Rhrich

But no, water will not bead off, and speaking as a yacht man, it definitely won’t do that when the surface has been exposed to the salt sea air. As I said, I make no comment on the current situation in DCS, but IRL you would expect significantly degraded visibility in ground ops. (Though the description does not sound ok when airborne at speed.)

I’ve been critical in the past about things that destroy the gaming experience, like excessive wear making it hard to read instruments in the cockpit. But it’s not unrealistic that ground operations is slowed and complicated by rain, sleet and snow. Especially for older fighters. I don’t know how it is on boats. But on land we had many «solutions» some by the book, some very much not according to the book. Even so patience, caution, slower speed and bigger safety margins is required. (Having said that, I haven’t tried the Tomcat in IMC after the updates, so I’m not defending the status quo, just making a general point)

The nsfw part reminded me about the legendary Swedish anti uboat surveillance system. They put extremely good cameras with long range zoom capabilities to monitor their coastline and video tape anything suspicious. Right next to and overlooking some of the best beaches in Sweden. Then they asked 19-20 year old boys to run the system. With predictable results.

That’s ROVER. The RIO is watching an image transfer, so sadly he isn’t playing.

Thank you.

Agreed. And, I’ve never tried multiplayer, but I believe I’ve read you can’t switch between seats there? Anything that doesn’t work in all game modes doesn’t seem like proper to me. that said, I’ve read some of Karons work and his knowledge impresses me. but, the Jester must be a reasonable solution to the average player.

Correct. It’s a long time since knowing this was part of my job, but a typical jet engine will produce 1,5-5 percent of max thrust when in idle. Keep in mind this is of stationary ground trust, which is lower than max in air. Small jets with powerful early generation engines was susceptible to this. A Lighting pilot once told me he reached 60 in idle - though he wasn’t sober at the time. In DCS my tomcat B needs brakes when taxiing to keep the speed down, even in idle. I’ve got no idea if this is correct or not, but generally I don’t really see an issue. The game is for flying, not WRC.

The topic says it all really. From other planes I’m used to be able to center my plane on the TDI to get a 360 overview. I’ve found that beneficial, especially with awacs feed. I believe I did find a way to sort of do this using the Jester wheel, when I played last time (some months ago) but now I can’t figure it out. Is there a way? If not, I have been told a Rio could do it, could that functionality be added?

Make sure to check that the trim is correctly set. do that before every time you launch. if it’s still an issue, then let us know.

Thank you, and sorry that I «spam» the forum. Im an old guy and away from my computer for much of the year, so I might not test something before long after you experts.

60s ABS wasn’t what it is today. its hard without feeling the plane, but you had to be judicious when applying brakes. You couldn’t just assume you could leave everything to the system and stand on the brakes. In fact, you would never get the full brake action as you will today. That’s one of the reasons why some used drag chutes. (Though, they still have their uses even today). Anyway, take it easy, and you should be alright. some tips: keep proper AOA and decent rate . You dissipate a lot of energy when you slam into the ground in proper navy fashion. Spoilers and aft stick to slow you down. I once read that it might help to tune the axis on my rudder pedals (I’ve got some cheap ones, and it did help me) to make it less responsive when you’re doing small corrections to stay on centreline.

The glove vanes was an artifact of a mistaken view of how the future of air combat would look like. I remember it well, we thought a lot of stuff would happen supersonic. Looking back on it now it seems rather stupid, but it wasn’t just the tomcat, «everyone» believed this.

Just a question: I tired som wheels up emergency landings and found that: It’s relatively easy to land the Tomcat wheels up, but with the hook down, without incurring much damage. Even on rough ground like a desert. You can land wheels up, and after you come to a standstill you can then lower your gear and proceed as nothing happened. That’s of course not realistic, but perhaps it’s just an artefact of the code? It seems the Tomcat is pretty much bulletproof when you land, should it perhaps be tweaked to be a little more fragile when you land?

There’s some confusion here that needs to be cleared up: »Fjord» in English is a clearly defined geological feature, looking like Sognefjorden. Its different in the Scandinavian languages where fjord can mean any sort of inlet, bay or fjord, or even a defined sea. The latter is the case of Vestfjorden. It’s not a fjord in the English sense at all, but a part of the Norwegian Sea. It is almost 120nm long and 40 nm wide. But, it is true that any fleet there would have been somewhat hidden by “Lofotveggen” (google it, it’s beautiful). You would also have several Norwegian AF bases in the vicinity. Attached is a picture looking across Vestfjorden: https://no.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lofotveggen#/media/Fil%3ALofotveggen.jpg

Yes. You either protect your hearing or you'll loose it. I'm not too aware of this part of the game, but aren't the helmet on even if you open the canopy? Anyway: They're wise not to recreate the delta between these sound volumes properly. If they had you had to have one volume setting for one state and one for the other. I do not belive that would be better for gameplay. Not everything needs to be an accurate simulation. I don't pee in a piddle pack either.

I think the sound increases quite a bit. Also, thsy environment is in reality painfully loud. Hard to say when it's not real, and I've never used that particular helmet, but in general a helmet would dampen the sound quite well. I think they strike a good balance.

Hello all, Bought this campaign. Good storytelling, but I found it completely uninteresting to play. Seems this is full of errors, but I'm an old guy and might miss something, am I doing something wrong? The computer that is my rio seems totally scripted and in the wrong way. It won't report "holding short" unless I enter the runway. He states he tracks stuff when I can see the lantirn is not tracking (and even if it's masked) And the GBUs seem to track regardless of cloud cover or anything else. And even if I place my kite precisely where it says, it still won't give me mission complete (but at least I can press skip to get the next mission, so that's not an issue) Is this how it's supposed to be? Is it more a play a movie than real missions? Is the other campaigns better?

This reminds me of the old quiz question: How many buffalo did Buffalo Bill kill? Answer: 0. There are no American buffalo, they're bison. But there is a philosophical question here: If enough people use a word as a name for something, that something will have that name. Regardless of whether it's correct or not. I sort of get why folks use "Cat". It's got a certain flair. And since they neither have the issues that Victory mentiones and DCS only got the one cat and not the other Grumman cats, I sort of see why its caught on. That said, I'm sure everyone appreciates some education and stories from those that actually was there and know the real story.

Thanks a lot for your reply and help. Yeah, I guess these things will happen from time to time in a complex simulator. Anyway, the B model seems quite correct at present. So hats off to the developers.

I've just returned from a long trip, and haven't had time to read about the changes. But what's your impression? I used to think the Tomcat was a bit too slow in the acceleration. This seems to have changed, and it now feels very eager and quick. Has anything changed, or is it just an old man imagining things? (Havent had time to do some proper checks yet) Also, have not been able to recreate the error mentioned above for some months. Might mean they fixed it.

Overspeed. Did it ever happen. Sure. Some planes are more susceptible than others. I've talked to Lightning pilots, they had to be real quick with the gear. In the F-14 you get a "slow down" warning, but nothing will override the pilot. It's been a shift in mentality. In my day any system that overrided the pilot was treated with suspicion and I frankly spent far too long opposing them. Nowadays some folks tend to think that the computer or some safety system should override the pilot if some boffin in a office thinks the pilots doing something wrong. In my mind, both extremes are wrong and when I see things like AF447 I tend to think things have gone too far. But I'm a dinosaur. To the spesific question: I'm sure there was good reasons. And agree a boffin-interview would be interesting.

I did. It's single target track. Not single missile track. The missiles passive antenna picks up the radar reflections from your aircrafts radar. That's the basis for all sarh. Newer versions do have some more tricks up their sleeve, might be that Mooch is referencing those. As far as I'm aware (but might be wrong, havent looked into it) DCS does not model anything that will stop you from using multiple 7s at once. Keep in mind though. If a missile at a certain point will have a 50% chance of kill you won't increase your kill chance to 75% if you fire two at once. At max you will increase your chance by a few percent (since failures aren't modelled). Well. At least thats the theory in the analog world, not sure how dcs model this.

Because they didn't need it. Tomcats, at least in US service, have never been used in combat in the air superiority role it was designed for. If the Iraqis or Serbs would send up a fighter (unlikely, happened on very few occasions) a 54 would be very useful. Guess that's why they carried it. The belly was used for bombs and the other outboard station probably had the lantirn.

STT: Single Target Track.

This. Different volume is an old, tried and testet trick when you're flying with two or more radios. Get used to differentiate between the two (or more) by loudness, direction or whatever (depending on your setup) and make a mental picture of what the radio is. That way, you can, to give one example, instantly know who/what talking. When sitting in your couch it sounds unnecessary, but might be a life saver if you're close to task saturation. I used this throughout my career. Any one considering flying would be wise to pick up habits and routines such as these early.