DarkFire

I'm a Flanker driver, so I'll comment from that experience perspective. As an Eagle driver the last thing you want to do is to be forced in to a turning fight below about 6,000m. A WVR engagement at low altitude offers me better instant and sustained turn rates (dependant on weight & other factors of course) and much better nose authority. These, combined with my ability to 'go dark' on your RWR by using my EOS to track you at WVR ranges, combined with the off-bore advantage I get from my helmet mounted sight and R-73 missile means that under equal skill conditions I have many advantages. The challenge form my perspective is surviving until the merge. Your radar is better than mine, and this combined with your better RWR offers you significantly better situational awareness. Under nearly all conditions the Eagle also accelerates faster and climbs better than the Flanker. Use the Eagle's superior radar and RWR to deny the Flanker the chance to 'capture' you in a WVR fight. Use the Eagle as an energy fighter and also make full use of your active radar missiles: fire and crank and don't be afraid to turn away if you need to extend and reset the engagement. BVR: The Eagle has a very significant advantage over the Flanker. WVR: The Eagle can turn & burn, but against a skilled Flanker pilot you're likely doomed.

Very impressive patience shown by both pilots. I really though that SuperMutt was going to run out of fuel by the end of round 2, that came right down to the wire. Great piece of footage. Shame it didn't go on for longer. I wonder if the entire video is on youtube somewhere. In a somewhat artificial guns-only tournament match? Possibly, though as you say with both of them on such low fuel... In a normal PVP engagement? I think trying to break out would be very risky. Even with maximum possible separation the 'resetting' bandit would invite a chase missile shot. That sort of scenario sounds tailor made for an R-27ET shot.

I think having an escape window would depend on the SA of the bandit. If they're watching you constantly then escape by simply turning out (or up?) of the spiral is unlikely to work as they could simply turn out after you and you'd likely still be easily within missile or even gun range. If however the bandit isn't being all that observant then yes I would imagine that would work. Don't know. Maybe if it was timed very carefully it would be possible to turn out of the spiral while being just outside of the bandit's view angle. This would probably be more likely to succeed against fighters with poor cockpit views e.g. the MiG-21, or against bandits who have less experience and who are therefore constantly glancing at their HUD to check airspeed, AOA etc.

Yes, that's a much better description for what I was thinking. The way I imagined it, vertical overshoot is exactly it :)

Hmm I should have explained that better. I was imagining the two aircraft sprialling down, both pilots wanting to level off at corner velocity. I imagined and Eagle driver being 'forced' to accelerate to level off at ~450 - 500Kts whereas the Flanker pilot would be happy to level off at a lower 400 - 450Kts, thus forcing the Eagle pilot to overshoot the Flanker by, at or soon after pull up to level flight at the bottom of the spiral. But why would anyone do that? It would be suicide for the Eagle pilot. Plus, as you say, after turning & burning the Eagle is likely to have lower fuel than at the first merge so the corner velocity would be under 500Kts anyway. I was thinking out loud a little bit :)

A descending spiral as airspeed bleeds off in the turns. By deck transition, I take it both fighters would be looking for corner speed for the 2C fight? Wouldn't that automatically put the Eagle at a disadvantage? I'm by no means an expert on the F-15, but isn't it's corner velocity in the region of say 420Kts or upwards, depending on weight? Whereas the Flanker will turn well down to, at a stretch, 600Km/h which is only 350Kts so the Eagle driver, unless they want to risk an overshoot which would be fatal, isn't going to be at corner velocity...? As an aside, one of the things I love about (virtual) air combat is that there is seldom a rock / paper / scissors approach to any situation. As the zen master says, "it depends..." :)

Ah, apologies, I didn't know you're a Flanker fan :) I thought I was discussing with an Eagle driver. I didn't know about the minimum radius thing - I need to fly the Eagle more to learn it better. I'd never considered a slightly oblique pull up before to avoid a guns shot, but it's obvious when I think about it: why expose yourself to the risk of a guns shot when you can make best use of the off-axis abilities of the R-73? Oblique pull up. That's an amazing idea! Thanks for the tip! :idea:

Thanks! Somehow I missed that. Really good manual :thumbup:

It depends entirely on what you're flying and what's firing missiles at you. If you're trying to dodge SAMs it's important to remember that surface to air missiles (in fact all missiles) have no idea where the ground is, and most SAMs use lead pursuit to intercept their target. One tactic that can be successful is to pull inverted in a steep dive. The SAM will calculate an intercept point that's actually below ground level and will hit the dirt before it manages to intercept you. If you're at high altitude this is obviously more difficult but still possible. If you're talking about A-A missiles, it then depends on whether the missiles are semi-active radar homing (e.g. AIM-7, R-27 or similar), infra-red homing (AIM-9, R-60, R-73 and similar) or active radar homing (AIM-120 and R-77). As it is now homing for SARH missiles isn't very accurate: all you need to do to avoid being hit is to drop a load of chaff. The game calculates chaff effect as a simple percentage so drop enough chaff (probably less than 10 bundles) and all SARH missiles will be decoyed. For avoiding IR missiles, chop your throttle to idle as this will decrease your IR signature, turn in to the missile and drop flares. If you can see the missile coming it's relatively effective. Active radar missiles, especially the AIM-120, are a whole different ball game. The AIM-120, especially the C model, has excellent countermeasure rejection. The best tactic appears to be to put the missile on your 3-9 line, go very low to attempt to hide in ground clutter and dump as much chaff as you can as fast as you can. Even then they're difficult to decoy. Very difficult. The R-77 is somewhat less effective but the principle remains the same. Hope this helps...

That makes sense. With regards to a heavy Flanker - one of the abilities of the Eagle that I very much admire is the ability to drop tanks, i.e. to ditch a pile of weight at the start of an engagement. While the Flanker has a very useful huge fuel capacity it's all weight that you're stuck with, meaning that a skilled Flanker driver has to plan 3-4 'moves' ahead in terms of fuel load vs. expected range to engagement etc. It's also the case that in the Flanker, when you get below ~50% fuel with only ~4-6 missiles remaining, your all-up weight is finally roughly in the region of 21,500Kg which is what the current G limits appear to be calibrated for. End effect: less concern about over-stressing and destroying your airframe. An Eagle at pretty much any weight will have a significant acceleration & climb advantage over the Flanker, so from my perspective even if I'm <50% fuel a vertical turning fight is dangerous. I'd want to try to enter with near or maybe just above corner velocity so as to maximise my nose authority for an R-73 shot, but if the Eagle pilot anticipates this and pumps flares during the first 180 degrees... Dangerous position for the Flanker driver to be in: unless one observes strict energy management discipline it would be very easy to find oneself at the top of a loop with dangerously low airspeed and an Eagle that's rapidly gaining energy on the way down. This scenario might be one of the very few tactical situations where I'd actually be tempted to use direct control mode to help get the nose down for an off-axis R-73 or potential cannon shot. Very interesting discussion. :thumbup:

Interesting. How does it fare, or how would you adjust the tactic, to cope with an opponent who has a slightly smaller vertical loop radius?

Yes, hopefully the missile guidance review / re-code will improve things for everyone.

Hah, yes there was certainly that. I think the alleged problem was that not having flaps down during landing should produce a greater effect on aircraft handling...? Personally, if it's been signed off by actual F-15 pilots I'll take it as being fairly realistic.

Watching the last two R-27 ER's sail meaninglessly past their intended target makes me sad. Easily launched within acceptable parameters. As it is now the big stick for the Su-27 / -33 is more like a dead branch :( Liked the way that you kept the F-15 constantly on the defensive throughout the engagement. Was it an AI aircraft? The F-15's energy management didn't appear to be all that great.

Thanks for the advice but sadly that didn't work. Pretty sure I have a dead SSD, which considering it's less than 4 months old is pretty disappointing. Very disappointing as everything I'd read before buying it suggested that the Samsung 850s are supposed to be ultra-reliable. Ah well. The only good thing is that it should still be within the guarantee period so I should be able to get a replacement.

Did anyone work out what the supposed problem was?

OK, I have what is by now a very old PC: i7 960 running at 3.2 GHz. Asus Rampage 3 mother board. 16GB PC2100 RAM. GTX 760 2Gb graphics card. Sound Blaster dedicated sound card. Windows 10 64 bit home edition. I have a 1TB mechanical drive (C drive) that I run windows & most programs on and a 1TB Samsung 850 SSD (J Drive) on which I keep my Steam library, DCS and Ubisoft (I threw up in my mouth a little bit there) games. Last night everything was working perfectly. I get home after work today, turn on the computer as per usual. Everything loads but Steam fails to initialise. I start getting constant messages asking me what I want to do for new removable media - referring to the SSD J drive. This keeps happening. Windows explorer can't see the J drive any more despite the fact that the BIOS recognises that it's there. I've checked to make sure everything's securely plugged in which it is. The only difference between yesterday night and this afternoon is that it's hot as hell here today (31 C), but I've never had any thermal issues with the computer before. End effect is that I've now lost access to my entire load of installed games - about 920 GB worth. Have I got a dead SSD or is this Windows 10's doing? Ultimately it doesn't matter because my new gaming rig should be here next week, but I wanted to sell this one to a friend (cheap as it's obsolete) as a working system, which I can't do if the SSD is borked. Anyone experience anything similar?

If the FF is causing you problems, the answer to your question is unfortunately, probably not. Some people seem to be able to get FF working properly with some aircraft, some people experience no issues at all with FF (a small minority) and others can't seem to get it working at all. It may be worth you experimenting with FF enabled while you fly different aircraft to see if any of them work. Unfortunately it appears that force feedback is mostly broken for DCS World at the moment. Not being familiar with the stick, I don't know if the stick drivers give you the option of simulating spring force without any actual force feedback effects? If so that would be worth a try.

Name: Su-27 - Mountain Flying Author: DarkFire Mission type: SP / Practice Controllable: Su-27 Quick Summary: This is not a combat mission. You are an Su-27 pilot based at Kutaisi. Your mission is to practice low level, high speed terrain avoidance. Your flight plan will take you fr om Kutaisi north to the mountain valleys where you will enter the low level training route. Fly around and over the mountains whilst avoiding the terrain. You'll be flying at 750 - 900 Km/h at below 300m altitude in the valleys so this mission will really test your flying abilities. Please note that this is not a combat mission. You will face no enemies except the cold, hard ground. I suggest turning off your cockpit mirrors for better frame rate, and don't forget that if you run in to trouble and have to climb, you can manually step through your waypoints on your HDD. A very, very large thanks to Eric "Air" Hahn and Kimi "Sockmonkey" Hahn for their incredible voice acting in this mission. It wouldn't be half as much fun without their work so thanks for their efforts. Both are very professional to work with and I'd urge someone at ED to take a look at their work and if you can, make use of their talent for official DCS content. The mission is available at this link: http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/2047620/

In fairness I can't remember if the missile goes dumb if the guidance radar drops lock before the missile activates its own seeker. From memory I'm tempted to say that it used to, so yes it was significantly less useful than the current AIM-120 is, but then again I have no idea if that's how the real R-77 behaves. I doubt anyone really does know how the basic R-77 works because there's no evidence that the Russian AF actually used or even had any significant numbers of the basic R-77s in its inventory. Pure speculation, but I'd guess that the R-77s that have appeared on the Su-35s based in Syria may be the improved R-77-1. Or, the RuAF may not bother at all with the R-77 until the PAK-FA gets the K-77M with it's alleged AESA seeker head.

To be fair, that may be less of a problem for the -33. I'm pretty sure the airframe was strengthened, which is part of the reason for the -33 being heavier than the -27.

Ah good, glad we got the problem identified :thumbup: Most people who experience issues caused by force feedback have success by simply disabling the force feedback feature while playing DCS. I don't have a FF stick so I'm not sure if this is done in-game or by the stick driver software, but disabling FF for DCS usually solves the issue.

Yep, I think this is another force feedback problem. I'd definitely recommend disabling it for pretty much everything in DCS.

OK, I watched the AP not working track twice then tried taking over control. Something is deeply wrong there: as soon as I took control I experienced massive amounts of left roll. I think it's quite possible that the AP wouldn't engage because the existing trim settings were outside of permitted maximum. I also had the ACS reset light illuminate after I trimmed out which means that the system went outside of 80% maximum deflection of the control surfaces. Try disabling the force feedback on your stick: FF is known to cause all sorts of issues with controlling DCS aircraft.