DarkFire

Thanks for the info everyone. So for me to be clear: if you have the "time to failure" set to say 20 minutes, but the failure in question set to a flag that activates after 30 minutes, will the failure always happen when the flag activates or earlier? What I'm trying to achieve is to get certain systems on a player aircraft to fail when the player is within a certain distance of another specific unit, but only under those conditions, and then to start working again once the player has flown away from the 'trigger' unit.

The problem with the Ethiopia - Eritrea border conflict is that the performance of the R-27 missiles fired can't be isolated from other parameters, e.g. missiles deliberately fired outside of acceptable parameters, missiles fired as 'warning shots' instead of as intended kill shots; the maintenance state of the launch aircraft; the maintenance state of the missiles themselves; the list goes on. More reliable data from Gulf War 1 and British testing of their now-retired Sky Flash both provide a solid argument for SARH missiles being more effective than they are in DCS, but the reasons for DCS SARH missiles under-achieving are well known, exactly as Rage commented. Moving on to a more advanced Su-27, I think there's a good case to be made for changing the DCS Su-27 from the Su-27S to the Su-27SM. This would give the Su-27 the ability to carry the R-77 as well as a small selection of PGMs and the Kh-31 ARM, giving it a little bit more multi-role capability. This would not however make it a bleeding-edge UFO aircraft (e.g. the Su-30MKi, Su-35 or Su-37) which would be entirely guess work anyway. Personally I'd like to have the Su-27SM: upgraded just a little bit to bring it a little closer to parity with current & forthcoming NATO DCS aircraft but not to the point where modelling all the systems would be entirely guesswork due to them still being massively classified. Plus, the Russian AF currently has 70 SM's in service, so it would still be a realistic service aircraft to have.

Definitely. I like to call this the "entry speed", i.e. to get to very high altitudes you need to keep your TAS & mach number relatively high. The best climb speed for the Su-27 is at (very roughly) M0.85 - M0.9. On your way up to 12Km+ it often pays to level out at 10Km at increase speed at 95% dry thrust before climbing again once your above 0.85M. There are areas of stability to be had up there: the Su-27 will happily enter a stable cruise at 85% RPM at around 7 degrees AOA at just above 14,000m altitude, but you need to take your time getting there. If you avoid using the burners while climbing to altitude, at above 12,000m your range will be phenomenal. levelling out at around 10,000 to get some extra speed won't be an issue as your range at this altitude at cruise throttle is already well above 1,500 Km. I've experimented a lot with different climb profiles. The best way to climb is: 1. Take off using 100% dry thrust. 2. Immediately level off until your speed reaches ~0.9M. 3. Climb at anything between 30-75 m/s vertical speed until you get to around 6,000m. 4. When you pass 6,000m reduce your climb rate to <35 m/s. 5. Once you reach ~8,000m reduce your climb rate again to <25 m/s. 6. Level off at 10,000m for cruise or stop there for a bit to allow speed to build up again before climbing again. Your cruise throttle should be 85% give or take 2% depending on altitude. Edited to add: The above technique isn't the fastest way to climb, not even close, but I've found it to be the most fuel efficient way to climb. Should have said that instead of "best".

Is it possible to have a system failure toggled by a switched condition? For example, would it be possible to force a radar failure if the unit in question is within a zone?

Looks damned good!! I'll have to do some work on my F-15C pilotage for this campaign! As always if you need any VO work doing let me know...

Interesting. It could well be. At high AOA I would imagine that the proportion of lift generated by the LERXs would be even more significant so any developing stall caused by high AOA could well start at the wing tips and progress inwards. That would also produce the observed oscillation as one wing tip then the other moved in and out of stall condition.

That would make sense. I could see good arguments for upgrading the 33's to a more advanced pure fighter level, maybe something like the -35, and then using the upgraded 29's in a multi-role capacity.

Same results here. I tried flying under similar conditions & managed to reproduce the swaying effect. It's a question of control sensitivity. With a heavy fuel load and a heavy missile load the Su-27 controls become very sensitive above about 11,000m altitude. Any drastic inputs, especially in the roll channel, will easily induce the roll inertia and yaw wallowing that you experienced. At that sort of altitude you need to be very smooth and controlled to maintain stable flight. Personally I still think that there's much too much cross-talk between the roll and yaw channels of the ACS which doesn't help matters at all under these conditions.

Anyone know why they went with the MiG-29 for the Navy instead of an upgraded Su-33? I would imagine that a fleet defence fighter needs range, a-la the F-14, which is one area where the MiG conspicuously struggles. Was it simply a case of being able to carry more of them on a medium sized "Kuznetsov" type carrier?

BVR mode shows TAS, not ground speed. For info, in navigation mode the number in the small box on the lower right hand side of the HDD is also your TAS. Under those conditions It's true that your IAS would have been very low, but even then I've never seen it do that before. I'll have to give this a try.

In the "Chart" area at the top, next to the chart controls there's an icon that looks like the old Microsoft Excel icon. Click that & you can export the recorded data to a .csv file: Looking at the Tacview feature list it's unclear as to which version you need. I'd say that from looking at the different versions you might need at least the "home" version: http://tacview.strasoftware.com/features/comparison/en/ Personally I'd always recommend the Pro version. For the amount of use I've had out of Tacview it's been cheap at the price and well worth the investment.

From a DCS perspective, the main disadvantage appears to be the cripplingly small fuel capacity. It can obviously take some tanks but that then further limits weapon capacity. As a point defence interceptor it probably has few if any rivals in the game, but I'd never use it as an air superiority or escort fighter, which in fairness it was never designed to be. I should also say that ED have done an amazing job with the new 3D model. It's really pretty, as is the cockpit.

OK, Test no. 2. For this test I was again attacking a KC-135. I was again at (just above) 10,000m and on this occasion launched at 2,205 Km/h TAS = M2.04. This time the KC-135 was at 6,500m altitude and was proceeding at a leasurly 650 Km/h TAS. The target was directly off my nose and I estimate the vertical angle between my nose and the target at <15 degrees, possibly more like 10 degrees. Launch took placed at just under Rmax which was 55.5 Km. The missile reached a maximum speed of 6,164 Km/h = M4.72. Interestingly unlike the previous test the missile reached a maximum G of no more than -0.5 & +1.2. The missile flew a total of exactly 45 Km and scored a direct hit. Here's the data graph for speed (Km/h, TAS) and altitude vs. distance flown. Again I have no idea what's going on with the X-axis but it should read 0 - 45 Km: Here's the graph of missile G vs. distance flown: Attached are the xls work sheets exported from Tacview and the ACMI recording.

Ah thanks. I can see when that might be useful.

Out of interest what's Vjoy?

Ah, yes that was indeed the case. I was up at 10,000m and the target was down at 1,500 so the down angle was significant. In fact it became so extreme due to the fact that I ploughed onward at M2.2 that I wondered if the first missile missed due to the target going beyond the radar gimbal limit. Based on what I know now, i.e. that the R-27 missiles use what appears to be a rather simple PN form of navigation, I likely wouldn't have launched at anything like that altitude difference, and of course for a more successful launch would probably have fired at just under Rtr instead of at just under Rmax. For some reason I assumed that the extra altitude would have been beneficial in terms of energy conservation for the missile, but it appears that due to the navigation behaviour of the missile that the opposite is in fact the case. I might try the test again actually under more reasonable conditions...

5 or 6 patches ago several of the IR missiles got a countermeasure rejection upgrade. IIRC both the R-73 and AIM-9M were included. Favourable parameters seem to make quite a difference to the IR missile Pk.

Yes you're right, I should have said that it's a GCI-only datalink and doesn't have the aircraft - aircraft capability that the one in the Su-27 has.

Compared to the Su-27, the MiG-29 is or has: 1. Better turn rate. 2. A better medium range A-A missile: the R-77. 3. Fewer hard points = fewer missiles carried. 4. A smaller profile so it's more difficult to detect visually and by radar. 5. A horribly minuscule fuel capacity. 6. No datalink or true HDD 7. A smaller diameter radar antennae, so shorter detection range against all targets. 8. The MiG-29S has an internal ECM set which the Su-27 does not. A well piloted MiG-29 can be an absolute terror in WVR fights, but in reality it's heavily dependant on GCI and is really little more than a very good point defence fighter.

At the point I launched the first R-27ER the KC-135 was at most 5 degrees to port from my velocity vector. I'd hardly call that a terribad launch angle :huh: I was well aware that the target was a big fat tanker that wouldn't even react to being launched upon. Obviously had the target been a fighter then launching at a hairs breadth under Rmax from a vastly higher altitude and then ploughing onward in a straight line at M2.2 instead of F-poling or cranking would have been wasteful and probably suicidal against any half competent opponent, but really that wasn't the point of the test. Really the only point of the test was to see what sort of profile the missile would follow when launched from comparatively long range and high speed against an actual target as opposed to free launched as in the first test I did. If as GG said the R-27 missiles use some form of PN for guidance then so be it, I just wanted to see what it would do... :)

Not sure what the current situation is with the MiG, but in the Su-27 bombs and cluster bombs always drop in matched pairs (i.e. one from the equivalent positions on the left & right wings) to avoid any asymmetric trim issues. It's probably just that the knob in question simply isn't animated like it is in the Su-25.

Indeed I was. Altitude hold mode at 10,000m and the KC-135 was at 1,500m. I can understand why the missiles would perform a push-over if they simply use PN to head towards their targets, but I'm sure that the engineers who program the missile flight guidance at both Vympel and Ratheon are much cleverer than that. For this scenario I'd expect some sort of energy-conserving level flight phase in order to maximise missile energy for terminal approach. *looks back at page 1* this thread's gone so far off topic I'll have to dig my Land Rover out of the garage! :lol:

Great work! The mach no. & altitude vs. distance graph looks like this (for the R-27ER): Frankly the graph looks crap and I can't get the range to work properly on the X-axis though. Some times Excel makes me want to smash things. With a GIANT F***ING HAMMER :mad: :chair:

Thanks. I did wonder actually whether the missile had lost lock. By the time it was supposed to hit I was going so fast and so high over the target that I wondered if the target had gone outside the maximum deflection angle of the radar. I don't think it did, and as you say I think the missile just didn't have quite enough energy to reach the target.

Ah, I should have explained it better. For example, my HOTAS has a small thumb-stick on the throttle. DCS thinks that this thumb stick is an extra mouse and for some reason in the default settings assigned the thumb stick X & Y axes to pitch and roll, as well as the X & Y axes of the actual HOTAS stick. Having two physical device axes connected to an in-game control axis causes all sorts of issues. That being said, it doesn't sound as though this is causing the problem you're experiencing. Not sure what else to suggest to be honest :(