Draken35

I’m updating my practice area with it... And have other changes.... Was waiting on 2.7 to be out to test and release it... Maybe by Friday, it will be out.. I’m really liking this new FCPL surface btw

Great video!

Tomorrow? Tomorrow could be different!

Very nice sound! Thanks!

How are your VTO's ? Perhaps practicing them,, and keep the hover will give you the muzzle memory ... After I set nozzles to 82 I don't mess with trim too much... Only do it if I find myself having to apply "too much" stick to control, usually for pitch. At that point the trim adjust that I do are gross adjustments.

Practice, Practice, Practice... I noticed in the track you posted that you went straight to land... One thing that I found helps me, is to do a proper (or as close as I can) approach pattern. I take off from the Tarawa, do and 180 turn and climb to about 2000 feet and fly to about 3 nm behind the carrier (setting up tacan helps), turn back towards the carrier and do the pattern. Also, doing the take off (hot start at least) gets me in the right might set... I do terrible in air start sorties I read somewhere (in a Harrier related book, which one escapes my mind now) that " workload kills " ... So have to be all setup before you cross the deck threshold ... You might be tempted to mess with the nozzles , after all, its control is right at your finger tips... Not the case on the real jet, you would have to take your hand off the throttle... No bueno. Stolen from the DCS Harrier Pilots group in face book: Looks like we crosses post You are absolutely correct...

I added the Saitek/Logitech throttle quadrant (yesterday!) to control nozzle's It seems to work well... The increase radius of the lever, compare with the friction incr on the throttle that I used before gives good control on the nozzles...Not that I really had an issue with it before. Is the Antenna Elevation rotary in your throttle an axis? You should be going to hover stop before you get close to the deck, where exactly, depends on your speed and the carrier speed. I used to wish for a hover stop to... But the real plane doesn't seem to have it and, well, is not really necessary. After, I get the nozzles to 82. I don't move them and fine tune speed with pitch, no more that 2 or 3 degrees each way. Regarding trimming... That is a good question... My theory is that the reaction control system doesn't trim well, either because of a bug or because it is like in real life, I don't know. My preference is to have some nose down trim before I get to the hover. After, that last trim setup, everything else is done with pitch, roll, rudder and throttle.

Came across this https://gumroad.com/l/VTreS in Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/DigitalCombatSimulator/permalink/3712621188863871/ Looks real good in the game... The download link asks for an email, but doesn’t validate it...

Ah ! Good to know!!! Yes, I had a fuel tank in the ventral pylon.... Thanks!!!

Is the airbrake mapping broken again in 1.8b? The AI taking off works great.. Did a formation take off with an AI flight lead from Nellis AFB (my formation training location) and had a close call... Thought it was because of the adjustments to the FM and my lack of familiarity with the throttle response time... Until the second close call, when I notice that the airbrake was not deployed... Checked my mappings and there all there... I really like how this bird is going! The A29 team is doing a fantastic job! Very appreciated!!!

Ah! That is the most likely explanation... It got hit. Do you use Tacview? It would have indicated if you got hit or not.

I just dropped 8 GBU12 , with different combinations of laser safe, master arms and tpod on/standby... Had no issues with the laser arming and firing...

Are you arming the laser, pickle, firing the laser, splash, turning off the laser, safe and come around to do it again? Knowing your procedure or track file will help troubleshooting I'm from this school: So, I safe my laser after I'm done ...

From FB:

Here is the Nevada mission... A bit easier. Symmetrical loadout (2xGBU16 , 2xGBU12, Gun pod , TPOD) and more room to maneuver ... Also, the JTAC was kind enough to lase for me... Take off and recovery is at Lincoln County, a short and narrow runway ... With some crosswind AV8B NV JTAC CAS Night.miz

Indeed, read that one recently too Take a look a this thread, if you haven't: Some good comments there about the recovery

I did a second attempt after I posted, replaced the GBU38 by GBU12, thinking that even if I couldn't designate the target, I could use them as dumb bombs in CCIP... I did, and I hit the target (I've practiced CCIP/unguides a lot)... BIG MISTAKE! Killed the bad guys for sure but turns out the friendlies were TOO close, so, killed some of them as well....ops.... I started looking for a location in the Nevada map to try to get close to the conditions at the AO of the Nightmares in Afghanistan... Found it quite challenging ... @RecluseKeep at it! I was struggling with my hover and carrier recovery for a while... The, all of the sudden, I was able to do it. Patient and very small inputs to the controls...

Yes, It was se to night... I figure it out last night. It was a Stick-Seat interface issue: I don't use NAVFLIR too much so I forgot to press SS Down to send it to the HUD ... Thanks for trying to help!

Nice! Just a little remark, the HUD in 0.16b looks very different to the dev branch. So that might cause some rework of the mission if the A29 team decides to use the current dev HUD... I don't know which one is the "correct" HUD for the A29B but I must admit that I prefer the one in the dev branch.

Thanks! Just trying to replicate what I understand of the conditions in which VMA-513 was operating in 2002/2003 in Afghanistan: 10 pilots, 6 Harriers, a year long deployment, micromanage flights, elusive enemies, weird difficult weather, poor living conditions... They had to operate often outside of the safety limits of the aircraft. Last night, I was reading about then losing a jet while landing in Bagram at night with crossed winds outside of the limits. The Harrier kept bearing right and when the pilot tried to steer left, the aircraft threatened to flip over, so it came off the runway into a leftover soviet minefield (is seem that the whole runway there was flanked by mines!). The pilot decided to stay with the jet instead of ejecting because he thought that his chances were better in the jet than landing in the middle of the minefield.

The recent Baltic Dragon's thread about ideas and comments, and me reading "A Nightmare's Prayer: A Marine Harrier Pilot's War in Afghanistan" by Micheal Franzak prompted me to throw together a quick night time, low visibility mission working with a JTAC, in an urban setting with troops in close contact... In the book, the author talks about similar missions over Afghanistan and they seem to have used asymmetrical loadouts and do 3+ hours missions with AAR... Since I don't have that much time and I'm not AAR (not even under VFR conditions ) qualify , I took some poetic license and put some empty fuel tanks and 85% full internal tanks. A GBU16 in one side and 2 GBU38 in the other, plus a TPOD and the gun pod completes the setup. Also, since I wanted to practice night/low vis carrier recoveries, I decide to setup the mission in the Persian Gulf, flying from and to the Tarawa. 3:30AM, Fog at low level with visibility of about 1300 feet and dense overcast at 4300 feet... Franzak mentions that they had to have at least 2000 feet of clear weather over the target to deliver ordnance, so, the target is at about 2300... In a valley of course... Not happy with the setup, I added some wind. HOLY ^&%^&$^%& !!!! I've tried it only once... Taking off was easy, climbed about the overcast and headed towards the target (near wp3) .The asymmetric config combined with wind its a pain in the rear end over the about 120 miles inbound leg but not difficult to handle. Contacted the JTAC (everything is set to AUTO) and he decided to use an IR pointer to mark some ground troops and I decided to gift them one of my GBU38... But first, I have to find them and for that, I have to go under the soup... In a valley... At night.... Well, Franzak described that they used the moving map with pre-plotted descend tract (at least on valleys where they were FOBs). Surprisingly , our moving map works decently in night mode... So, I went under without too many issues... Remember, I only have about 2000 feet of clear weather in a narrow valley. So spotted the IR marker and the struggle begins... I had to slew my TPOD over it to identify my target (there are friendlies nearby)... Well, did I said I was in a narrow, dark valley with a low cloud celling? I just couldn't manage to fly in those conditions without hitting the deck or crashing into a mountain while at the same time trying to work the TPOD... For some reason I could not get my NavFLIR (need to figure out what am I doing wrong!) to work so I have to turn on and off my NVGs... After a couple of (very) close calls I decided to call it quits and return to the carrier... I jettison my stores ( was kinda tired of the constant trimming :D) and headed home. The recovery was not as easy as under VFR but not as difficult as I expected it to be. I'm attaching the mission here in case any of you wanna try it ... Just don't expect much AV8B PG JTAC CAS Night.miz

If you own SuperCarrier it is indeed broken....

Gotcha. I have only played that campaign till mission 3... I was able to talk to Tarawa using the frequency listed in one of the kneeboards. It causes a bit of confusion since I have 2 frequency sheets (for mission 3) with 2 different frequencies listed for the boat and the voice over mention Marshall . The one that works is the one that matches the radio presets. IIRC the callsign is Proud Eagle but not 100% sure. As for TACAN, I have not tried to used it in the campaign but I sure if it was configured it would be listed... The default ACTIVATE TACAN advance action that we get when the Tarawa is placed on the map is not fully configured and it does not work.

Both work... So, it is has to be something you are doing or not doing... Are you just creating a mission in the ME and placing the Tarawa in the map? If so, you need to finish setting the tacan in the wp0 for the carrier, which, by default it is set to channel 1 or 11 X (can't recall right now which one) but it doesn't have the unit name assigned. Default frequency is indeed 127.500. I guess we will need more details to help troubleshooting.

Posted there but for emphasis: AV8B N/A , so, night mission please ! Edit: Including JTACs if possible. NTTR could be a good map for early 2000's Afghanistan inspired missions.