Dudikoff

Oh, do you have a link to such a diagram? I've skimmed through the pilot's manual and on the throttle diagram I've seen, I didn't notice it, but it wasn't a diagram explaining the throttle controls.

There's a diagram of the throttle the F-14D Flight Manual which seems to be publicly available. Yes, the new stick hat is the weapon selector switch and I don't see any TD controls added to the throttle. It has only two buttons on the front side not seen on this image, nothing else IIRC. I would presume the radar manipulation mentioned in the video would be limited to what's available on the MFD controls when the radar picture is shown.

The main reason for the chosen name was to distinguish it from the existing FC MiG-29 which is called "MiG-29" already, while the FF module is called "MiG-29A Fulcrum-A". Since they added "Fulcrum-A", they could have just called it "MiG-29 Fulcrum-A", I guess.

Flanker has two dedicated spots under the wings where 2 R-27T/ET missiles are usually carried (though, R/ERs can be carried there as well) and the fuselage stations can carry R/ER variants only. So, the text is not really describing a case where a mixed seeker load on the same set of pylons is possible.

Interesting. I'm using the WinWing MFDs as well so I'm wondering if it's possible to export the SPO-15 to an MFD in this way, too?

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough - I don't want to negate it; it's much preferred to a toggle button as I can use a suitable control on the throttle and tell physically by it's position if it's out or not. I guess an illustration of the controls in the manual would help; the way it is now, I saw the flaps illustration and moved on.

Ah, that's useful to know, thanks. Was confused why there's only a toggle button for it.

It's probably how it's supposed to function in theory, but given all the references from various flight manuals mentioned in this thread, I guess in practice this sync is not guaranteed and overspills would obviously occur. Given the state of Soviet electronics, the question is if this would occur constantly or randomly (i.e. couldn't be avoided with the systems used being not reliable or precise enough to avoid this) or perhaps the equipment would get out of tune in time (so it's kind of a maintenance issue where the ground crew would need to tinker with it).

Radar switches itself between transmit and receive periods constantly (so it can receive the reflections), that's normal. I don't see any mention here that these periods are synced with the SPO.

Some of these are probably features that 95% of the people won't ever use and they don't want to go down those rabbit holes given plenty of modules and limited manpower. Heatblur takes a different approach, but then again, it takes them ages to release stuff (probably due to a lot of these seemingly simple features turn out much more complex to do properly than initially assumed). I do agree that it brings full-fidelity description into question, but they need to stay afloat as well, so, you take the bad with the good, I guess.

Unless it's something they couldn't solve at that moment and left it for later (like e.g. the TWF mode sometimes overwhelming the Ts100 computer, which was fixed with Ts100M, IIRC). But, yeah, this sounds like something that should be made optional as it was definitely not designed to work like this.

It was further developed to VTAS II and III and even tested on the F-14A, but to be more useful, it required development of new high off-boresight missiles. In the end, the Navy decided to shift their missiles development funds elsewhere based on tests, tactical considerations and available budget (the primary limiting factor as always). If they had known in advance the Soviets would field such a system on the MiG-29 and Su-27, I guess they might have given it a higher priority.

Personally, I wouldn't mind paying for it (discounted for F-14 owners, naturally) as it's quite a lot of extra work that was never mentioned on the roadmap, but that's up to HB to decide, of course. Though, I would really love to have the F-14D as well (even without IRST if that's the major issue with it). It's a shame it got canned from the start, basically; it would have been so cool with the A2G SAR modes (as on the F-15E), AMRAAMs, etc.

Even the first photo of a Ukrainian 9.13 shows an R-27ER, from what I can tell.

The new interface to DCS sounds interesting. I'll try it out when I find time. Thanks for your hard work keeping VAICOM alive.