Wildwind

It's not about "attitude". It's about learning styles and preferences. Ultimately, I'm trying to learn these skills the way real pilots learn them (except without the benefit of an instructor, unfortunately). Ultimately, what software I use to do it is less important to me than creating a learning environment that works for me is. I'm not suggesting that anyone else do it my way. My way may not work for anyone else, but it works for me. And in that regard, you can't tell me I'm "wrong", because it's a subjective thing. Your learning style isn't the same as mine, and what works for you likely will not work for me (and vice versa). There were some skills I have been able to practice effectively in DCS (for example, the F-14 is great for practicing coordinated turns because of the yaw string, for example). But for other things, it just doesn't work for me. Some of the most basic skills are just harder to learn in fast aircraft, and every aircraft I have in DCS (except the A-10, which coordinates your turns for you and thus cultivates bad habits) is too fast for training the most basic piloting skills, at least for me. DCS is an excellent simulator, but all the aircraft in it are aircraft you'd never get your hands on as a student pilot, because you aren't ready to fly them yet. This is, of course, by design; the simulator is focused on combat aircraft. And yes, this includes the trainers in the game, because they are all advanced trainers. It's not a fault of DCS, at all... DCS does what it is designed to do.

Certainly not. The reason I am flying the other sim so to get better at flying so I can be better at flying in DCS. It's merely the means I chose to this particular end, not something I'm trying to recommend. The reasons for me to fly the other sim are: 1). To fly slower, lower-performance planes, where I can more carefully evaluate what I am doing right and wrong. Nobody learns to fly in fast jets, and there's a reason for that. Even the TF-51 is vastly faster and less forgiving than a Cessna 152. 2). The maps in DCS don't really encourage one to just go fly. There's not much to explore. 3). DCS brings the constant temtpation to go fight something, because DCS is only fun when you are fighting. Right now when I am fighting I am not learning the things I need to learn. I needed to get away from fighting for a while and just focus on flying. Understand that I am talking about learning the very fundamentals of flight here. Things every pilot learns before their first solo. And yes, you absolutely can learn those things in DCS. But I personally struggle to learn those things in DCS; I needed to go somewhere else to learn them.

I think part of the problem here for us single-player types is that the AI psychically reacts to missile launches it shouldn't know about, which means it will always be maneuvering after a TWS launch. Which makes TWS pretty hard to use effectively in single-player. That's something ED needs to fix on their end, though.

I've been playing MSFS and working on my basic piloting skills while waiting for fixes. I realized somewhere along the way that my problems with low speed controllability/flying the landing pattern in the Tomcat were due to fundamental flaws in my (self-trained via sim) piloting skills. MSFS gives me a way to fly around the world and look at some nice scenery while I practice the skills from the online book Victory linked me. So, when I come back I'll be a better Tomcat pilot by virtue of being a better pilot.

Just wanted to say thank you for what you did do, and I hope that you find a way to accomplish what you wanted to accomplish here.

I'm interested. One of my favorite movie quotes is from Star Trek II, when Kirk tells Savvik, "You have to know why things work on a starship." Why? Because it reflects my philosophy on learning and understanding technical systems. Rote memorization will only get you so far; understanding the underlying logic will get you everywhere. If you know why it works, it doesn't matter if you forget the details of how it works - you can derive the how from your understanding of the why.

And yet, for those of us who play single-player, if the missile is ineffective against the AI, then it's useless. Not everyone plays multiplayer.

It may not make much difference in multiplayer, but it sure appears to make a big difference vs. the AI!

Problem 1; The F-15E is a two-seater. Pilot and WSO. This means you need a WSO to fully utilize it. Problem 2: The F-15E is substantially heavier and has more drag than the F-15C, and therefore is not as good at air-to-air (it's still no slouch, but the difference is enough to be significant, especially in BFM). I would absolutely buy both the F-15C and F-15E, even as separate full-priced modules. They're sufficiently different in role and capabiltiies.

IIRC, Phoenix chaff resistance was reduced in the last patch. I could be wrong, but it certainly seems so given the difference in performance I am seeing between before I realized Steam hadn't updated my DCS (~60^ kill probability with Phoenix vs. AI fighters at 20-25 NM) to after I actually got the update (~10% kill probability with Phoenix vs. AI fighters at 20-25NM

Yeah, unfortunately it pretty much makes the Phoenix useless against the AI because the AI pilots are like those guys in Skyrim that magically know exactly when you shoot at them even if they're 100 yards away facing the other direction, so they will almost always defeat the missile with chaff. I mean, admittedly, I only have about eight missions or so since I downloaded the update, but the pattern has been really obvious. AI spams chaff - Phoenix goes stupid and misses. It's so bad right now that if Sparrow PD-STT wasn't broken, I'd be carrying loadouts of Sparrows and Sidewinders and not bothering with Phoenix. The only thing it's good for right now is making the enemy go defensive, and I can do that with a Sparrow and save weight.

In a heartbeat. This is a "shut up and take my money!" case. There is no aircraft I want more for DCS than a full-fideltiy F-15C. Absolutely none. That even goes for impossible ones like the F-22. Probably the only thing that comes close is the F-14D (which is also in that impossible category, unfortunately, no matter how badly I want it). Just to add, I'd buy any full-fidelity F-15, but I'd really prefer an A or C rather than an E. I want the "not a pound for air to ground" version. Even if it's an F-15A and only gets Sparrow and Sidewinder, I'll take it.

And yet, in DCS I find the AIM-7 to be highly pretty reliable inside of 10 NM as long as I take good quality shots and support the missile. I don't think I've ever hit with a Phoenix inside of 10 NM. Of course, before I discovered suddenly last week that I had never downloaded the latest update (yes, I haven't tried to fly the -A yet; I'm still learning the -B, so I'm in no rush to try the more difficult Tomcat just yet. Eventually, though!) and did so, I had found Phoenix to be highly reliable between 15 and 25 NM (I hadn't gotten around to trying to fly the -A yet, I'm still learning the -B!)... and ever since then, I've had about a 10% kill probability with Phoenix at 20-25 NM vs. fighters where it used to be about 60%. Fired eight last night against MiG-23's and MiG-21's, all in near-head-on intercepts, for example - one hit. Two of them never went active for some reason (yes, I was in TWS).. In those same two missions, I fired four Sparrows at 5-10 NM against maneuvering targets and 3 of them hit. I agree the Phoenix should be the better missile, but (as long as you're in P-STT) right now, right now Sparrow is more reliable.

We can be pretty demanding, I know. But for my part at least, it's because your F-14 module is so doggone good that I don't want to fly other planes, even when something on the F-14 doesn't work the way I expect. So it makes me impatient for fixes. You should absolutely take it as a compliment. For my part... just a bit brighter on the red would be sufficient for me now, honestly, but ideally I'd like all three of them to be a somewhat brighter (especially the red). Right now, I have to fix my eyes on the indexer to see if the red is on (and if the sun is behind me, I can't see it at all), which... fixing your eyes on something inside the cockpit is not something I want to be doing in the groove. For all I know the other aircraft in DCS might be brighter than is realistic, but I don't need it to be that bright. Just enough that I can recognize it at a quick glance, which I can't now.

Heatblur F-14 manual: http://heatblur.se/F-14Manual/ Chuck's Guide: https://www.mudspike.com/chucks-guides-dcs-f-14b-tomcat/ How to get off the ground/carrier? Check Training in the menu, there are training missions for that. Also how to start it up, land it, shut it down, and how to use the weapons. They're pretty good. I don't know how to answer your aspect ratio/field of view question, but I'm sure there's someone around who does.

Yep, that was a new one on me, too. As was the connected realization that I've been drawing the wrong conclusions from it. Now I am doing a bunch of flying around in the F-14 with the seat jacked up so I can see the string clearly and practicing coordinated turns in an effort to exorcise my bad habits. The most surprising discovery was that I have been using too much rudder in gentle turns (and thus skidding without realizing it) and not nearly enough in really hard turns. Fixing my habits is going to take a lot of practice, I can tell.

The online book that Victory linked me to in another thread has a page that addresses slip extensively, including the differences between the yaw string (which purely indicates slip) and the ball (which is actually an inclinometer, and indicates inclination, which often but not always reflects slip). https://www.av8n.com/how/htm/snaps.html I was just reading this section this morning before work, in fact.

I will admit, after I played around with my monitor picture settings a bit, and then discovered that nVidia Control Panel had set me back to "limited" dynamic color instead of "full" again (I had forgotten, it does this every time you update your drivers, which is obnoxious), the sky is no longer painfully bright at the horizon (meaning I can actually use 2.2 and still read the HUD), I can see the green and yellow on the indexer passably well. it's still pretty dim, and far dimmer than the other DCS aircraft with indexers. That said, the red light on the indexer is still very difficult to see, and I largely recognize that it's on by the absence of the other two (which means I can't distinguish yellow-and-red from just-yellow very well). This also leads me to observe that it does need to be bright enough in game that even people who have crappy monitors can see it.

I've definitely had P-51D tracks break in similar fashion. Often shortly after takeoff.

Just so you know, I have experienced broken tracks with the P-51D, the A-10C, the A-10C II, the F-16C, F-86, and the F-18C, also. I have experienced broken track replays with every module I have ever bothered to watch a track for, except for the F-15C. It really is an ED problem. I will grant that the F-14 goes off the rails faster than most of those planes. EDIT: Forgot the F-86.

Definitely. I haven't done more than glance at that yet, but I definitely will. Went for the book first because my learning style favors reading over lecture, and I thought the background from the reading would help me get more out of the lecture because of it.

At the end of the last mission of this campaign, I was absolutely on vapor (had maybe 800 pounds of fuel remaining, not sure it was even that much. I cut it really close) when I touched down on the runway at the divert airfield (which, interestingly enough, did not give me mission complete; I had to refuel and fly back to the carrier for that). About two seconds after I touched down, I hear "Two, ejecting!" and then an F-14 just plummets out of the sky off to my right and craters in the grass 2-300 meters away. I'd tried to order him to RTB, but it wouldn't let me talk to him even though I hadn't changed the channel on that radio. Not sure what was up with that; may have been damage, since the navigation was acting up, though I don't remember getting hit at any point. Guess he ran out of fuel, considering how close I was. The debriefing log did show "engine shutdown" for him before "crash". Have to say I felt like I really earned my mission complete on that one. Six kills (two MiG-29 with Phoenix, two MiG-29 with Sidewinder, one MiG-23 with Sparrow, and one MiG-29 with guns that really didn't want to die. I scored hits on him with guns five separate times before he finally burst into flames and ejected), plus having to nurse my aircraft back to the divert airfield with the navigation system half-working and almost no fuel. And then fly it back to the carrier with the nav system STILL half-out because I didn't want to stop my engines for repairs and risk not being able to start them again for some reason when I hadn't gotten mission complete yet. Somehow, I made it. That guns kill was definitely my #1 DCS moment so far, though. He made me earn it.

Yeah, I had to run it three times because I am not very practiced at Bombcat yet. I'm pretty good at dive-bombing with slick bombs, but the low-level high-drag drops I don't quite have the hang of, and since my wingman hardly ever made it all the way to the target, it was up to me to take out the radar. I ended up realizing that I didn't have to stay QUITE as low as I was, I could pop-up to about 500 feet AGL and make a shallow dive on the target, and when I did that I nailed it the first try. At some point I need to learn how to use Computer Target mode; I suspect it would be better suited to that particular attack. As for why my wingman never made it, well... I was flying really low. Under the power lines at points. But I don't think that was the problem; he always seemed to crash right after I made a turn. He was in trail, and I suspect he was using pursuit logic rather than actually following my path, which would cause him to cut inside my line on the turns... and I was cutting some of those turns fairly closely. I haven't gone back to watch the TacView of that mission yet and find out, though. Maybe it will offer me some insight on how to help him get through alive.

Very cool. Thank you! EDIT: Having started reading the material at that first link now, let me say again thank you. This is very helpful. I understood a lot of the physics involved on a theoretical level (I actually started in college as an Aerospace Engineering major, then changed to Comp Sci (aviation and computers are my two great loves, no surprise I got into flight sim, huh?) because I was bluntly informed by my academic advisor that there were far more aerospace students than there were aerospace jobs at the time), but there is a big difference between understanding the theory and understanding the practical applications of that theory for a pilot. I'm only 2 sections into this, out of 21, and it is already changing my perspective on how to fly an airplane! I can tell already this is going to be one of those things that after I finish reading it once, I am going to find myself going back and forth between re-reading it, and jumping into the sim to practice applying what I've read.

Yeah, I ride motorcycles, too ('87 Kawasaki Vulcan 88, was my grandfather's before he passed away. Love that bike, even if it's down with clutch problems at the moment. ). Since my grandfather rode, and my dad still rides, I got good advice and took the Motorcycle Safety Course, and I'm so glad I did; slow-speed riding was one of the many things covered. I had the additional bonus of it raining on Day 2 of the class, so I got to learn a lot of things in adverse conditions (which made it harder, but at the same time means I was better prepared for riding in those conditions in the future). Yeah, what I really need to do, I think, is find (or develop) some kind of practice exercises for precision low-speed flight. That's how I learned to go slow on the bike, after all. The tricky part is making sure I'm doing it right, practicing the right habits and not the wrong ones. That's where having an instructor comes in handy.