scoobie

Thank you, Rudel_chw! I tried to dig some more details out of the internet, but to no avail. I think I need NAVAIR 01-40AV-1T(A). Couldn't find it anywhere. Anyway, the set of equpiment in our A-4E-C version is somewhat mysterious. AN/APR-25 should be a typical RWR suite - just as you said - for aural AND VISUAL cues, so it should have a control panel (similar to the one we've got in DCS:F-5E) and a round scope with lines stretching from the center of the scope outwards, indicating "contacts" (radar illumination directions). Trouble is... our Scooter has no control panel, no RWR scope, but the ECM panel still suggests there's APR-25 on board. What the heck? I think it's either because the ECM box was taken from a different version of A-4 (or a different plane altogether) and APR-25 was NOT really on board, or, 25 was actually installed, but only to generate aural indications to the pilot. Things get even more confusing. The "ALQ" supposedly stands for AN/ALQ-51, which indeed was a jammer (or "track breaker"). You're right about SA-2 (I didn't know that!), I also read it was quite capable of defeating SA-2 missiles. When lucky, it could fool them to detonate prematurely or not detonate at all. But I digress. Apparently, ALQ-51 could also generate some kind of sounds for the pilot, as we have this "AUDIO" switch to choose between APR-25 and ALQ audio, but what sounds exactly - no idea. All in all, it remains irrelevant for our Community A-4E-C, because the devs don't have information on what sounds ALQ produced, so "AUDIO" switch does not switch between any "two kinds of audio". Also, the "RPT" position of the grey knob only illuminates the "RPT" light on ECM panel when you've been locked or the missile is guided against you (it won't defeat or fool anything, it's just a light). This is not to say our Scooter is any less awesome! I just wanted to understand more about real Scooter (but failed ).

I don't know if this is a good place to ask this. I seem unable to find solid info on "EW" package in our A-4, that is RWR, a jammer maybe (?), whatever exactly the set of devices is. In the Community Guide it says it is AN/APR-23. In the cockpit it says APR-25 (twenty five, not three). One switch selects audio between APR-25 and "ALQ". ALQ should (I think) refer to a "broader package" of devices... or maybe not, IDK. What is "ALQ" then? Then you've got APR-27 switch (ON/OFF), what is APR-27? The community guide says it's "alert receiver"? If it's a receiver where does it receive the alert from? I thought the very RWR is - as the name indicates - a receiver. It receives radar signals illuminating the Scooter, demodulates them, probably does some more "post-processing" to turn the signals into audio for the pilot. So why do I need another "alert receiver" APR-27? Finally we've got the separate grey knob OFF/STBY/REC/RPT, so "REC" is probably another thing that receives something. What does it receive? Then "RPT" seems to stand for "repeat", so is this a jammer? In total 3 things can be turned or flicked into "OFF" position in this panel. How many devices do we have in this package then? Which one does what? Sorry for all the dumb questions, but I've just realized I don't get what we've got there. I can flick switches at random, make the thing make funny sounds, but I don't understand what I'm doing. Can somebody illuminate a simple pretend-pilot with knowledge?

So the Scooter actually could be better than in the previous release? I didn't expect that! Thanks a lot! Very cool sound additions - EW (I must explore it further), but also tyres when they're complaining, the spoiler arm/disarm gives a quiet short sound (don't know if it's new, but never heard it before), new (IIRC) missile warning sound, TEST button lets you test this sound too (so you can turn the volume down a priori and not get a heart attack when you get fired upon later). RWR test improved with the growl. SLEW axes for lots of analog things, apart from a tonne of "absolute" (normal) axes. AMAZING! No one has ever done this before! Again - huge thanks for the terrific job you guys are doing! Microbug: "Shrike/Sidewinder Volume Knob - Absolute" controls the in-cockpit knob in the range of 50% to 100% of volume, in other words you can't turn down the volume below 50% with a bound axis, you can only do it with the mouse.

Yeah, I know about "istrebityel"... if I get Russian right (I don't) it means something like "down-shooter", something that shoots down other planes, right? But I don't get what Ilyushin bureau had to do with Polikarpov. BTW, wasn't it "good" uncle Stalin who sent Polikarpov to jail or camp for being late with a design of some airplane? For 2 years or so, then they pulled him out, maybe because they realized that an engineer is typically more productive at work than in jail. Healthy work environment, welcome to USSR

There's a discussion about weapon settings, rocket interval etc. in another thread on the forums and it seems IFE have encountered some difficulties figuring out how DCS works in specific fields, but it's just a whishlist topic, so no need to panic, just a wish. It would be great if one day MB-339 got an "interactive" kneeboard page (the type of page that is driven by a Lua file) for setting up weapon parameters and maybe also equipment. You're on the ground, engine off, press LAlt-LShift-Something and you change rocket interval and such. So far it's been possible through Mission Editor only, haven't tried it yet, but saw it in ME and the manual. Quite a few modules in DCS have such interactive kneeboards - Viggen, Harrier, some other planes, and it's a very cool feature.

Hey, cool video! Nice to watch crazy little Donkey at work. That Ilyushin Il-16 bit... that might be some kind of a Russian joke, is it? Thanks for letting me know there's this pretty kneeboard for I-16, have just downloaded it. Not that the Donkey is complex, but it's still a very pretty kneeboard, nice to have. If only I knew how to tame that damned metal tail-roller on landing I don't kill myself, but boy, this thing gives me a headache.

Thanks a million, ED, for expanded "CONTROLS" window! Makes a huge difference for me!

I'm very impressed, too. I know IFE aren't totally new to the business, but still - it's their first full-blown module for DCS and they've done a really great job. Hats off, Gents! There are some quirks to be ironed out and a tonne of control bindings is missing, but so many things work great straight out of the box that it's... kind of... surprising! BTW, I think it's the first module I saw where those "fixed views" or "snap views", whatever (lWin+Numpad_digits) are meticulously pre-programmed for you - go see for yourself. I was about to create a close-up view for the GPS panel and... "WT..." - there IS such view already. Left console, right console, GPS etc., all programmed, you don't need to do it yourself. Also the manual seems very comprehensive, detailed, really honest work. Haven't read it yet, but yesterday I was browsing it page by page to see what's inside and man... there's a buttload of info there. And I thought MB-339 was a simple aircraft! Big props for the guy who wrote all this! All in all, I'm super happy IFE got on board and I'm definitely getting the Fiat from them Oh, look... and they have 4 (or so) programmers, I mean real programmers, and they can... you know... program... stuff... and the stuff works. It reminds me of another company where... oh, sorry, wrong forum, nevermind Cheers for IFE, forza Italia! (in genereal sense)

Yeah... that's my dream feature for DCS - each "button-driven axis" with speed adjustment slider of sorts. It's not only about trims, but also RPM levers for those who don't have axes for it, any sort of brightness/wingspan/elevation knobs up/down or whatever analog there is in the cockpit. I heard it's good to have dreams, so that's mine

+1 I'd concur, they're slightly fast. Not too easy to trim elevator, but IIRC it's even less easy to trim aileron when you need to. It's a bit of a pity IFE did control commands in the old hard-coded style, e.g. "iCommandPlaneSomething" - this prevents users from any fine tuning on their end. In the Mosquito, for example, there are these newest fashion "value_down = X" commands where you can tweak X value to your own liking, e.g. slow down trim etc. (I mean value_down = X commands were there in many modules before Mossie, but changing X did nothing. I think Mossie was the first one where it worked.)

I've got problems with calling ATC, too. Typically (or always) the first contact is successful (request start-up), then request taxi and request take-off both fail (silence), then I go fly somewhere and when I get back to the airfiled and contact ATC on approach - this works again. Go figure... EDIT: Removed some text from this post. I thought I figured out when the radio works (with wrong selection of COMM1/COMM2 selector on ICS panel), but no - today it works all the time, regardless of that. I have no clue what's going on.

I'll never get used to people's creativity, never! Really cool idea. Personally I shoved my Stream Deck right under and in front of my pancake monitor, so I kind of achieved similar effect, but yeah - if your SD is to the side or low, or in whatever suspicious position - great idea! Thanks for sharing

CORRECTION! The issue below is not a thing on cold and dark start. I was going through traininig missions one by one, so I got under impression it was somehow universal. On a mission start, the frequency set on UHF radio - as read from the radio's panel itself (above the knobs) - is not what the radio is really tuned to. You need to turn each freq. knob separately, each at least once, so that their respective megahertz number becomes "alive" or "is taken into account by the radio". For example, turn leftmost knob to "wake up" hundreds of MHz. This can be easily observed on the "frequency repeater" above airspeed indicator (top line for UHF). The repeater probably reflects the real frequency the radio is initially tuned to. By the way, if this is true then UHF radio can be initially set to VHF range, e.g. 1XX MHz, which shouldn't be the case for UHF radio, I guess. Both repeaters show the same frequency on the mission start (which is the frequency the V/UHF radio is tuned to). Short track: MB339_UHF_desync.trk

When mirrors are set to off (for better framerate on lower range machines), they display the famous ZX Spectrum jumping reflections... which are scratchnig the eyes and cause serious mental disorders Would you mind replacing them with a dark fixed bitmap or anything plain and simple of that kind?

Whoa... wait... a system for what? Sounds intriguing! Do you have any photos or drawings? Is it something like those, how do they call them, "export screens" - parts of the cockpit "redirected" to separate physical screens? Or anything like it?

Hi, Norsk-L. Haven't tried your SD profile, but you might consider posting your profiles, Apache or other, in the most popular thread for this (so more people will be able to spot and grab them). Here:

Haha, another one! Don't worry, Fleur79, you don't need a psychologist, you're perfectly healthy - the Hawg IS great And I concur with what sirrah wrote - while learning the HOTAS will initialy be serious PITA (so split the job into small chunks, i.e. specific use cases, and practice them one by one, e.g. multiple Maverick launch in a single attack run etc.), but once you build muscle memory it becomes... close to ecstatic, because you really feel glued to the machine, as if you two were one. (At least with the TM Warthog HOTAS, don't know how other gear works with the Hawg.) Now, many people prefer clicking OSBs on MFCDs/DDIs/whatever and I can understand that - you read handy labels on the screen and click OSBs, so it's easy and gives the pilot the confidence, but on the other hand you are often FORCED to click all those OSBs to set up this or that. In the Hawg there are very special cases where you may be forced to leave HOTAS and click an OSB. It happens, but seldom. Most of the time HOTAS is absolutely everything you need for the attack, or multiple attacks. That's why I call it TrueHOTAS, as opposed to SometimesHOTAS in some other birds. And yes, HMCS is freaking awesome in the Hawg. I just wish I could wipe out old markpoints (the blank key on the CDU doesn't work), sometimes it would come in handy, but that's about all bad things I can say about HMCS. Of course she's slow as snail, but the remedy to that is to stay away from fast birds for a while, switch to choppers or Yakk, or I-16, and then those 200-300 KIAS in the Hawg will feel "fast enough" You need to cheat youself so you don't notice how slow she is. I think if you come from the Fishbed, you might need such "treatment".

Hmmm... before I posted the commands, I had tested them. I'll check again at home (in about 11 hours). EDIT: Deleted my edit - it was silly. You wrote that your file starts working again if you put 1.0 value back. Nevermind, sorry.

Hey, Rabbithole. I'm very sorry to hear about your condition If you want to go for Voice Attack - valid option (I believe), case closed. If you want to go without it, here's how you can make throttles slow. You choose. On your disk, in the directory: <DCS main directory>\Mods\aircraft\MosquitoFBMkVI\Input\MosquitoFBMkVI\joystick there's a file "default.lua". I don't think I may post the whole file here (copyrights and stuff, I imagine), but here's just the beginning of the file where I put 2 homemade commands for you. You'll recognize them by the comments I put there. local cockpit = folder .. "../../../Cockpit/Scripts/" dofile(cockpit .. "devices.lua") dofile(cockpit .. "command_defs.lua") local res = external_profile("Config/Input/Aircrafts/common_joystick_binding.lua") join(res.keyCommands, { -- scoobie begin: -- for Rabbithole begin: {cockpit_device_id = devices.ENGINE_CONTROLS, pressed = device_commands.Button_27, value_pressed = 0.1, name = _("Throttle Up Slow"), category = _("Engine Controls")}, {cockpit_device_id = devices.ENGINE_CONTROLS, pressed = device_commands.Button_27, value_pressed = -0.1, name = _("Throttle Down Slow"), category = _("Engine Controls")}, -- for Rabbithole end. If you put these 2 lines in your file at the same position (in the file) as shown above, you'll have both the old, normal (fast) throttle commands and these two new "slow" commands. Now you can bind fast commands to the hat and slow ones to - for example - "hat + shift button" or perhaps you'll want to use another hat or a pair of buttons. This way you'll be able to control throttles both quickly (e.g. in combat, when neccessary) and slowly during cruise etc. Alternatively, you can also tinker with these numbers "value_pressed = 0.1" to find a sweetspot and have only one set of commands, like "throttle up/down not too slow and not too fast". 0.1 here is the speed - I just put this value off the top of my head. 0.1 is very slow. The original fast commands have 1.0 of value. You may try 0.2, or 0.5, whatever you want, and see how it feels. Oh, you need to restart DCS each time you modify the file, changes made while DCS is running will be ineffective (until you restart it). If you want this solution, let people know, because you'll also need some solution for restoring your changes after each DCS update (which will destroy your modifications). People will help you with that, I'm sure. There are mod managers for the job and there was a mod to keep own bindings in <Saved Games> folder, I can't remember how it was called exactly.

Haha, yeah, good timing In that case here's a newer version w. flight director buttons. Most of them seem to work, but it's late and I haven't tried localizer/glideslope intercept. C-101CC.lua C-101CC.streamDeckProfile

[Files deleted, improved version reposted below.]

Hi! Good gear and smart decision to go for pedals and head tracking together with HOTAS all at once - you'll need all of them on day one, especially the head tracker. Now get ready for a lot of lovely flying hours, but also lovely sweat and toil learning all these birds (though FC3 are not rocket science, quite a reasonable choice for starters), setting up your gear etc. Nothing compares to it, well, except for RL flying. Have fun!

ctytler explained that 2 icons maximum is the limitation of the Stream Deck software itself. A few folks from here have already asked Elgato for more icons per button, but no luck so far I wonder if they realize that flight simmers, maybe also simracers (I don't know, but maybe) are using their Stream Decks. They still advertise it as the hardware for streamers/youtubers. Fortunately I don't know anything about marketing, so maybe narrowing the pool of your potential customers is good for the company. Maybe.

Wheels are great provided you have them Fun fact: such "ramp up time" is there in P-51 if you bind trim controls to buttons (e.g. a trim hat), even though the RL Mustang has normal trim wheel and knobs. No later warbird in DCS got this quality of life improvement. My impression is that... maybe something like 2/3 of all aircraft in DCS, or half of them, IDK, have trimming with buttons set too "nervous"/coarse/fast, so that trimming turns into a minigame on its own. IIRC that was the case back then in LOMAC, probably also Flanker 2 (can't remember this one clearly).

Yeah, the Big Lady is awesome! It keeps puzzling me why people don't run in throngs to the shop to buy the module. I mean... sure, she looks like an old style milk truck, doesn't look hot or badass, as one of you mentioned above, she isn't an attack helo or a proper gunship, either, BUT... Mi-8 IS a top-notch module in DCS and it does matter a lot. RL aircraft is one thing, but the quality and "completeness" of simulation is another thing. She's on par with the Hawg (Charlie) in my book. There's so much depth to the module, the FM feels so good, so detailed, but also all the systems on board, starting from anti-ice and similar serious systems, but even every damned volt- or ammeter seems to work, a switch you didn't even know was there works, too. She's so amazing. You wanna HiFi - that's what's called HiFi. For a few hundred hours of flying Huey and Mi-8 in turns I was on the fence - do I like Huey more, or Mi-8? I finally decided, it's Mi-8 I prefer. I think I know why - Mi-8 is not only an awesome module, but also a very, very competent aircraft IRL. Lots of power, lots of radios (you'll need some to home on), she is TrulyTrimmableTM, she can cruise without you getting tired (as in Huey), you can medevac, you can swing load like a pro, you can also shoot and it's a lot of fun... provided the bad guys don't shoot back too much at you (which is a serious caveat, I know). 120 rockets? Or if you prefer realistic payload - 80 of them? That's a lot. Those machingun pods are fun like hell - you even get two flavours of bullets. Very soft targets, scattered around - spray red tracers (7.62 mm), you've got a million of them. Something slightly more endurable - aim with green tracers (12.7 mm). You need a serious punch - good, replace gunpods with cannonpods (23 mm), not too many rounds, but if you hit, they just kill. The only thing I haven't learnt to deal with (yet) is 30 mm grenades. Maybe some other time I'll get down to it. Even those "basic level" autopilots are really good, SAS that is. For instance, you can "kinda-autohover" in Mi-8. Use pitch and roll SAS - those dials on the center pedestal. Bring her to a manual hover, force trim and then see if she shows a tendency to drift away - use those dials to fine tune the hover. A few fine touches and she'll stay where you want for quite a long time. I have these dials bound to momentary toggle switches (like: minus-neutral-plus) on my button box - one for pitch, one for roll. Works a charm. Oh, you may add HDG hold to the mix. Normally you don't need this as she force trims so nicely (for sling loading etc. use your eye-hand combo, it's best), but when I get lost in a mission and need to consult the map or briefing, I hover OGE and study the papers, no problem. You can also trim her beautifully for cruise, 3 options: force trim (it works!), pitch/roll SAS (that works too), or "proper" autopilots HDG+ALT hold. So, anyway... if you like FLYING the meat and potatoes of a chopper (not a spaceship with a battalion of autopilots under the floor), for me the Mi-8 is still the best one in DCS. I mean FLYING, not missiles, double INU, fancy weapon systems or anything like that - just flying. I just wish she didn't get "knocked" every now and then as nobody from ED comes back to fix her. First the flood lights stopped flooding anything. Then she got that piano varnish at the back of the cockpit. I wouldn't mind varnish on its own, but it displays those spooky ZX Spectrum graphics reflections, jumping once a second. Recently she's got the fake hum, but I hear this is being dealt with (great!). Don't break our milk truck, ED, please!