Dudikoff

Seems to be progressing quite well!

A very interesting system, surprised it wasn't fielded in the end. But, in any case, nice of Razbam to have provided it for us (and for free at that).

Great work, Razbam. Hope some of this stuff can be reused by some of your other modules.

To be fair, Winwing has just recently entered the consumer market so the comparison is not really fair. I'm sure you could find such complaints from back when VKB and Virpil were just starting. The company needs to get a larger sales volume so they can invest in dedicated customer support department and then have some part of the profit set aside to be burned on claims like these. Without a dedicated and trained customer support, the language barrier and a larger cultural difference can lead to a conflict when there's some problem. But, the problem here is that you're not the OP. You take one-sided second hand bits of information and form IMHO rather extreme views on the situation which you present as obvious 'facts' which only serves to escalating the misunderstanding further and doesn't really help the OP to resolve his situation to mutual satisfaction. I could be wrong, sure, but my basic view is that WinWing have no interest in crossing over their customers as it would be quite stupid to do so. But, I'd wager it sounds more likely than 'WinWing wants to shoot themselves in a foot to save $50' perspective.

Not saying there's no bug with a target lock if you try to slew it horizontally, but I don't think that EOS is supposed to be slewable anymore on the MiG-29 (as it is not in real life as well).

'Obviously lying'? You seem to hold a very extreme perspective where a company which wants to earn money by selling flight sim gear to their customers is somehow interested in scamming them.

How long can a Paypal dispute remain open? Trying to look from the perspective of the company, they could send out the missing parts AND then get the money paid through Paypal revoked, thus the buyer would keep both their money and the fully functioning throttle.

Is it possible to configure the lua for some static image file to be shown on a part of a screen? E.g. if I'm using three MFDs over an external screen and I export two DCS instruments on two of them and a custom static jpg on the third to show some custom MFD key bindings. Also, is there a list of all the supported constants for MonitorSetup (e.g. F14_DDD, etc.) somewhere? Can kneeboard be exported as well? Thanks.

Looks quite practical. Do you have some photos from below to see how it's mounted? Did you like make holes in the bottom panel of the throttle?

Not sure if the Mavs were ever certified and used on Navy A-7E's, but if they wanted to, one simple solution would be to make the radar screen compatible with it like on some export variants of the F-5E.

If you compare the edge to edge width of the original mounting plates and the new ones when installed, you'll see where the extra spacing comes from. Cool idea. I hope he can come up with some sort of adapter plates for the Super Taurus as well.

I've read some article recently where a former Czechoslovak MiG-23 pilot said how he asked for a transfer to a MiG-21 or an L-39 unit or something because they were flying only about 30 hours max a year on the 23 at the time (due to a much higher operating cost, presumably).

I highly doubt MiG-29's were flying the same number of hours as the F-15's, though. I got the impression that WP fighter pilots seemed to have had gotten a rather small number of yearly flight hours. Plus, the P&W F100 was highly problematic early on IIRC, enough to force USAF to introduce an alternate engine later on for the F-16s (GE F110).

Maybe Heatblur? Hopefully. It would certainly make sense, unless there's some new unannounced developer..

I don't know, I think the variable geometry is what makes it an efficient and compact design; for example, it helps it to both land more comfortably than the MiG-21 and also to have less drag at high speeds which allows it to outperform and outrange the MiG-21 by a large margin. And I'm not sure the system increased its weight by THAT much. Keep in mind you're comparing its weight with a MiG-29 which was designed more than a decade later and thus used more advanced materials like e.g. composites. Though, I do think they should have made the wing angle primarily controlled by a computer like on e.g. the F-14, at least on the later variants when electronics were more advanced. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if variable wing sweep mechanism was one of the major contributing factors to the types somewhat short service life, but that's not really an argument against the concept itself IMHO - they could have made it sturdier and longer lasting if that was more important to them than keeping its price relatively reasonable.

I agree with the other points and, yeah, the MiG-23 has a bad rep in general, but I'm wondering how justified that really is. I'm sure the earliest variants were a nightmare, but once those kinks were ironed out (from M and beyond), I would wager it was a very good interceptor, with a combination of a decent radar, weapons, speed and a very good range for its size. A lot of the bad rep seems to be coming from the Constant Peg analysis flying the initial export MS variant provided by Egypt (and UB perhaps?). Regarding the ex-pact countries, most decided to keep MiG-21s temporarily as they were cheaper to overhaul, I presume, and the only mission they required was controlling the airspace, like intercepting and identifying some civilian airplanes. Also, I also kind of remember the type had a relatively short service life (in hours and years) so when that ran out, they were just withdrawn from service (e.g. Bulgaria kept theirs till 2004. apparently). For example, the service life of the MiG-23UB is supposedly only 1500 hours or 17 years. Also, reading about some offers to the Indian Air Force (which operated both the fighter MiG-23s and attack MiG-27s), one limiting factor was the engines as they were not manufactured anymore, being turbojets. If India went ahead with the overhaul, they would have to have been reengined with another type. I can't find any hard data on its operational and maintenance cost and stuff, but I saw on YouTube that a few are still flying in the states and their owners seem to find them reliable and relatively easy to maintain.

Could be, though the key word is "required". Like the MiG-29 was required to have a bigger combat radius than it ended up having.

The R-27R missile was required to outrange the AIM-7F so the MiG-29 could intercept an F-15 as well if required.

I'm kind of dumbfounded by some contradictions between the plane and its intended role. For one, it was designed to be a cheaper counterpart to LFI (Su-27), but with twin engines, it didn't really end up that much cheaper (IIRC, around 75% of the Su-27 price). Two engines also took a toll on the range as it didn't have enough fuel for them (coupled with those auxiliary intakes to be able to operate from unprepared runways and non-composite riveted wings which limited the amount of fuel which could fit them). Two, it was designed to be very maneuverable, but at the same time, it was intended to be a replacement for MiGs 21 and 23 and used in the same way - intercept a GCI assigned target and return home). Maneuverability and high off-boresight SRMs perhaps allowed it to gain a favorable position for a second attack in the merge, but I think an updated MiG-23MLD with same weapons wouldn't have fared that much worse for less money (e.g. modified canopy, automatic wing sweep control system, outer wing pylons made moveable and SRM capable, etc.). The 23 having a single engine, had a much longer combat radius and a smaller frontal RCS, not to mention a smaller silhouette in general. I would wager it was also cheaper to make and maintain. MiG-29M (9.15) would have fixed a lot of the issues with the initial variant, but it would require a doctrinal change to make use of its potential.

Cool, had this happen several times this week.

It also keeps the cost down (which I guess is important if your economy is much weaker) as you don't need sophisticated (and thus expensive) radar sets and very well trained pilots if they just need to follow the assigned intercept course and attack assigned targets. Su-27s on the other hand were supposed to have a more capable radar set, but its development failed at the time so it was replaced with an enlarged set from the 29 with more Ts-100 computers added. Plus, it was a system where those at the top are somewhat paranoid and distrustful of the lower echelons so they like to keep all decision making powers to themselves which then trickles out to all spheres, including the armed forces.

I guess you should have researched my post better then as it didn't reference you in any way.

Speaking of not researching, Razbam A-7E? Kind of doubt it will happen since someone else is having a crack at it.

One more point worth considering is that rumors are the next generation of Nvidia cards should be in production next May. Now, that's certainly not a given in the current silicone shortage environment, but since you've said it runs DCS well enough, you might as well wait for next gen to splurge that amount as the performance gains will be much bigger.

I guess that depends on the price you can get them at. MSRP wise, the 3080Ti is of course not worth it (as it brings only a 5-10% increase in performance, depending on the title), but with the inflated 3080 prices, it could be relatively speaking if the price difference is small enough.