Tomsk

That's fair enough .. but it looks like there's quite a bit of evidence that our F-16 the F-16CM Block 50 as of 2007 probably did carry JSOW.

Here is more evidence, pretty sure this is aircraft with serial number 93548, which is an F-16CJ Block 50 .. with a photo of it carrying JSOWs apparently taken in 2000. http://www.f-16.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13472

Maybe .. but it would be a bit inconsistent. Personally I'd quite like to see JSOW-A on our Viper, if the 35 FW were flying with it in on an F-16C Block 50 model in 2003.

Sadly that document isn't on Google, as far as I'm aware. Still it seems very odd that they would run JSOW in 2003 .. but then the support would be removed some time before 2007. Before apparently being added back some time after 2008. I mean it's not an impossible sequence of events, but it seems a very unlikely one ...

Yeah I wondered about that. The PACAF Standard Conventional Loads May 2003 lists an SCL for 35 FW including 2x AGM-154 JSOW. The 35 FW ran the F-16CJ Block 50 right? Why is the JSOW listed as a valid SCL if the Block 50 F-16CJ couldn't carry it?

I don’t think so. If you search for a document called PACAF Standard Conventional Loads May 2003, you’ll find a bunch of standard load outs for F-16s near the bottom (starts page 18 ). Triple Mk-82s (or Mk-82 AIR) and 2 fuel tanks is a common load out in that list. You can even find 6 Mk-20 and 2 tanks. The one that doesn’t appear is triple mounted GBU-12, I’m guessing the clearances are different with the guidance kits attached.

Same for our squadron of (currently) 20+ members. Ultimately I guess it's up to ED to make the things they make, and decide how they want to monetize them. It's then up to us if we want to buy them or not. However ... to my mind things like improving the (currently very buggy and underwhelming) ATC is improving the core platform (much like the mission editor, or improving performance, or the dynamic weather and so on) and is something that benefits lots of modules. As such I would personally much rather these types of things were made available "for free" and paid for out of general module sales, even if that made all modules a little bit more expensive.

Just to add another voice, I think this is a terrible business decision from ED. I'm not going to argue about them being paid for their work, they clearly should. But just that the decision that you cannot join a server running the new carrier unless you own the new carrier is a guaranteed way to ensure no one in the MP community is going to buy it. Our squadron is not going to make buying the new carrier a requirement for joining the squadron. There's already enough barriers to entry for new players: the Hornet module, the maps we fly, etc. This means our squadron will not use the new carrier. Therefore most people in the squadron will not buy it because they won't get much chance to use it. ED are shooting themselves in the foot. If this keeps being the plan for releasing new content: that everyone on the server needs to have it to be able to join, then our squadron will be buying very very little of this content. As will be the case for most squadrons I'm sure, as will be the case for most people who fly MP. As a side note, I also think that it's entirely fair to ask people to pay for shiny new deck animations and immersion and other such things. But lumping in the new ATC is a bad call: it's just going to annoy people given how bad the comms are in DCS (they are extremely buggy), and how long people have been waiting for them to be fixed.

I'm sure one of the experts will answer properly, but my understanding was that this was added as part of the CCIP upgrade: which Wags has stated our version is intended to include. http://www.defense-aerospace.com/article-view/release/6069/first-f_16-ccip-mod-kits-delivered-(july-27).html

No doubt, although for now this is probably as close as we can get.

This describes the HOTAS functionality .. at least in "another sim": http://falcon4.wikidot.com/avionics:hotas

The HTS (HARM Targeting System) pod is another unique F-16 feature. As I understand it, this allows the aircraft to accurately triangulate the position of a radar from repeated emissions. When a sufficiently accurate position has been determined this allows precision guidance of munitions onto the radar. This means that the F-16 we are getting is pretty much the ultimate SEAD/DEAD platform: the Hornet can do it, but this Viper should do it better. Dogfighting prowess seems to be quite subjective: they certainly fight differently, the F-16 has better power to weight and the Hornet can pull more AoA. Which is better seems to depend who you ask. I would definitely agree on the HOTAS layout: the F-16 is much more HOTAS heavy (like the A-10), compared to the Hornet being more DDI heavy. Personally I prefer having more on HOTAS, especially as a VR pilot.

Can you get it work as a slider? i.e. as a one to one mapping where the axis position directly controls the radar elevation. I can only get it work in this weird mode where it works more like a momentary switch. To move the radar elevation a little bit up you have to move the axis from center and then quickly recenter it or it'll just keep going up.

Personally I'm pretty happy to be getting a fairly modern F-16, it seems a good balance to the fairly modern Hornet. That said I also enjoy simulating slightly older era scenarios, the nice thing about a fairly modern jet is you can simulate an older era jet fairly well by just not using stuff. So our squadron often likes to do 80s scenarios by restricting weapons and systems that were not available then. You can also simulate more modern scenarios by using all the tools available. I think when the F-16 comes out in its early access form, it's quite likely we'll do a lot of Fox-2 only scenarios simulating various Middle Eastern engagements. With that said, I also have sympathy with the view that DCS spreads itself a bit too thin.

If I remember correctly the CM designation is used if the plane has had the CCIP upgrade. Since it was previously announced that the version we’re getting would include the CCIP upgrade the change of the thread title from CJ to CM is really just using the more accurate name for that version of the aircraft.

No the problem we've been seeing is not just that contacts are only visible close, it's that the radar gets into a state where no contacts are shown at all: near or far at any elevation. It's as though the radar has been switched off, except the scanning line still sweeps back and forth. You know the contacts are there (because other people in your flight can see them) but you have nothing showing on the radar no matter what you do. Only solution we've found so far is to respawn into a new plane. We had another squadmate with the same problem on Sunday.

I have also seen this bug many times recently. We haven't found any steps you can take to reliably reproduce it, but I'd estimate it happens in about 1 flight in 4. It is exactly as theIRIEone has described: the radar can get into a broken state where it will no longer detect any contacts of any kind. No action seems to be able to fix the radar in this case, other than respawning into a new plane (not always available in a cooperative mission). This bug occurs frequently enough that it has lead us to question whether the Hornet is currently suitable for use in the air-to-air role within the squadron, given that it's reasonably likely a few people will suffer issues with broken radars.

Generally my preferred technique for defeating the AI (and humans) is scissors. Scissors rely more on good timing and reading of the position than raw power or turn rate. You can often beat significantly superior planes in scissors, including the cheating AI. Takes a fair amount of practice to get good at, and you do need to be able to fly the plane on the edge, but when you get it the AI fall easily.

Yeah I've found they miss long even for perfectly stable scenarios: constant airspeed, constant altitude, completely level, exactly 1 G on the aircraft at time of release ... still goes long.

The other thing that may affect this is the zunis are insanely draggy. Don't know if it's realistic, but you really notice the different in top speed when carrying zunis. Like I seem to recall you can't even break mach 1.0 on burners at sea level with 4x zunis.

This is exactly what we do: it does look silly, and we wish we didn't have to, but it works reliably and can accomodate large packages well (which we often have). We've tried all sorts. For example only having certain flights (max 8 planes) spawn on the carrier at once and the others have to wait to spawn in. However it's never worked well, especially since later joining aircraft keep spawning cold and dark on the catapults which then blocks the cats for the aircraft who are on the deck ready to take-off. To say nothing of a few team members who've once or twice started hooked up to the cat, forgot to remove the wheel chocks and so have shot off the cat straight into the water :) These issues have caused so many headaches, people exploding, cats being blocked and so on that in the end we just decided to run multiple carriers. Which has, to be fair, entirely fixed the problem. We've also found if you run multiple carriers you have to despawn the other ones after everyone has taken off, or else the TACANs somehow "interfere" with each other. Even if you give each carrier different TACAN channels. Yeah it is a bug ED could really do with getting round to fixing, it was present back in Flaming Cliffs with the Su-33 for example.

I've noticed that all AUTO bombing modes seem to be incredibly inaccurate. Including AUTO mode whilst diving at the target, which should behave very much like CCIP. Yet CCIP is accurate and AUTO mode whilst diving is not. Additional AUTO mode in the Hornet is much less accurate than CCRP on the A-10 for example, or similar modes in other aircraft. As noted, in all AUTO modes, no matter the attack profile (diving, lofting or level) the ordnance goes long every single time. Usually by about 100-200 ft or so. I guess this is to be expected from an early access module, probably the bombing modes haven't been worked on much yet.

Sure, but maths is fun :) The 100 NM threshold seems vaguely plausible it shouldn't be a long way off that (within a factor of 3 or so I'd guess). The 15nm isn't really at all relevant. However, sadly the data I don't have to complete the picture is the radiation pattern. Your sim seems to be modelling a radiation pattern that is very different from the examples for directional antennas I've seen, but as I say not an expert on directional antennas :)

That makes sense, again using the wikipedia page for reference, if the first sidelobe is about 5 degrees off the main lobe. I wouldn't be surprised to be getting false indications in that scenario. It's close enough to the main lobe that it's going to be hard to tell. However, I must confess I still don't see how that works for 30 degree angle off scenarios: assuming the wikipedia chart is roughly accurate. Let's say that 100nm main-lobe power is our threshold power (T); so taking your relative power formula: P = (d/100)^-2 where P is the power as a multiple of T. d is the distance from the emitter. We can then calculate the amount of power (Q) relative to T, that you'd get at a particular distance (d), on a sidelobe with a particular fraction (f) of side-lobe power relative to mainlobe power. Q = f * P = f * (d/100)^-2 We can plug in our previous example, so 15nm out, sidelobe has 0.03 power of the main lobe: Q = 0.03 * (15/100)^-2 = 1.333 This agrees with your answer. So then we can calculate the amount of power in the scenarios I posted: at 30 degrees off main lobe, which is roughly -30 decibels [seems I can't spell :)] less power according to the wikipedia chart, at 20nm from the emitter. So -30 decibels is an f value of 10^(-30/10) = 0.001. Q = 0.001 * (20/100)^-2 = 0.025 i.e. just 2.5% of the threshold T (100nm main lobe) power. Indeed the distance where it becomes greater than T is around 3.16nm: Q = 0.001 * (3.16/100)^-2 = 1.0014 So I'd have thought those scenarios should be well under the necessary threshold power. I'm sure you're right, you clearly have a great deal of expertise in this area, and I have no idea of the sidelobe power vs angle-off data you are using. But in any case thank you for indulging my curiosity a little :)

Thank you for your time in answering my query. As I say it was the wide angular range over which you get lock indications that surprised me, rather than the distance: I'll well believe the distance aspect is complicated. My observation was simply that your RWR works very differently to the other modules RWR, and that the way it works seems very surprising particularly with regards to angles. This makes more sense if you say DCS is modelling much wider beams than would really be the case, and I really look forward to your updated logic. Once again I'd like to congratulate you on the great work you've done with the F-14 and for your first rate community interactions. I realise we can be a difficult bunch at times :)