Stearmandriver

Meh... to a certain extent, a jet is a jet and they're all pretty brainless to fly. If you want to learn to *fly*, start with the Christen Eagle. But yeah, the Hornet FCS holding AoA for you makes it a bit easier to land.

I've had several missions lately where my AI wingman never gets launched. He just sits on cat 2 for the whole mission. He makes radio calls when he gets spiked so it's not like he's "locked up"... they just don't shoot him. I'll quit and grab the track the next time it happens and I'm single player.

It's a measure of redundancy, a last chance to verify the next expected aircraft type was correct and the gear is set correctly. Easy enough for confusion to exist in aircraft sequencing I would think, depending on who might have been boltered / waved off, or spun etc. It's also a reason the Super Hornet is nicknamed the Rhino at the ship. A name was needed that sounded nothing like "Hornet"; especially critical since the two aircraft look so similar but one is so much heavier. My guess would be that the fuel state being included in these calls is more for LSO / air boss awareness of that aircraft's tank state - how many more looks at the deck he gets before diverting or heading to tanker (or I guess being barricaded in a really critical situation). But maybe fuel weight is considered in arresting gear settings as well; that I don't know.

GIB ME CORSAIR! (With bat bomb would be cool too )

This was my first thought too. A pod on one cheek and a missile on the other might seem symmetrical enough but there's still a noticeable difference. Other than that, I don't know. I so rarely land ashore that I guess I wouldn't have noticed; as noted above, constant drift to the left is normal in the groove at the boat.

The Horizon Q400 theft pretty well proves that a guy with only civilian desktop sim experience can figure out how to get a plane airborne. Could he have landed it? That's more doubtful, but we'll never know. Operating weapons and sensor systems on a military jet though? I'd personally doubt it, at least not effectively. Too much of these systems are - by necessity - merely approximations or "best guesses" in any publicly available simulation. That's as it should be. I personally do think we won't see too many new manned air combat platforms; the human is the weak link in the system, and why risk human life if you don't have to? Just my opinion though; I have no crystal ball.

Hey, that's a great tool, thanks!

Huh! I... never noticed that! Sorry haha.

I've seen this. I'm not sure what's happening, if it's a bug, correct behavior, attempting to simulate a scrubbing nosewheel or what, but I can tell you why it happens in DCS: you're applying too much steering input, too rapidly. Slow down the rate at which you deflect the rudder.

This is completely personal preference, the way I see it. Setting cockpit labels to something you can read only makes sense. As someone else said, you expect the pilot to be able to read the airplane. HOTAS bindings - I'm with you in that I like commonality. I also fly the Hornet almost exclusively, with an original Warthog grip (so the A-10 one). Is it unrealistic? Maybe if I'd previously flown a Hornet and had muscle memory of the control feel... but I haven't. And I never will. So... HOTAS feel has no bearing on realism at all, to me. It's also worth remembering that IRL, very few pilots are qualified in more than one aircraft at a time. They fly one thing at a time, with a full qual training cycle when switching fleets. We don't do that, so controls commonality seems reasonable.

I use the Hoggit threat database for such info. Can't vouch for its accuracy other than I tend to plan my tactics based on it and usually live unless I do something dumb haha. https://wiki.hoggitworld.com/view/Threat_Database

Thanks! I'll mess with it!

Had my first spin around Marianas tonight... now THAT'S a naval air map! The deep blue, wide-open water with just a few islands in the distance... it strikes me that this would be a beautiful place to do some CQ . @Bankler , any chance of you knocking together a version of the case 1 recovery trainer on Marianas? Or, can anyone comment on if there's a straightforward way to move all the pertinent chunks of a mission onto a new map? I'm pretty confident I'd break the scripting if I tried, and of course that's the important part... Sorry to be greedy. I don't know how high the workload would be for something like this if it had to be built from scratch, and I completely understand not wanting to undertake that. Creating this mission in the first place was already quite generous. I just think it would suit the new map really well, and I suspect I'm not the only one... Either way, thanks again.

Solid point, I had taken that question to refer to post-merge, since kinematics were mentioned in the context of extending and running. But yes, for the initial shot the viper has the launch advantage. The Hornet has plenty enough for a notching defense or J-pole though. (In DCS; no idea how true any of this is in real life.)

You don't need a kinetic advantage if you've got missiles... then it comes down to nose pointing, and if handled well, none of those aircraft can match the Hornet in that regard.

The plane trims up nicely for me just like it always has. Only thing I could suggest is, I've seen updates mess up my control bindings before. You might check out the pitch trim bindings and make sure they haven't been deleted or doubled up somehow.

This was fun. Outside view first; then in the cockpit.

Can't land the viper on a boat. That's pretty much all the reason I need.

Reasonably sure I've read something similar; pitch trim and/or pitch CAS logic is reset on touchdown to something appropriate for takeoff? Regarding civil aviation accident stats, I'll point out the following: 1. Until just a couple years ago, loss of control accidents were dramatically outpacing runway events. It's the heavy emphasis that I've talked about that has changed this. 2. Regarding the relative fatality rates of the two types of accidents, it's important to remember that LoC accident stats include every type of LoC accident. Ground loops, blown tires that result in a runway excursion etc... anything like that is counted, as long as it exceeds the (minimal) damage value. Such events are relatively common and never fatal, thus they dilute the LoC fatality rate. However, if you break out the different types of LoC accidents, you'll find that the one we're talking about - a high AoA event in flight leading to an accident- is almost ALWAYS fatal.

I ran a bunch of tests with some practice 1v1s when this patch came out. For me, both the problem of HACQ failing to reacquire lock after dropping it, and the phantom target bug in all ACM modes, seem to have been 100% resolved. I saw repeatable textbook behavior in all the ACM modes I tried. Thanks ED!

I don't think anything in a Cessna qualifies as "massive". It usually takes at most a few flicks of the trim wheel to reset takeoff trim in a Cessna. If a pilot can't take a quick glance or two down at a trim indicator without losing directional control... they aren't yet ready for touch n gos. Full stop and taxi-backs while solo are required until they reach an experience level that makes touch n gos practical. While dual, touch n gos are great for efficiency as the instructor can set the trim. Nothing happens very fast in a GA aircraft; there's plenty of time for this. Now in more demanding taildraggers, at some point the stop-n-go becomes preferred because even at taxi speeds, a directional excursion can develop in an instant and the instructor may not be comfortable enough with a student's performance to look down for even that long. Regardless, normalizing and even teaching intentional takeoffs in a mis-trimmed state is just a bad idea, in a real airplane. High AoA loss-of-control accidents are one of the highest areas of emphasis in civilian aviation right now, because many years of continued simplification of training requirements have created a load of pilots who aren't comfortable in this regime and fail to recognize the developing situation. An intentional takeoff in a nose-high mis-trimmed state just sets them up to encounter such a situation in the worst possible phase of flight. A lot of things were taught years ago that modern human-factors knowledge informs us better on. Recognizing such items is the first step towards fixing them, and that's good for everyone!

My trim comments were in response to someone suggesting that the trim isn't reset in civilian aircraft for a touch n go; I (perhaps incorrectly) understood these comments to be referring to real life. In general, Touch n Gos are just takeoff and landing practice, thus it makes sense that you want to be properly trimmed for takeoff before initiating the takeoff phase. Obviously carrier ops are going to be different, and in a desktop sim we can do anything we like (which is part of the fun); my point was only that we probably shouldn't be encouraging touch n gos from a mis-trimmed state in real-world training aircraft.

You shouldn't have to push forward; the dramatic pitch-up after a touch n go is a previously acknowledged flaw in the DCS Hornet's flight model. I often do touch n gos at the boat where I don't re-configure at all. Instead of pushing forward, I just modulate power to keep the climb under control. So mil at touchdown, then a power reduction right after running off the edge of the deck. I set power for about an 800ft per min climb. And off topic but responding to an above comment - I'd strongly recommend considering taking the entire one second to reset trim on a GA aircraft before taking off again. Nothing happens that fast at GA speeds, but intentionally lifting off while mis-trimmed nose-up is setting you up for potentially severe problems. I'm not saying it *can't* be done obviously... but from a TEM standpoint, is it a great idea? I've been a flight instructor for over 20 years and have done more touch n gos than I could count in everything from Cubs to airline jets... I promise, you have time to properly set the trim.

Can game mode be set by the mission, over-riding a user's personal settings? I don't know if that's possible, just an idea.

There have also recently been issues with undesignating a target when the tgp is in a particular track mode (scene, I think). Try changing mode of the tgp, then undesignate, THEN SOI to anything but the tgp, THEN wpdsg. It's easy!