Kalasnkova74

Did you enable it in the Mission Editor or Special Options menu? NEW: Added Persistent Aircraft system: allows saving and loading the same aircraft—including its properties, wear, tear, and condition—across missions or campaigns. The aircraft state is automatically saved when successfully left on the ground. Enabled via either the Mission Editor or Special Option. If enabled through Special Option, press the “Initialize Persistent Aircraft State” keybind in-game to initialize aircraft state saving (LCTRL+P). Aircraft is tracked by its livery and tail number. Optionally, a Persistent Aircraft Key can be set in the Mission Editor to enforce specific airframe continuity across missions (useful for campaign builders). Mission Editor persistence settings override user Special Options.

Good timing on your post. I recently switched my F-4E BFM training mission opponent from an aced MiG-15 to the MiG-29. After losing the first ten fights, I’ve killed the Fulcrum 4x. The last two were head on gun passes. Im still paying my skill tax, but the core tactic is to pretend you’re in an F-104. Only turn in enough to force a head on pass. Fix the cannon sight and hose that MiG with 20mm at the merge. If he’s still alive, keep flying straight until you’ve got some knots back, then gently turn back. Feel free to cash in some energy to make the head on merge happen, because you’re not turning after his tail. In case I didn’t make this clear, don’t turn in after the Fulcrum- even if he makes an error and gives you his six. No amount of BFM skill will overcome a Fulcrum’s thrust and turn advantage at close range. You’ll saddle into the control zone long enough to see him shake you off like a bad Facebook post. Act like Maverick here and you’ll get shot down like him. Even if you’re good and force an in-close overshoot by the MiG , you won’t have the energy to do anything to the Fulcrum. Dont bother with Sparrows or older Sidewinders unless the MiG loses sight and leaves the fight. If he goes vertical , don’t follow him up unless you’re above Mach. Flying big ovals might not win any visual effects Oscars, but you’ll still bag a Fulcrum or two with a Phantom.

The workaround I use is to start the mission with the aircraft in flight or on the runway if I care about the replay.

I’m not the quoted poster. But original versions of the Navy F-4B had Sparrows on the inboard rails for fleet defense missions. If I recall correctly, this capability was dropped later on.

Thing is, those modernized F-4s are really unique animals to the versions in game. It wasn’t just the radar sets, but the aircraft mission computers, weapon sets, and various avionics which were changed. On some modernized F-4s , enough wiring was consolidated to reduce the aircraft’s weight by thousands of pounds. There’s the APG-66 in the Hellenic , German ICE and Japanese F-4s, then the ELTA GMTI radar in the Kurnass 2000 (no Sparrow capability however), plus the AIM-120 integration for the Hellenic and German F-4s. Developing one of these would be a dedicated module in and of itself.

Here’s one hypothesis that may explain your event. I’ve committed the human factors error of unintentionally activating the emergency gear deployment while clicking the switch for the landing light /taxi light on. IRL you push in on the lever , but in game it’s triggered by a mouse click on the lever. Once the emergency gear extension is deployed , it will not retract.

As with most subjects, context matters. Most Cold War Mach 2 fighters were deathtraps regardless of manufacture. Many Mach 1 fighters were similarly unsafe. One didn’t graduate F-100 Super Sabre training so much as survived it. The students who didn’t pass washed out in fireballs. The MiG-23 was so hard to handle Egypt lost over a dozen of them in the first week from accidents.

Based on the accounts of Wild Weasels who employed the Shrike, the weapon was essentially a psychological deterrent first and a site marking system second. They hoped but didn’t expect it to kill a radar. “Shrike was dumb. You could do better with a peashooter. It was only fifty percent reliable, fifty percent accurate, and when you do the probabilities on that you realize it takes a lot of them to hit the target. …We really had to line it up with the target in an almost perfect trajectory…You used Shrike as a marker most of the time.” -Kim Pepperell, from the book “Iron Hand” by Anthony Thornbourough & Frank Mormillo. Further, USAF Wild Weasels typically escorted a strike package of other aircraft , so they’d fly interference by operating between IADS sites and the strike force. If one of the IADS locked on with a SAM, the Weasels would fire a Shrike to mark the general location and the hunter-killer flight would do the rest with CBU / bombs. What does that mean for DCS? Well, employing the Shrike as a one-shot single ship kill weapon against an IADS radar sadly isn’t realistic no matter how well the player flies, especially in MP. Using it that way is , as many of us have discovered the hard way, a recipe for enduring frustration. It’s a supporting weapon used to find camouflaged sites so Someone Else could bomb them. Worse, the psychological “kill” of a SAM site battalion commander turning off his radar to avoid a Shrike visit isn’t part of DCS as a default yet, so the suppression benefit is lost also. Bottom line- if you’re flying with a team or as a flight , the Shrike makes sense as a SEAD target locating tool. Otherwise , skip it.

That may be true of the later ARMs like the HARM, but in real life the initial AGM-45 was unable to reliably track sidelobes. Source: https://ia801900.us.archive.org/26/items/history-of-the-electro-optical-guided-missiles/S-75 family.pdf

In fact, what you’re seeing is not an ED weapon modeling issue. As I understand the AGM-45 wasn’t originally built to track radar sidelobes (the later HARM does). So this behavior, while inconvenient, is accurate. In the field, this situation is why the guy in back earned their pay; they could do EW magic and know which signal was a quality one to use for weapons employment and advise the “bus driver” up front when to shoot and when not to. Since Jester never went to EW WSO school & we just have the ALR-46, solving this problem means mission planning where the site is in advance, noting where the radar’s pointing and attacking the site from that direction. Just like the real world nutcases Weasels.

Of course damage/malfunction is one reason, but another is to keep the slats from cycling in and out at certain parameters.

Once the Combat Tree feature arrives in the DMAS block under development, the tables will turn quickly. That system pings the IFF of hostile aircraft to track them passively: if it’s implemented for everything in DCS (not just MiG-17s and 21s) , it’ll be a major advantage for the F-4E in the Cold War servers. I can see people desperately searching for “IFF keybinds” once that version drops.

I think the issue is simple. Players just aren’t used to the F-4Es pulse radar. They’re coming from modern fighters with intuitive control setups and look down/shoot down modes. God mode on the screen, as it were. Then they hop in the F-4E and go “WTF” when they can’t easily search targets, can’t effectively sort, or effectively employ the APQ-120/AIM-7 at AMRAAM range. The hope is Jester can somehow bridge this capability gap out of the box. That said, Combat Tree will change this to an extent in the next block coming out.

If you’re in this forum, you already understand the appeal of a Vietnam War map. My question-within the bounds of economics and player system, is a comprehensive Vietnam War map viable? We’re looking at a combat zone stretching from central Thailand in the West, up just beyond the Chinese border in the North, south to the end of Vietnam and Cambodia, and east to include the ocean around Hainan Island. That’s a LOT of area. Fully detailed , that’s going to be a VERY large map file. Time to crack open the piggy bank for another 1TB external drive. ED could break it up to avoid a huge map file , but the playerbase won’t like that either. A “Vietnam Only” map means you can play Southern Vietnam scenarios, but full fidelity simulation of Laos or North Vietnam campaigns is off the table. Thailand and Laos covers the Barrel Roll and some SAR ops, but obviously Vietnamese air campaigns are not viable. This is one map where leaving parts off compromises the utility of the whole project. However, I’m not sure people are OK with buying a map AND needing a dedicated HD because of the size. Seems like a no-win scenario for me. What say you all?

I’ve gotten ‘er up to 1.8 with the pylons in a dive to 25k ft. She’ll probably do 2.0, but I backed off after seeing the intake duct temp light come on.