Wildwind

Just had this same thing happen yesterday to me. TacView said I was at 7.9 degrees AoA at touchdown, so only 0.2 degrees less than on-speed.

So, yesterday I had a couple of puzzling LSO grades (both in single-player practice missions). 1). I got a "3PTS" in a Hornet when Tacview shows I touched the deck at 7.9 degrees AoA (i.e. just 0.2 degrees below on-speed). How's that possible? 2). I got waved off (again in a Hornet) for no apparent reason. I was on-speed, ball was centered, lineup was centered. LSO Grade was WO WO[AFU]IC, but I was pretty much dead-on, possibly the best approach I've ever flown. Furthermore, the Wave-Off came when I was about 10 feet off the deck, so it was far too late to avoid trapping (and I caught the 3-wire, no less). This was one of two wave-offs I got where I called the ball, heard "Roger ball", and then nothing until suddenly "wave-off, wave-off" really late in the approach for less-than-obvious reasons, but the other one was at least soon enough to avoid trapping (and I think my descent rate was a bit high (not so high as to get a TMRDIC, though) on that one, but that definitely wasn't the case on this one)) I've had a number of times where the LSO responses really puzzled me, but most of those have been in the Tomcat and I have heard that sometimes the LSO does not handle the Tomcat correctly, so I didn't think much of it. That, and I'm just not very good at carrier landings yet, so I'm generally inclined to assume I screwed up somehow rather than that the game did. These two were the first really weird examples in the Hornet, though, and in both cases I felt like my approach was pretty good.

Thank you very much. I'll give those a try as soon as I finish troubleshooting the other problem I'm trying to solve currently (getting my MFD exports working)

Yeah, rudder trim is heavily needed in warbirds, too. Example, in the P-51 you have to trim something like 6 degrees right rudder on takeoff, and then you'll be adjusting that immediately once you're in a stable climb. I find in the F-14 the only time I ever touch the rudder trim is when I extend the fuel probe (the extra drag from the probe on the right side causes the aircraft to yaw right, so I have to add a fair bit of left rudder trim to compensate). Is there any other time I ought to be using it? The aircraft seems to fly naturally straight without any intervention on my part (possibly this is the effect of twin engines/twin rudders). Actually, logically, it occurs to me that I should probably be trimming rudder after firing a missile from one side or the other (for the same reason, except in this case I've reduced drag on one side), but I am usually too busy in those moments to pay much attention to that.

This has a lot to do with why it took me so long to realize it was a controls problem. I couldn't reliably perceive whether the clicking the trim hat (actually an analog stick mapped as a hat, which was where the problem was - I needed to recalibrate the underlying analog axis) was making a difference or not. It was only when I tried it sitting on the ground and realized that when I trimmed nose-down, the stabilators moved, and when I trimmed it nose up, they didn't, that I realized it was actually broken. Of course, now that I have it working correctly, I realize that it should have been obvious it wasn't working, now that I have actually seen it at work and understand better how it affects the aircraft (it's one thing to understand it intellectually, and something rather different to actually experience it). Thanks, this is quite helpful. One thing I realized is that I have no business trying to land on the boat until I can consistently fly the pattern and land correctly at the airfield. So tonight I spent a fair amount of time practicing at the airfield and I am beginning to get a handle on controlling the aircraft on-speed. So much of it is learning how to recognize (and then anticipate) the need for throttle changes.. It was only tonight that I finally put together that if I am experiencing dutch roll, it's because I'm too slow (and therefore my AoA is too high). But this is something I could never have put together until I got the aircraft trimmed right - before that, I was so busy fighting the stick I couldn't properly establish the relationship between AoA and speed in anything beyond an intellectual sense. Now that I see it in practice, I have finally started actually learning. For the first time tonight, I actually landed the aircraft at the correct speed, AoA, and descent rate, several times. And once, I even set her down exactly where I wanted to. Now, I just need to be able to reproduce that consistently, and then I'll be ready to try my hand at the boat again.

Yeah, I've tried that, too. I'm starting to wonder if something is wrong with my joystick configuration, but it was working last night when I was practicing AAR. After further experimentation, it seems that nose-up trim just doesn't work for me for some reason. Nose-down trim works. Roll trim works. Rudder trim works. Nose-up trim does nothing at all. This explains a lot, but I am somewhat baffled as to the reason for it. if I am in the control bindings menu and push the hat in that direction, it registers, so I know the hat on the joystick is not dead. EDIT: I think I may have fixed it. Looks like it was a problem in the joystick configuration. I'm not sure why it was working in the menu and not in the plane, but it does appear to be working correctly now. I think mostly I am just relieved to find out it was actually a controls problem and not that I'm incompetent or going mad somehow :p EDIT 2; Yes, it's fixed! And this is so much better. Having the plane trimmed correctly really does make a huge difference. Of course, now I need to unlearn a bunch of bad habits I developed when I didn't have it trimmed right, but at least I will be learning it correctly now.

So, I'm trying to work on my Case 1 recovery, and everyone says that trim is the key to doing it right, and that probably explains why I can't do it with any consistency at all, because I cannot get the plane trimmed anywhere close to level flight. I put the wings in sweep as described, and then I click the trim hat in the nose-up direction as many as 60 times and it still tries to nose dive into the ocean. I can't tell that the trimmer is making any difference at all. I can trim the aircraft at other times. I can trim it while doing air-to-air refueling and get it exactly where I want it. But for some reason, it seems like when I am trying to set up for landing, the trim hat seems to do nothing at all no matter how much I push it! I try clicking it, I try holding it down, I've tried everything. It seems like no amount of trim is sufficient. Similarly, after I have the wings open again, no amount of trim seems sufficient to hold the thing at 15 units of AoA. The nose continually wants to drop. This isn't a matter of not being able to get it precisely right. I'm not getting anywhere close to right. It's a matter of the trim hat just seeming to not DO anything while I'm trying to land the plane. I'm exasperated and confused, and I have no idea why something that seems to work correctly at all other times seems completely useless when I am trying to trim for landing.

Ok, I am grealy confused. I have the Winwing throttle and F-18 startup panel. I can map it just fine on the F-18, but I'm trying to set up bindings for the A-10C and A-10C II, and running into an issue. The startup panel has toggle switches for L GEN and R GEN. I'd like to map these to (naturally enough) the left and right AC generators for the Warthog. However, there are no on/off bindings in the default.lua for these functions, there is only: {down = iCommandPowerGeneratorLeft , name = _('AC generator power left'), category = _('Electrical power control panel')}, {down = iCommandPowerGeneratorRight , name = _('AC generator power right'), category = _('Electrical power control panel')}, Is it possible to set up bindings for these such that Button 7 on the startup panel (the "up" position of the L GEN toggle switch) turns ON the AC generator power left, and the Button 8 on the startup panel (the "down" position of the L GEN toggle switch) turns OFF the AC generator power left? And likewise, button 21 (R GEN toggle switch "up") turns ON the AC generator power right, and button 22 (R GEN toggle switch "down") turns it off? EDIT: Never mind, I am completely blind, it seems. Someone asked not exactly this same question, but a very similar one, just a couple of pages back and I somehow overlooked it. I was able to work out the answer from there. Here it is, for anyone else who might need the example: {down = iCommandPowerGeneratorLeft, cockpit_device_id = 1, value_down = 1.0, name = _('Left AC Generator PWR'), category = _('Electrical power control panel')}, {down = iCommandPowerGeneratorLeft, cockpit_device_id = 1, value_down = 0.0, name = _('Left AC Generator RESET/OFF'), category = _('Electrical power control panel')}, {down = iCommandPowerGeneratorRight, cockpit_device_id = 1, value_down = 1.0, name = _('Right AC Generator PWR'), category = _('Electrical power control panel')}, {down = iCommandPowerGeneratorRight, cockpit_device_id = 1, value_down = 0.0, name = _('Right AC Generator RESET/OFF'), category = _('Electrical power control panel')}, EDIT 2: Nope. Still broken in air starts. Works correctly in ground starts. I don't know what is going on here. EDIT 3: Looks like this switch is only set up as a pushbutton even in the clickable data, so i guess it isn't actually possible to bind it to a 2-position switch and have it work the way it's supposed to. That's exceedingly aggravating. If anyone happens to know of a way to make this work correctly, please let me know.

Yeah, seemed like Yorktown was the only carrier who really had her act together at Midway (I think she was the only one of the three that had actually seen battle prior to Midway?), though she got sunk for her trouble. Enterprise's dive-bombers managed to get the job done through sheer determination... and Hornet's air wing never even found the target. Of course, US carriers surviving damage the Japanese assumed would sink them was something of a recurring theme, especially for the Yorktown-class. They thought they'd sunk Yorktown at Coral Sea, then after three days of emergency repairs she sailed for Midway, where they thought they'd sunk her again, and she'd been patched up so well that the second strike didn't even realize they were hitting the same carrier they'd already hit. Then there was Enterprise, who the IJN would believe they had sunk three times over the course of the war and she refused to die. "Enterprise vs. Japan," indeed. Compare that to Akagi, who was sunk by one direct hit and one near miss astern (albeit a fairly devastating near miss, since the record seems to indicate that it wrecked her rudders). One of the things that really struck me about Shattered Sword was how tragically flawed the design of the Japanese fleet carriers was, from a damage control perspective. On the subject of a WWII Pacific theater sim, I'd love to see that! Navigation would definitely be a challenge, though; I suspect a lot of players would not be willing to do the manual work (though some certainly would). If I remember correctly, the US carrier aircraft had a radio system that could home in on the carrier, but most of the pilots hadn't been trained on how to use it yet at Midway?

It's funny, when I'm having a "basket doesn't like me" day (because it's all the basket's fault, really :p ), Jester's jokes don't bug me. What does drive me nuts is "A little right. A little to the left." And so on. Probably because it induces me to look at the drogue, which invariably (and rapidly) leads to PIO. Also because he seems to lag a little bit, which means sometimes he suggests corrections I've already made and throws me off. Though, I am finding that as I get better at AAR, he bugs me less in general than he used to.

Yes, I recently read Shattered Sword, and I now remember reading about that unique arrangement - but I'd forgotten about it until you mentioned it. That was an enlightening read; I hadn't realized just how different Japanese carrier doctrine was from US carrier doctrine of the time. I had been wondering if it was a holdover from propeller aircraft days. Certainly engine torque would be more of a factor in something like, say, a Hellcat. Playing DCS WWII has really enlightened me a lot to handling characteristics of propeller aircraft that I had never really thought about from playing other sims that didn't model them to the same detail. And yet, your other observations about pilot tendencies and handed-ness seem at least as likely to be reasons for it - or possibly some combination of the above. I probably wouldn't have thought of that, since I've been using a sidestick for years now (the chair I have doesn't work and play well with a center mount; I had to remove the arms from it just to make the side mount viable) Though, actually... I suspect I probably tend to break left, also. It's a bit more of a natural motion to pull the stick in toward my body than it is to push it away Interesting things to think about.

I haven't gotten good at flying it the regular way, yet. But now I'm curious, so I'll have to remember to try this once I think I'm good enough at it to properly evaluate how it changes things. You've got me wondering what the reason for doing it with left turns is.

To be fair, I think some of the missile drama is more related to the fact that missile modeling in DCS is just not very consistent right now. That's a problem even in single-player, and it's a realism problem as well. But I think you're very much right about the rest of it.

Just wanted to say how much I appreciate this. As a player, I'm in it for the experience. I'll obviously never have the opportunity to fly a real Tomcat, so the sim is as close as I will ever get. The degree of effort that has gone into accurately modeling the aircraft is what has made it my favorite module in DCS. Thank you for your part in this.

This is exactly how it looks for me, too. If you're on-speed and you really stare at it, you can just barely see the donut. If you're not, you can't see the arrows at all.

My experience is that the E-bracket lags (and, as I understand it, this is accurate to the real aircraft). That said, I did move the larger monitor to my desk tonight, and I can read the instruments a lot better now.

I have a bit of a hard time reading that indicator (and also the airspeed indicator), probably due to the fact that I'm playing on three 24" monitors, and they're set further back than I'd like for them to be. I may just have to move the 42" TV from the other room to my desk and use that instead. If nothing else, it would go a long way to making the default FoV feel less wonky.

I'm glad to hear that this is still on the agenda, but I do hope y'all fix the AoA indexer brightness first, or I'll have no hope of ever landing on the boat again :p

That "rear pop-gun" killed a fair number of Zeroes, historically. Remember, the Zero was completely unarmored. Even the cockpit. You didn't need a big gun to kill it. All you needed to do was actually hit it (which was the difficult part, as it was extremely maneuverable) If we ever get the Zero in DCS, some players are going to be shocked to discover how incredibly fragile it is.

I so desperately wish this was true. A full fidelity F-15A or F-15C is the one thing I want more than any other in DCS World.

I specifically said that I didn't think it was the SR-71. Just that someone had suggested it, and that the idea amused me/appealed to me, so I mentioned it. Yeah, I pretty much said that myself. Ultimately, I'd buy it if they made it, just to fly the Blackbird. But I don't actually expect them to make it.

I have to admit, I want the 262. Not to fight in it. For one thing, it doesn't have any real competition, as has been mentioned... and for another, I personally prefer to do my fighting in Allied aircraft. Even so, I will absolutely buy the Me-262, simply because I want to fly it!. As an aviation enthusiast, I'm fascinated by it. It was revolutionary in more ways than just its jet propulsion. It was truly ahead of its time. It's a piece of aviation history that deserves to be reproduced in full fidelity, or as close to it as can possibly be attained.

Someone on Reddit suggested the possibility of the SR-71, which does actually check all the boxes as far as I can remember (modern, but not too modern? Check. Not REDFOR? Check. Not currently announced so far as I know? Check. Difficult to fly? Check. And modeling its engines and intakes would definitely be a technical achievement). I don't think it is that, because our maps aren't really big enough to use it correctly (and there's no real use in DCS for a reconnaissance aircraft right now anyway). Even so, I have to admit, I'd buy it day 1. And then I'd take off from Nellis, tank, turn around, and blast down the strip at full burner wishing all the windows were breakable so I could take the most epic screenshot ever.

Once we have our Corsair, and hopefully a Hellcat (and can we hope for a Wildcat, too?), I really want a Yorktown-class carrier. Well, really, what I want is Enterprise. But if you're making Enterprise there's no reason not to put in her sister ships as well. You can't have the Pacific Theater without Enterprise. She was there at almost every major battle in the Pacific. At one point, she was the only operational U.S. carrier. Getting the Essex-class is nice, because they were the beginning of the evolution of modern carriers, but it was the Yorktown-class that held the line for half the war.

Planes I'd love to see, in order:: P-38 Tempest Macchi 202 P-40 (we'd need some other early fighters, though, or it'd be completely doomed) Yak-9 (ideally Yak-9U given timeframe of our other aircraft) P-39/P-63 P-80 (yeah, they never saw combat, but the YP-80's did actually see service in a recon role) I'm sure I'm forgetting some, since this is largely off the top of my head. Would also love to see A/B/H variants of the P-51 (the A-36 would also be pretty cool), and some earlier 109's and Spitfire marks.