KlarSnow

JTIDS and FDL are exactly the same in a mid 2000's context. If they are modelling Link-16 in an F-15C in the Mid-2000's it doesn't matter what they call it JTIDS/FDL/MIDS, its all the same capability and functionality on the Link-16 network. I sincerely doubt they are modelling the mid 90's JTIDS and if they are any of the limitations it would have (still Link-16 remember) wouldn't be relevant to how DCS does Link-16, or TNDL since that's what they are calling it now. the Knob in the cockpit is Still labelled JTIDS to this day (just like in the F-15E btw that you can see in DCS), and several of the MFD options reference JTIDS, regardless of what terminal is actually in the jet. Its still all Link-16 and can talk to and do all the same messages as any other jet, with all the same track display and reporting and link capability. Basically this is a non issue, if its a mid-2000's jet its going to be link-16 compatible whatever they end up calling it, and there wont be any difference between JTIDS/FDL/MIDS in DCS because that level of detail is well out of scope, and wouldn't really matter anyways since even if it was modelled, everything would still be able to talk to each other and display all of the data appropriately. If they said it was a "Mid-90s jet with JTIDS" then maybe you should be concerned it was whatever that small experimental group of jets was, but if its mid-2000's as they have stated its a non issue. The terminology FDL/MIDS/JTIDS is interchangeable once Link-16 becomes standard in the early 2000's. What specific radio you have in the jet does not affect your ability to get on the link and transfer information in any meaningful way that could be represented in DCS.

If it’s a mid-2000s F-15C then it will have -220s.

The F-15C was heavier, but the wing design was the same. The 7.33 G limit for the A and C was the most restrictive part of the envelope (mach 1.05 at a heavy aircraft weight at a specific altitude IIRC) If however you are lighter than that, slower than that, or at a different altitude, the G limit will be higher that's what the OWS is dynamically monitoring. If you don't have a working OWS the G limit per the Ops limits is just that most restrictive part of the envelope over the entire flight envelope. Again this is all straight out of the -1. Once the OWS is installed there is zero differentiation in G limit between an F-15A and an F-15C, only is the OWS working or not. When the F-15A and first F-15C's were built there was no OWS, so they were all restricted to that 7.33G most restrictive limit until the OWS was installed. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/dd/1c/da/f0c1baa0d059b3/US4302745.pdf Patent to the OWS if you desire to read how and why it works.

Just to clear up the confusion on 9G on the F-15A/C in here. All F-15s were and are 9G capable. In the early 1980s the OWS (overload Warning system) was retrofitted to all F-15's that were not built with it (all A's, some C's that were not built with it) This system gave real time monitoring of actual current dynamic G on the aircraft, with warning when approaching over-G. This unlocked the full 9G potential of the aircraft. If the OWS is not functioning properly (or not installed) the aircraft is supposed to be flown under 7.33 G's (both A and C) to ensure a margin from the actual over-G since there is no warning or dynamic display of where the G limit is. This is all laid out in the TCTO's and the ops limits from about 1985 onwards, with no difference between the A and the C once the OWS was installed. The OWS is the beeping you hear as you approach the G limit and the displayed allowed vs current G in the lower left of the HUD. There is some discussion of this in the Eagle Talk magazine from the late 70's and 80's that you should be able to find if you look for it where it discusses the dynamic nature of the OWS and how it is dynamically adjusting the over-G limit based on current altitude, mach and aircraft weight, but the end result is that all variants of the F-15 could safely pull 9G's (and more as demonstrated several times) repeatedly over their lifetime. And again, all of this is the over-G warning going off, nothing in the aircraft limits your actual G pulled.

From the developers.

If you go back to the start of this thread 2 years ago, we already tested and compared the current missile to these fly out graphs. Spoiler they are extremely close. As in almost perfectly matching. Additionally you do have to modify the missile lua a bit to perform the test properly, since by default the missile will try and maintain the attitude you fire it at. If you disable all guidance and autopilot in the missile via editing the lua, so it will fly ballistically instead of holding an attitude or AOA, then it will in fact match the performance in the flyout graphs posted.

Aim-9B is the only one that cannot be uncaged. AIM-9J/P/P3 have no tone when uncaged.

The band switch has nothing to do with shrike bands. It was a switch added and then repurposed for shrikes later. with the -9/-10 shrikes (Mk49 and Mk50 seekers) it will select whether the shrike is in LOFT ATTACK or DIRECT ATTACK mode, and whether or not it has angle gating while on the rail. None of this is implemented currently. It is also not clear if this functionality was on the F-4E or if it was only implemented on F-4G's. The F-4E -34's do not spell out this functionality, but the switch and presumably the functionality was there. the F-4G -34's do spell out how this functionality works, and the F-4G has some additional lights under the AOA indexers to let you know if you have LOFT/DIRECT attack selected, or angle gating. Those lights are not present in the F-4E. In either case at the moment in Heatblurs F-4E that switch is completely non functional.

That’s awesome! Please make sure to have the option for on or the other or both in the route part, and then a clear delineation or label in the columns so that doesn’t get mixed up. another thought would be to add a wind corrected heading column. Right now what you are essentially creating in the kneeboard is the desired course from steerpoint to steerpoint, but with any wind, the desired heading will be different (so that the aircraft flies the desired course) it’s a fairly simple vector calculation if you know the winds direction and velocity at the altitude the aircraft is flying at, and if the winds are known for a navigational leg then this would be included in this kind of planning. Additionally for the loadout section, it would probly be beneficial if it’s possible to read the fuze and laser code settings that got added and have them displayed there somehow. That way you could at a glance see all of that info and what fuze/laser code/shrike seeker etc… you picked in the mission editor.

CBU-87/97 and CBU-52, and CBU-99 all have radar proximity detectors in the nose. If you are setting an altitude, it is an AGL altitude, not ASL. If you are not setting that, you are setting a time after release that the weapon opens.

Pretty sure in extreme northern or southern maps the mag var is going to be very difficult to deal with. Once you get that far north or south (60-70 degrees latitude)magnetic navigation starts to go out the window and true/celestial/other navigation methods are normally used.

The interlock off does not turn the seeker of the missile off, all it does is remove the requirement for IN RANGE and SHOOT lights to fire the missile. Its mostly helpful for doing close range stuff for boresight shots or where the WEZ computations cant really keep up. In real life they mostly flew with the interlocks out so they would never be inhibited from shooting if they needed to.

You are not locked to the target and the gunsight is showing the incorrect range. Look at the range wrap on the right side of the gun reticle, and you need to QC the radar for what it is actually tracking. It looks like you have a bad/spurious lock on ground clutter and it is showing you ranging out to 6,000 feet, which is where the gunsight is calculating your lead to, and the target appears to be well inside 1000 feet. You should see the range wrap almost completely unwrapped (at the 6 o clock position or non existent) instead of fully extended.

Mk-84 LD's are not approved on the inboard pylons, the fins and tail kit are too long and interfere with the landing gear doors. This is correct per approved loadouts in the F-4E-1 and talking with SME's. If you look at the external view you can see that GBU-10 and Mk-84 AIR are both significantly shorter length wise than the Mk-84 LD. They do not interfere with the gear doors.

While it may be difficult to have it auto generate the magvar, could there be a field where we could enter the magvar and then have it applied to the kneeboard charts? This would be pretty easy to grab and enter say in a field here with a checkbox to apply it or not, or as something that can be added, this is the one thing that makes using this kneeboard as a navigational aid difficult, because you have to manually calculate the magnetic heading or course, and most of the jets in the game fly magnetic, not true headings. On maps like nevada that can be a big difference.

As to the questions about shrike seeker bands and what they can/cannot see. If you look into the Lua files you can see the actual frequency ranges of the various threats and emitters, by comparing those to the shrike seeker bands that are presented in the seeker selection dialog you can start to parse together what each shrike seeker can/cannot see. The label for the seeker is what it was designed to target, but there can be other things that overlap the designed seeker band and may also be able to be tracked. This is what the chart above represents based on firing them. There could be and probably are bugs, but so far based on looking at the in game luas of what the target radars actual frequencies are, and firing them against matching seekers, it so far has matched exactly in my testing.

150 seconds after it leaves the rail. The 150 seconds is seeker operation time. The missiles battery is not fired until you press the pickle button, that is what engages the 150 second timer. there is a bug right now where if you reload missiles or change seekers using the rearm dialog in game, the shrikes will not guide. They only function correctly at the moment if they are on the jet at mission start, loaded by the mission editor. This could be a major reason for why people are having a lot of trouble with them. a couple of other notes: the tone you hear from the shrikes is always from the left most selected shrike on the jet, this is correct. This is also the firing order, if you have multiple shrikes selected they always fire left to right off the jet. there is a small bug where the left outboard pylon fires the shrike as a rail launched missile and the other three fire it as a ejector launched missile. They should all be rail launched, so seeing one missile fly straight ahead while the other three all drop after launch should be fixed at some point (all four should fire straight ahead and not drop away) for the question about putting a location to calculate a loft, this is what WRCS AGM-45 does, but it is not correctly functioning right now. You may have some success with it you may not. When it is functioning correctly I will update the above with how it works. The Shrike can only pull 3G 's with its fins when it is guiding. It is not very maneuverable. You really need it to be on a ballistic trajectory to the target, and it cannot correct gross guidance errors very well at all.

The FRL is 2 degrees (35 mils) above the nose guns boresight, per the -34 for the jet. So the manual is currently correct for how the gunpods are boresighted.

Suggestion: add an option in the units for headings to be in Magnetic or true or both. different platforms or groups may want both or one or the other.

Just to be clear in case there is any confusion, with absolute targetting with perfect coordinates (no target location error) according to those papers, the JDAM should have a 5M CEP, not 13, which can in fact be better than an LGB depending on energy state and release parameters. With relative targeting the JDAM should have 5M CEP plus whatever the Target Location Error (TLE) of the designation source is. As to how the F-16 flips the absolute vs relative bit, without looking at pubs for the jet, I dont know, I would assume an unslewed steerpoint from what little I know about the F-16's navigation system. Finally a relative targeted JDAM should be 5M plus whatever its TLE error is, what the relative target bit tells the JDAM is once it acquires GPS and figures out what the relative error is, it then shifts the target coordinates it received to correct for that positional error. So again it should be as accurate as the designation source plus 5 meters. If DCS has zero TLE in a targeting pod designation with laser rangefinding, then it should be that accurate.

It sounds like there is no correction for relative targeting, and the 30 second figure is a "maximum GPS acquisition time", the bomb attempts to acquire GPS 3 seconds after launch. Please reference these 3 papers and they should be fairly illuminating on the errors that are being discussed here, and the things that the JDAM does to resolve these errors. The third paper also references a 5 meter CEP for JDAM when target location error is removed (if you input perfect coordinates) the 13 meter CEP often referenced includes an arbitrary target location error that is not related to the bombs ability to guide. If the bomb has perfect coordinates and acquires GPS, it should guide to within 5 meters, not 13. All three of these papers are publicly available and approved for public release. https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6123&context=utk_gradthes https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3487&context=utk_gradthes https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA389516.pdf

It sounds like you are in GUNS, if you have the weapons select switch on the throttle in guns, the jet is overridden to A/A GUNS acquisition mode. To get out of it and back to normal operation just move the weapons select switch to SRM or MRM instead.

No, if your base is under that kind of threat then you probly shouldn’t be landing at it anyways. If you want to wait that late in the game to check your weight then just keep in mind that the fuel dump is at 900-1000 lbs per minute, so rough math you are only gonna be able to dump 2-3000 lbs of gas by the time you are 30 miles out. If that’s not enough to make you comfortable then you will be landing. basic aviation guidelines for your descent checks, or preparing to enter the landing environment start 10-15 minutes before you land, which is usually 100-150 miles out. Checking your gas and adjusting for these purposes is second nature and just part of learning how to fly this stuff IRL. also what do you think is safer, getting on the ground safely without risking damaging your aircraft in a single approach, or holding 10,000 extra pounds of gas for a “just in case” air engagement that you then have to spend 10-15 minutes orbiting to get rid of. that just in case fuel should have been part of your bingo calculation and assumption before you started the RTB, not after you have fenced out and are heading back. If this is something you are super concerned about then just plan your flight to include holding for 10 minutes over the airfield with your extra gas, perform a CAP in case anything shows up until you hit your landing fuel and then land. If you aren’t planning on doing that, then just get configured so you can land ASAP and out of the way of whatever is going on.

Pull the nose up till the waterline in the hud starts blinking, that is your cue that you are at the limit and if you raise the nose any more you will be in danger of scraping your tail. should start blinking at 12 degrees nose high. if you don’t pull the nose up relatively quickly after touch down, you won’t be able to get the nose high enough as the speed bleeds off. you can stop inside 5000 feet of runway distance if you fly an onspeed approach at a relatively light weight (4-5000 lbs of fuel plus ordnance) and immediately get on the aerobrake and then hit the wheel brakes at 120-100 knots. biggest thing is landing weight, since that translates to landing speed and then the amount of braking energy required to stop the jet. It’s one of those exponential equations where everything compounds quickly as you add weight, since it increases landing speed, which increases rollout distance and the force required to stop the jet. So if you are having trouble getting the jet stopped on the ground, first recommendation is always, land at an appropriate weight. Normal overhead recovery fuel is 2500 lbs. so you are in the break at that fuel point. A “comfortable” landing weight is 5000 lbs or so. 9-10000 starts to be the upper limit. also remember ordnance is included in that weight, so if you are bringing back a full load of bombs you have to incorporate that in your weight calculation as well. as to fuel dumping, you should be figuring that out on your RTB, IE as you point back at your intended landing base (100 miles away) you should immediately be looking at your fuel gauge and remaining ordnance, and doing a quick “do I need to adjust weight” check, if so you start immediately dumping fuel to get down to an acceptable weight. That way you are good by the time you get to the base, not figuring it out as you are in the break. Ill reiterate the rough rule of thumb here again, you conservatively get 50 miles for every thousand pounds of fuel on board, so if I’m 100 miles away from my intended landing base and I want to land with 2500 pounds of gas, I’ll need 4500 lbs of fuel to be comfortable. if I have 9000 lbs I’ll set the bingo bug to 4500 and dump till it gets there and I’m assured landing on that airfield, as I get closer continue to reassess and reduce weight if desired.

Check your external after dropping the pylons, dropping the wing pylons drops the missiles as well. the bug here is that the stores page still shows you there is one missile left when it has been jettisoned