jubuttib

Fwiw I'm the WSO, and neither of us know enough about the plane to do that on purpose at any rate, and I'm pretty sure I saw PP-EGI on the UFC during the flight.

Tested with JSOWs, GBU-31s and GBU-54s thus far. If the rear seater hits the "XFR RDR" (or TGP etc.) button to transfer the co-ordinates to the smart weapon, the bomb still shows up as uninitialized for the front seater. Likewise if the front seater does it, it shows as uninitialized for the rear seater, there's no syncing in either direction. This also extends to the HUD, if the rear seater sets the bombs up, the front seater doesn't get any heading guidance for delivering the bombs. Rear seat HUD repeater after rear seat setting targets: Front seat HUD at the same time: Track file added. EDIT: Can't add track file because it's too big. =P

OK, confirmed that smart weapons that get co-ordinates from the front seat don't sync with the backseat, and vice versa. So whoever sets the co-ordinates into the weapons has to also fire them. Also saw a worrying thing with regards to navigation accuracy, the front seater's TSD/moving map stayed perfectly aligned, but even on a short flight my TSD on the rear seat went completely out of whack. Some of the bombs also went off target, so I wonder if it's something like the INS drifting badly for the rear seat, not getting updates from GPS, while front seat is OK... Here's front seat TDS: And here's my rear seat TDS at the same time (roughly): They're not even in the same area code. And mine kept shifting all the time, this was taken 2 minutes an 3 seconds later (timestamps on screenshots):

Heya, just wondering if there's a consensus atm. on what works and what doesn't in multicrew properly. For example in today's session with a buddy we had quite a few issues, some unrelated to the F-15E itself (like FFB issues, which got sorted with a game restart), and I was just wondering whether they were supposed to work or not. Main ones that we ran into were that apparently no targeting data was being transmitted between the seats, nor were smart weapon targets synced at all. On our first run at a target I set up 3 targets for GBU-31s from the rear seat using the radar, and got all the targeting cues etc. on my HUD repeater, but the front seater got nothing. Weapons kept saying "NO ZONE" on the HUD, heading tape didn't show where to go, nothing. Eventually I requested control of the plane, dropped the bombs, and gave control back. Second run we tried to do the "rear seat designates, front seat transfers co-ordinates to bomb" method. I designated two different targets for him, and he uploaded them on his end, but they didn't actually show up on the smart weapons page for me at all, the bombs kept saying INIT. I then set a couple more targets to the bombs he didn't try to program myself, and those showed up as expected. When it came time to do the drop, he got one bomb off, then the system cycled to a station that wasn't even in the weapon profile (profile had just the CFTs, after the drop it cycled to the centerline station, which was already empty). I had to again take over, and drop the rest. Couldn't drop the second one that he had tried to program, since it was showing as INIT for me. Included images of what his HUD was showing him, and what my HUD repeater was showing me.

FWIW, and I don't know if it's straight up compatible with this specific implementation, but with the ALPS switches I've also been able to use Joystick Gremlin to make it so that the push-in function only sends a button press when no direction is held (four IF conditions). Potentially an option if you don't want to figure out how to get the PCBs made. EDIT: Outside of that, great job as always TSN, love your stuff.

Currently it seems like the radar doesn't work in Stable, need to be in OpenBeta.

I'll start looking into it, definitely. I sometimes visit my buddy there, so could probably pick it up from his place. FWIW I'm not going to order it for at least a month or two, so no hurry.

Drat. How about Denmark?

Sorry haven't been checking the forums: The sound was fine when just using the radio in game, there's something weird that happens in the test.

Maaan, that new model looks absolutely magnificent K-51! Can you still handle orders from Finland?

Slightly different, but related: It says in the patch note that "... or AGR required", do I need to do something specific with the A-G radar to get the improved accuracy, or just have it turned on?

For people who are fairly serious about the sound quality of their mic, but don't wanna sped a whole lot, I like to recommend the combination of the t.bone HC95 headset mic (comes with a headband, which can be easily detached for mounting on existing headphones should you want) and a cheap single XLR input USB audio interface with Phantom, like a Behringer UM2 or the t.bone MicPlug USB. It's not bargain basement prices, but it's very good quality IMO for well under 100 bucks for the combo. I might have just had bad luck in the past with all kinds of devices, but nothing that plugs into a normal mic port has ever sounded as good to me as a decent condenser microphone, and nothing that's either onboard or inside the computer case has been so problem free of noise issues as an external USB audio device. That said DCS doesn't seem to like my USB audio interface for some reason, sounds perfect elsewhere but crackles in DCS, so this may be a bad recommendation for now.

Would be interesting to hear more about this. I'm also using an USB audio interface (TASCAM US-4x4), as is my buddy (IIRC Behringer UM2), and while our inputs are crystal clear over Discord and every other app, selecting the same audio devices we use in DCS leads to horrific buzzing noise and garbled voice during the mic test.

So Flight Director, basically?

Has been interesting looking at this and seeing how at least based on that testing the F-16C struggles in many areas against almost all of the competition. It's only a clear winner in climb performance (it can indeed haul ass decently well), but sustained turn rates aren't the greatest and instantaneous rates are quite poor, and the sustained radius is one of the largest. Not saying anything concrete about the actual performance in a dogfight (especially against AI), I don't really do dogfighting myself, but I've been seeing a fair few people complain about how poor the F-16C is in a dogfight against human opponents, and seeing those performance figures does lend credence to those claims. Would be interesting to see a more updated study, since I think they've fiddled with the F-16C since that was made.

Can someone confirm which seats are available? The wording in the release notes makes it sound like we're getting the 3 cockpit seats AND a singular gunner seat, is this accurate? I'm guessing the side gunner with the Kord is at least available, is the rear door PKM/PKP spot usable?

Aside from what Dr_Pavelheer already said, I think what you could do is take the DEST 01 (WPT1) co-ordinates and copy/paste them to DEST 36 (or another PP slot if you need 36), that way you get a PP with the same co-ordinates as your waypoint.

If you first put 4xGBU-12 on the CFT, then add a CBU-97 to the wing pylon, the GBU-12s on the CFT disappear. However if you first put the CBU-97 on the wing pylon and THEN add the 4x GBU-12 to the CFT, both are shown going on just fine. In-game though this results in the CBU-97 being on the wing pylon, and the CFT being empty.

I had the original issue today, and tried to solve it by turning on just normal altitude hold, but the plane kept oscillating. Was slightly annoying.

FWIW comparing the cockpit AoA units to the AoA degrees readout in both TACView and the bottom info bar in external views, it would seem that the units are basically degrees of AoA + 10. I.e. 11.5 units of AoA = 1.5° AoA, 20 units of AoA = 10° AoA. Based on the training mission's suggestion of holding between 20-22 units of AoA, that would put the landing AoA of the F-15E to around 10-12 degrees, which sounds fairly normal.

I haven't seen any of the tutorial videos, but it works the same way for me that it's always worked: Turn on master arm, turn on the weapons panel, flip open the safety cover and turn on the right weapon pylon.

The trouble of doing that in the Hornet is what makes me love the JDAM delivery system of the Harrier SO FRIGGING MUCH.

100%, it should fly like the real thing, whatever the real thing is like at the end. And this isn't necessarily to be taken as me wanting the helicopter to change either, this is more a commentary on how I'm finding it compared to the other helicopters, and how those differences pertain to my likes and dislikes. But the module isn't, and shouldn't made to suit my likes and dislikes instead of realism, and it certainly has its own character. And yeah, I do expect to be busy in a helicopter, and I am fairly busy in all of them, except the Ka-50 with its really strong autopilot capabilities and inherently more stable coaxial layout, but I did not expect the Apache to be quite so unstable. I do still like it a whole lot, and continue to keep getting better at flying it. EDIT: Oh, and the "and if the controls were equally fast in unsprung stick trim mode as they are in center position trim mode" is just plainly a bug, the trimming mode selected shouldn't affect the control movement speed. Either the Instant and Unsprung stick trim modes are too slow, or the center position trim mode is too fast. I _really_ hope that instant and unsprung are too slow, because the helicopter is way easier to fly with the fast inputs of center position trim mode. Just to note, it's the same for the Hind and Ka-50 as well, the trim button also interacts with the autopilot/stability augmentation systems on those as well. Interestingly it doesn't on the Hip, the reason being AFAIK that it has a 3rd person in the cockpit whose job it is to tune the autopilot channels manually.

Dang, wonder when that was. The stabilization and damping on the Hind is (for me) absolute miles beyond what the Apache can do for me, and the mass also makes it slow to get moving out of a hover. And this is with an unsprung stick, not even using the "easy mode" 4-way trim hat that will make you the second most stable helicopter in the world (after the Ka-50). I wanna preface the following with making it clear that I don't consider the Apache "impossible" to fly or anything like that, and I have gotten used to it enough to hover it decently, and get it into hover hold. Turning off IHADSS and using the trim properly all help. And the stability has improved when holding in force trim button, i.e. with the SCAS mostly off. This is just comparative talk, it is significantly harder in ever way at low speeds for me than any other helicopter (including the Huey, Hind, Hip, Black Shark, Gazelle, Blackhawk mod and Little Bird mod). The Apache's main issue for me, beyond just it requiring constant little inputs (which is fine, the Huey requires that too and it doesn't bother me none) is that whenever the Apache twitches a bit, it accelerates off to the side _so much faster_ than anything else in DCS, for me at least. Hind or Hip gets nudged a bit off kilter? It'll eventually start to drift that way, but it takes a while, and the stability augmentation are already reduces these random little twitches a lot. Huey is a bit faster, and there's no stability augmentation, so you need to work with it more. But the Apache, it has the double whammy of not wanting to sit stably holding its position via stability augmentation, and needing constant nudging like the Huey, it also gets out of sorts faster than the others, so you need to be really quick about it too. The most annoying part about that is that if you fly with "Center position trim" option enabled, you can move you stick MUCH faster than in instant or unsprung trim modes, which makes it a LOT easier to control the helicopter in a hover. With center position trim I feel like I can keep up with the helicopter to hold it in a hover, it's just some work to do it, while the unsprung trim mode (my preferred one) makes me lag behind it badly. I'd honestly rate the Apache's stability a lot higher if I could move the stick in unsprung as I can in center position trim. The other issue I've had is with the stability augmentation itself. When reviewing footage I've seen instances where a disturbance happens, and instead of trying to correct/compensate for it, it ends up making the helicopter lean into it harder, with no or even opposite stick input. It also seems to oscillate back and forth weirdly at times. This is something I've basically never felt in the Mi-24, Mi-8 and Ka-50 helicopters. The most noticeable example for me is when turning on the hover hold (i.e. very low speed attitude hold). My speed can be 0, my ball on the IHADSS centered (and yes I am aware that chasing the ball in IHADSS is usually bad, and I do get better results ignoring it entirely), but when I turn on the supposed hover hold mode, the helicopter starts accelerating in a random direction. You not only have to get the speed to be basically 0, and the acceleration to be basically 0, you also need to nail a specific attitude on the helicopter before turning the mode on will actually capture and hold the hover. It's very binary, either it captures the hover hold perfectly with no issues, or it doesn't get even remotely close to it. I can't remember if they announced a specific change to this aspect, but in the manual it still says that when your speeds is below 5 knots, the Attitude Hold switch is supposed to turn on the hover/position hold mode, but it absolutely can not even remotely achieve this currently if you're moving a more than like 1 knot. At least on my system. =/ Now I can do this after some practice, but comparing it to the 3 other helicopters with hover holds, all of them are SO much better at this. The Ka-50 just wants you to get to like below 10 km/h and with the trim set so that the autopilot has most of its channel authority left, and it'll capture and hold your hover very easily. Even if your trim wasn't perfect, and the autopilot runs out of authority, it'll still _try_ to maintain the hover as best it can, drifting to the side a tiny bit, which you can correct for by retrimming. The Apache in a similar situation will just yeet off to a random direction at high speeds, rather than try to get as close to a hover as it can. The Mi-24P isn't as good at capturing the hover, but it will try its best, and turn off the hold mode if it can't do it. The Gazelle (such as it is until the new update comes) is very touchy unless you severely drop down your saturations, but it's not very hard to get to a hover, and the hover hold grabs and holds it aggressively. If the Apache could actually engage position hold that manages to grab the helicopter and keep it steady when engaged at between 2-5 knots, and if the controls were equally fast in unsprung stick trim mode as they are in center position trim mode, I'd have very little to complain about really, even with the current stability augmentation not really keeping it "stable" in the same manner as the Hind, Hip and Shark do.

Sure, and that's entirely fair, I just personally wasn't expecting it to be _the toughest_ helicopter to fly.