SgtPappy

No problem, thanks Lance. I hope you had a good vacation! It's good to know I'm not the only one having trouble. I've found a few photos of that SN but nothing detailed enough. I'll try this next. Thanks for the advice, guys!

What resources do you use to make such stunning skins? I'm trying to find 3rd TFW liveries but I'm having trouble reading the names on the canopy rails:

I usually do AAR with the F-4 with a tanker at ~400 kn and am constantly making throttle corrections. For a super slow tanker, I've dabbled with popping the speed brakes a bit in the F-14A so that my engines are at a higher RPM for a given airspeed and therefore take less time to spool up.

I've only ever used it to cage/uncage AIM-9s and AGM-65s. I do not think it has anything to do with using the AIM-7 but I might be wrong.

I wasn't able to find a bug report for this exactly, and maybe I misunderstood the function so please correct me if I'm wrong. However the manual states that: When the cage condition is present the following changes happen: Air-To-Air light in the rear pit illuminates. Trigger control is transferred to the air-to-air weapons (including when ARM and TV are selected) Optical sight switches into the A/A mode. Computer Automatic Acquisition becomes available. It appears that the second point is not true. I am unable to fire any air to air weapons using cage mode if my weapon selector is in TV mode. I was able to fire just the gun with ARM selected but Sparrows and Sidewinders do not fire. Oddly, when I press the trigger, the weapons system just cycles through Sidewinders without firing when TV or ARM are selected and WRCS set to either off or direct. Please see the attached tracks. I am able to reproduce this every time. F-4E CAGE mode not switching trigger to A2A.trk F-4E CAGE mode not switching trigger to A2A part 2.trk F-4E CAGE mode not switching trigger to A2A part 3.trk

Yes I found this works great versus other players, especially when the weapons and aircraft are restricted to the ones accurate to the conflicts of the F-4's prime time. Then again, when all-aspect heaters come out, you can still drain contemporary aircraft of energy and deny their shots if very careful - or just use the more reliable AIM-7F/M and blow through and repeat until they're dead!

Awesome, thanks for adding this. Sometimes I prefer to think that Jester is just another guy learning the module with me, and each update is just him figuring out more tricks

Perhaps the prompt can happen while he is aligning the INS since you're just waiting anyway.

Is it currently possible to set boresight to a 10 nm display? Or perhaps I misunderstand what you are suggesting. Like you mentioned, I often lock clutter at high Vc if I ask Jester to lock at 5 nm or if I try to lock with my own custom bindings since his cursor is not ahead of the fast-closing bandit. EDIT: I found the mode knob in the manual.. I just have to try it tonight and hopefully Jester doesn't kick me out of it since I like having him track the contact's range while in BST.

I may have a dumb question but do you also use the direct seeker head when arming/in the mission editor? I assume yes because I discovered I had been attacking an SA-6 with the mk 49 mod0/1 with loft seeker and my shrikes never hit. Weirdly enough, the Mk 49 mod 1 loft head hit the SA-8 in direct mode every single time.

Right and to add to the OP, the AIM-7F only needs 2 seconds for wait time. Then you can shave off 2 seconds of wait time of you lock first and then flip master arm to on. But I don't know how that works... would any be able to explain that?

I've also found a lot of success vs the SA-8 using the 49 mod 1 loft seeker in direct mode as long as I fire from above 10,000' and even around 8 nm. Almost every shot hits. It takes 3 Shrikes to kill it though (yes, I know SEAD vs DEAD etc but it was fun to try). The SA-6... not so much. I might just use Mavs and a jammer for that. As an aside, does anyone also have the issue/feature where your Mavs are fully warmed up but if you switch to Shrikes and back to Mavs, the Mavs have to warm up all over again? Is this by design?

For sure, I was more talking about my personal experience and of those of some of my friends. We had to rewire our brains and I think that's the case for lots of people. The temptation to pull for a missile shot is often all too real and it's not as much of a kill shot as it would be with newer missiles and newer aircraft.

Really good video. I think a lot of us are really just used to turn fighting but if you look at it, US planes generally excelled in speed ever since WW2 and the main strategy since then has been to drain your opponents of speed and drop on them like a sledgehammer. Mustangs, Lightnings, Thunderbolts, Hellcats and Corsairs did this in the Pacific vs Zeros. Bf 109s and Fw 190s used these strategies vs Spitfires. Then Australian Spitfire pilots had to learn the hard way to do the same vs the Zero as well... A lot of us are now in this stage with the F-4 since most of us are used to the extreme maneuverability and highly-rewarding 1 circle strategies learned in 4th gen jets where reliable HOBS and radar-homing missiles punish anyone trying to 2 circle or extend. Energy fighting is STILL dogfighting, but the idea that 1 circling IS dogfighting seems to be more persasive among jet pilots online. I'm convinced that F-4 pilots need to go back to the WW2 mindset and use missiles and radar as bonuses, not the primary means of winning a fight.

I agree it can get super frustrating sometimes. Personally I find him incredible in the F-14 WVR (BVR, a good human is superior) and he's saved my bacon so many times, he's part of the reason I love flying the Tomcat. I'm keeping my fingers crossed we'll get the same in the F-4 soon!

Speed callouts during bombing runs would be really nice. I think he currently also does not specify if the bandit is high or low when calling them WVR. But my understanding is lots of this will be added as he does some of it for the F-14 already.

The confusion may be coming from the fact that when the Rivet Haste program ushered in the slatted F-4E into Vietnam starting in Nov 1972, they took the 555th squadron title in the hopes that their new jets and training would pay out in MiG kills which didn't happen. The real, original 555th then ended up getting the last kills of the war with F-4Ds. Look up "Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam" by M. L. MIchel III. Lots of info on thw Vietnam war and this in particular there.

Hey I was totally just kidding, come back

To be clear, the pilot does not control the radar in the real aircraft. The temporary section of the control bindings which has radar controls for the pilot is exactly that - a temporary workaround while Jester is improved.

There are controls under temporary binds where you can choose to control elevation and gain on your own. Jester will fight you but he lets you use it a bit for a few scans and resets it to his desire if the scans yield nothing. You can also add your own controls from the WSO binds in a keyboard.lua for the pilot and take full control while turning Jester off but it's a bit risky.

I tried a practice mission with MiG-21s at various altitudes flying orbits. I appear to be finding them at the same ranges as I did before. What seems to work for me is having some control of the antenna elevation and gain myself. If I move around both and illuminate a target, Jester will often find the target himself even in clutter. If he finds nothing he will reset both. What seems to have got worse for me is how many times he'll just decide that "Oh no I lost the lock!" despite having a perfect lock on a lookup target right in front of me at 7 nm. Then as I'm approaching a firing solution, he'll just return to search. It appears to happen most often when he switches from the 10 nm display to the 5 nm display. I'll try to reproduce the track soon.

Thanks for the info. I think I would have preferred having the quicker boresight auto-lock as well as I'm having a tough time getting the current system to lock repeatably. Still, what we have now can come in handy in some situations.

I played with a friend of mine who is certainly better than I am but we are close enough in skill that more of our fights end up in a draw where we run out of fuel over those which either of us are victorious. Some lessons learned in DCS so far: - With the Viggen, F-5E and MiG-21, the F-4E will generally beat them in a 2 circle - especially when clean, it's not even close. With missiles, it evens out more. - The Viggen, F-5E and MiG-21 have better 1 circle performance (especially the Viggen) but the F-4E is a little better in climbing turns since it can use that extra P_s and should strive to force the fight upwards. - The F-5 and Mirage F1 are the weakest of this plane set in terms of T/W and struggle a lot when the fight goes up. But all planes other than the F-4 gain a lot when in diving turns since they can pull more AoA without worrying about losing speed. This is a dangerous thing for the F-4 to follow. Really, ANY kind of scissors is a bad day for the F-4 against these planes except maaaaybe the Mirage F1. I still have to face the Mirage more to conclude anything. To summarize, it does seem that the jets are all close enough in performance that if neither pilot makes a mistake, they'll end up in a draw. At first this disappointed me but I'm feeling a bit better with this result because if you win - especially in BFM practice with another human - you were the better pilot in that engagement. If you're even then chances are someone will bingo first. Usually the F-4 but all the jets of the time have similar endurance. My next steps during online practice will be the following with the goal of making the best move possible even if it may not result in a win, and then maybe moving onto more risky and aggressive tactics. I'd like to avoid giving them good rear-quarter missile shots since rear-aspect IR missiles were the weapon of the era (please provide feedback where possible): 1) Remember to come into the first merge at ~0.95 Mach or ~550 KIAS whichever is greater a) Be aggressive whenever you have this excess energy 2) Focus on bringing the fight upwards in climbing turns and avoid the temptation to following these other mid-Cold War jets in diving turns or any scissors. Note: I suppose diving turns look a lot like scissors... Any thoughts on this? 3) When beating the enemy in a 2 circle, they will often tighten the turn if you're about to get a shot and then reverse as you overshoot their flightpath a) Try to prevent overshooting the flightpath by using a vector roll in the opposite direction to the turn, or a high yo-yo b) If the bandit sees you doing either and takes the opportunity to reverse, go into an oblique loop to force the fight into basically an egg-like, somewhat vertical 2 circle since they will be at an energy disadvantage.

Just a bit off topic, but do you happen to know what came before CAA? My understanding is it went like this: 1) F-4B/C/D - Pilot commands cage mode, puts bandit near reticle and then request WSO/RIO to lock 2) F-4E with cockpit TO 556 mod - Pilot commands cage mode, puts bandit near reticle and pilot presses air refuel button to lock on OR can request WSO/RIO to lock 3) F-4E with CAA mod to APQ-120 - what we have in DCS now Is (2) correct? I haven't been able to find a clear source.

I think just being on the internet does that to everyone. At any rate, it's good to know that this particular engine quirk will be corrected on an already spectacular module.