Frostiken

As I suspected :) I found this out myself when I was trying to whirl my TPod around and test a few things. Was wondering why it wouldn't work, but since SOIs are typically to correlate nav data between sensors, it makes sense that in absence of even knowing where your own aircraft is, there wouldn't be a point in having an SOI. So yes, as mentioned, you have to be in Nav mode. I doubt you have to have aligned all the way, but always, always make sure it's reading 4.0 0.8 before you go into nav mode, as that's the best alignment you can do. Don't move your aircraft until then! Many newbies have problems because they jump the gun and skip through alignment, and then wonder why they can't engage EAC :p

In your defense, the 'shutdown procedure' most people have is overly dramatic. Pilots simply don't return an entire aircraft to safe-for-maintenance status. This would be a great question for paulrkiii, as he's likely seen countless cockpits post-sortie and knows exactly what pilots do and do not turn off, as he (actually more likely his B-man) typically turns everything off to get the cockpit safed up. Things pilots probably don't do: - Disengage SAS - Disengage fuel pumps - Turn off TCN / ILS - Turn off radios - Turn off anti-skid - Turn off radar altimeter - Stow Stby ADI - Turn off lights - Turn off screens Things pilots would most likely do: - Turn off TPod - Turn off CDU and EGI - Turn off CICU, IFFCC, SADL - Turn off oxygen - Safe the seat - Turn off IFF (Mode IV at least so the code doesn't dump) - Disengage Master Arms (duh) - Disengage generators (they don't do this on F-15s, but probably do on A-10s since they have to turn off the battery and it's right there).

What do you mean 'fight against'? You want someone to drive tanks around while you blow them up? :P

You can't set anything as an SOI if you're not aligned and in NAV mode (because the A/C doesn't know how to correlate anything).

Actually I have to admit, they really should break away from having three different engines already and work the aircraft as plug-ins to the engine, rather than having three 'almost the same' platforms. The entire reason we have problems between the three right now is because upgrades to A10's engine don't necessarily work on the older versions present in KA-50 and FC2. To me it sounds like it'd pay dividends in the future to isolate the aircraft from the sim and then settle on a common 'engine module' between them all that gets the same global updates. If you spend the asspain getting both aircraft and the semi-aircraft of FC2 out of the way now and fix them all so they all run on the same codebase, everything should be much easier in the future, especially if they end up making it *four* versions of the 'core engine' when DCS: F-15E comes out. And hey, maybe even open the engine up to modding :]~

I just wanted to point out that part of the reason the A-10 was picked over the YA-9 is because it has absolutely unmatched fuel efficiency, endurance, and loiter time. The thing is, with the sad little engines the A-10 has, it sips fuel like a martini. All the more reason to have DCS: F-15E so you can tear ass across the sky at full afterburner and watch your fuel needle spin :D

Well that's base / MAJCOM directed as well. For F-15E maintenance runs you need clearance from MOC and they call the SPs, otherwise they swarm the jet and think you're stealing it (happened to me when they towed a jet without permission and I was in the cockpit... :D). Aside from that, you don't ask the tower for clearance. At Mountain Home IIRC the front-seater on MX runs would tell tower ground he started the jet, but in USAFE they don't.

Unfortunate fact of life is that getting into realistic sims requires a heavy investment. I like to think of it like scuba diving - but once you're set up, you're golden for a long time. Once you lay down the cash you'll wonder how you ever managed before.

IRL there's no problem with starting the APU. It's used for maintenance all the time.

Dammit, I don't have any free buttinz on my joystick, just my throttle... :/

Reporting from Helsinki! Not really, I just wanted to be part of your thing.

Never done multiplayer yet... are the radio clicks a feature or a mod / program?

You shouldn't have to hook anything, just put the cursor on it and TMS up. I think.

New gun, two new verts, a few antennas and some paint and you're good to go! Hell you don't even have to sweep the runway since A-10s aren't gonna injest any FOD anyway :P

I had this problem as well and as Fish I discovered that using the TAD worked. Even though I had the waypoint as my steerpoint and made the HUD the SOI, the TPod would only slew to the LAST SOI mark.

+1. On the topic of big explosions, can we get a properly massive explosion for the 2,000 pound bombs? Some of those big explosions in that video are from GBU-31s and as you can see, they **** up a *lot* of stuff. In-game they feel extremely weak... Additionally why isn't my A-10 that stable when using the gun :( They're not even using PAC! With PAC my nose pitches up (no rudder, no speed brakes, no flaps being used) so I have to use extremely short bursts. Without PAC it's just all over the place.

Failure to trim while flying may be related to too many inputs. I know on my CH setup if I'm doing too many thing at once, sometimes even the stick axis don't get sent to the game so I have to let go of everything for a moment.

Hah, I still suck at finding targets... trying to get used to playing without labels. There was a target on a hillside I was looking for, and I was looking right at it but couldn't see it because of the awful contrasting terrain. Only reason I saw him is he fired an ATM and the huge heat explosion gave him away :p

For what it's worth, the terrain around Bagram AB looks exactly like Nellis, complete with that big mountain. In fact it looks almost exactly like it, to the extent that we'd joke that Vegas was just on the other side. But okay, yeah, it's *just* Bagram. Paulkrkiii's probably been to Kandahar so maybe some insights there, but IIRC Kandahar is a bit flatter (Bagram is nestled in the mountains at higher altitude). I think the terrain in Afghanistan is a bit more rugged in the Hindu-Kush but aside from that, I consider having a fully-developed Las Vegas to be a huge bonus, as we already have small towns full of small buildings. Some developed-looking stuff to do some damage to would be nice :)

Actually the only avionics systems I can think of where classification would cause problems modeling it 'properly' (ie: missing features) would be AN/ALQ-128 EWWS (which is a black hole of classification, would not even be functional in the sim) and some aspects of radar. ICMS could be dealt with in a 'good enough' fashion with some creative liberty - honestly all I'd really expect, even as an F-15E avionics tech, is the right symbology on the TEWS scope and maybe degradation from part failure / damage. There's plenty of unclassified stuff about ICMS you can find that will give you enough of an idea of how to model both of those. And yeah, SDBs on the F-15E are a must, as technically you would end up carrying more god damn bombs than you could probably find things to drop them on :D I would also royally flip the **** out if we didn't get GBU-15 / AGM-130s. PS: Scrape, some F-15E uses different engines from the C-model, and they all have a different radar package. Basing them off the C-model might be 'good enough', but the AN/APG-70 has better ground mapping capabilities, and the P&W -229s are more powerful. Also the E-models aren't getting AESA anytime soon if you were referring to that.

You know, just because it *says* Nevada doesn't mean you can't just pretend it's any other sandy wasteland... saying "I can't play on this map because it's not a real life conflict location!" is pretty disrespectful of the work being done on it, not to mention it makes you sound ungrateful as hell.

Another pro with not going with Steam is actually being able to play your game when you don't have immediate access to Steam's network, as well as not having thousands of dollars of fake merchandise tied up behind one flimsy password :p Like I said, I still use Steam, but I don't think the average consumer has put much thought into just how much we take Steam for granted. Using Steam isn't just 'do I use stuff tied to my account', it's putting complete, 100% faith in Valve, a company who in the end is all about making money first and foremost. You trust them to not use their vicious monopoly to exploit consumers, that Valve is going to keep letting you access their servers and your account, and that it will always be there. Valve isn't the shiny benevolent force you may want to believe - go ask anyone who has to pay in Euros about how much they price-gouge.

Technically? http://www.listal.com/game/jetfighter-ii-25074 But I was like... seven years old or something when we actually played it (doubt it was 1990 which would've made me five), though I still remember it. Aside from that I never really played any flight sims. I played some IL2 games but decided WW2 combat sims were dull and repetitive.

At the same time I dislike the idea of Steam's monopoly and the fact that it's still first and foremost a DRM platform. Not actually owning your own games is also one of those things that also bothers me. I won't *not* buy things on Steam but if the option is available I'll always get a boxed copy of a game before I'll buy it on Steam. I like to keep my Steam account mostly freed up for reasons such as security, stability, and ease-of-access. Steam is incredibly convenient and Valve may have good intentions, but you know what they say about the roads to hell.

If you want to get technical, the *real* procedure is to manually load all the stations unless you got the same loadout strapped back on, since the data cart wouldn't have the new profile pre-loaded.