Dragon1-1

Unlike GPUs, CPUs generally don't lower their prices. This is odd, but that's how it works. It's typically best to get the latest generation CPU available, because it's going to cost the same as the equivalent lower generation model.

AWG-9 is an older radar set, no wonder modern jamming pods can make problems for it. It's powerful and has a long range, but it can't filter out jamming as effectively as radars with full digital electronics.

Some of those were paper studies, so data could not exist at all. DCS is a "top down" simulation, which requires the devs to take real aerodynamic data and then tune the FM to match it. This pretty much excludes any weird design for which there was not even wind tunnel testing, nevermind an actual, flying test article. For that, you would require a high fidelity "bottom up" simulation, which basically means running CFD in real time. It will be less accurate than what DCS can do due to limitations of discrete modeling, so it will not be to DCS standards. Which is also why using CFD to replace actual flight test data is not going to be an acceptable method for a DCS module.

Except the pressure doesn't drop all across the system, it drops, first of all, at the point of puncture, which is why you see a trail of steam coming out. It can steam for quite a while, too. Until the reservoir is empty, the coolant will continue to cool the engine, and what's more, the evaporating coolant will take quite a bit of heat out of the system, and the fact that evaporation causes steam to expand will constrain the flow rate somewhat. So the system does not actually lose effectiveness until voids begin to appear inside the engine. A single rifle caliber hole won't prevent you from making it back across the channel, assuming you're smart about how hard you run your engine. In fact, I recall an account of a P-51 going quite a ways (though not back to England IIRC, this was post-Normandy) when steaming from a bad encounter with a pair of 190s, though I can't find it now.

The autothrottle in the F-14 is for carrier landing, not for cruising.

This is a bit of an exaggeration. A small bullet hole in a radiator will cause a coolant leak, but until it all leaks out, you'll be fine. There's a lot of water in the system, so unless we're talking a gaping hole in the radiator or a completely severed coolant line, it can run for long enough to get the ship back to the airfield. Also, while it's true that an air cooled engine will be generally tougher to break, both have an oil cooler, and both can be completely destroyed by shooting a hole in the oil system. The only thing is, oil cooler is typically a smaller target. Oil system also typically has a smaller volume, so any leak will kill the engine much more quickly.

Not having the silly radio comms probably does help. It's unreliable, largely unrealistic, and annoying to deal with when not using voice control.

More or less this. On reentry, most of the speed is lost in upper atmosphere, far above 50kft. The Phoenix doesn't go particularly fast by spacecraft standards, and there's very little drag this high up at those speeds. On this phase, the heatshield doesn't glow anymore, and the spacecraft will be in a ballistic descent (unless it's the Space Shuttle, which is gliding at that point). Also, friction isn't the lead cause of reentry heating. Compression is, air can't get out of capsule's way fast enough, so it gets squeezed, and that causes it to heat up. A lot. Civilian reentry vehicles (that is, ones that are not ICBM warheads) have a blunt shape to keep this "bow shock" away from the heatshield's surface, preventing the glowing white plasma from heating it directly. If the heatshield glowed white, it'd be rapidly disintegrating.

If I was to pick one, it'd be the A-10C, because it's very comprehensive, and being the first fixed wing aircraft in DCS, some of its quirks don't hurt it as much. The latest offering from Heatblur will typically be visually impressive, but as far as realism goes, both Phantom and F-14 still lack some features. Phantom is very WIP, the Tomcat is almost done, but is still missing some stuff even from the basic startup checklist, such as EMER GEN and OBC tests. There's probably more things missing in the backseat, but I don't fly as RIO, so I don't know. Meanwhile, in the A-10C you can not only perform all the checklist, you can go into deep menus that you don't need 99% of the time, and change some obscure parameter if it's the 1% of missions where doing that can help you. I wish more time was spent on bringing newer aircraft to that standard. Generally, the older the aircraft, the simpler the systems, but OTOH, modeling an analog radar system is very much a complex task.

It's been already stated that ED is going to add ammo detonations eventually. This was indeed a serious problem, but it required hitting the wing in the specific place, in case of the 109 it was the right wing root, FW-190 had ammo boxes for wing guns, making this easier. Of course, Allied pilots would know to aim for those bits, so I guess it wasn't that rare, but remember that many engagements ended with the bandit bugging out and not being recorded as kill at all, at least until they captured the airfield and found the plane in question augured into a field not far from where the fight took place (or even crashed trying to land because pilot didn't realize he was missing a tire). Did you verify those "hundreds of .50cal holes" in the post-mission log? Because that's very much not my experience. Sure, it happened that I was shooting at the bandit all day and couldn't kill him, but it usually meant I wasn't hitting him a whole lot. The guns are harmonized to converge at a specific distance, and if you're off that distance, you won't be hitting much. Especially when shooting from directly behind, it's very easy to get too close and have the bullets just whizz by. When firing at convergence distance, raking a 190 with a short burst from Spitfire's Hispanos reliably sends it down in flames, and the P-51 doesn't need a whole lot of shooting, either. In DCS they're harmonized to a point, not a box like they were IRL, so it's harder to hit with them, but they hit hard.

On the P-51, they do plenty of damage. Yes, there are four more of them, but either way it doesn't take a whole lot of those bullets to make the target completely unfit to fight. It's also important to recognize when it happens and stop pumping bullets into it. It does not immediately cause the plane to turn into a fireball, but that's not how most WWII kills went down, and neither did ones from Hispano cannon. Most of the time, you've got the bandit leaking all sorts of fluids, and he'd crash some time after, on landing or otherwise. That's the "terrifying" level of damage the 20mm does, a big hole torn out in the wing or in the fuselage. Unless you hit a control surface linkage, you won't see any drastic effect, because by itself, it doesn't cause a huge explosion. There were fuel fires and you could set off ammo explosions, but the vast majority went down without fireworks.

With .303s? Most of them will deflect off the pilot seat armor or even the skin itself, if they hit at a low angle, and if you hit a strut, forget about doing anything to it. These guns were not especially useful, especially by the end of the war. Many models of the Spitfire (just not the one we have in DCS) replaced the two .303s with a single .50 in each wing, which could do some actual damage. The main use I found for the .303s is checking my aim before firing a 20mm burst (they have tracers and ample ammo supply, the 20mm has neither). The other is for strafing infantry.

Not unnecessarily complex, it simply started out in the 80s, they couldn't have made it any smaller and still have it hold all the necessary data. In many ways, it's like an oldtimey console cartridge, only more rugged. The modern version holds over 128GB of data and has a lot of features such as integrated tests and fault detection. This complexity is very much necessary for what it does.

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.