Kalasnkova74

If I recall correctly , the Sidewinder’s fins will not clear a 750lb bomb - hence choosing the smaller 500lb option enables Sidewinder carriage.

An understandable bug submission, but the “mismatched” wing tank is the correct color & the developer need not change anything. Background- in the 1970s, the F-4E Phantom II wing tank contractor built drop tanks in green/white colors for their primary customer- the U.S. Air Force, who were fighting in Southeast Asia. Consequently, every export user who purchased the F-4E in the 70s were supplied wing tanks from that company in the same Southeast Asia green/white - even if the aircraft itself used a totally different color scheme. Early Israeli Kurnass, Luftwaffe, Iranian , and Egyptian F-4Es (among others) flew with green/white external tanks. As time went on many export users would repaint the tanks to match.

The F-111B falls into that weird category of planes where there’s community interest, but the plane doesn’t really fit into a mission set except intercepting bombers. The U.S. Navy’s F-111B was to to be a super-F-4B, meaning a pure long range bomber killing interceptor. It wasn’t designed to turnfight (which undermines Adm Tom Conollys assertion “there was not enough thrust in Christendom to make (the F-111B) a fighter” - because it was never designed for that mission in the first place) , and it wasn’t tested with air to ground payloads. So you’d have a Phoenix missile shooting airplane that performs worse in every metric than the existing F-14A, and it can’t carry air to ground stores like the Air Force F-111s. The same issue affects all dedicated interceptors like the Su-15, MiG-25, F-102/F-106 and F-101B. They can’t effectively turn fight and shoot down bandits , and they can’t strike air to ground targets. That makes them DOA as paid modules.

Thats because the AoA is different between the U.S.N and land based F-4s. Yes the tail hook is the same, but the AoA is different because the slats and airframe configuration are very different from the Naval versions. Between the gun in the nose (more weight= lower nose authority), the extra fuel tank in the tail (which balances the weight of the nose but changes the aircraft’s pitch behavior), and the wing slats vs the early Naval models’ blown boundry layer control leading edge slats , the F-4E is an aerodynamically different animal. Further, the landing gear is different as it’s engineered for land operations.

IMO, this is the role of the operator/player/campaign designer- not the system. A big list of liveries is less development intensive than an interface redesign that requires ED resources to implement and test. In my estimation their developers have much bigger fish to fry than redesigning the liveries menu to enable region locking & independent livery selection. If I’m building a scenario, I know the role of the players and thus should have the flexibility to assign color schemes as required. If that means sorting through a big list of liveries, it doesn’t bother me. What would is encountering a nation lock that forces me to program around it.

Perhaps this is a personal perspective shared by no one else. But HBs brought the F-4E to life in a way that makes so many war stories about the Cold War so much more understandable. Example: it’s one thing to read about the Israeli Air Force’s exploits in books like Ghosts of Atonement , documenting Phantom II/ Kurnass sorties the October 1973 war. It’s another matter to set up an airfield mission at the Sinai map using realistic SAM and Egyptian combat air patrols, fly it, and truly gain a personal scope of just how mother*****ing difficult their jobs were. Which they did, day in and day out, day and night. Short of a time machine , HBs Phantom II will give you the closest feeling of what those crews (and their contemporaries in the USAF and elsewhere) experienced. I don’t care about some dood shooting 3 MiGs in a Tomcat. Big whup. Let’s see a movie about the Phantom II crews who loft bombed SA-6s at night using a low level ingress on instruments and sheer guts. It’s a different dimension of air combat IMO vs slinging AIM-120s at a HUD cursor or plopping GPS bombs on a tank from the bozosphere

Assuming no technical glitch, I’d say something got missed during the cold start that caused the engines to compressor stall violently on takeoff . If it happens badly enough, the engines can shed high RPM turbine parts . The failed parts then shrapnel through the rest of the airframe (followed soon after by a kaboom from punctured fuel tanks ). It was a common problem on early F-14As with the TF-30. Did you equip a centerline tank, and did you select it before takeoff? If memory serves doing this means the tank can overpressure on takeoff, ejecting fuel and then going boom. There may be other checklist steps that could cause an engine failure like this, but that’s what comes to mind for me ATM

I don’t think it’s nonsense. But the change is more realistic, and so is learning how to do it “correctly”. FWIW, I find AAR much easier now with the slower spool time. Lacking the “ON/OFF” nature of the incorrect quick-spool setting, it’s easier for me to control fore-aft alignment

Interesting. I find AAR easier now with the slower spool time.

Thanks. False alarm on the bug note. Apparently the MER doesn’t clear the landing gear in a purely vertical configuration. USAF F-4s and USN F-4s solved the problem in different ways. According to the source below, the USN kept the vertical pylons and canted the MER using an adapter. The USAF fixed the clearance issue by canting the entire pylon, so HBs presentation is 100% accurate. https://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2016/01/f-4-phantom-outboard-pylon-and-mer.html

What may not be helping matters are canted outboard bomb racks. This does not appear to affect the outboard fuel tanks. Perhaps a bug?

I follow your reasoning, and that’s how I used to manage liveries. Then I tried to build a campaign with a Red Eagles MiG-21 flying for the USAF. You can guess the problem. Also, some liveries correspond to nations that either don’t exist anymore or would align with both sides of a combined task force depending on the timeframe. If you have a USSR vs Imperial Iran scenario, Iran would be on the U.S. side. Obviously after 1979 under the IRIAF they’d be on the other side. Now add in mission scenarios like escorting a defector who needs to be considered “blue air” despite flying a “red air” asset, and you can see having the freedom to assign liveries without national ties is a useful capability. Of course, the trade off is less straightforward livery organization for more clear-cut Red v Blue setups.

Yeah, it’s weird for me too. IMO it’s fine the way it is. The livery names & types clearly show the nation, and they’re all F-4E Block 45s anyway (which is only correct for about half the color schemes available ). No nation lock = ultimate user freedom in assignment , which IMO is a good thing.

IMO, I think down the road adding modernized F-4E variants is a good idea. By then there will be greater aircraft variety in DCS, and an F-4E that can drop modern PGMs and launch AMRAAMs would add variety to the missile v missile duels (since an F-4E does still offer Mach 2 speed in a clean configuration). In the short term though? Learn your bombing tables kids.

It may not look it on the surface, but these advanced variants may as well be totally different aircraft from a DCS development perspective. Perhaps HB will look at these Phantom II variants after higher priority projects like the Typhoon and A-6 are published.

HB’s already commented that they’re not doing any one-off F-4E variants like the -EJ, -EJ Kai, Kurnass 2000, AUP, Terminator, F-4G and so on. Each Phantom II variant basically is its own unique aircraft from an avionics perspective -and thus each version would take years to develop correctly.

Another factor is the F-4E is a fairly stout aircraft. With lots of foam lined fuel tanks , multiple control surfaces, two engines and two (or more) of everything else (two generators, two hydraulic pumps, etc) , an F-4E can survive hits that would knock down a MiG-21/F-5E /Mirage F-1. Cue players proclaiming “bugs!”. Not to say that the OPs post isn’t valid, but we have to readjust expectations with HBs F-4E.

Looking forward to this one. Will the module include aggressor color schemes such as this TOPGUN T-38: …and 4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron T-38A :

Well, I ate an S-200 missile and the aircraft was (appropriately) cut in half. The damage model is functional enough for me.

Well, you DID go off the runway and trash the jet. Stay on the runway, problem solved!

In real life combat, the F-4 Phantom II was fairly durable and IMO is modeled correctly in game. The jet has six fuel tanks (+1 reserve in the F-4E), foam fire reduction fuel tank lining in the F-4E , two primary hydraulic systems, two generators, two engines, and (as the Showtime 110 crew employed) could still be controlled via the utility hydraulics even if the primary and secondary were depleted. For example, this F-4D was hit by AAA and still recovered with the arrestor hook . Source: https://www.f-4phantom.com/no-backseater/ This Iranian F-4E ate a proximity fuse Sparrow hit in the tail and still made it back to base. Source: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-story-of-the-us-navy-f-14-tomcat-pilot-that-scored-an-aim-7-sparrow-soft-kill-on-an-iranian-f-4-attacking-a-us-navy-p-3-and-saved-the-lives-of-the-orion-crew/amp/ Suffice it to say if an F-4E could take a Sparrow hit IRL and survive , surviving an R-60 isn’t a bug.

My kit sat in Polish customs for a month before arriving in the US in late May.

I understand the general wisdom of this sentiment. Yet realistically we must fight this airplane at all speeds, not just the convenient ones. Contrary to what some believe, the F-4E can be flown and fought successfully at low speed against similarly low speed bandits. The Israelis managed it often enough against Arab MiGs. It requires switching off the yaw SAS and getting familiar with the rudder pedals, but one can get this big bird to dance at low speed against a bandit at similar low energy state - if necessary.

Perhaps. But that’s the rub- if you’re King Kong of a server, is it because of your superior skill - or were you just fortunate enough to play against relatively inexperienced players in that session? On the flip side, if you’re losing is it because you’re inexperienced relative to your opposition? After all, even newbies in F-22s lose to pros in T-38s. Yet if you consistently beat the toughest AI- accurate physics or not- that’s a skill benchmark which is consistent, in a way random sessions against random humans of unknown skill is not.

One could argue the same about human opponents. If you shoot down a player in a server, is it because you were that skilled- or was it because you attacked a newbie who just downloaded the game 30 minutes ago? Say what one will about the AI, but it’s a consistent opponent we can all benchmark against.