bluepilot76

Glad to see so much positivity on the thread! I certainly dont want to stand on the toes of those that DO enjoy to read the manuals first, its all good. Everyone can folow their own path right! Respect to the cheap stick brigade. I think we should start a new squadron! I think DCS will provide a good home to flight sim nuts for many years to come! Lets get as many in as possible!

pS You DO need a Track IR though HAHA Only Joking! logs out quickly....

Hi Folks, I just wanted to make a light hearted and gentle reminder that you CAN fly this sim with a cheap joystick, and untill you try and do something complex like start the engines or fire a maverick, you can probably get a lot of enjoyment out of just flying around and crashing and working things out for yourself. In my case I did find that I was warned off Blackshark because it was soooo complicated from forums I got the impression that you certainly could not do it without reading the manual. When I eventually decided "what the hell Im getting it anyway", I found that I was blowing stuff up within a couple of hours. Its not that hard. I STILL cant start the engines, but I know that if I am ever that way inclined I can read a manual and find out. However it turns out the KA50 was not really my cup of tea. Anyway my point is, sometimes looking on here, I would get the impression there is no point buying the sim if you cant afford a TM Warthog, or an X52 or a set of hand crafted aluminium rudder pedals, which is totally not true, and there is also no point buying it if you dont have 6 weeks to put into groundschool before getting into the cockpit. Most people dont have that much money or time to devote to a sim. To all those people I say dont worry, just get stuck in with what whatever stick you have, and whatever time you have. Even if its only 5 minutes whilst you wait for the rice to boil, just get stuck into an instant action and you will soon start enjoying yourself, even if you dont know what your doing! Of course if you find you want to start the engines and no matter what buttons you press they wont start, or your HUD is all wonky, Then the manual would be a good idea, then the video tutorials and of course ultimately all the people on here who are happy to help!

Nice pics!.Feeling inspired to go learn Mk82AIR again.

I think AAR with a boom would not be especially difficult for a military pilot, its basically just flying formation on a really big aircraft. These guys are trained to fly in tight formation through all sorts of manoevres. I think the difficult bit is the last 12 inches, and the guy flying the boom takes care of that. After all, on many aircraft the refuelling port is behind the pilot, so he is not responsible for the last few critical inches. With a basket though...That Im sure is difficult for any pilot, as the basket bobs around and the pilot has to control the aircraft right into it. All you DCS F18 wanters, be afraid! (I think its only basket with naval F18?)

Hi Druid, Interesting about the the height on the tanking, I do find it easier when I can see everything out of the front window, but I will try it a bit lower and see how that goes. Apparently there is a bug with that though, so Im not convinced my position is the cause. Certainly my instrument approach was a bit ropey and wouldnt pass an IR examination!, I dont think I was helped by having the airfield on the EGI though, I actually flew a rough sort of DME arc procedure 10 miles out, so I was certainly concentrating on the HSI and not the HUD. As you can see when I came off the tanker I almost immediately turned away from the airfield onto 270, that was my downwind leg, so I was not homing on the EGI. I watched the track in TACVIEW and never saw anything like that radalt, so unless my memory has completely deserted me perhaps there is something wrong with your track playback? I will probably fly it again soon, as it is very good training, besides Im not overly happy with my landing on that one. Not helped by the approach lights though, see my other thread on that one! I think I could knock another minute or so off if I didnt have the trouble with the tanker calls. BTW I was unable to play your track, and its about 2mb, seems very large? Maybe my download got corrupted though.

Hi Mack and Depth, Thats great info, it hadnt occurred to me that I could actually get it implanted into the Hardware, but now you mention it I dont see why not eh? Then again if my laptop doesnt have the SATA3 connectors within (I dont know ATM) then it sounds like USB3 might be good enough to be worthwhile. I see some research followed by expenditure in my immediate future! Thanks again

OK great thanks for your input folks! I see a bit of a majority there towards killing the objective and then contacting JTAC if you want or can which is what Id sort of started to realise. In the case where the JTAC might be desperate for some help with something, then I guess in RL you would get a specific instruction through AWACS to abort on your primary objective and go and help out. I suppose things are more likely organised such that the JTAC will have dedicated cover already. Those would be the flights whose objective is "Fly to X and contact JTAC" After all who knows how important those BMPs might be? Maybe thats where the enemy commanders are, or they are about to take out some village cheiftain that we want to protect. Or they are full of crack troops that will kick arse when they get to the front line.

OK, not getting much help with this one so never mind what is the correct answer...What would you do? Mission is: Attack BMPs at Waypoint 3. Freqs: AWACS 124 JTAC West 30 You take off and can see the BMPs in the expected place Do you: A) attack mission objective, then call JTAC if you have spare bombs B) call JTAC before attacking mission objective C) something else

Well done on the pics!, interesting but nothing conclusive eh? It looks like when the electics are off all of the flags are displayed (red flags, flight directors, and that 1 chevron) When the electics are on I cant see a chevron. Kind of indicates it might be a bug to me. BTW I have an ADI fom an F4 at home, obviously it has no power. All of the flags are displayed on that as well. I can not check for a couple of week s because I work away, but I am sure it does not have two chevrons.

Hello fellow Warthog pilots! The first time I flew the second campaign missions (Hammer Campaign?- sorry, memory failure ATM) , I would always contact a JTAC for tasking shortly after takeoff. This time round I am starting to think this is not always the correct thing to do... For Example: A mission briefing says the target is column of BMPs in a village somewhere at waypoint 3 and JTAC is on such and such freq. I dont really feel I need the JTAC to do the mission, in this case the BMPS are sitting there in the street, right where the mission briefing says they should be. SO I just want to get down to business. Problem is that sometimes the JTAC has sent me off after a bunch of tanks or whatever miles from my ground armies objectives. By the time I have sorted everything out for him Ive got nothing left for the next JTAC and have to go and rearm. So are we always supposed to contact the JTAC if there is one on the mission, or is it more realistic to contact him once we have completed the primary objective, and maybe have a few bullets or bombs left over? If the briefing specifically says fly to X and contact JTAC then obviously thats what to do, but they dont all say that? Any ideas how this would work in RL?

You need to switch from HARS to EGI after INS alignment. Switch under ADI. You dont notice on the other campaigns because they all start on the runway.

Can you use an SSD connected with a USB3? so I can use it on my laptop? They sound like they are really good. Disc access is by far the lowest score on my windows experience thing, it would help with that wouldnt it? As for overwriting it, I bet they are like memory sticks and flat screen tvs. Really expensive for a couple of years, and cheap as chips (HAHA) thereafter.

I recommend a gaming laptop, ASUS G73JW see my specs. That is 6 months old so there might be a better version out now. I dont fly BS much but I think it was maxxed out. I fly WH with eveything on high, except the water effects because I dont like it, and no mirrors, and MFDs on 512. Runs pretty well, mind I have never seen a true desktop gaming machine. Oh it has a button on it which doubles the CPU clock, but WH seems to prefer to have the turbo boost disabled. DOesnt run COD well, I think they are not supporting GTX460m yet. Oh price, was approx £1600 from PC world. Used Quidco voucher too.

I hope X10 is good, twice now I have been swayed by the X-hype, and twice very dissapointed. The world just seems so dead. Its like after some sort of epidemic has wiped out 99% of the population. Hard to take it seriously when a hot air balloon is floating across your major international airport. I also hate how nearly all of the cockpits are just panels. Look to far down and you can see the ground. Its just a panel floating in mid air. Got the good helicopter addon, looks amazing, but its just boring because the world is so dead. Awfull ATC chat in the background too. Its on a loop. has nothing to do with whats going on around you. The only active ATC speaks through a voice box. I wont be fooled again, as for wing flex. well, you should not be looking a the wings when your landing, I really couldnt care less! Give me some Traffic!

Need to see a picture of the real cockpit, there was a good one the other day, but I cant remember what thread it was on. I was fixating on it as well, getting a bit more used to it now though. Usually my GS is anywhere EXCEPT stable and in the middle lol!

I looked it up the other day, it wasnt clearly explained. I THINK it is supposed to show how far you have moved the pitch bar with the circular knob on the right hand side of the instrument. EDIT that will teach me to speed read technical manual- No its Not! I tried it briefly but didnt notice it showing the offset so I might be wrong. EDIT Yes I am! It is a bad design, if correct, because its easy to start looking at that and think you are perfectly on the glideslope.

OK I have been on a big loop checking out quite a lot of airfields. I have seen at least 6 different patterns of lights... The most common is the simplest pattern. This consists of a few red lights on the centreline, about 5. These lights then stop and there is a massive gap before the runway starts. I saw this at; Kobuleti, Kutaisi, Gudauta, Maykop-khanskaya, Mineralyne Vody, Nalchik. Another thing to note on these, the runway edge lights are yellow, and not very realistic looking. There is a picture of Gudauta attached. The most realistic, IMO, are seen at Batumi, Tbisili, and Sukhumi. However note gap between threshold lights and runway at Sukhumi and Tbisili. All three of these are slightly different from each other. Batumi and Tbisili were the only runways with PAPI that I saw. The most imaginitive and useless lights were at Senaki. I can see no logic in that pattern what so ever. Variations of this were seen at Vaziani and Soganlug. As for the searchlights across the runway at Soganlug? Good job I wasnt paying the fuel though.

Doh! Printsceen, who would have though it! OK thanks I will try and get a couple tonight.

OK wilco, just in case I cant figure it out later can anyone tell me how to make a screendump. If anyone else has some good pics of ALS then please post them!

I just like to kill a big chunk of them. As you RTB you will see other Warthogs and Apaches heading out to take over from you. You could rearm and head back out as well, but I think you will progress to the next mission even though you havent been given the big thankyou from the JTAC Dont know about the comms Q.

Viper, Thanks for the charts, I look forward to having a good look through them after work. I had a quick look and see the approach lighting diagrams is not displayed on the Batumi or Tibisli charts as I hoped it would be, some charts do show a little picture of what to expect. There is a description of the lighting though. BlueRidge, you have certainly given me some acronymns to start researching there! Look forward to learning a bit more about the subject. Like I said I am just convinced that they do not represent any RL lighting system , as I believe it would be too dangerous as it is. My main gripe would be the "false start" threshold marker, the too-wide runway lights, and lack of strong centreline lighting along the approach. This is for Senaki. I think I might go for a long cross country flight later and document all of the different lighting systems in the sim, to see if there is any pattern.

Yeah I would like to see some approach plates. I had a look on google earth and there doesnt appear to be any approach lights at Senaki. In our simulation obviously the airfield has been upgraded for ongoing operations (it looks a bit derelict in GE), I would prefer it if the lights were a bit closer to ICAO standards, and maybe a bit less individuality between individual airfields within the sim, except maybe military vs civilian, or maybe differ a bit country by country.

OK Ive been replaying the track. There appears to be two parallel lines of red lights on the approach to the runway (that you can hardly see in bad conditions) these are quite widely spaced so do not give a good indication of the direction to the runway.. I would suggest that it is more likely to be a single line of high intensity white lights along the approach centreline. Then about 100m BEFORE the threshold there is a perpendicular line of red and green lights. This gives you the impression you have crossed the threshold, but you havent. This seems incredibly unlikely to me- very dangerous! The runway lights are white (correct), but much wider than the runway markings. I suggest that it is unlikely that the runway edge lights would be any wider than the useable portion of the runway, so they should be at the same position as the runway edge markings. I see no sign of PAPIs, although to be fair I was too low coming over the threshold so perhaps there were some in the touchdown zone that I didnt see because of the bad vis. I cant recall seeing any at other airfields however, except Batumi I think. I must have seen the orange and red runway lights at another airfield and to be fair perhaps I was landing in the wrong direction (according to the ATC) I might see if I can put a short video on YT.

In the most recent and memoreable incident I was approaching Senaki. It is the approach lights before the runway that I have a problem with, they just seem very illogical and I would be really surprised if they are representative of an actual system in use in RL. Maybe just because I am used to western / ICAO standards though.. From memory...as you approach minimums you pass some red lights that are perpendicular to the runway, I think there is 3 on each side. it gives the impression you are crossing the threshold, but then there is nothing for a while, no sign of PAPIs, you are left holding your breath waiting for the runway to appear. Eventually the side lights of the runway appear, but they are much wider than the useable portion of the runway (perhaps twice as wide), causes me to flare too high every time. I am fairly sure as well that the runway edge lights start red, then orange, then white, which is the reverse of what I would expect. Normally the orange and red is at the far end to warn you that you are running out of runway. I havent done a lot of instrument approaches in the sim, but every time I do I am surprised by the approach lights. Batumi is the only one that seems sensible to me, perhaps because it is civilian airfield though. I realise that I am probably wrong about this, I think every country is a bit different, and no doubt military bases are also different, but I was hoping someone could prove me wrong with reference to an approach plate or some good pictures. I just dont see the logic in how they are at the moment, and think they would be too dangerous for a RL situation.