Ddg1500

Still pretty sensitive, maybe even more, sweeping wings back would make tomcat more easy to sink down, I don’t like that

Tomcat is like a Dodge Viper, very powerful,very fast, but not much safety, no FBW, no G limits, little glass cockpit. With some pretty analog fly control, it's clearly functional, but not very effective, and it's optional, you could switch it off if you want(just behind the throttle). Due to this reason, tomcat is pretty naughty at aerial refueling, precision control is HARD to say the least, and maintaining connected for long time is even harder. The fly control won't correct it for you if you oscillate, you would need a lot of hand + throttle work to correct that. Furthermore, due to the fact that there is no g limits, with a variable sweep wing mechanism, you could actually tear off the wing if pulled too hard. Overall, a pretty hardcore aircraft.

It does sounds quite fun!

Hello, after quite some while flying tomcat, i sort of understand why navy ultimately retire all the tomcat, here are several possible reason. 1 dominant majority of f14s were A variant that is designed in late 60's, saw extensive service from 70's to early 2000's, with technology that is not only complicated but also very hard to maintain, main parts like hydraulic system etc require frequent servicing, which demand f14 to be at least 3 days of servicing per 1 hr of flight, whereas f18 would only require less that 1 days. 2Carrier deck and hanger is a crowed place with limited room and equipment, naturally it would be best to have aircraft that is as much reliable as possible, whereas f14 is not that much. 3 navy need to make a choice between sortie rate and individual performance, however, the budget cut causing the navy unable to satisfy both of then. 4 variable sweep wing is not only complex but also heavy and fragile, which makes it not a very good dog fighter, f14 is a rare 4th gen fighter that can tear its wing when pulled too hard whereas f15 or f16 doesn't not have any such issue. 5 although grumman have proposed a upgrade, the cost would be exorbitant and it is basically a complete redesign of everything, dod does not consider it reasonable. 6 f14 is not so versatile as hornet, and not as economically acceptable as hornet, while being a heck a lot more expensive and harder to maintain than hornet, ultimately, dod retired all of the f14, they prefer economy over performance, variable sweep is like the pop up light of 80's car, looks kinda cool but difficult to maintain and is a complex moving parts, which is a haven for mechanical failure, so, after so many reason, dod decide to retire all of f14.

f14 can’t turn exactly well at high speed compare with su27, and I would risk ripping the wings off when pulled too hard, su27 is a much better dogfighted than f14

Just got blowed up by su27 in a Chinese severer twice, those su27 are really agile and capable, I think su27 is actually better than f14. su27 locks on target much faster than f14, and su27 got a actually better missile

Aim54 is not exactly a very agile missile like amrram, it probably designed to hit bombers only, it doesn’t seems to be able to pull a lot G, and honestly so far I haven’t hit anything with it yet

This is a aggressive but feasible aircraft, and beautiful

We could have realistic flight model using CFD and with data from existing equipment, we could have an aircraft that could handle and functions like the real one, and i really want some stealth f14 to obliterate those 4th gen puppy like there was nothing

Hello, in gs server for example, awg 9 could been seriously jammed at long distance by a f16 carring jammer pod, posing significant harm the locking of the target, the display on the DDD is full of noise and cannot be effectively discerned by rio, making locking impossible, and there is plenty of vicious jammer in gs server, giving a lot of hard time to f14

Hello, there were a lot of "could be" aircraft that didn't came into reality due to budget restraint, like Asf-14 supertomcat 21 or even NATF stealth f14, if we could let those true aircraft engineer from lockheed martin or northrop grumman use their professional talent using advanced CFD and avionic design profession, we could see a brand new future for the dcs world depicting a world of "what if" with realism, i want to see some stealth tomcat operating in the carrier or canard f35 or f15 armed with f119 or f15 with three horizontal surfaces of course they could be very arrogant that probably wouldn't give a look on us, but hey there is a chance right?

Hello, there was 2 possible bugs that I found, first, the canopy ejection won’t synchronize with the front seat when ejected, second, there is many weird blocks of black spot in the targeting pod image that is quite disturbing, and yes I can replicate that

Hello, i just realize that those dcs modules are nothing short than a "digital aircraft museum" that keep storage of the aviation engineering marvel of the past century, you can truly fully know what those aircraft fly like in real life, i want more & more aircraft to be recorded and modeled to keep and let us know what those aircraft truly fly like

Hello, I think it sounds good to call different variant of tomcat as A cat ,B cat , D cat

What I mean is after arrested touch down, the tomcat would be forced to pitch up and lift the whole nose up due to the retraction of arrest wire, which quite often sometimes

Hello, i wish heatblur could solve the physical issue of the arresting wire drag up the whole tomcat sometimes after carrier landing, this is simply not realistic compare with real life as I haven't see any real footage of tomcat being so, so please fix it

Hello, i wish Heatblur could add a night version of case 3 landing into f14a/b's quick mission, right now there is only case3 fog version, i don't want to create the mission myself cause i'm lazy and it's pretty complex to trim it to fit my demand, also, i wish the heading were already established in the like the one in fog verison， by the way i wish that the deck light and is always on as sometimes it just won't open

Yes, I use a winwing f18 stick with a VPC rudder pedal, bonded as it suppose to be

Hello, when I taxi along the deck with a slightly faster speed and trying to engage nws hi, the nose wheel would not turn and would turn to the opposite direction and stuck, how to solve that problem?

From at least 50 times of experiences on f14A&B carrier landing, I found out that at about 85%rpm, tf30 seems to generate more thrust than f110 at nearly identical load at weight configurations, interesting ………..

Your right, there is probably some issue with that statement, but this is what is usually behaves, lots of tomcat guys don’t land in the way it should be, and if you don’t do too much deliberately static control, you are not so easy to get into stall, and you still could power up to correct it, and also fly without trimming is pretty incorrect as a little change in stick movement could result in sensitive pitch change, which is not so good for a aircraft without auto trim, I did saw guy in the GS server that pitch like crazy during the case 1 and ultimately stalled and crashed in tomcat, definitely because he don’t trim at all and also he is apparently a newbie

Hello, i would like to share my valuable experience of f14 case 1 carrier landing, would try to present it in the shortest words, be free to add your own opinion Before commencing, i would like to clarify that this article is only for players with hotas, your could still learn something if you use keybroad. Furthermore, the correct way of landing f14 defined in this article is with dlc engaged while trimming on speed at around 140-150 knots while CATCHING the E-braket with below 10000 pounds of fuel in clean load and not smashing onto the deck. 1 TRIM THE AIRCRAFT!, tomcat isn't a FBW aircraft that has auto trim to keep you on AoA like hornet, which requires QUITE SOME trimming to keep the AoA at the correct angle, if you don't trim the aircraft, good luck, the cat would punish you with harsh temper, namely STALL, with nearly uncontrollable pitch, there is reason for trim hat to be put at the center of the stick, so TRIM THE AIRCRAFT. 2 the normal AoA you need to reach after trimming is at 8-10 degree showing at the HUD ladder at 145-150 knots, which enables you to catch the e-bracket that would stably float at 7-10 degree, at that time your don't need to worry about stalling or compressor stall of the aircraft, if you do it right, that won't happen, and you would magically realized that tomcat is surprisingly stable at this state and would not so prone to stall that much. 3 USE THE DLC, i saw to much pilots lands tomcat like hornet who thinks DLC is just a complex liability, no its not, in contrast, you will find it much harder to land tomcat correctly if without DLC, DLC could help accelerate control of sink and rise with some sporadic extent and retract, which will massively help you to control the tomcat's sink and rise without too much throttle adjustment, furthermore, the small e-bracket is much more controllable and catchable with the control of DLC, another very important thing to knows is that the E-brake on the tomcat is designed to be cateched with DLC extended, it's not designed without DLC extended and would be impossible to safely reach, SO USE DLC. 4 many guys think tomcat is suppose to land at around 160-150 knots, its not, the e bracket is too high at that speed, the tomcat is designed to land at 140-150 knots, usually 145, don't buy those wrong opinion, the aircraft could still be rising at that speed. 5 for tomcat A, a 80-85% rpm would sufficient to keep tomcat afloat in most of the cases including banking depending on the weight, the E-braket is still stable so don't worry, but you need to keep a mind of adjusting the power after coming out of banking as the excessive power would rise the E-braket, for B tomcat, the rpm would need to be around 85-87% depending on the weight, i felt that TF30 actually generate more thrust at 85% rpm that f110 6 When on the final approach, the engine rpm would need to go down to below 75% to engage sufficient sink, otherwise you would still find tomcat not sinking enough as the lift body simply generate too much lift, use dlc control to adjust the sink rate and you will be safely go onto the deck. Finally, all what i said just now requires some good experience of landing tomcat, it would be better for you to land the tomcat on land runway before going to carrier, after some experience, you will surely be better time after time, you will get there, just like what i did, so good luck, of course there is some loose end in the article that haven't been described, i know, but i've gave you the general vital tips, it's after you to trim it yourself with your own experience to fit your demand. Here is a text book example for you to reference:

Yeah, you need constant and quite frequent throttle adjustment to keep tomcat stably approaching, to exactly how, I’ve mentioned above and of course there will be dramatic differences between A&B, you will need a lot experience to pull off that maturely, so good luck

Just tried to refuel with hornet just now, and I must say hornet is a joy to refuel, it’s stable, controllable, much less prone to oscillation, unlike tomcat which is a much harder to refuel at all aspect, it’s sensitive, quite hard to precisely control, oscillation is significant and frequent, and another things that is quite important is that tomcat’s refuel probe is quite far to the center of the nose than hornet, which makes it harder to refuels, I would say tomcat is one of the harder one to refuel in dcs as there is just too much rudimentary system inside tomcat, if you still find hard to understand, then just compare refueling tomcat like torturing and hornet like writing a slightly harder paper

Those tomcat pilots are more capable than those hornet one, the complexity of using dlc with stability augmentation system with a steam gauge and a rudimentary hud with no auto trim and is just deadly for a those hornet guy today, and those tomcat guy need to do this everyday, which simply say they are fearless elite