BuzzLine

Since people still encounter the bug, this is what I use with 2.8.1.34667 (no changes since last May, I believe) me_logbook.lua

Context: Take off (2x F-16s) and form up Order "Flight go trail" Problem : Wingman is unable to establish a trail formation and just snakes behind at mach 1 in full afterburner until fuel runs out. Option "Restrict Afterburner" does not seem to have an effect or I am using it wrong ? Expectations : Wingman is able to go from cruise to trail formation Sigh ... 2, ejecting (update: adding the Tacview, the issue is quite self-explanatory from there) (update 2: it's on today's openbeta 2.8.1.34667) debug_ab_trail.miz Bug_AB_trail_formation.trk Tacview-20221222-233727-DCS.zip.acmi

FYI, I just flew it (with today's open beta patch, maybe that helped ?) and no issue was encountered. Wave did correctly divert to the field, this time. Fun mission ! Small nitpicking : during recovery, there is a lot of crosswind on deck, about 7kts. That is usually avoided whenever possible: "NAVAIR 00-80T-104 : 8.4 EXCESSIVE WIND-OVER-DECK OPERATIONS Winds starboard of the angle also adversely affect recovery conditions. The burble, aft of the ramp, becomes stronger and moves closer to the ship as the magnitude of recovery crosswind is increased. The airflow disturbance requires corrective pilot technique if the recovery crosswind exceeds 7 knots for all carriers. Even with corrective pilot technique, sinking speeds 3 to 6 feet per second in excess of those experienced during normal (no recovery crosswind) operations can be expected. For these reasons, recovery headwind should be maintained as closely as possible to the optimum velocity and the centerline of the landing area. Shipboard aircraft recovery operations with recovery crosswinds in excess of those specified should be avoided. Refer to Aircraft Recovery Bulletin No. 10-10." Full discussion on this topic here :

Pfew ! Just finished the campaign and am now apparently "combat ready" !! Excellent work, I really enjoyed it. Being "forced" to employ various attack modes was really good for practice. I was surprised at how precise(-ish) the toss bombing was, given how crude are the tools we have. Also (not news) : I suck at air-to-air combat. I also struggled at times with the bombsight settings but I guess I'll just spend some more time on the range and find what works for me. (Sidekick made me discover the joys of iron bombing ) The "exam" missions were great, challenging at times (I had to refly a couple of times) but had that feel of passing a higher bar than the trainings, well done. So great job @Don Rudi ! And many thanks for providing good entertainment and valuable experience.

Thanks ! Dodging DCS' dodgy AI is part of the joy of making missions ! Cheers, Buzz

I think Wave was headed back to the carrier after we finished the main part of the mission, instead of diverting to Khasab, causing a mission fail. Tacview attached. Track is too big for here, but I'll keep it if you really need it. Thx, Buzz Tacview-20221217-004435-DCS-Persian 6 Chopped Chops.zip.acmi

You would expect that not crashing into the ground is a somewhat basic skill for a helicopter pilot, right ? Think again. A game of DCS Liberation will give you a whole new ... err ... "appreciation" of the skill and quality of the AI when it's left alone (fixed or rotary, it's all at the same level). That bodes well for the dynamic campaign !

The gunpod: a more elegant weapon, for a more civilized age... (funny that we call "fixed wing" a plane that has swing wings ... )

If I remember correctly, the mig-27K did more harm to itself and its pilots with that humongous 30mm than it ever did to anyone on the ground... Are you really sure you want that ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gryazev-Shipunov_GSh-6-30 "On the MiG-27 "Flogger" the GSh-6-30 had to be mounted obliquely to absorb recoil. The gun was noted for its high (often uncomfortable) vibration and extreme noise. The airframe vibration led to fatigue cracks in fuel tanks, numerous radio and avionics failures, the necessity of using runways with floodlights for night flights (as the landing lights would often be destroyed), tearing or jamming of the forward landing gear doors (leading to at least three crash landings), cracking of the reflector gunsight, an accidental jettisoning of the cockpit canopy and at least one case of the instrument panel falling off in flight. The weapons also dealt extensive collateral damage, as the sheer numbers of fragments from detonating shells was sufficient to damage aircraft flying within a 200-meter radius from the impact center, including the aircraft firing.[4]" That may be a bit of an extreme example but guns (and even more so gun*pods*) that don't fit well the airframe do not bring happiness and success and fame and glory.

Don't you find the Warbrd base + TM Warthog stick combination too wobbly ? Or did you use the extra-heavy springs ?

I had the same issue the first time I flew it. The second time, I left a bit more time for them to work on the defenses. Afterwards, it's luck. Will you be targeted by a SAM or not ? Will there be a convenient break in the clouds ? Will the random AAA hit you while on the bomb run and you can't jink ? A great mission, I loved it. (follow the yellow brick road, Cool Hand )

For the sake of completeness and exactitude, note that in real life and in the case of bomb-on-coordinates attacks (i.e. not talked on the target through TGP, etc) the readback should be *from the plane's systems*. To ensure there is no error when entering data from your notepad to the airplane/bomb, you readback exactly what the plane/bomb received. Source: Joint Publication 3-09.3 "Close Air Support" 25 November 2014, p115 (<= not sure I can post a link here but you'll find it on Google) (not trying to be pedantic, that's just for some additional color and insights into real-life procedures) On being hasty, something we do in my squadron (but I'm not sure it's official standard procedure) is to setup several 9-lines for alternate situations, and give them names, so that the JTAC can say "use 9-line Batman/Alfred/Robin", adjust the few things that may have changed, and off we go with less time wasted in transmitting the full brief. HTH and happy bombing, Buzz

Another thing : I've played with sirrah's mission and I think Flappie was onto something : if you move the box a bit to have *at least* 600(sic) feet of clearance from the closest trees, then it will pick up the box just fine (and not do a weird silly approach when the helo slides backwards before landing). Of course, you need to find a fairly large field... Chinooks like to have their elbow room !

Hello people, I encountered a chinook sling issue in a campaign so after some digging, I found this bug report and tried to isolate my issue. I couldn't isolate my own bug but I stumbled on another one. I set up on the runway at Kobuleti (so no issue of enough room as per previous post), it seems that changing the amount of fuel has a weird impact : For some ranges of values, slinging works but for others, the chopper will just land next to the cargo and not sling the cargo and take off... With 100% fuel : ko 80% : ok (chopper lands next to the cargo, hooks it up and takes off and delivers it a bit further, all working as intended) 75% : ko :(( 65% : ko :((( 55% : ok Changing the weight of the cargo has no impact, btw, although changing the load type might... Tricky barsted, this one. (Mini-mission attached) Cheers, Buzz ---- (Note: for reference, the sling issue I had while playing campaign "UN tour" for the gazelle was a different one that I haven't managed yet to isolate outside of the mission. Hooking the container worked (no landing, even) but then the pilot had some ... stability issues. Clearly not "a situation with a future" (and indeed, the chinook crashed soon after. Its container was sling-launched in the sky and then crashed back on the crash... epic). debug_ch47_sling_load.miz

The coder of the 'escort' task has been watching Lucasfilm/Disney's "Red Tails", seems like.

Oooh, fancy, I like that ! That solves my woes, many thanks.

Context/bug : 'Restrict air-to-ground' has been "misbehaving" since forever, it is known. It considers a unit of type plane as an air target even when on the ground. Which is ... surprising and not very useful to mission designers. (see miz and track attached.) Question : how to I setup two flights attacking an airfield so that my CAP flies high cover and lets my strikers shoot the targets on the ground ? I'd like to have a plane take off at some point during the attack so I can't have only statics. At this point, despite using restrict air-to-ground, any flight with task CAP or a variant of 'search and engage' will drop down low to strafe the uncontrolled airplane on the field... In range of air defenses, unfortunately. Bug_CAP_strafing.trk debug_CAP_strafing.miz

Thanks, some of us appreciate it. As a software engineer of almost (gosh !) 25y experience, I am sometimes critical of ED for certain things that I think should be done better (non-regression testing, for instance). However, in the case of going from single to multithread (even if multi=2 for a start) on an old code base, I am behind them 100%. Remember, people, you're *not* asking for *multithreading*, not quite. You are really asking for *more performance*. In particular in VR, where I don't expect much from MT. And for complex scenarios like MP, or smarter AI, or whatever will be required for a dynamic campaign, where the background computations can be taxing on the CPU. But know that thread-safety is incredibly hard to get right, especially when not designed in from the beginning, and it's quite easy to see either the ugliest, nastiest, bugs that computer-assisted mankind can produce. Or to overprotect (either by the "mutex sprinkle of death by crawling molasses" or the "death by copy-all no side-effect heaviness of misery") and see performance drop through the floor (worse than single-thread). In the latter case, you would get your multithreaded DCS but with unacceptable perf. In the former, you'd get epicly hard-to-reproduce bugs that would leave the userbase in arms and the devs baffled. They *need* to get this right, from the get-go. So, patience. Waiting is.

True story. "Git gud lol" is not helping anyone, so just be silent if you have nothing more to suggest. All of us have mentioned the value of practice but then we try to help people get to the stage where it "clicks". I'm often on Discord whenever I'm flying (SP or MP) so flee free to just HMU and if I'm available, I'll happily fly on your wing and share whatever experience I have.

+1 on all that has been said (except Serpent Head 1&2, too "arcady" for me, but it's a matter of taste). Note that most require additional maps (Persian Gulf and Syria) and usually Supercarrier too. I can't recommend Bold Cheetah enough, it's free and on-par with if not better than most paid stuff. I'll just add two free campaigns (from the User Files) : Eastern Friendship (Hornet Edition) and Interceptor, both on the Caucasus map. Ground ops. Ah, and Operation Resolute Spear, somewhat repetitive but good practice, for Syria and Supercarrier. Have fun !

You're confusing coordinates in Degrees Decimal Minutes whereas the briefing gives the targets in Degrees Minutes *Seconds.Decimals* . Default F18 setup is in decimal minutes, I think. See below: (I activated the fine precision, in low precision it would read N42°14.64'. That's 0.64 minutes, so not 64s but 60*0.64 = 38.4s) You can change the coordinate system in the A/C tab, there are seveal options. With degrees/minutes/seconds.decimals, we get what we expected with 14'38s (exercise to the reader : why is there a slight discrepancy 38.96 vs 38.4 ? ) HTH, Buzz

For me the key understanding was that I was chasing the basket and constantly overcompensating and was always lagging behind the plane. It's easier to think of this as docking of two spacecrafts : a bit of lateral thrust will start a lateral drift that will need to be stopped by opposite lateral thrust. Same for all directions. So the key is first to establish a stable position close to the tanker. Then, in order to plug in, remember that every action will need to be followed by an opposite action once the position is established. "I am left of the basket", a touch of right stick... plane drifting right, alignment good, a touch of left stick... plane stabilizes at the right position. It's even more important with the throttle as the plane takes a while to accelerate and even longer to slow down. (if you're into Control Theory, it's akin to Open Loop control rather than Closed Loop ) Another trick is to show the FUEL page on a DDI (the right one works better for me), it means less head movement to check how the refueling progresses. On the F16, the BINGO page on the DED show the total fuel at an even more convenient location. Then practice, practice, practice. But do try to see it as drifting around a stable position. And relax, wiggle your toes (it's a real-life pilot trick but it also work on the simulator ! )

Adding my voice to the chorus of positive feedback ! One of the best campaigns for the F18, the immersion is excellent and the difficulty just perfect. Congrats and many thanks ! A (very minor) contribution : for the last mission (M13, Alpha Strike, I think) on the kneeboard page the T/O trim value is 16 (as often) but with the given load (50k lbs) it should be 19.

@Antonisrho happy to help. I haven't encountered this bug in a while, no idea if they solved the root cause or if I flew with my patched version. But if you encounter it again, save all the log files, track files, and mission files you have and ping me (@Flappie promised me a beer if I show him a reproducible test case ) That bug is a tricky one.

ME stands for Mission Editor, it's in every install. If you want to learn how to use it, Sidekick has done a bunch of videos on the topic : It may be obvious but since you're asking, have you looked at multiplayer missions in the User Files ? https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/filter/type-is-multiplayer/apply/