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Yes, they are utterly worth it if you fly anything other than F-16s. Uncoordinate flight during gun runs will screw up your aim. The bullets will not hit where you are aiming. That goes both ways, thouh. If you are flying uncoordinated due to lack of pedals, your aim will also be off. You can use the rudder to "hose" a target though, mainly during strafing. Definitely worth it. You will never want to go back. I can't really see myself flying without pedals, but I could see myself flying without TrackIR, to put it into perspective.

Quicksilver, yes, you are likely to apply rudder all the time when using a twist stick. I think this is the first time I’ve seen that mentioned as a positive though. It is usually considered one of the big drawbacks of the concept - you'll inadvertently be inputting rudder commands as you bank/pitch. Going from one to the other means relearning – no surprise there. Fast jets need them. However, you don’t need them to fly fast jet simulators. I’d hate to do without them, to the point that I’d probably park my virtual F-16 while waiting for a replacement should they break, but flying is essentially feet off from line up to landing, so they’re nice to have rather than need to have. In the A-10, I use them all the time. It’s got adverse yaw when banking, it needs rudder to coordinate turns and it’s great fun to side slip the aircraft in to a landing. Finally, you need them for crosswind landings. Cheers, Fred

Aaah, escort missions... I'll be there in my trusty Pony, loitering 2000 feet above the KC-135, ready to roll in on any bugger lining up on it's six. The stars on the wings of that dog-ugly aircraft is a ruse. Only the Jerries fly reaction-driven aeroplanes. Tally-ho! Wish it'd have been a Limey crate though, for the banter and the wonderfully interesting instrumentation. :)

There's no limit in the book. It's recommended to be left on until 70 KIAS with xwinds>20 KIAS, otherwise 'as desired'.

1) I'm buying a grand-stand seat next to the runway when it goes live, to watch people learning to cope with ground handling and torque/P-factor. On second thought, make that at a safe distance from the runway, with binos. 2) Nevada is coming. Nellis is in Nevada. Then there's that other place, R-something... we need pylons modelled! 3) We will finally be getting our very own Luftwhiners! No Mustang sim is complete without them! :D

Yes, on all accounts. You need them for everything but fast jets, and the Saiteks are a nice piece of kit at a reasonable price.

Do I detect a slight smell of alpha coming off you? You bastard! :D Now, fill that fuselage tank up and give us a handling eval. Cooper-Harper scale, please. ;)

Where do I pre-order?

Ah, good to know it's indeed possible to keep it up all the way to 90!

Regarding AD braking, I'm going to spoil all the fun had through speculation and quote chapter and verse. As you can see, our resident Op guy is correct in his assumption.

In big planes, no, you go for the aim point and then you flare - the landing will be somewhat beyond and that's expected/taken into account. The performance calcs are built on an on-glide threshold crossing height. Just dont hold out for a greaser - arrest the sink rate and plant it. In small aircraft VFR into short fields, you can be more creative, but you will want to consider the terrain before the threshold before going down a route putting you there if the aircraft spontaneously converts to Real Flying (i e gliding).

Aha, there we have it... nice, thanks for pointing the file out! (Sound of furious LUA editing here) I think my version of DCS:A-10 now truncates rather than rounds. It should also give me the GZD every time. With luck, I'll test it this weekend. Hmmm... is the MGRS to TGP target conversion in a LUA somewhere as well? Cheers! /Fred P.S. Now, what have you done recently to prevent me from being able to rep you for the NATO.lua? :D

Eddie, both valid points for USAF ops at own bases. Thank you for pointing that out. Cheers, Fred

degoe, you have the windspeed and OAT where you are at available in the CDU. For accurate bomb delivery, you need to enter the wind speeds in the layers the bomb will fall through as well. Trev, that's peculiar. Doesn't agree with the standard atmosphere or what you can deduce from how the atmosphere works. Any reason you can think of for this deviation in your operation? Are you usually entering cloud at those altitudes? Your quoted figure is close to the wet lapse rate. Cheers, Fred

As the song goes: "If you've just been out for mexican, and your stomach is in knots..." ;)

Aero braking is only if you have plenty of runway to spare. It is not the method for maximum performance. Coasting to a stop without using the brakes is fine, if saving brake wear is your primary concern. If in any doubt about the landing distance available, brake. That means: Get the nose down ASAP and brake. No aero braking. Same goes if there is traffic behind you to the same runway. You won't get any fans if you force aircraft behind to go around while lazily coasting down the entire length of the runway trying to save on brake wear. Aircraft anti-skid and car ABS are two different beasts. Car ABS pulses the brakes, causing noise, vibration, tyre wear and dotted lines on the asphalt. Aircraft systems are generally way more advanced and use wheel speed sensors to modulate brake pressure to obtain just the right amount of braking. In other words, you can mash down on the pedals and you will be fine - as long as you are below the brake energy limits given in the flight manual. Yes, it will wear on the tyres but not the way it does in cars, and tyres are cheaper than airframes. (In airliners, you can find autobrakes with various settings, providing preset rates of deceleration. Rather neat feature, especially when you want to make that turnoff!) Above the brake energy limits, you may end up with hot brakes, brake fires and what not. OTOH, if you have to choose between risking a brake fire and running off the far end of the runway, it's a no-brainer. On a hot (30 deg C) day at 4000 feet, the caution zone where you risk tire deflation due to blown fuse plugs begins at 110 KIAS. The danger zone, where you evacuate and call for the red trucks, begins at 130 KIAS. On a standard day at sea level, caution zone is at 120 KIAS and the danger zone at around 150 KIAS. A-10 maximum sink rate is 600 fpm and 33,200 lbs, decreasing to 350 fpm as the aircraft gets heavier. It's in the book. In my experience, bouncing is usually indicative of either touching down at too high a rate of descent (less so the more damping you have in your landing gear) or landing at too high speed. Of course, that's not from flying A-10's... and I haven't really experimented with bouncing in DCS. :) Does anyone know if the A-10 has received carbon brakes, or if it's still all steel? Cheers, Fred

You have to make a sanity check on the coords given. If they are too far off, suspect they're the wrong grid zone. Our virtual JTAC is making a gross error, as the grid zone should always be given if there's any chance of ambiguity when omitting it. I think plugging my UTM/MGRS introduction is in order. Speed, you never round when giving a lower-precision MGRS, you always truncate. I e, if you know the easting is somewhere between 16 and 18 and the northing is somewhere between 28 and 29, you give the coordinate as GH12 and not GH23. This of course means that if you are given GH12 for a coordinate, you start looking in the middle of the square GH12, i e around GH1525, and not in the SW corner of the square (GH1020). In your example, 170 becomes 1(00) and 284 becomes 2(00). It used to be the other way around, but it was changed quite some time ago. I suspect, but have not yet checked, that the systems in the simulated A-10 go about it the wrong way, ie focus on GH1020 rather than GH1525 when given GH12. Cheers, Fred

Aaron, you got close? ;) There's no need per se to use the same area for the lift and the drag equation. Double the area for one and the net result is simply that the corresponding coefficients are halved. It makes sense and reduces the chances of screwing up later, but there's no technical need. Using the wing planform area is conventional, but again - there's no direct need. The planform area to use for a given design can also be discussed. What do you do about the wing box, for starters? Is that planform area or not? Cheers, Fred

What drag/lift coefficients are you using? You need to use the same area which was used to establish those coefficients. If you have the coefficients but not the area, you are stuck with guesstimating until your performance matches data from other sources. For all you know, the area used could have been the surface area of the pilot's helmet. It wouldn't make sense, but it'd be valid. :) Cheers, Fred

:thumbup: Having owned pretty much every TM product from the PFCS and on, this is one of the reasons which make me stick with TM! A brief stint as a Saitek owner and never-ending problems and I was back. I still own various Saitek gear as well, mainly for civvie flying, but the TM stuff is what gives me the best value for the (substantial amount of) money. I was worried when Gullie.. Guillie... Guillemon.... that French company took over, but TM were allowed to keep up the high degree of customer support their price tags frankly call for. Writing this as a customer testimony, and to let the TM reps who are surely frequenting these forums know that it is worth the cost to keep it up. ;)

Can be any old area, really. Frontal area, wing planform area, the area of the tray in a catering trolley... as long as you specify the area. Cd will be change in unison, for the same net result. Planform area is convenient to use though. Without the area specified, there's no way to convert the Cd (or Cl) into actual drag generated. Cheers, Fred

Make sure to hit 'OK' when exiting the setup screen. It's either in BS or one of the other sims I have installed where this is a 'gotcha'. Perhaps the stick is objecting to the thread title in it's own little way. Now, that's a typo for the history books of the forum. :D

The lapse rate dictates that the temperature drop per foot of altitude remains about the same, hence the temp below ISA follows you up as you climb. In other words, you will be at a higher pressure altitude when you hit the ceiling. What you read on your altimeter is pressure altitude. A given pressure altitude equals a given pressure. What matters for performance is the density altitude. A given density altitude equals a given density. The density at 20,000 feet pressure altitude on a standard day is 0.65 kg/m^3. At ISA -30 deg C (15 below on the ground), the air density is 0.74 kg/m^3 at this 20,000 ft pressure altitude, and you get better performance than you normally would. To get down to 0.65 kg/m^3 and a density altitude of 20,000 feet again (and thus the same performance) you'll have to climb to around 24,000 feet pressure altitude. In other words, you gain 4,000 feet pressure altitude to the ceiling. However, you will not be 4,000 feet further away from the ground, due to the fact that the colder air means more of a pressure drop for every foot climbed. Adding four percent of pressure altitude for every ten degrees below ISA to maintain the same height above ground is a rule of thumb used. Using this, your 24,000 feet pressure altitude (what's read on the altimeter) means about the same height above ground as where your altimeter would read a little above 21,000 feet pressure altitude on a standard day (112% of 21,400 is about 24,000). Probably stretching the rule of thumb a bit, but it's in the ball park. Anyone not confused yet? :D

I'll post the mandatory question: Track?

Yup, just get the first one up to 85% core RPM first. :thumbup: