. You'll find most aircraft have an official name, a nick name with positive connotations from people that flew it, and one with negative connotations that comes from people that didn't fly it. The exception here is Soviet Aircraft. To my knowledge Soviet Design bureaus never assigned nicknames to their aircraft formally. Ground crews and pilots would generally come up with some (The MiG-21 was the Balalaika, the Su-25 was the Grach, the An-72 was Cheburashka etc.). The names western enthusiasts most commonly associate with them are arbitrary names assigned by NATO. The names are intentionally meant to be... unique... so they won't be mistaken for other things. In the NATO convention, the first letter of the name (usually) corresponds to the type of aircraft. Cargo planes start with C, Fighters and Attackers with F, Bombers with B, Helicopters with H, A for air to air missiles, K for air to ground missiles, S for surface to surface missiles. Russians generally don't use these, because, well, no one appreciates their ride being called Frogfoot, Fishbed or Flagon, but seem to have tacitly accepted Flanker and Fulcrum as pretty cool.

That sounds correct. AIM-54s are big missiles that accelerate relatively slowly. 10 NM is a really close engagement, and the system is trying to get the missile off the jet and working on its own as quick as possible.

Was your radar on? I'm able to get a solid diamond outside of 5 miles.

What's your definition of recent? They still have the same CCM values they've had since last last august when it was changed due to fallout from the AMRAAM rework, it hasn't changed since at least december.

The range where it will kick in is more restrictive now. You need to have climb or descent of less than 200 FPM for alt hold to engage. The specifics are in the June 16th change log.

Was the diamond blinking? If so your slant range to the target was too great, and you need to get closer.

Are we going to see a resurrection of the old cruiser Azov anytime soon, or is this just general house keeping for the HARM range known modes?

During the fly out the AIM-54 receives guidance instructions from the AWG-9 via information encoded in radar pulses, which is analogous to a data link. Later on during the mid-course and terminal phases the missile will transition to SARH guidance and then ARH guidance. I don't have an argument one way or another about chaff rejection values other than amplifying that the entire system needs reworked to better reflect how and why it works in reality.

Quality takes time and estimating time is notoriously hard in tech, especially in a shifting environment. I don't say this with malice, but HB are also especially slow. So long as the devs stay engaged with us, there's not really a whole lot you can do to speed them up. You can express your frustration, but I imagine they're aware and frustration sadly doesn't add anymore hours to the clock.

But do you have a moment to update us on the status of our lord and savior: Sparrow bug fixes?

Link 4 is has a limit of how many DL contacts are displayed, but hostile link contacts should take precedence over friendly or ambiguous contacts. Also bare in mind that Link 16 used by the bug and dart are peer to peer networks, and detected contacts will propagate further between aircraft on the net. Each aircraft is broadcasting what it sees and rebroadcasting what it has received through the link. Link 4A used by the F-14 when talking to an awacs or a ship is a provider client type network. All info is coming from a single provider. You are limited by the provider’s ability to detect the contact and the range the provider can push that info out to clients.

The 30% number comes from all AIM-7s expended vs number of kills. The 50% number comes from AIM-7s fired versus number of kills. There isn't a great breakdown of what the criteria between the two scenarios is. EDIT: Source for the 50% statistic https://web.archive.org/web/20130720010705/http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2006psa_winter_roundtable/watts.pdf#

If combined arms is using the attack unit or attack group tasks from the scripting engine, those both bypass the normal detection logic and automatically reveal the target to the controller of the attacking group. Because it bypasses the normal detection logic, it might not be reported to whatever determines fog of war spotting logic.

How much trouble do I get in for mentioning how many of those test shots were against ASCM threats in the context of the aspect switch discussion?

When ships are sunk in DCS, and the unit is despawned (destroyed) once the model passes a certain depth, usually enough that the entire model is below the water's surface. The average depth of the Pacific Ocean in the Mariannas Map is ~164 feet. This depth is shallow enough that when sufficiently large ships (carriers, large amphibious ships, the seawise Giant) are destroyed, they cannot sink far enough to completely submerge before hitting the sea floor, and the corpses will remain with their superstructures sticking out of the water. If a large ship is destroyed as part of a group, the group will stop indefinitely waiting for the model to despawn before continuing. Moist.trk

If you've got steps to reproduce, I'm happy to be proven wrong. As it is, I asked him to jump between an awacs, multiple cruisers and two carriers in different groups, and he was 6/6 with the frequencies.

Simple set up, Foxbat closing at speed of yes. First flare I drop after I shoot signals me flipping the aspect switch to beam with ~40 TTI, and the Foxbat track drops into track held extrapolation. Second flare I drop is the AWG-9 displaying a phoenix active signal for the dropped track with ~12 TTI. Missile takes cut off, and bandit starts manuevering. Tacview-20210625-222237-DCS.zip.acmi I've absolutely encountered the extrapolated tracks not going active, but it's not 100% of the time.

I've seen it both ways. I've seen the missile just keep driving forward, the contact never begins to flash and the missile seemingly doesn't go active. I've also seen missiles hit extrapolated targets. The loss of loft when a track begins to correlate is probably related to the missile API, hopefully this will be remedied when the AIM-54 is fully transferred over to the new model.

Did the Jester options make it into today's hotfix?

The 1800 knot limit affects all PD modes, including PD-STT and PD-Search unless I've tested something horribly wrong. A 100 mile P-STT Phoenix shot would be... optimistic

Was the MiG-31 using chaff? How fast was he going? Could you post the ACMI?