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Paradox, every radar creates a narrow beam, the thing is, that the beam emitted by conventional conical scanning radar like the old RP-21 was rotating around an axis, along which the beam-rider missile would try to fly toward the locked target. The RP-22 is a newer monopulse radar, it's emitting two pulses in short duration slightly misaligned. If you would engage such radar in conical scan pattern, and flew a beam rider missile into it - it would freak out having two misaligned pulses instead of one and try to correct for both, eventually over-correcting into first or second pulse, and flying off the beam. Personally I have no problem of that armament being there, as long as we get a clear statement that would say: a. it wouldn't work, but we're keeping it for the entertainment value (artistic licence); b. it would work, and here's the documentation to prove it. ;)

The problem is that the RP-22 radar is too new to work with the Kh-66 and RS-2US missiles, there were no beam riders that could work with RP-22 radar. The RS-2US were then modified by adopting the R-3S and R-3R seeker head/guidance unit to form newer R-55 family of missiles that could be used on the MiG-21Bis (one variant being IR, other one semi-active radar). It would be different story if it wouldn't be MiG-21Bis, but earlier model with RP-21 radar - then you could not use semi-active R-3R and R-55 missiles. In Poland once the older MiGs were being phased out, the remaining RS-2US missiles were being modified to be used as practice targets. Since they use the same launch rail as S-24 rockets, they could be launched from both MiG-21Bis, and Su-22, but had no warhead or guidance.

I'm also waiting for official statement on that topic.

What ? Idle detent an mostly unused switch ? Have you read this thread ? Do you know there are procedures that require both starter and idle detent switch to be pressed AT THE SAME TIME ?

Have you seen the Maintenance Test Flight Checklist for UH-1 ? That's 51 pages :thumbup: BTW going through the TM 55-1520-242-MTF is a great way of checking if the DCS Huey is up to specs.

The problem is - there is no system in place in the DCS that would force you to act like a real pilot, there is no persistence in the aircraft state and mistreating it in one flight does not affect the next one. There is no randomness in the aircraft subsystems wear and effectiveness. Each flight we start with brand new machine. We can overheat, overtorque, and brake everything that will not affect safe landing at the end of the mission - and we still can fly the next mission as if nothing happened. If at the next mission helicopter would under-perform, or was still in maintenance because of our mishandling it last time - that's when the checklists would be needed.

:smartass:

The version of Huey we have is 1988+ because of the composite rotor blades, and NVG compatible equipment. The earliest RWR sensors installation I could find on the Huey was in mid 1970s, and the first prototype looked pretty strange too ;) Although the XM130 and ALQ-144 countermeasures got to the line helicopters quicker than the RWR, I have pictures from 1978 of a ex-UH-1D with those and still no RWR blisters. Throughout 1980 most helicopters got the blisters, and many got sensors. Then in the Operation Just Cause Hueys were used in C² role - those were pretty much top of the line with all* the gismos bolted on, and that was 1989. * ALQ-144 IR jammer, M130 countermeasures dispensers, NVG, "Striela kit", HF radios with scramblers, Doppler navigation and radio altimeters - only fancy things missing were INS and ECM. PS. Side note: there were 17 US Army UH-1H Hueys in Panama, and they scored most missions and flight hours (both day and night) of any type used in that operation... and that was when Blackhawks and Apaches were the workhorses already.

Actually most documentation for the Nighthawk is available - with exception of JDAM integration, but we'll see what will be available in a few months. Yes. I can shoot an email to a company dressed in nice words that say "Hey I want to implement your product / your company logo in a game, here's what I did so far, here's what I want to do.... are you ok with that ?" And they say "Yeah". Actually I did that few times, does that mean those companies officially endorsed what I was doing ? Heck no! We weren't yet told what the deal with LM is about, don't draw conclusions. This may be as simple as using Lockheed Martin logo, or as counter intelligence loaded as sharing pilot workflow algorithms and aerodynamic flight test data. W E - D O N ' T - K N O W.

I don't think it's about sales numbers, because you can make an F-86, that will sell poorer than an F-15E, but developer of the Sabre will be better off, because he spend 100x less time developing the simpler platform. $$$ per work-hour is relevant here, not total $$$ from sales. But I'm waiting till Friday, then I hope to have all my concerns addressed on the kickstarter page.

Something being classified is not a problem, there are people here that have high enough clearance to US and NATO documents. The problem is the need to know basis, that is typical for any military technology, where even unclassified information can be unobtainable, because "you don't need to know that" ;) F-35 is problematic, because most needed documentation is usually unobtainable at this stage, either through official and unofficial means, mostly because it still doesn't exist in its final form. I do wonder what is the reasoning behind choosing this particular platform, it would be so mach easier to make the F-117.

No, like this: ( F/A-18 )

Pretty much yes. You can practice by hovering at ~2000ft above the ground or more, and descending at a constant rate, each time higher, and you'll see how the helicopter responds between 0-500fpm, 500-1000 fpm, and above 1000 fpm. Anyway for a more in-depth description I recommend getting Shawn Coyle book "The Art and Science of Flying Helicopters".

It was one and the same in the 1950s, when the US Army handbooks were written :smilewink: Today those phenomena are a bit better understood and defined. You settle with power, when you simply have not enough mechanical horses to arrest your descent - and you can get out of it simply applying collective - if you have enough room to do so. And you're in VRS when the rotor is eating its own downwash, and applying collective only make things worse. BTW there are anecdotes, that some helicopters can power through the VRS, such example is said to be unloaded CH-54 Tarhe (S-54 Skycrane) but those anecdotes date to 1970s when the VRS phenomena was still un-researched, applying more power in fully developed VRS shouldn't really help at all. What I recently found out with the DCS Huey, is that the VRS entering envelope is tightly tied to ETL. Once you go out of ETL you're entering VRS danger area, which is really weird, because there is no way that with let's say 15kts airspeed across the rotor disc, any helicopter could enter VRS...

The descent velocity threshold at which a helicopter "fall through" into VRS rises with the gross weight. The heavier the machine with same rotor (and engines) the easier it is to enter Settling With Power, not VRS. This is what I believe is the problem here, many people are throwing themselves into situations where they simply don't have enough power to get out off, adding to that heavy loadout (19-tube FFAR launchers) and people run out of power very quickly unable to arrest the descent, and then call it VRS - which is not.

Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar for cyclic and collective, and Saitek Pro Flight Cessna rudder pedals. The rudder is not modified, the Cougar on the other hand has ball bearings installed in both stick and throttle, and springs replaced with custom - much lighter ones (they only give feedback on where is the center position - won't center the stick by themselves). Electronics and sensors are stock, so are the arm lengths, although I do have plans on changing those too. The devise settings are standard for axes: linear, no deadzone.

No problem, I just find it strange that there are still problems even though the VRS was addressed in the last patch. Maybe a piece of the problem is the perception of helicopter operations - you really shouldn't operate in the vertical much, any approach should terminate at the correct altitude you want to achieve when the airspeed gets to zero. Especially with the Huey. For example if we would take the Apache, we have twice as high disc load, so we could do pop-ups and masking in the vertical up to 2000+ fpm in descent safely. What I like to do is to play in the city a cat and mouse game with Shilkas - but if I do a pop-up, I never return to hiding spot in hover, it's to slow to do it safely in vertical - I just brake off to the side and dash to another concealed spot.

Few things we can try here: - make sure you have the current DCS version, because the VRS in previous build was rather over-exaggerated and would result in what you're describing; - practice deceleration in the city at rooftop level, without any descending, just keep the altitude steady; - forget the controls position display, fly by what is required in current situation, not what was at take-off; - be certain that everything you do is either in dead calm, or into the wind, never, EVER decelerate going downwind ! It's a problem of lack of sensory input, in a real aircraft a change of few fpm is noticeable by feel, here you won't notice when the VVI goes from positive, to negative 2000 fpm, and the higher this happens it's harder to notice.

Funny that I'm saying this, but the manual is wrong :smartass: Like I wrote in the other topic, there are two approaches to those phenomena: 1. Putting all the cats into one bag - so according to those VRS is Settling With Power, and vice versa - this what this manual is doing (either dumbing down so a young pilot can understand, or is simply copying the manuals from 1950s, that simply didn't know better); 2. Settling with power is a state of high rate descent that can be arrested by applying enough power, and VRS is going through its own downwash, where applying more power only makes things worse. The best I can do is direct you to PPRuNe forum where you will find gentlemen like Nick Lappos, and Shawn Coyle, who actually wrote books on those phenomena, and spend a lot of their career to study them in practice. Now, outlawal2, if what you write is what's going on to you, then my response is simple: this can't happen. I have never experienced sudden increase in descent in steady deceleration, that couldn't be arrested before going through the VRS threshold (with light helicopter it will be around -1000fpm). It appears you're omitting something, can you please provide a track of such behavior ?

Let me repeat myself: So I'm surprised that people are still having problems with VRS... therefore I have to ask two questions: 1. How do you fly ? 2. Are you absolutely sure it's VRS ? Or maybe flying heavy and you simply running out of space because of the enormous power required to perform what you're trying to do ? - meaning you're settling with power, and not experiencing vortex ring state.

Bring beer and pizza ;) I simply spent last... 3 years reading about - actually about the Bravo model mostly.

Ok, one thing at a time: What I'm afraid is that what we see is what we get - nothing new in the release version. Well yes, although those would only be viable here either as minigun replacement on the flex mounts (would become M9 subsystem then), or crew operated as XM94 pintle mounted in the cabin. M5 with nose mounted turret have no real place here, because there was no provision to mount it on the Delta and Hotel models - even though the cockpit section structure have close to none differences between the short Charlie and Mike models, and the structure attachment points for turret are there. Funny, because the M6 subsystem is the only flex mounted armament used operationally, mounted to the front hard points on a long Huey (only one such aircraft was used in Vietnam). Australians did test such configuration with M21 and miniguns, but abandoned it and used fixed mounts instead. The Delta had provision to mount the M3 subsystem, there were no changes in structural components that would prohibit its installation on the Hotel variant... but it doesn't really give us any advantage over pod-type launchers. The launcher tubes are the same as on the M156A1 launcher we have currently, which means no Mk.66 rocket motor provision. M197 was an experiment - it worked... somewhat, but not fielded on anything except as a turret armament in later Cobras. Also it was tested on a short test-bed Huey. Looked cool though: And no, the recoil was not an issue. Maxwell missiles, and TOW were very specific kind of equipment, designed to work with the short body Bravo Huey, although the M22, could technically be installed on the Hotel Huey, the TOW would pose many problems. The XM26 was a system of both the helicopter and the armament, not a subsystem, that could be easily taken off. For example the nose structure was extensively modified to mount the TSU.

For Huey the max endurance speeds are between 50-70 kts, depends on gross weight, altitude and air temperature. Didn't checked the fuel flow in the DCS, since we don't have matching power settings with higher speeds, those would have be off also.

In Vietnam the Striela threat came pretty late - just as the US forces were being withdrawn, but there was something like this: Supposed to be an AN/ALE-29 countermeasures dispenser adopted to be used on the raised bomb rack (like the used with auxiliary fuel tank or XM14 gun pod), but couldn't find more info or pictures on this thing, and it does look weird - maybe it's missing the charge chambers assembly...

Sorry, you're wrong. As far as we're talking about US Army, and US National Guard Hueys: It was called XM/M130, and they did had it, even was in operation use in South/Central America. For current Hueys, there are also other dispensers available: