jubuttib

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.

@Raptor9 Any thoughts on how different trim modes have different maximum speeds for the stick movement? When you're in Center Trim mode you can move the stick around pretty fast, but when you're in unsprung stick trim mode the responses are way slower. I don't know which mode is supposed to be the proper one, but if at all possible I'd love to be able to test the center trim mode's stick movement speed with the unsprung stick trim mode, even if it breaks IC. I use an unsprung stick, so centering the stick isn't really a good idea for me (it's immensely hard to find the center), but even then hovering the Apache is way easier in center trim mode because the input response is so much better. I just can't really use it for flying around because I can't ever trim in this mode. =( Is there a way to adjust this in the files for the helicopter somehow for local testing? Could you guys in a future update make it so that the center trim mode's faster input speed is used for all trim modes? It really makes a big difference for me with the Apache, I go from feeling like I'm constantly chasing it to being in control.

Entirely fair. I work with racing sims, and sometimes weird things just frigging happen. You don't touch something but it suddenly breaks, an sometimes even inconsistently between different computers...

You can, if you're close enough. I didn't get any big boxes when shooting at targets about 5-6 km away, but I did when shooting at ones about 1-2 km away.

It's been quite interesting for me recently. When the first iteration of MT came in a patch, I found the Apache suddenly really nice and stable in a hover, and overall much nicer to fly, and very easy to get into a hover hold. Then with some of the later updates that went away, it becoming super twitchy again (this despite having my saturations dropped to 70%). With yesterday's patch I didn't really see much change in the stability, still being insanely squirrely and hard to hold in a hover vs. any other helicopter in the game, getting the hover hold to actually engage a hover instead of veering hard to a random direction seemed to be down to pure luck (even with the speed line ultra short and the acceleration ball centered), but I did notice the SCAS channels behaving themselves better, especially collective. All of the above (including all my previous tests with older versions) were done with IHADSS visible, in the mode usually used for takeoffs. For some reason I decided to then test flying the Apache without the IHADSS, and after a little bit I found it a lot easier to hover, even if I hadn't been consciously looking at the IHADSS symbology. With the IHADSS visible, there's a HUGE tendency for me to end up in situations where even though I'm making tiny stick movements, the helicopter will just end up banking hard and wandering all over the place. With the IHADSS disabled, this didn't really happen anymore, and I got the helicopter to activate hover hold much more consistently too. Shrug, worth a try for some peeps, I guess. FWIW I still think it's weirdly unstable compared to any other helicopter in the game, or any other helicopter I've flown in other (civilian) sims for that matter. A Huey also requires constant small inputs to hover, but it's so much more calm than the Apache.

Testing last night from a hover with George, I could easily have 2, sometimes 3 missiles in the air at the same time heading towards different targets. That plus the ability to just bob down after a launch definitely gives the Limas a lot of versatility vs. the Kilos. But I also ran into some issues where I couldn't hit the exact target I was aiming for when multiple targets were close together, so there's still definitely a place for laser guidance. EDIT: And doing the lasing myself, I could ripple off about 5 missiles before the first one landed, too. This is definitely a capability that can be useful.

On 3), I found that the procedure seems to go something like this: Slave George to target -> George lases target -> Once the "Target Data?" prompt goes away George stops lasing -> You can tell him to fire. I found it helpful to turn on the video feed from the TADS, so that I could see when the "Target Data?" prompt disappeared. On 4), the missiles are supposed to veer to the side (it gives the missile a chance to use doppler beam sharpening techniques to improve the radar imaging, which doesn't work well when you're just flying straight at the target). For missing, the only thing that comes to mind is are you shooting from a hover? I noticed that the missiles tend to miss more if you don't shoot quite soon after the designation, or move around, especially sideways.

Oh yeah, agreed 100%, but in the end I'm playing DCS so I'm somewhat forced to think in terms of what works in DCS. It would be awesome to actually have to use these big badabooms to achieve things, as well as being able to cause damage on near misses.

FWIW in the video Wags stopped firing the laser, waited about 5 seconds (while talking), and only then fired the missile. So clearly the laser didn't need to be kept steadily on anything after initial designation (i.e. until the "TARGET DATA?" text disappeared), but I don't know if there would be any limitations to the helicopter drifting around between that and the launch. The helicopter in the video was drifting a tiny bit sideways, but not much.

That are better against armor than the cluster JSOWs in-game... In terms of DCS at least, I prefer quantity over size for bombs. It's very rare that I need a big bomb, but pretty often I need a lot of hits.