Dragon1-1

Because the onspeed AoA is different, but the overall layout the same, the relative positions of the hook and the landing gear are different from the naval Phantom for a given AoA indication. Hence, if you touch down "on the donut", the hook will skip, since it'll be the same as if you had wrong AoA. You need to have the same "stance" as the naval Phantom, since that's what counts.

Yeah, more than Russia did. I think Russians ultimately bought 16 MiG-29S airframes, and that was that. The rest was sold to Peru, Angola and Sudan, among others. Some ended up in Belarus, but I don't think Belarus actually flew them. It would have been nice to have the S, for the sake of replacing FC3 if nothing else, but for now we're getting the A.

Looks fixed, I'd better finish the campaign before it breaks again...

It seems that a good number of airfields operating today got their start in WWII. I wonder if any were actually added during that time. Everything from 70s to 2010s was Gaddafi years, in the first decade he did a lot of building, but after that there was a massive oil price slump and after the wars of the 80s, the good times were pretty much over. There likely wasn't much built at the time, maybe aside from the oil fields.

Honestly, how much did it change between 1981 and 2011? Aside from cities being pounded into ruin, that is. Improverished areas tend to change much less over the years, and while big cities (Tripoli and Sabha, I guess) had probably expanded and improved during those 30 years, all the other areas would have changed little. Tunisia might be another matter. No matter what year, finding good imagery is always the problem. 2011 has the advantage of Google Maps existing, finding pictures of obscure areas from 1980s is going to be hard, if they even exist. In many cases you basically have what some random traveler snapped, scanned and uploaded.

Honestly, this kit is probably like Ka-50's ABRIS. A commercial unit that has a public manual and can be integrated into just about any aircraft. It's probably more elaborate than NS 430 we have in DCS, but the idea is quite similar.

Well, it was their last trip as German planes. I don't know if Poland sends its jets to the US very often, but they're a NATO member and got a lot of mileage out of those MiGs. They added some pretty cool upgrades, too.

Yup, still happening, still a problem.

Oddly enough, the mission worked for me the first time, then it stopped. I don't know what changed. I would have thought him being set to immortal (as, I presume, he is from the start) would make him ignore the damage, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

I did just that, and he exploded before my Sparrow got to him. I did not mess with PAL this time. Paco then called a kill, and I'm pretty sure he's the one who killed it (I forgot to check the debrief for play by play, but I was credited with just two kills, which would be two of the Fishbeds). It did something like that once before, so it might be worth checking whether there isn't some spillage going on.

There seems to be something off with sort on M14. Despite the fact I'm on Paco's left, as fragged, Chig locks onto the westernmost bandit. This is annoying enough, but after I locked up the right one with PAL, I then got shot down, with a heater, by the bandit that was opposite Paco, and I'd have expected him to take that one out by that point (and who was supposed to be going after Paco, anyway). Either something's off with target sorting, or the bandits got mixed up during turns. Chig had been quite helpful in air to air at that point, but here he kind of blew it.

If you want full immersion, use voice control. You can't fly without talking to the WSO. You'd have to make your own VA (or equivalent) profile, but there are bindings for many things already.

Well, I haven't seen any of those discussions, so clearly it needs more exposure. ED said how they operate, give the thread a lot of stars, make a lot of replies, and they'll consider it. There seems to be no good reason not to add it, unless ED gave one. It could easily be a waypoint action. I sure don't know of any arguments against it other than "ED didn't bother adding it". One potential problem is that when you look at how the basket behaves, it's clearly the same code they used for the boom, just with different values. It's particularly obvious when you near the edges of the box, the basket will float off the probe a little, but if you manage to correct that, it'll reconnect. However, I don't see how that would prevent making a command for automatic refueling, especially as there's usually only one aircraft anywhere near the connection point. In fact, it means any solution for baskets would also work for boom refueling.

I don't think it would bother processing anything when the emitter is turned off.

How about an alternate AAR mode for basket refuelers, where the hose is always out and anyone can come in and plug, at any time, as long as the tanker is on station? IRL, that's more or less how it's done. No annoying tanker comms or fiddling with the menu while trying to hold formation, just fly up to it and plug.

I think he means that when you sit upright in a plane and enter an uncoordinated turn, the "down" direction will no longer be towards the floor, which is very noticeable through your seat cushion interface. Obviously, it's not really possible to simulate without a motion platform, which makes flying warbirds well, for instance, much harder than IRL, because you have to look at the slip ball and not just operate the rudder by feel. IRL it's supposedly more like balancing on a bike, once you get it you don't even have to think about getting your turn coordinated, nevermind stare at instruments.

This is not likely to be in any manual, but it can be figured out experimentally. Go up in the Viper or the F-15C, get up there and note the fuel flow indicator with burners on, and the mach number you get. Once you have that, it's simple arithmetic to get how long you can fly like that on a full tank (since AAR is a thing, you don't need to account for takeoff). Calculate TAS from mach using either the formula, an online calculator, or the switch in the jet while you're there. Remove a reasonable bingo value from your fuel load to get combat range. Also note, I didn't say the MiG-31's supersonic dash is short ranged. I said it can't be called a cruise, because you typically don't cruise for 20 minutes. In fact, it probably compares well to the Viper, which is notorious for its short legs. Supercruise in fighters wasn't a thing until F-22, and before then, Concorde, Tu-144 and SR-71 were pretty much the only aircraft capable of it AFAIK, and that's only if you consider the "afterburner" on the SR-71 to be a full-on ramjet that just happened to be integrated with the turbine. Turns out, going supersonic and staying there without an afterburner isn't trivial.

By the Russians (USSR fell before 2000). And my point is, and always was, that US had a technological lead on Russia in mid-2000s, and therefore it is futile to look for symmetric counterparts to mid-2000s US modules among the Russian aircraft, because at the time, no such thing existed. It's not dev bias, Russian laws or anything, just technical reality of that specific period. That's the only point I ever tried to make. I'm looking through a prism of DCS because we're playing DCS. To deny airspace IRL, Russia would have used, first of all, what they're using in Ukraine today: SAM sites. MiG-25, was a solution to protect the vast tracts of Siberia that were impractical to plaster with SAM sites, and the MiG-31 is a modernized derivative with slightly expanded mission profile. They would be supplementing the SAM screen, not trying to establish air superiority over hostile territory. The frontline fighters were, in mid-2000s, Su-27S and MiG-29A, the latter being more or less exactly the same as what we're getting, maybe with a commercial GPS unit strapped on. I seem to have mixed up values in km and nm. Difference is not as big, but consider that it takes about two hours to get all the way across the subsonic combat range at Mach 0.8, compared to under 20 minutes for the supersonic dash. Since that one was about the exact definition of "cruise", then it's important to consider both time and range.

This is not cruising, they use afterburner to maintain that speed. Yes, it can go pretty far that way, but at that speed and altitude, it covers its 400nm combat radius in less than 20 minutes. "Cruise speed" usually means you can maintain it for longer than that. MiG-31's actual cruise speed is subsonic, just like most other aircraft of the time. At Mach 0.8 and 10km its combat range is over 1300nm. That is what we usually call cruising.

It's not un-simable, you just need a 10000$ motion platform to get that feeling. I've been meaning to make one myself, hopefully for less, but it's on backburner for now. Sadly, a full centrifuge for G simulation is beyond even that.

In what timeline is 1992 "mid-2000s"? Also, in what timeline is that year relevant to a discussion about mid-2000s? They won't, because MiG-31 does not "cruise" at Mach 2 at 20km. To reach that kind of speed and altitude, it needs full burner and a lot of room to climb and accelerate. More than we have in DCS on most maps, in fact. So this capability is largely irrelevant. In a typical DCS scenario, it'd be hard pressed to go much faster and higher than Tomcat usually does. It's closer to an armed SR-71 than to the F-14 when it comes to how it's flown. ...and that's really my whole point. Nothing to do with classification (it's IP licensing which was holding up ED making the MiG for a long time, not government veto), and everything to do with the fact there's simply no good red counterpart for most BLUFOR aircraft. Consider that you keep going back to a specialized interceptor that, while quite capable, is still 80s tech. Also, we're not getting a MiG-31 in DCS, as far as I know. Even if the phased array wasn't classified, it's probably too much of a one trick pony, not to mention it's a two seater that requires even more crew cooperation than the F-14 does. MiG-29 will be great for Cold War scenarios, and if we get Su-27S, it'll match up quite well with the F-14. We don't have the F-16A, and the period accurate F-15C is FC3, though I hope someone will eventually make it in FF.

This will probably be rebalanced for DC. There needs to be some way of making runway destruction useful, while not being the end of the world. IRL it also greatly depends on the weapon used to crater it.

Missed that one earlier. Aside from the Hornet, aircraft lights are not visible at a distance. This makes them practically useless and also makes night rejoins a huge pain. Hornet has its problems, but it's much better than lights not working at all, except up close. Likewise, landing lights and AAR lights. The former should illuminate the runway when on approach, the latter should light up the whole tanker when closing in. This needs to be looked at, and should be a priority, given the impact it has on night ops.

At night, the lights on the S-3 are completely invisible until very close to the tanker, at which point they suddenly pop into view. This is making night rejoins for AAR far harder than they're supposed to be. They need to be made visible from a long distance away, like on the Hornet.

But you're talking about late Cold War all the time. Discussion is about "modern" DCS timeline, which is smack dab in the middle of a period in which Russian aircraft production really wasn't at its best. Half of your post is arguing about how things were before USSR fell, at best or right after. This doesn't enter into discussion about modern-era DCS modules. If nothing else, it proves the point that to get true peer to peer combat, you need to go back to late Cold War. In that timeline, 4 MiG-29 vs. 4 Viper would handily go to the Viper with its AMRAAMs. 4 F-14 vs. 4 MiG-31 would likely to to the Tomcat, as all they have to do is survive BVR. Against an airframe like this, the best option is to banzai across the MAR and force a WVR engagement. Which, with Phoenix outranging the R-33, the F-14 is very well set up to do. Add to it that the F-14 we have is not the latest model, that would be F-14D, with an even better radar, fancy HUD and MFDs. Also, I'm talking in context of DCS multiplayer, and there, players would find assets like MiG-25 or MiG-31 disappointing. Between its limited WVR capabilities and its weapons, the MiG-31 would still be fighting from a position of disadvantage most of the time. Not to mention, its cockpit design is far from modern, and its datalink does not compare favorably to Link-16 (it's more like Tomcat's Link-4). My point is, at this point in the timeline, there's no "red" aircraft (other than prototypes) that would have a glass cockpit, Fox 3 and all that, maybe except the Su-30MKK. At the same time, the US had a full fleet of Block 52 Vipers, Hornets, Strike Eagles, and the F-14 was still alive and kicking.