Ashilta

I'm struggling to determine the difference between the left and right most switches on the panel in question... BR and JJ I think they're termed?

Considering just how back and forth this has been, plus the extraordinary cheating by =Air= this afternoon, and the nuke that got dropped, I'm calling this a draw.

=Air=

Is this why my Mirage started smoking yesterday..?

I only see that there are three major obstacles remaining for this beast... Two of them have shown significant improvement (the list of radar improvements and the improved missiles) and the last (INS) is planned - fantastic news. Really good job Razbam!

Hi Zeus, That's an awesome list, and it'll be great if we start to see it delivered by the end of the month. Can I just ask how the Target Lost Memory works?

I was hoping that the 'big release' would include dedicated server, but no, it seems we're still stuck with Operation BlueLag.

There is, of course, nothing to stop pilots taking data from ABRIS or TAD and manually inputting it to the other system!

Please ensure that your plan is announced here so that us BLUFOR pilots can get in on the action...

Is it possible from a mission dev point of view to just update a file every five minutes that can be monitored? Doesn't have to contain anything and so memory usage and disk IO would be minimal. I don't know LUA, but I can certainly knock up a windows app or service that monitors change in that file and takes the appropriate action.

I'm quite sure it's possible to write a quick app that does it; it would simply monitor the list of running processes every X seconds, and if there's no process listed called DCSWorld.exe, re-start it!

Ahoy, I've snipped a few bits from your post just to focus on what I want to talk about much much of the content is there. Firstly, I'm pleased that you've re-kindled your love of DCS and that we've another rotorhead in the community with the forethought to ask for help; Helicopters are complicated beasts! Firstly, let's talk about 'the bias to turn right,' It's actually a consequence of your rotor spinning, in that one of Newton's laws says that 'every action must have an equal and opposite reaction.' As a result, whatever force you put into turning the rotor is equalled by an torque reaction that forces your airframe to spin in the other direction. Ergo, in your anti-clockwise spinning Huey, the airframe will yaw clockwise. Newton also teaches us that 'an object remains at rest or in uniform motion until a resulting force acts upon it.' In this case, the resultant force is your tail rotor, which thrusts to counteract the yaw of the helicopter. The anti-torque (not rudder) pedals in your helicopter change the pitch of the blades (they are essentially another collective) in the tail rotor, increasing or decreasing the thrust produced by them. This is how we stop the beast from spinning. As Deadbeef alluded to, slow is fast, but also earlier is better. Much of flying a Helicopter well is about anticipating what's about to happen and reacting to it before it happens. Your 50% collective rule is a myth; it is perfectly acceptable for you to drop the level all the way down mid flight - it's called autorotation. What you're probably not doing, however, is pulling back on the cyclic to cause the blades to 'collect' air as you move forwards and downwards. In your normal attitude, you'll be slicing through the air and pushing it behind you, however if the blades are flat (reduced pitch from the collective being down) then you'll actually not collect any air, hence the plummeting you described. You'll also find that you'll overspeed the rotors which introduces you to a whole new world of pain... How fast can this thing come in? Never exceed Vne (Velocity never exceed; max speed of the aircraft) but with the appropriate skills you can stop within 50m from this speed. You'll get there one day, but this is ambitious. Your airspeed indicator works by determining how much pressure is being forced into a tube on the front of your aircraft. Once the pressure gets below a certain point, the pressure can't be measured, ergo no airspeed indication. You mentioned your 'air cushion', but I'm not 100% sure what you think it means. The closest thing is what we call 'ground effect', which is essentially caused by the build up of air underneath your rotor causing a higher pressure environment. As you're resting on that pressure, you need less thrust to hover the helicopter. In ground effect, the air that your rotor forces downwards is disappointed across the ground more quickly than at high altitude, and so getting into vortex ring state becomes nigh on impossible. Whilst we're talking about VRS, As Flamin_Squirrel pointed out, VRS is caused by you catching up with the air you've forced downwards. You need three things to get into Vortex Ring State: Slow forward airspeed, a high rate of descent and a lot of 'power' (high blade angle). Eliminate any one of these things and you should never get into VRS. However if you see the incipient stages of VRS (high power, high rate of descend, slow forward airspeed, helicopters threatening to kill you), drop the collective, but the beast on its nose and when you've built some forward airspeed back, slowly bring the collective back in. Finally, a note on nomenclature: The lever to the left of your seat is called the 'collective' because it collectively changes the angle of your rotor blades. The stick between your legs is called the 'cyclic', because as the blade rotates, the pitch of your blades is changed one after the other (cyclically!) to introduce changes in attitude. Hope this helps...

The amount of fuel at an airfield depreciates by 10 per departure.

Was such a relief to see BluFor finally coming together last night. CAP, Srikers and Helos working well together, and we even managed to dodge Beslan getting bugged (we couldn't re-arm or re-fuel until the next restart after we capped it). Just a quick note to all A-10 pilots - check your fuel status (Jeffrey!)

What makes it not right? Your capabilities at achieving it doesn't determine whether or not it's correct. There have been several highly entertaining engagements involving the 21 on Blue Flag. Notably, I remember back in round one watching a Tacview recording of a 21 engaging three F-15s. The 21 won.

No, thank you. I don't think I've ever had to wait long for a reset when the server's been unhealthy. Thanks for your prompt attention as always.

Seems the server is in poor health currently... Those in the game are finding massive leg spikes or black screens meeting them, whilst I can't even see the server listed.

Let's get ready to rumble!

Perfect, thanks Greg

Team, There seems to be some confusion around the group that I fly with regarding the repair timers. My understanding is this?: When the last unit in a group is killed, a timer is added to a queue, where the length of the timer is a random figure between 15 and 30 minutes. The repair queue is processed in order and at the end of the timer, the whole group is repaired. Is this correct? If this is the case, then I'd ask that the scripts are reviewed as there is some repeated suggestion that groups are re spawning in less than 10 minutes; below the minimum for the quoted repair time. I have seen no evidence of this myself, but I've heard it mentioned enough times that it's a concern. Cheers, Ash

Rubbish, we have Maverick

Can I ask *where* you tested as it seems to be of significance, and by 'where' I mean on which server/mission etc

XCom, does this apply to FARPs as well as airbases?

Hi Mike, I've no experience in turbines in reality, but I know that on cold days the piston I fly can be a pig to start. It's entirely possible that, as you suggest, the cold is causing the movement of fluids around the engine to slow. Rotor anti-ice and pitot heat won't help unfortunately, as rotor icing won't impinge the engine start too much and the pitot is largely for avionics There'll be a temperature at which any electrical device will stop functioning - it seems -35 degs is that temperature for the KA50. I must admit I've not tinkered with the 50 in temperatures this cold, but certainly the colder it gets the slower the start is in my experience.

10 seconds is actually a reasonably short time compared to reality. Often, loads are secured with multiple hooks so anything upwards of 30 seconds is entirely feasible. 10 secs should be fine with a larger box. Thanks mate! Ash.