jubuttib

The one at 300 feet with him in the pilot seat is showing 88% tho.

FWIW I'm not thinking about thrust to weight at all, more about thrust to size. Aerodynamic forces scale so quickly that I've always considered weight a secondary concern to top speed. Acceleration, sure, but not the primary factor for top speed.

There's at least one loadout with a small rocket pod and 2x Sidewinders on the inner wing pylons, but trying to create that same loadout manually is impossible. Adding the rocket pod removes the Sidewinders, and vice versa. (Video not fully processed at time of posting.)

Would be interesting to have more real life data. The Mirage 2000 is a slippery rascal, as evidence by being rated for mach 2.2 at "high altitude" with an engine rated for 95 kN of thrust, vs. for example F-16 at 2.05 at 40k feet with 130 kN of thrust (rough wiki numbers, please don't shoot me).

I mean... It should be? The SA342 has lots of autopilot/stability augmentation going on with it, while the Loach has none. The SA342 after the flight model update is IMO the _best_ hover and near hover helicopter in the game (ignoring Ka-50 hover hold). With the Loach I'm getting what I'm kinda expecting: A superduper light Huey that never properly settles and kinda wants to overreact to everything.

Yeah I found that out the hard way. My common troubleshooting for not being able to rearm (assuming the UI works) goes like this: Am I parked in the correct spot? -> Do I need to be on intercom? -> Do I need to have doors open? -> Do I need to be shutdown? Usually one of those sorts it out on any given aircraft.

Bless the Dutch. .50 cal door guns, 30x173mm (GAU-8) CIWS... Would really like to have that .50 cal on our Chinook at some point.

Aaah, that's probably it! Just checked and for some reason object and sensor exports weren't enabled, thanks! And I'm trying to cut down on my Discord servers, nothing against you.

Oooh, any hints as to what's coming? Also might as well ask, I've seen some people having success with the door gunner, and others not (including myself). Is it something simple like "doesn't work in MP" or whatever?

Hmm, so here's another question: There's no rearming/refueling binding for the mod, so I can't do that... EDIT: Oh right I can use the radio menu, duh.

Had this happen when playing with a buddy online, their helicopter showed up with a box attached. Their loadout was as follows: -Minigun on left side -7 rockets on right side -Full load of all grenades and color smokes Is this expected, or do I maybe need to fix something?

Not directly Apache related, but talks about various tricks that radars and the computers analysing their output can do to figure out what they're looking at.

Like Raptor9 said, that's not really what the radar on the Apache is doing. It's not nearly high enough resolution to do a 3d scan like that (especially multiple km away), but it does get more detailed information than your typical plane radar does, allowing it a better guess when categorising. The "counting the number of N1 blades" is afaik also a bit wrong, technically. To my understanding it's more that the spinning compressor blades (or turbine blades if rear aspect) create a very distinct kind of signal when the radar waves reflect back from them, and it's that pattern that gets recognized. Of course the number of blades affects the return signal, but I don't think they quite "count" the blades. That's also not quite all NCTR systems do, to an extent they also try to analyze the returns, and the shape of the plane (and the loadout on it) affects those returns. So the radar returns get analyzed and compared to known threat databases, and the computers try to make their best guess at what you're seeing, with varying certainty. I have no doubt the longbow radar also miscategorizes stuff occasionally. How often? That's probably a military secret...

This seemed weird, but reading the full comment it makes sense. He's using "collective" as a term to increase/decrease the angle of all blades on a rotor simultaneously. So it makes sense that, being a tandem, pushing cyclic forward would increase collective on rear rotor and decrease it on front rotor, and vice versa. "Thrust" then adjust the total thrust of both rotors at the same time by increasing/decreasing collective on both rotors simultaneously. So yeah, technical terminology because tandem layout, functionally the "collective" lever is the same as on other helis, and cyclic too, they just technically do different things from a normal heli to get the same result.

Cheers! So indeed, the FN MAG in 7.62x51mm NATO as wielded by the British Army. Fundamentally the same gun as the M240 we'll have on the Chinook, and in terms of damage identical to the M60, but more durable and reliable* (and a couple of kg heavier). Just yesterday had a session in RotorOps, where it took forever for my door gunners to finish off a few infantry. Just got a looooong list of damage reports, going up at couple of % intervals... Sucks that the 7.62x51mm is such a death by a thousand cuts round in DCS, when in reality it packs a wallop, especially in large amounts... *To be fair the M60 kinda gets an exaggeratedly bad rap for being unreliable and fragile. Reading up on it and watching some documentaries it did its job in Vietnam especially quite well, but some parts of the construction are wearables, and unfortunately didn't get replaced in time when they should have. This lead to the poor image it developed later on, especially once guns started overall to be pretty shot through. It's not a bad gun, it's just not an infinitely durable one, and to make up for that it also weighs noticeably less than a lot of 7.62x51mm NATO machine guns.

Interesting, I wish that would also happen in-game.

White just means contact/track, by default the radar doesn't know whether it's a friend or foe without doing an IFF interrogation. The reason the green "goes away" is because the radar symbology goes on top of the DL symbology and covers it. The two don't combine into a single contact, they stay separate, F-16 in-game doesn't do sensor fusion like that.

It absolutely is not detailed, it's very generalized and rudimentary. But happy to have been of assistance.

That doesn't really matter, because it takes about 5 of them to kill the average AI helicopter anyway...

EDIT: This is very rudimentary and lacks a <profanity>ton of nuance on purpose, but if there are any clear inaccuracies, please let me know. Basically it just means that the radar wavelength is in the scale of millimeters to a centimeter, around 25-40 GHz, while for example the Hornet APG-65 and 73 radars operate in the 8-12 GHz region, the wavelengths being more in the few centimeters range. Theoretically the higher the frequency/shorter the wavelength, the more resolution and bandwidth the radar scan can provide (with LOTS OF CAVEATS), but tends to have lower range and penetration capabilities. (EDIT2: Once you start getting into the hundreds of terahertz range and hundreds of nanometers of wavelength, you get visible light, which as we know has pretty damn high resolution capabilities, but penetrates poorly, hehe.) This is why millimeter-wave 5G phone signals can be blocked by a piece of paper, but potentially have really fast transfer rates, while ground penetrating radars often operate in the megahertz ranges, rather than the gigahertz ranges. Similarly early warning radars often use longer wavelengths that don't really get attenuated by the atmosphere, but their resolution isn't enough to actually guide missiles to the target, which is why tracking and guidance radars operate at higher frequencies. As a crude example the SA-10/S300 system's Big Bird early warning radar operates in the 3 GHz range, the Clam Shell target identification and tracking radar operates in the 8-10 GHz range, and the Flap Lid guidance radar operates in the 10-20 GHz range, each tending to go down in range but increasing in resolution and fidelity. So in the Apache case the millimeter-wave radar offers enough resolution for the radar returns to contain enough data to have a decent chance of guessing WHAT the thing being targeted is. It might not know if it's an Abrams or a T-90, but it can be pretty sure it's some form of tracked, armored vehicle. Massive ranges aren't as desirable as this kind of capability to find and prioritize targets automatically. In consumer applications millimeter radars are useful for example in scanning and mapping purposes, and can be used for example in cars to detect nearby vehicles, structures, people, etc., where they can fairly easily see through things like fog and spray that would make cameras and lasers almost useless.

Agreed. I often see it just bouncing left/right on its own, neither maintaining a heading nor staying on the ball. I try to keep things steady on my end, and the yaw channel just develops its own oscillations, as if it was a rookie pilot causing pilot induced oscillation. I've started to turn the yaw channel off completely as a part of my startup procedure. It's perhaps a bit more sensitive to pedals like that, but at least it's a lot more predictable and doesn't do things on its own. Shame that it disables the attitude and altitude hold modes... As for why the Apache is hard to fly vs. the others, for me it comes down to two or three things. One is that yaw channel, as mentioned previously, the other is the tendency of the SAS to _amplify_, not damp your inputs near hover. I've recorded myself multiple times and watching back on the controls overlay you can see how I nudge the cyclic to the left a tiny bit, and the autopilot pushes it further than what I intended. This can make near hover behavior very twitchy. The third is the AFAIK confirmed to be exaggerated lateral push from the tail rotor, which causes the helicopter to crab enough that the canopy structures block visibility forwards when in aerodynamic trim. BUT overall with the most recent updates it's actually really not that bad! It's very easy to fly and handle when going at anywhere from 30 to 120 knots, it's really only the near hover stuff that's twitchier than I'd really like. Sedate the yaw channel, reduce the lateral push, and maybe* stop the near hover exaggerations of the AP and there'd be nothing to complain about really. Even now it's by no means uncontrollable near hover, just very sensitive, and the yaw channel is hard to predict. Oh right, there is one other thing... I need to check whether it's still a bug that exists, but last I checked all trim modes EXCEPT "return to center" had a HUGE effect on how fast you could move the cyclic around. The no-trim and instant trim options caused the maximum speed of the cyclic to be really sluggish when you just moved your stick around, while in center trim mode it responded MUCH faster. This made the helicopter a lot easier and more responsive to fly in center trim mode, but I use an unsprung cyclic so it's not really an option that I can use other than for testing...

Important to not that this doesn't apply to Jamsheed with his RPG-7, he is perfectly happy shooting helicopter going completely perpendicular at 90 knots, and hitting it... Huh, I thought a lot of them used wire guided ones. Learned something new today!

GPMG is more of a role than a specific gun (you probably know this but explaining in case someone who doesn't stumbles on this), where the same basic machine gun is used to fill various roles, like a bipod utilized LMG, a tripod mounted MMG, or a vehicle mounted gun on a jeep, a truck, an APC/IFV, a commander's gun on a tank, a helicopter door gun, etc. The M60 and M240 (an FN MAG variant) have both been used as GPMGs, on the Russian side we have the PK/PKM line which is also featured in-game (Hip rear gunner IIRC). They're most commonly using a battle rifle cartridge like 7.62x51mm NATO or 7.62x54mmR etc. If you specifically mean the L7A2 GPMG the Brits use, that's an FN MAG in 7.62x51mm NATO, should basically behave ~identically to the M60 or M240 from a damage perspective. Yeah they should be plenty to cause damage, and the M134 minigun certainly should fairly easily take out most unarmored vehicles with just a light burst. In-game though it tends to be really damn hard to get anything swept up with them, even with the ridiculously accurate door gunners. The Kord or the M2 on the other hand absolutely clean house. For funzies, here's an M60 in 7.62x51mm NATO going against a simulated cinderblock wall with tracers. Fun times. EDIT: Searching YT a bit, eventually found a video of 7.62x39mm (so way less powerful intermediate cartridge) taking down a piece of cinder block wall filled with concrete. Did take a while, but under 100 rounds still...

Would definitely love any kind of .50 BMG (or a nade launcher), unfortunately the 7.62mm guns just seem to underperform against vehicles. I know it's not a very powerful cartridge as such, but even the M134 spewing out a torrent of lead is lacking in impact. Meanwhile the Kord gunners on the Hip and Hind absolutely DEMOLISH things. Love those guys.

My favorite plane module in the game, just so damn good and interesting. Shame about some of the recent bugs, but it happens.