DD_Fenrir

It should also be noted that there is no Spitfire with 4x .50s. The .50s we’re placed alongside the cannon, not in the outer wing positions.

One wing (125 wing) of IXe was in evidence just after D-Day, consisting 602, 453 and 132 squadrons. Others were upgraded prior to the wider appearance of the mkXVI on operations. There is photographic evidence of this - both Johnny Johnson and Geoffrey Page are pictured in or alongside .50 cal equipped Merlin 66 engined Spitfires in D-Day markings at a time long before any serial numbers denoting mkXVI variants would have appeared at the frontline.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment (I have also started threads requesting the MkIXe, this being the sub-variant with the 2x .50s instead of 4x 303s) this last statement is not entirely correct; the C or Universal wing can indeed accept both armament configurations but some 3d re-modelling work would be required: Cannon shrouds are not only moved to the outboard position but also shortened and often had a different profile The bulges to accommodate the feed motors to the cannon in the overwing ammo tray access hatches also have to move outboard with the cannon The spent cartridge ejection ports on the underside access hatch also change to match the revised position of the guns breeches. So some work is required; however it would be a useful expansion of the module for a modest amount of work and would certainly help the Spitfire have a version more relevant to the later war Luftwaffe fighter types in DCS.

It’s complicated but doable - it’s been a while since I’ve done any. You’ll need Photoshop to do the editing and the template available in these forums. The first note is that there isn’t one texture file, many are used across the aircraft - this can make lining up geometric shapes that cross texture boundaries challenging. Then there are alpha channels - these are texture layers that have transparency characteristics and are used to drive how Matt or gloss the skin finish is. A search on YouTube for DCS skin creation will help - there’s a few good ones that helped me when I started. I’m on my phone currently and don’t have time to search out the links but if I get the opportunity later I’ll add some for you. Just be advised that it is a time consuming process at first (and even accomplished skin artists can find complicated paint schemes a black hole of time and effort) and takes a while to get the rhythm of. This probably why your request was not immediately taken up - as even a noob skinner I can see there’s a lot of complication in adapting that paint scheme to the F-14, and that even before we worry about lining up those geometric white lines and making them make sense with the wing sweep etc. There’s scope to lose a lot of hours there! Hope this helps somewhat.

You need to do the following steps: Wing Sweep Handle (inboard of throttles) all the way forward and right click handle to engage into spider detent Punch the grey circular RESET button just forward of the quadrant on the vertical panel Now find whatever you have mapped to the wing sweep auto button (you may need to assign it) and hit it. Voila, your wings will be coming forward. For flaps, you should now be able to use your flap lever to engage the flaps.

Hi Wolverine, I can only suggest a compromise solution that seems to mitigate (though not eliminate) some of the issues. Go to your pitch curve input cell for your FFB stick, highlight it and select Axis Tune. In the pop up window, find the user curve box and tick it. You can then adjust the numbers manually. Use the following values: 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 56, 100 I find these the best compromise between controllability and moving the airspeed range at which the trim tuck effect takes effect. It will also still allow you to access the full range of the elevator on the ground or at very slow speeds. What seems to be the case is that the shallower that initial gradient the lower airspeed the trim tuck manifests. At these values it does not occur until we’ll above 300mph indicated, so be wary of it during shallow dive bomb or rocket attack profiles from several thousand feet, but it shouldn’t manifest during cruise or level bombing attacks.

Ha! The entirety of this thread, started by you, is one massive act of passive aggression, with that costing exercise the pinnacle. Excuse me for calling you out using your own modus operandi. Thats called irony by the way.

So?

The above should be noted for being the dictionary definition of “clap-trap”, “balderdash” and “piffle”. Male cow manure may also suffice.

Last night (on the 18th aptly enough), the DangerDogz invited a number of the DCS community members to partake in a recreation of the Amiens Prison Raid. Despite a few small niggles it went extremely well and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive - I certainly had fun despite having flown the mission more times than I can count during the course of testing! Some screenshots, all courtesy of @MJDixon, for your delectation:

Anytime... baby! Oops, wrong sub-forum.

1. Go into your control settings 2. Select the axis commands filter from the drop down menu. 3. Highlight either the aileron or elevator input axis cell corresponding to your MSFFB2 input 4. Choose the "FF Tune" button which will have now been made active 5. In the pop up window find and check the box which says "Swap axis" You will need to do this for ALL ED developed aircraft modules else you will find your pitch stick forces acting on your aileron and vice-versa.

This needs to be boldened, underlined and printed in all caps. This the new Gospel. This is your new mantra. DCS is not Ace Combat; the enemy - and chance - gets a vote.

Another insightful post backed up with legitimate documentary evidence. /S Modus operandi KoN everyone.

I don't understand the hard-on for pilot body; there's an element of increased immersion seeing limbs in the cockpit in lieu of the controls moving as if a particularly compliant poltergeist is your avatar, sure, I get that, but in aircraft so profoundly dependent on switchology I always find that these semi-static limbs ultimately get in the way, and that is equally if not more immersion-breaking. Each to their own I guess.

1. MLC = Main Lobe Clutter Essentially it's a filter for your radars Main Lobe: The Main Lobe is what you use for detecting targets - all the others are a nuisance and we want to ignore any return from those. If the WCS calculates that due to antenna elevation any part of the Main Lobe might be catching a return from the ground it enables, automatically, this filter. Why? To do look down/shoot-down you have to use doppler processing, i.e. assessing the closure rate of a return. This is where the WCS looks at your calculated ground speed and throws out any returns whose closure rate to your aircraft it thinks correspond to that number, ergo ignoring any return from the ground. Simple, right? In theory, yes, in reality... there's a few gotchas. This is not, particularly in the AWG-9 (which whilst amazing technology of it's time, is essentially 1960's tech), a very precise technology. It cannot estimate your GS down to the nearest 1 Knot accuracy. Or even 10 knots. Or even 50. It's more like +/- 100 knots. So, if your target is flying either very slowly or turns perpendicular to you and your radar's MLC is active he's gonna disappear. When that happens, you get the dreaded 'x' appear over the contact, the track file is now bupkiss and you watch the target you just committed a missile to march off the TID at some incredulous angle at unfeasible speed. Bugger. 2. There is another issue in the AWG-9s ability to discriminate between multiple fighter sized targets at range that can cause lost track files. If you commit to a target aircraft group that is flying in close formation it can be difficult for the AWG-9 to determine that there's more than one contact, and as such it might tell you there's only one. Sometimes, when break-out occurs it can confuse the AWG-9 and where it had one contact it now has two, does not know which to maintain as the 1st Track and which to start building a 2nd Track for and seems to throw a wobbly; it dumps the nice track file you had and starts from scratch. Which is great, except when you've already put a Phoenix in the air. Sometimes it is able to break-out the other aircraft before your Missile Engagement Zone (MEZ) and at others not. It depends on the RCS of the target and how close they are flying form.

Yeah, I kind of doubt it, remember hearing one source, might have been the F-14 Tomcat Radio Show saying that the kneel was a hydraulically pressurised at 1000 psi; be damn dangerous for ground crews to be working in proximity to that in the event of a sudden failure. Regards the DCS bug where the jets spawn in kneeling, I only get that from hot start F-14s; cold start F -14s spawn in fine for me.

So rafale = sudden brutal gust of wind. Hmmm....

If you have a prototypical length stick (~900mm) with prototypical throws (displacement limits) you won't need curves. The point is that general desktop PC joysticks have tiny throws compared to real sticks - the upshot on something like the Mossie or the Spit is, without curves, you'd need something like 2-3mm of stick displacement to reach critical angle of attack (stall) where the real aircraft may be almost 10 times that amount. This makes small corrections for gunnery or formation incredibly challenging and unrealistically difficult.

Anyway, we have strayed from the point. I too would very much like to see a flyable B-25 or B-26 in DCS.

Whilst I kind of understand that argument, I also don't - cognitive dissonance is a b**ch! They did? I though all the Stuka Geshwader had converted to Fw 190As, Fs and Gs by that time. Besides, that's Eastern Front WW2, and the only aircraft from that set currently is the I-16, and even that does not fit the timescale you offer. No maps for that chronology.... It's not chronological order, it's coherence. And why? One leads to another. P-51 led to Dora led to 109 led to (illogically - should have been Dutch/Belgium/German Border) Normandy, et al, over period of 5-6 years. It was an iterative process. First part true...ish. But when you're dogfight has descended from that 25kft to the weeds or you're putting warheads on foreheads the environment starts to matter. A lot. Seeing 6 lane highways, or a modern semi-trailer or a Eastern Bloc architecture block of flats when your on the deck in a Mosquito doing a low level precision raid only exposes and reinforces the artifice of the endeavour. Then there's topography; this drives tactics, especially in air-to ground but to a limited extent, in air-to-air also. These varied from theatre to theatre even for same/similar aircraft types because of the vastly different terrain forms; desert plains to desert mountains or canyons, open sea or gentle rolling hills and valleys, hilly jungles, craggy temperate mountains or glacial fjords, all bring their positives and negatives in terms of terrain masking, camouflage or even attack profiles and adjusting your weapons delivery and ingress/egress strategies to suit was necessary to maintain a reasonable level of survivability. Given that, let us say we never got the Normandy or Channel map, but we got the Mosquito, any attempt to replicate the true to life exploits of these aircraft, their crews and most importantly their tactics is pretty heavily restricted. We ask for (and generally get) for the most accurate FM's, system modelling, damage models for our virtual aircraft; we ask (within reason) the most accurate maps that a modern PC can perform in a combat flight sim, and demand AI behave as realistically as possible; why oh why then are some people so willing to compromise on that standard when it comes to scenarios? That's a logical fallacy; firstly the desire is to replicate the scenario, not the outcome, BIG difference. Secondly, the desire is to attempt some small understanding of the challenges the real aircrews faced, to better understand the restrictions, limitations and excitement or anxiety that those dry summaries that so often filled the combat reports of the time rarely are able to invoke. Just for example. I am attempting to recreate the Amiens Prison Raid, a mission flown in the worst weather imaginable for flight and under some of the most exacting type of tactical flying; low level high speed navigation, with little more than a compass, directional gyro and stopwatch. It as closely as possible replicates the actual route flown on the Channel Map and straight away you garner a whole new appreciation for the crews on the real raid as you try a lift off in a blizzard. Then trying to find the specific turn point on a wintery map at 1,000ft when every village looks just like the next and one line of rolling hills quickly becomes another, then another, then another till you're not entirely sure whether it was the third or fourth line of hills you just crossed and wasn't the turn point coming up after the fourth...?. Then you cross the Channel trying to fly at 50ft altitude and maintain your heading, but the Directional Gyro has wandered - it needs to be checked against the compass every 15 minutes, and the compass (thanks to magnetic declination) is out by 9 - or was it 10? - degrees, north (was it or south...?), but all your map bearings are given in true.... Better not fly above 100ft whilst you mess around adjusting the compass and DG else you could alert the Luftwaffe and find a cloud of FW 190s awaiting you over Amiens.... Then approaching the French coast, was it this cluster of trees or that cluster of trees or that cluster of trees on the clifftops that's supposed to mark my turn point - if I get it wrong I'll be in range of light flak guns to the east or west of my desired track... is it that village or that village that is my next turn point? Hope I don't get my course wrong enroute and overfly a V-1 site heavily defended by light flak. Then there's picking up the tree-lined road that runs down into Amiens, trying to make sure I don't fly my wingmen, into a particularly tall poplar tree or a telephone pole. Having the Prison appear in the near distance as you crest a small rise and you feel the rising anticipation in your stomach. Get as low as the terrain and trees allow before attempting a bomb-release that requires split-second precision and that won't leave you enough time to clear the prison building if you delay for a second longer than necessary. I admired the actual crews a vast amount already. Even having flown it now a number of times I can say my respect and admiration has grown further; what they achieved in terms of airmanship is phenomenal. You might say "I could make a similar mission on any map"... and you'd be right. But having the right units and structures almost exactly where they should be with the sight lines they really had, and knowing the navigational landmarks correlate as closely to what the actual crews saw, that, is the icing on the cake that takes DCS away from the description of game or entertainment software and it becomes a true simulator.

The reason the Stuka is not a thing in DCS is because it’s massively irrelevant to the chronology of the maps or the bulk of the current plane set. Should ED or another partner choose to to model maps and aircraft types from the Barbarossa-Plan Blau time frame on the Eastern Front to compliment the I-16 then you’d be warranted. In the interim, there are many, many other types that deserve incorporation into DCS ahead of the a Stuka, some of which you have already mentioned.

Where's your struggles Vole, BVR, WVR or both? If it's getting Phoenixes to connect at range, then I suggest waiting till the range to target is 40nm or under; those 100nm shots are for lumbering, fat, dumb and happy targets that have no idea you're there and cooperating so hard they must have a death wish. For more dangerous foes make sure you're Mach 1+ at ~30K ft or higher to give your AIM-54s as much energy as you can. Don't forget to crank, and prepared to either turn back in with a follow up shot or go notch defensive if they're launching on you. Getting toward the WVR envelope (under 20nm) adopt a STT mentality; at this stage I like to go PAL and maybe get a Phoenix in at any target >10nm. Sparrows work best at under 7-8nm if the target is hot. If flanking hold that to 3-4nm. If cold, 2nm. Don't forget to use the VDI; the closer you can get the inverted T symbol to the centre of the green circle the best chance you have the missile will hit. Missiles still need lead! The less energy they are obliged to expend to generate the necessary lead to make intercept after they leave your plane, the more they'll have available at the terminal phase to manoeuvre or chase down your target; if you can do that work for them your Pk will increase. Sidewinders are good ~5nm head in if you're using Mikes, but if your chasing the target tail on 1-2nm max. SEAM lock is a great tool in the Cat - use it! Again it will provide cueing in the VDI to allow you to do work so the missile doesn't have to.

Thanks NL, it would be appreciated.

Good Q. My 2 cents; depends. By all accounts the AIM-120D is matching/exceeding the AIM-54 in capability so that in itself prompts the big question: why do we need the Cat? A big factor was Dick Cheney's hatred for Grumman (earned or otherwise). Even if a peer threat to the fleet existed one suspects he'd have found even a tenuous reason to axe the Cat. (see AIM-120D....) Cost of keeping the Turkey fleet flying was a big needle in the Navy's budget so... But. The F-14Ds were certainly hugely capable and it took a while for the Super Hornet to get the systems necessary to fully replicate them (avionics and mission capability -wise). There wasn't a budget to upgrade any further A's or B's to D standard so I suspect the A's and B's would not have lasted much longer. The B's maybe 2-5 years beyond the actual 2006 decomm; the D's could have been useful for another 5-10 years maybe? Hey, we don't have an official Super hornet in game so you can easily make the hypothetical case that the Navy weren't completely happy with the performance or capabilities of the F/A-18E or F as offered in 1995 and asked Boeing to spend a few more years sorting it out (getting pylons that didn't double as airbrakes for a start....!) and ensuring that it matched the capabilities of the F-14D, and this obliged the Navy to hold on to F-14s a bit longer than 2006.