Dragon1-1

There's your problem. On the Orion 2, throttle is Ry and Rx. I don't know what Rz is on that particular throttle (antenna elevation, maybe?), but it's probably set to near 100%.

Except no? Germany has cities (bigger than either of those maps, in fact), highways, landmarks, all that stuff. Water is water no matter where it is in the world. Of all the bad arguments you've made, this is probably the silliest one. Even the endless parade of maps set in the sandbox has something to set them apart. In the GIUK gap, you'll take off from the boat, do your mission feet wet, and get back to the boat. That's pretty much the scenario for it, US CVBG vs. Soviet surface combat battlegroup. Very nice for ship and especially sub sims, but for aircraft, way down the list. Only to ones that are almost 100% water. Just to be clear, I wasn't referring to ahistorical aircraft, I was referring to most modules and AI aircraft, particularly Soviet ones, that we have being physically unable to operate from a carrier or do AAR. This means they wouldn't get very far in, especially without a friendly airbase in the area. You might not have noticed how many miles separate those airbases. GIUK gap is huge. Distance from Falklands to mainland is about 600km. That's the largest DCS map currently available, and it already exceeds combat radius of most of our aircraft. From Iceland to UK? 1000km of nothing but sea. If you take a detour you can glimpse Faroe islands, not that there's a lot to see in there. If you want to fly for three hours with multiple AARs just to see something other than water, well, you can set it up on the South Atlantic map. In fact, Marianas has already been explicitly designed as the DCS' "mostly water" map. Also, GIUK gap is big enough that it'll be even worse than South Atlantic with regards to being just plain inaccurate. Geography of the SA map is skewed because the map is flat and the Earth is not, contrary to what some people believe. It's not too obvious because of all the water, but this is something you really want a spherical Earth for. Just like with Vietnam, you're thinking too big for this stage of sim development.

You know that if you want a huge swatch of water, you can just load up Marianas or SA, right? Or even Kola, it's got quite a bit of water around it. Naval aircraft we have in DCS are quite few in number, and Soviets barely used them, anyway. Ships in DCS are lacking, too. Most aircraft in DCS are land based, so a map that is pretty much only ocean would have limited utility. Notice how most of Red Storm Rising and Hunt for Red October involved ships and submarines. Realistically, any Soviet aircraft fought would be flying from land bases. The only Soviet planes to fly from a carrier were Su-33 and Yak-38. Nothing else.

Kola is fairly close to GIUK gap, but the gap itself is huge and very watery, so it's probably best left for the whole Earth map. After all, it'll mostly be endless ocean bounded by landmasses from which it got its name. Also, air combat there would be mostly the domain of carrier aircraft, with maybe a few land based ones from Iceland and UK if the fighting got close. Kola map has all we need in that region, IMO.

Many a Vietnam era Phantom jock had those thoughts, too. Especially when it came to the earlier versions, which were unreliable. The Sidewinder was a favorite for a reason, even if they still grumbled about its reliability, but that's more due to a hot, humid Vietnamese jungle doing a number on electronics. Also worth noting, the F-4E in particular has a tiny radar antenna, because they had to fit the gun in somewhere. Not sure how it compared to F-4D, but the USN Phantoms had a much better radar, and a bigger nose to hold the antenna (and no gun). All I can say, try looking up instead of down (radars of the era hate ground clutter), and maybe try to fiddle with radar settings. I hope Jester will be able to manage the radar in a somewhat more sophisticated way later on. In general, though, try to account for the fact you will probably get tally before you get radar contact. That's just how it is, and why the ACM radar modes are such great help. If you're flying the Phantom for air to air, you will be dogfighting, unless you're shooting down bombers flying in straight line (admittedly, the designers' intended use case). When USN figured this out, TOPGUN was born. USAF took a bit longer, but they eventually came up with Red Flag.

It's be hard to nose gear to hit first, seeing as the hook is at the back, so that's what the aircraft will pivot around. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that any attitude in which the nose gear is down and main gear isn't would result in the hook being way above the deck.

Welcome to the jungle (or rather, the aircraft that fought over one). This is just one of the things the pilots complained about in Vietnam. 50 or even 100NM range scale was the result of wishful thinking and testing in optimum conditions. Against a tiny Vietnamese MiG, it wasn't nearly that good, not that you were allowed to shoot it without VID even if you did get a lock. Now add random missile failures, and imagine those are your only weapons. You'd quickly realize just why they added the gun. Your only recourse was that the enemy couldn't launch at you from ahead, because PAVN didn't have radar guided missiles (nor was their radar any better), and all aspect heaters weren't a thing yet. The Phantom's radar is, like most radars on 3rd generation fighters, an FCR first and foremost. The 4th gens have no problem using their radars to search the airspace, but the Phantom's radar is primarily there to guide Sparrows, and its ability to search for targets is not impressive. At the time, AWACS and GCI would be charged with that.

I finished it (by taxiing out of the way before signaling) right before the update. I didn't check after the patch. It's possible it's been fixed.

Agreed, we could use a George in this aircraft. It'd make using the missiles while flying the helo so much easier.

Sound needs to be improved, but I gear collapse happened to me a few times in the F-14. I dunno if it was flying engagement or I simply brought it down too hard.

I've seen this bug pop up before. Might be a good idea to make a separate report for that one. Last time it was fixed relatively quickly.

While the I-16 doesn't have too any places to fly it, we will soon have Cold War Germany. A WWII version of this map would be good for La-7, as well as many other late WWII designs. So it's a thought, the devs at UGRA are very experienced in WWII area, so perhaps after they finish the Cold War version, they could be convinced to make a WWII one using the same terrain with era-appropriate buildings. A few landmarks will be the same on both maps, though a lot of Berlin had to be rebuilt post-war.

None of our aircraft are LORAN capable, though. I think it was mostly a thing on bombers.

Presumably because it should have been sent via PM, though if you're sure it's a pre-1980 unclassified document, you should tell them so.

You can force the setting in the difficulty options. In fact, you can force it on, off or leave it up to the player, just like any other difficulty setting. Using the Stennis won't work for SC owners, because it gets the full SC treatment for them.

This has a fairly simple solution, actually, just make sure the only allowed spawns are assigned to cats that aren't blocked. Myself, I think ED should prioritize a small feature: require a "salute" before magically turning the jet around in the parking spot. That would help immersion in SP, or simply when you want to shut down.

In M6, the starting positions mean the wingman tries to taxi first and collides with the player's aircraft. The only fix is to manually tell the crew to pull chocks and get out of the way. This positions probably work for Hornets, but not for much larger F-14s. I suggest moving the player to another spot that doesn't have this problem.

Well, it's an FMC, patterned after the Boeing, but will work in the A-10, Chinook and Apache, as well as any future aircraft with a keypad. I ran out of room for peripherals, but if I ever make a transition to a standalone frame cockpit, I'll probably get one for use in these.

I'll add, this is because in CCIP, the radar is locked into providing the range to the pipper. It can't do mapping at the same time.

ED really needs to rethink its policy on making multiple variants. Why the Swiss F-5E in particular? There were so many other versions more relevant to us than this particular one. I don't think they'd all be missing documentation.

This was going to come up sooner or later, so I figured I'd go ahead and start it. Basically, a WWII version of this terrain would be wonderful, we'd finally get some place to fly the Russian fighters, and most of our WWII hangar would fit in as well. After Normandy, Berlin is the logical next step.

On water in calm weather, it can probably be expected to work. On land, in a complex terrain, it should fail if you move it around too much. Not to mention, getting the radar to actually track the ground, as opposed to some false return, takes some WSO work, too. I don't know if it's implemented yet, but moving the pipper around too much should result in a lost lock.

Also, JDAMs aren't as accurate as LGBs, and that's a well documented limitation IRL. They are accurate, but not pinpoint weapons. That's why LJDAM exists, and why it makes sense to bring regular LGBs with our Viper if that's what you need. Cloud cover may be a problem, though.

Apparently, the data is more complete than you'd expect. I have no doubt there will be a lot of stuff left out, but we'll see how it'll end up looking. In any case, that's more than the F-16XL, which never existed as an operational platform, and thus we don't know what it'd have carried. Not to mention, we don't even have the regular Block 40 Viper.

We're not "going theoretical" on the JSF. ED is apparently convinced they can recreate it based entirely on data leaked through videos and other unclassified sources. What I expect is a jet that's accurate with regards to things it has, but there's a lot of nonfunctional features. Basically, "we don't know what this button does, so it's not implemented". They say that they know what enough of the buttons do to make a functional jet. It wouldn't be the first time. RAZBAM's Harrier has a few classified pages marked as such, and even the Hornet has a button or two which isn't planned to be implemented for now, like s-mode for the AMRAAM. The only question is, will the missing features from the F-35 be a few inconspicuous details, or will they be all over the place? We'll see.