SloppyDog

1) Helmet equipped with night vision goggles instead of sun visor 2) Aircraft needs full alignment before taxiing 3) When using INS only (not corrected by GPS) determines the amount of drift the system will have as soon as the mission starts. Let's say you want to start at an air start, you could set the INS drift to 30 minutes, for instance. If you have set up offset points for waypoints in the mission, you would see them way out of place and a Precision Velocity Update (PVU) in the radar would be needed, as well as a INS update to reset the INS. It adds a layer of realism for the older systems. Of course, you can set the INS drift at 0 minutes, like you just had made an update and are good to go. 4) ALERT Status means that the aircraft is shutdown but already with INS aligned. So crews can go in, start it up and don't need to wait for the INS to align. That was common practice during the Cold War, before GPS was widely available. EDIT: It works in game. In the kneeboard there is a message in red that says: SH Align Ready. When you start the jet, you can go to the INS knob and set it to SH (Stored Heading). It will take a while to align, but it is faster than the GC align. I tested it, and once you have power to the Right Gen (always starting the #2 engine first), you can start the alignment with Stored Heading. Way faster. P.S.: About 3, if you wanna know more, you can check pages 258-259 in the manual and the video by Notso in the Razbam channel, that explains a whole lot about Offset points, PV updates, etc:

OCA Strike in Egypt. Nothing like flying low and fast over the desert! nullnull

This is a very interesting find, to say the least. I've been struggling with it since day one in the Mudhen. And interesting enough, as you and others have said, GBU-10s on the right, or on the left AND right work perfectly. The ASL doesn't work, or GBU aren't recognized if installed on the left CFT. I tested it as well and can confirm the bug.

Dogfighting? Where? Where? If the Mudhen sees one, it will accelerate its way away from dogfights, does not like them. In a more serious note, in the companion book to the F-15E, "Be Afraid of the Dark" there're portions where the pilots testing the F-15E talk about its dogfighting capabilities: Page 23-24: "When we flew the air-to-air portion of the tests in a VHN condition it did not perform like the C model – it couldn’t, it was just too heavy. Once down to a half fuel load though, it would start to fly like a C or D model. However, some of the regimes we flew in surprised us. The CFTs created an interesting drag characteristic which meant that we could, at low speeds, pull the nose of the aircraft up to even higher Angles of Attack than you could in a C model. In a dogfight we could out-nose position the opponent." Page 94: "Light grey aircrew who moved to the F-15E remarked that the two aircraft did handle similarly, although the additional basic weight and parasitic drag from the CFTs meant that the F-15E’s turn rate was inferior (it lost a few degrees per second turn rate over the C model) and that it bled speed more rapidly in the turn. Unsurprisingly, the contingency plan in the E model world was never to get into a rolling dogfight in the first place. In most senses this was not an unrealistic end game. There would be few times when the F-15E would ever go into battle without an array of support who would provide either situational awareness input (such as AWACS) or direct support (such as a dedicated escort or sweep fighter package) to keep a superior adversary at arm’s length." And then there's the analysis of the "dogfight specialist"Growling Sidewinder showing that, in the end, it cannot dogfight. It simply wasn't made for it. But it is really BVR monster:

Yes, it is great, for all old simmers. The old Jane's games are great still, but they were very limited to what technology could do for them. DCS (and other sims) is a dream come true in may aspects: a full 3D, fully clickable cockpit, with a "realistic" flight model, study level module is something people only dreamed of in the 90's. Now we are living it. And yes, sometimes I just want to fly around and admire the view, because it can look great.

LJDAMs are very cool to use. You can drop them in a coordinate over bad weather and, provided they have a proper altitude after going through the cloud layer, a JTAC can guide them all the way to the target. I have attacked moving targets in that manner. Very cool!

The JDAM is an evolution from the concept. Not needing guidance all the way to the target is a big advantage. Also, as others pointed out, the fact that you can drop multiple JDAMs in multiple targets at the same time. Not much exposure to enemy air defenses. That said, GBU are still useful if you wanna to target specific parts of a building, like a windown in a specific floor or an air vent (done in Desert Storm) or hangar doors in the side of a mountain (done in the Balkans wars).

I don't believe you should take the grazing angle table as a rule "written in stone". From interviews in various YouTube channels the former WSOs say they took maps from 40nm out to the target. Of course, they've already knew what they were going to hit, and taking maps was a way to refine the targeting solution. I haven't tested it in DCS, but in the good ole Jane's F-15 you could take a map from 40 nm at 5,000 feet AGL. Then go EMIS (Emission Silent), meaning no radar, no ECM, no radio transmissions, getting low, closer to the target another map, low again, and as @Mav87th said, the WSO would hand off the radar to the pilot and would Target using the TPOD from that point on. Of course, what I'm describing here is a contested airspace case like in the first Cold War and the opening days of Desert Storm. In these scenarios I would never be at 15,000 ft prior to the target, unless leaving a tanker track on the way to Fence In. From that point one it would be low and fast, pop-up, low/fast, pop-up, attack, low/fast, get out. Showing below is an attack profile of an F-111 using a GBU-15. It is interesting to note the last navigation update before IP, the attack run with terminal guidance by TPOD, loft, egress.

My love if you consider real life aircraft is the F-15, and its brethren, the F-15E, of course. I've never ever liked the F-16. For the love of all that flies I'd rather spend my time with my beloved Jane's F-15 than Falcon 4.0 (that at the time, was in shop windows everywhere...those were good times). Anyway, in game, well the F-16 is more mature and the F-15 is in a very early state, so points to the F-16 on that. But the Mudhen will always be #1 in my heart.

Some LGBs, mostly the GBU-10, are not correctly or directly recognized by the PACS when loaded on the jet. So, you need to tell the system what kind of bombs they are. This might help:

It is lost on the mists of Discord, but NotSo said that they usually do pop-ups along the route to make maps. They do one usually at 10 nm from the target, then go down low, the radar is given to the pilot (A/A) and then on the WSO is looking through the TPOD. My speculation is that these pop-ups would be made in some points that the enemy would have low radar coverage, or little to none time to react. Of course, NotSo always says that "good target study and planning are a integral part of the life of a Strike Eagle crew". What I interpret from that is when done in real life, they have many information that they take in account when planning a strike. It is not like we DCS pilots who jump in an Instant Action mission and try to do the best we can. I know it may sound like I'm some kind of NotSo's fanboy, but the fact he is the real deal, being a real life WSO. He is very active in Rambam's Discord and his videos in Razbam's YouTube have been very helpful. Also, he posts in his own channel lots of great stuff, sometimes answering people's questions or showing procedures for attack runs, like this one:

Well, we have the benefit of the virtual life on the sim. I imagine how it had been in real life. Poor crews, didn't have any benefit from modern simulators or a proper accident analysis cycle.

Thanks man. I've been struggling with take-offs in the Mossie since launch. The fact of not going full throttle AND not using brakes has helped me a lot. Now it is controllable. This combined with a little adjustment on my pedals curves made it possible to enjoy this module again.

NotSo, the Razbam SME, gave these out in the Razbam's Discord: nullnull

it may be a problem with terrain elevation. Check out one of the NotSo's latest videos:

The Record Function works on the MPD, but the only way to recover the images is by looking at your Saved Games/DCS.openbeta/ScreenShots and then there will be a new folder created called F15E_Recordings.

Could not replicate. Only works with GBU-12s. Also, redesignating didn't work also, unfortunately. And I couldnt find the GBU-10 Training version as shown on your video. I tested the GBU-16 with the Harrier and it works and the GBU-10 with the A-10 and it also works, both in Auto Mode, no problem with the ASL. Apparently the ASL problem remains with the F-15 only.

I'm not able to find this.

It is dependent on the type of bomb you are using. If using GBU-12's or -24's it works fine. If using GBU-10's or other dumb bombs, the ASL is way off target.

It is a common problem with other bombs too, specially GBU-10's. Not working at all. But the ASL designation works fine with GBU-12's and GBU-24's.

In NotSo's video he does turn to the right, to leave the TPOD as exposed as he can. Also, he bunts the aircraft, in order to give that extra room for lasing.

Tactically no, but it works for training, for those who don't know how to do it yet.

Ok, thanks for the info. So even if you are running under EGI, a PVU from time to time won't hurt, since it is added to the INS calculations. Got it! Also, do you have the sources to all this technical stuff? I don't want to rebuff what you said, just want to learn more about it.

Well, I see the opposite. The kind of attack is perfect for a frozen or stored image. You have the time, the angles needed to take a radar map while far away, you do it, freeze and store the image, When you pop-up, you cue the TPOD to the point you want, without having to be offset and take the time to make another patch map. Since the system knows spatially where the frozen radar image is (in space), it will cue the TPOD to the point you want it to look at. All of this can save a lot of precious time when doing an attack. And storing radar images (recording them) have the added benefit of doing a BDA, by comparing the before and after of an attack (not very useful in DCS, but I believe it is very sought after in the real world).

There are no speed limite per se, but yes, keeping at 350 kts is a good practice if you are straight and level passing over the target. Faster and you run the risk of having the TPOD masked. NotSo, who is the Razbam's F-15E SME, made this interesting video showing how to keep the TPOD unmasked after tossing a bomb. Basically you maintain a curve to the right and keep the belly to the target, as long asyou can.