jeffyd123

another bump for our new pilots... maybe the mods should create a new sticky section for training materials?

definitely no substitute for having a teacher on comms... you can learn the ins and outs about 5 times faster. I self-learned Falcon 4 and it took me 3 weeks just to learn how to land.... a teacher (even though the falcon tutorial system was very good) would have had me landing perfectly in about 3 days i bet. when i started this sim, i just jumped in and did quick missions and started by getting used to the plane and firing the gun at large oil tanks, then gunning vehicles, then i started learning to use the HOTAS and mavericks/bombs. learning falcon 1st took many, many hours off my learning time. If you are new to sim flying, then reading up on flight basics is sort of essential, then start shooting stuff and having fun, then keep on learning your multi-million dollar toy! There's lots of great, experienced pilots here that are always glad to help you out. One of the greatest things of getting online with people is the creation and execution of the tatics to be successful.... its probably my favorite part of air battle simming. Jeff

ya take your time guys.... no sense in driving everyone nuts with a bad patch.

Im gonna make a mission with DANCIN' GIRLS!!! see if you guys can top that! LOL

cool bahger... im gonna spock this out.

I have burned out a laser by leaving it on... Thanks for the info about the CH stuff. thats very interesting. I cant believe that I didnt even consider one before i bought my X65. I was thinking about the light touch the CH has... One thing I like about the X65 is you can make it where you have to push on it pretty hard... like 10 pounds of force coming out of a dive. It kind of gives a more immersive feel than a lighter stick i think... I was impressed by TH's quality but i wanted a generic stick for other sims too. Really wish I checked the CH out first.

yup, me either... My stick has performed flawlessly. It was a tiny bit off center but i made a dead zone around it and it has never been off center in the game. You can make a pretty large dead zone on the X65 because there is no actual center to it.... like there would be with a stick that moves. Just a matter of trimming the aircraft out for me. I spend as much time trimming the A10 as using the stick for flight LOL

Just my 2 cents... I remapped RCtl+NUM0 to just NUM0 to activate and deactivate snap views. It works really well and there is no conflict with other keys. trying to hit 2 keys to start and stop snap views is no good when your in a battle.

I have an x65 cavedog... First open up the Saitek control panel (lets you tune the stick, NOT the programming software). In there you can see if the stick is off center or is "floating". If the center is a little bit off (which they all are pretty much), then put in a small amount of deadzone to cover the offset. Dont try to do this in the sim's axis controls... you want to do this in the saitek control panel. If this isnt it, then your plane just needs trimming... they do tend to want to roll left or right after takeoff, and its very pronounced when loaded with ordinance.

When idling in my mission "Surf-N-Turf", which has 18M/s turbulence and 6M/s wind on the ground, the engine idle does fluctuate but I havent seen one stall.

carrier ops + F-18... Im in!

No kidding? 9 Hats? I gotta check out one of these things. thanks

Personally, I would say if your'e on a budget (like me), pedals are about the last piece of hardware to buy. Im going to build a set and use a generic xbox controller as the "brain". the pedals will just move one of the small sticks back and forth on the controller. total cost wil be about $25.00. Will post pics when i get around to building them. For now i use the twist rudder (which i hate) but flying the A-10 with it is really no big deal... for now. Im on a limited budget and I spent my $$$ on what i wanted and could afford. In hindsight, I should have looked at CH's hardware as it is inexpensive compared to the Saitek X-65, but I do like the X-65 simply because it has A LOT of Hats... 8 in fact. This really does come in handy for a HOTAS layout and as Im planning on using it for other sims that will be coming out in the future, like combat helo. jeff

I used one of my rotaries on my throttle for the boat switch. I mapped the rotary to 3 bands (in the stick programming software) and then made button presses at each band. I didnt think i would like this method but it works very well for me.

I have to admit, after about 3 weeks of flying I found this and converted it... I was very surprised that I actually learned a couple of new "HAT Moves" (Like DSMS Peek which i use a lot now) on my HOTAS.... the layout is so perfect for learning something like this.

Absolutely Beach. thanks guys i appreciate the kind words... Ive been seeing a lot of new guys whose heads are about to explode LOL. This chart really does help for the first month or so. Great Job Red Baron!

I use zoom on one of my rotaries as a compensator for looking at a monitor instead of looking out of a highly polished canopy. And Yes, I forgot to mention that CH makes good stuff at a reasonable price... you should look at them too.

howdy and welcome... First off, call your wife fat then slap her in the face.... she will then totally let you get that new stick. Trust me , I know how to handle girls.... If the above doesnt work, then you MAY have to stay with your old stick... Check out the training tool I adapted for learning the HOTAS commands. >>>>>>>> http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=69610 One other thing you can try is to just buy the stick and see if your wife notices... I bet she wont LOL. If she does, tell her you "Modded" it. If she goes Jihad, then buy her a sewing machine or "The Sims"... its like catnip for women. I used to have a business selling gaming PCs so Ive been through this quite a bit actually. BTW, I bought a Saitek X65 for about $280 shipped and Im happy with it. I couldnt afford a Hog, but they are the best. Good luck my son... Jeff

bump for our new pilots

no, nothing is reset. thanks for the info on motoring the engines... Ill try that out.

When I land, I fire up my APU then engage it when i park, shut down engines, then refuel/ rearm. When the last call of "completed" comes from the ground crew, i reset my clock and in 3 minutes the plane should be fixed. I have seen a lot of problems come up after the repairs are done however, things like hydraulic pressure and other weird things. I generally just get a new plane if I have any damage at all. If the plane is fine when i land, i will do refuel/rearm.

Thanks Bagher, I appreciate the input buuuuuuuuuddy. I make my missions fairly basic to be stable and for the main reason that Im not very advanced in the ME. I do find Im missing callsigns and other things too... Im sloooowwwwlllly getting better LOL. I mainly focus on getting the Steerpoints accurate. My missions are primarily made to be MP although I play them as SP while building them so I try to get a feel for the difficulty and timings. I didnt include wingmen in SP because I wasnt sure if SP pilots would want them or not... From my readings and SP experience, I dont like how the SP wingies have superhuman powers and kill everything before you can find anything on the pod. The other thing is my missions are made to entertain my friends I fly with a lot and they get grumpy if i dont make new stuff up for them... as such i make them with only about 3 hours or so of work and leave out a lot of depth. I Just churn 'em out... Iv'e found that most people dont really give a crap about how much detail is in it anyway. I guess you could think of them as play a couple times and then move on to another one.... the "Yugo" of missions LOL ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This mission doesnt have any coalition assistance on the ground (trying to simulate the real op). So the theory is the fast movers have taken out "most" of the Surface-To-Air threats and now its time to "send in the A-10s to take out the ground units". As far as the SA-19, i did consider whether or not to put it (only 1) in there, but I decided to to keep the mission a bit "off balance" for the player(s). I have defeated the SA-19 as a SP and with wingies in MP so its not realisitic but it just some added difficulty for the player. Plus, my missions try to keep to a theme of a bit of chaos and not necessarily exactly to military planning and execution. My other mission, Surf-N-Turf, is fairly complex (about 85 enemies and a couple of surprises), it also has friendly armor moving through the target areas and taking out enemies. I gotta get your mission and check it out... i tried the early version and i couldnt do the JTAC right or something. I want to hear how those voices came out. Thanks again for the comments my friend Jeff

Ya thats what Im doing now. I finish and test it in MP, then change one plane to "Player" and change the file to SP. Ive noticed the guys that like SP dont want to host a server (even on LAN) for whatever reason, the best reason is MP doesnt show your kills when your'e done. So its easy enough to convert it. Jeff

I dont know why, but I was trying "D" models in a mission that i made (operation vertical limit) about 50% were missing targets. There was snow on the ground, targets at 5,000 - 11,000MSL, wind was light but there is some turbulence, time 18:45, light was starting to fade. The "H" models had a better success rate but 1 or 2 out of 25 would miss. What I have noticed about Mavs: "D" models lock on farther out but are very reliable. they seem to have a narrower scope and firing envelope. "H" models need to be closer to fire but have a wider firing envelope. They also seem very reliable to hit the target. Im no expert on Mavs, Im just going by what Ive experienced between the 2. I have fired about 300 of each model I was very surprised in my mission that the "D" models were missing targets... any ideas what would cause this? Jeff

bump... hoping to get this. Was warming up my plane and sure as hell it crept forward AGAIN while i had my head in the pit and i had to start over again. pretty please?