okopanja

@BIGNEWY this is a small feature request to solve a problem of commanding and placing complex groups, not really a bug. TRK would be counter productive, since you command all units if you PATH. Difference here is to use this new formation type to move individual unit from group to exact position where you wish to have it.

Even when turning the knob to maximal value the emitted sound is too low, and easily covered by air flow, engine sound and SPO noise. I thought we were supposed to pick this volume on our own?

Can we get simple yes or no?

Too me it looks like this is actually a misinterpretation of genuine exploitation problem for non-overhauled aircrafts (true for both GDR and YU Fulcrums) vs original design and state of aircrafts. Modeling the exploitation fault as design flaw is wrong and is not supported with the actual technical documentation. Instead the electronics aging effects should be modeled as a fault which can be ticked in mission editor for those who want to really feel how it feels to fly and fight in broken aircraft. E.g. this includes other failures, like radar range degradation, which in case of L-18 was 20-30km in 1999 (I have a direct statement of a pilot comparing the state of aircraft when they were in good condition and later when the electronics started to break down). Some of us prefer historic context, in which you fly the aircraft with such failures, but the majority of the player base actually want the aircrafts that behave according to the specs when they were new.

right horizontal panel at the very back, its animated in model but not usable atm. There is a button to tell WCS that gears are up.

Is it fine to quote this document as a reference in my historic 29 flights? Is it still confidential, and how do I make sure I do not breach the British laws? The reason I ask is: Eastern German and Yugoslav 29s are roughly the same age. It appears the degradation of electronics did proceed in similar tempo in both air forces. Asking since this document proves British were aware already in 1997 that the aged fulcrums had serious problems. E.g. first signs that war imminent were mid-1997, with Autumn 1998 being marked with huge NATO demonstrative actions over Albania.

I will try it. I spent more time reading manuals than playing since the release.

Why would it appear only within gun employment range?

I think there is no point in displaying air to air weapons in Ground mode. Very likely the meaning of inboard/outboard changes once you flip this switch.

Wrong, it can be placed into faults section in ME. For those who wish to face the true challenge. Failures can be simulated in DCS, but I am not sure about degradation. E.g. change the radar range.

I have seen several of them with no mentioning. 347 I could not find in them, but it sounds as if it is part of sections with updates and failures (e.g. 347 for my 9.13 is fault error table). Might be interesting to see how Soviets maintained theirs (LOL). They tended to treat airplanes as consumables, so likely 10 year old aircraft is something that was supposed to be replaced all together. Nations with less resources were more interested in keeping them running longer, which is why MiG had upgrade options for them. In Soviet system they would simply move from 9.12 to 9.13. Just for the record: the 29s donated to Serbia from Russia were all wearing different liveries and were looking from outside worse than our own 29s. The Belarus did look better, but still worse. I would not be surprised if they just decided to keep the aircrafts with known faults and updated one revision of the manual with the description of the fault. IMHO: this is a problem that plagued the aircrafts when they reach certain age. Deterioration will occur even if you do not use them, but more frequent and aggressive usage will wear them down faster. I got an interview where the pilot state that original range of the radar got reduced down to 20-30km for detection and tracking. These birds were in a sorry state. Even after the war the situation did not change much, with whole remaining fleet being grounded due to not having startup batteries. Around 2008 the repairs and overhaul started, with another in 2012.

A bit of background. The Wall fell in 1989. East Germany got their Mig-29s around the same time as Yugoslavia in 1987. The Yugoslav training groups of pilots and technicians started their training after the Germans finished training. The 204th regiment was mostly based in Pleso, Zagreb, where the main repair facility for the 29s was and Batajnica, Belgrade (repair facility Moma Stanojlovic at that time did not service 29s). With civil war, the main repair facility remained in Croatia. Given the chaotic nature of withdrawal from Croatia, we can not be sure that all tools and spare parts were pulled out. This also meant that significant number of trained persona who lived and worked in Zagreb were also divided (some of them moved to Belgrade, but later left and returned to Croatia). The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia got both sanctioned and embargoed, which prevented any import of spare parts or modernization, until 1995 when the Dayton accord the things got more relaxed. The planned overhaul was supposed to start already in 1996 and be completed in 1997. Offer was received for the overhaul and upgrade (radar upgrade, R-77, Kh-29T, fixing gun/fuel tank issue, as well as possible Gardenia installation). Only radar upgrade would have brought MTBF from 50 hours to 250. By 1998 large parts of fleet were grounded, mostly due to the failing electronics. The engines were still in good condition, but on the paper the lifetime got extended at least on 2 occasion past the time the overhaul time. At this time the it was clear that Yugoslavia will be invaded by NATO, so desperate attempts were made to repair the fleet. Offer was received from MiG to service the boards, which were prone by failures of electrolytic capacitors. MiG has offered to service this in field, at the price of $200k per aircraft. The request was made in the 204th regiment and sent along the hierarchy, but the whole thing stalled: someone along the path with political background decided this is not needed. It should be noted that during the period 1996-1998, 2 complete Hinds were smuggled in the country for the needs of Serbian Ministry of Interior (JSO - special operation unit). Still this was rather sensitive internal political time. With Serbia and Montenegro leadership not getting along and later controlling the Ministery of Defense, I can easily see why these opportunities to bring the Migs into fully operational state were missed. Internally leader of Serbia never trusted military (e.g. prior to the war Chief of Staff Momčilo Perišić along 20+ generals got retired and replaced), so all available money got funneled into Ministry of Interior. These "repairs" which took place at the end, were not done with official MiG support, and amounted to cannibalization of spare parts from different air-frames and improrvized repairs. The airplanes got into somewhat flyable state with breaks occurring frequently. You will observe that this roughly correlates with the date of the intelligence document marmor posted. I am pretty sure Germans would have experienced same kind of the issues. I have no information of they themselves did overhaul. However its worth noticing that they sold their Migs to Poland against a symbolic price in 2004, basically at the price of junk. Perhaps some Polish MiG lovers can tell us when the overhaul took place? In 1999 war started and pilots flew in airplanes that often had failed electronics on the startup. One such case was the flight of Peric/Radosavljevic (I will prepare the story about them) and actually it might be the case of this radar/SPO bleed example. Peric was more experienced and was supposed to lead. On takeoff when turning on the radar he had immediate failure, and noticed that his SPO is lit like a Christmas tree (randomly blinking and beeping). He passed the lead to Radosavljevic, whose airplane appeared to work properly. I will not go deeper than this at this time. As for this issue in documentation: in Yugoslav manual there is no mentioning on this radar/SPO bleed issue. The document was originally published in 1990 (I assume that for 3 years they used either soviet manuals directly or had another kinds of documents to support the training and operation). The document had revisions in 1992, 1993 (large number of pages got updated at this time) with the final version in 1994. This 1994 version is what got leaked in the internet. It should be noted that was already 7th year of the service, so one would expect that they knew the airplane pretty well by this time, and that such limitation would have been documented.

Don't use Auto, Use P (150km scale) for situation awareness then switch to Dogon, this is what (Boro Zoraja actually did). For a kick try to make the transition too early (e.g. around 50km) and the RL will start fleshing and drop lock after 2-3 seconds, but if you wait a bit longer it will not loose it.

@LaCiKaI think you did nothing wrong here, target was hot all the time, so HPRF made sense. Still traditional wisdom in DCS is that with flanker/fulcrum you have to switch to MPRF when you get closer purely for tactical reasons. One of the first things the blue learns in how to notch or even go cold. To counter that you have to switch to MPRF which is way more stable. Attempt next time to switch to Dogon mode once you are closer than 30-40km. From what I tried, it will keep the track or even lock if you are in the STT. Funny thing is that not even chaff got used. I must say these issues with FF 29 would have been much more tolerable, if they did not choose to bring second breaking change and that it R-27 itself which also affects existing modules. E.g. if this was not touched now, you could still revert back to FC3 and give them more breathing time to fix FF 29. We are all eagerly waiting for the next patch.

Which page is this?

Yugoslav manual indicates GCI can sends 3 different commands in order to activate radar illumination AVT, PPS, ZPS. If this does not occur, pilot is expected to do it himself. Not sure what ED plans to do, but I do hope DL actually includes dedicated GCI seat with all available options for GCI officer.

Just to give some background. Mirčeta Jokanović, pilot of first group of 16 trained 29 pilots in Yugoslav airforce, stated specifically that they had problems with electronics and degradation, whit electrolitical capacitors being blowing up. They were offered in 1998 the replacement of these boards at cost of $200k per airplane. 3 most common failures of systems in 1999 war were: 1. Radar 2. SPO 3. Navigational sistema SPO failures came in 2 flavours: straight failure on start, and more subtle with no warning, but SPO going crazy all the time. To me it looks like fumctional failure got modeled as design flaw in DCS. This can easily happen if the failure rate is so high that it eventually ends up in pilot's manual.

This is what I assumed when I saw first mentioning of this. Still encounter where SPO-15 worked with radar on head on is here. Not to mention that SPO-15 saved him a life when GCI officer gave no warning of attack. From: 00:19:53 to 21:06 19:53 Boro Zoraja: The SPO device stopped showing a threat and there was no more sound in headphones 19:57 Boro Zoraja (radio to GCI officer): "Orao 356, I dropped outside of the lock, report the information on the enemy!" 20:03 Boro Zoraja (radio to GCI officer): "Olymp, Orao 356, do we hear each other. Please, Olymp 356, confirm if you hear me!" 20:11 Boro Zoraja: I repeated these messages several times, and while doing so, I started a free hunt, to scan and seek for the enemy 20:19 Boro Zoraja: I came to 6000 m and was on course between 130 and 140, and I detected 3 targets. 20:25 Boro Zoraja: I selected the nearest target and established the lock, the radar switched from scanning into targeting mode. 20:34 Boro Zoraja: That mode allows me to see the range of the targets. 20:38 Boro Zoraja: The target was at a distance of about 35 km, and was moving toward me. 20:43 Boro Zoraja: My next action was to flip the cover for missile launch trigger up, since we had a very high closure rate. 20:51 Boro Zoraja: It was just a few seconds and in the meantime he was already at a distance of 30 km, and at that moment I got spiked by them again, and SPO started to indicate I have been locked, while radar dropped the lock. 21:06 Boro Zoraja: My next reaction was simply to escape the missile launched at me. Keep in mind we are talking about badly maintained 29s, where they used spare parts were taken from other airplanes.

Lock is on throttle. Still no clue on depress

About this?

Inside Black Shark some of these units are already used (and not only them). Some of them may get reused in FF 29.

I think I saw something BS, what is the original name in russian?

Well it occurred to me that Lazur could be faked to some degree with new navigation by spawning/de-spawning RBSN car. (not fully, but HSI would behave similar to the way Mig-21 behaves with Lazur)