KLR Rico

It seems like the best way to get behind him is to pull into a vertical, and when he follows you up you can use the Mig's excellent instantaneous turn rate to pull up behind him as you come around the top while he's still in the climb. I guess it'd look like a figure "9". From there he's a sitting duck.

^ good info about the PAC, I do think i read that in an old manual. I find in practice 8 seconds is really an awful long time, but I make it a point to engage it as soon as I'm satisifed with my aim (hopefully immediately after the roll) and hold it until I reached my desired slant range. I agree 100% with P*Funk on the mental checklist and that feeling when everything is going right. It's a procedure like anything else, you know when you're doing it right and you know when you've screwed up, just like an instrument approach. It might take some practice, but there are plenty of missions made up just for that purpose. And don't be afraid to abort a run if you're not 100% satisifed with the way its going, it's better to go around than to waste your ammo or get shot up. I might add that a common mistake I see people do is that they will pray & spray. That is doing the GAU-8 a great disservice, the thing is a goddamn sniper rifle for all intents; the rounds *will* hit where the pipper lies. Firing rounds in the general direction of the target is not at all effective.

^ That's what I do. I get the real elevation from the F10 map and dial it in.

My basic run is usually a roll in from 6-9K and 200-250 kias, usually dive in at ~30 degrees and engage PAC-1 as soon as the pipper is on target (supposed to be in PAC-1 for 8 seconds), burst at ~1 mi, and break smoothy in vertical and horizonal planes trying to conserve as much energy as possible for the climb and extension. Although I vary the technique slightly for different targets. I'll engage a shilka from higher to get more speed, fire from a longer range (~1.5 miles) and a longer burst to compensate for the dispersion. BMP-2's will *BITE*, so I treat them like shilka's. Other APC types and lightly armored vehicles I usually engage at 1 mile or so and use far fewer rounds, it doesn't take much to turn them into smoke & fire. T-55's get a rear aspect & high dive angle with about a half second of fire from a mile or so. T-90's are tough bastards, I engage them from just inside a mile with at least a second of fire. Artillery and trucks I usually do shallow dives (10-20 deg) and try to get at least a few in one pass, but not until the high threat targets are gone.

+1 I'd love to be able to lean out of the cockpit when the canopy is open, especially on the warbirds.

The other night a CV-22 flew over my house flaring in for a landing at <500 ft, I thought pictures were going to come off the walls. :O

Probably your radar altitude alarm. I think there might be an over-g warning too, but I'm not too sure.

Most people use CCRP because targeting is easier since you designate the target beforehand. I generally only use CCIP in the consent mode, and even then really only for popup attacks. Invalid fusing means you're attempting to release the bomb at or below the height of function (HOF), the point where it'd release the sub munitions. You can change the HOF in the DSMS inventory page.

I wouldn't have put the fishbed on my list of "must have" aircraft, but I meant it when I said I'll buy any aircraft released for DCS. :) I appreciate the amount of work and love that must go into making something like this, and that all really showed the second I jumped into the plane. The attention to detail is amazing and the aircraft certainly has its own personality. I've been enjoying learning how to operate the plane and it's systems and I think I will have gotten my money's worth several times over before I can really say I've even come close to mastering it.

That's possible, and you'd wire it up just as you're probably imagining. My route was to replace the stick with one from an x52, keeping the board and base switches from the x52 and putting them on a base plate alongside the msffb mechanics.

That budget will enable you to build an excellent sim machine. I bought pretty much all my parts for my latest build from amazon, I found their prices to be pretty good and I know I can count on their customer service.

Yes. In fact, I've been told that a windmilling propeller is capable of producing the same amount of drag as a solid disk of the same diameter. Some props have a negative torque system that senses when the propeller starts to drive the engine and increases blade pitch to reduce the negative torque. I'm not sure if the P-51 had such a system or if there was another mechanism they used to solve that issue, it certainly doesn't seem to be excessively draggy in windmill. It could be that the Merlin doesn't have very high engine braking potential and it doesn't take much negative torque to make the engine gain RPM to satisfy the govenor. In contrast the T-56 turboprop engine *can* sink a ton of power, it takes 7000 HP to drive the compressor at 100% RPM, so a negative torque system is very important there. Yes and no. An increase in engine MP means an increase in torque applied to the propeller. The increase in torque would have made the propeller speed up, except the govenor senses the increased RPM and increases the blade pitch to reduce the RPM until everything is in balance again. The end result is that torque is converted into thrust, and RPM remains constant. The particular blade pitch that is needed to balance the RPM to the torque varies with conditions, but yes, the blade angle will be closer to feather during high speed cruise than during takeoff. To create the most drag from the propeller for braking you'd want the lowest MP and the highest RPM to try and get the propeller to drive the engine. In that situation, the propeller will decrease pitch to try and keep the RPM up, but as soon as you bring the engine power back up, it'll just readjust the blade pitch and you'll be making thrust again.

Huh? I can change the RPM setting on the engine and watch the propeller's apparent "thickness" change in real time in the external view. The helicopter rotors also visibly change in response to collective or TR pitch. The only problem I can see with the P-51 is that it's mapped like the RPM lever adjusts blade pitch directly instead of pitch being set by the govenor, as it should be. But yes, it's a *very* minor point and development time is better spent elsewhere.

Amen, brother! DCS relies on CPU more than anything. I spent a few years flying DCS on a 2.5 GHz machine and living with 10-40 FPS. I decided enough is enough and put together an i5-4670K based machine this last spring for ~$600 USD. Since you have a K proccessor, I highly recommend overclocking. My haswell is on a stable 4.5 GHz which will crank out butter smooth 60FPS all day long. From what I hear the devil's canyon CPU's are significantly better than haswells for OC because they solved the thermal issues, so you should be able to get a nice & cool OC out of your chip. PS, time to update your sig. :)

There's a contact pad on each side of the existing resistors that you could solder the legs of the through hole resistors to, but honestly that's as much work as just putting another smd resistor. The only reason I'd suggest going that route is for the ease of getting through hole resistors over the smd parts.

You could use regular thru hole resistors just fine, smd's are just the cleaner option.

From what I can tell, the appropriate propeller animations are there, they're just not applied correctly. I haven't done a whole lot of testing, but it appears that the problem we have is that the animation shows the blade pitch changing according to the RPM setting, as if the RPM control was the pitch control on variable pitch propeller, rather than varying with the needs of the governor as it should.

Brilliant!

LOL, is *this* the beginning of the end? A debate about how complicated raising the gear should be? Personally, I prefer that the aircraft be as true-to-life as possible, which is the whole reason I buy these planes instead of playing war thunder or some other arcade game. If that means clicking a safety before clicking the gear, then that's great. I despise the thought of loosing sim fidelity for "casual" players... just like that damn steering "assist".

I keep re-reading this discussion hoping I can chime in with some helpful insight (8 years experience as a C-130 engine troop), but I can't seem to tell what the argument is. :D

No, but it's certainly a fun way to employ rockets and the gun against a column of soft targets.

I'm pretty awful in the FC3 jets so I've been trying to practice more, but this is what has been fresh in my memory. I've been flying a 50-50 split between the flanker and eagle. Both certainly need their own tactics. With either plane, I find it's best to keep the radar off until I'm close to bullseye (<40 nm), and I almost never use ECM. Either one of those too early just announces your position to the world. I don't have much luck flying the Su-27 head-to-head BVR vs the F-15. My best hope in that case is to keep notching his missiles and try to get into a WVR fight. I think the best use of the flanker is to, well, flank. Using terrain masking and the IRST to try to get on the enemy's side of bullseye and come up from the side and below while the enemy is distracted by their head-to-head engagements with your team. In the eagle I try to use TWS as much as possible and take advantage of the ARH missiles, holding off fire until they're as close to the no-escape range as I dare.

I'd do it, but I don't know if I could explain it much better in a video than I could here... I believe the maneuver is called the funnel (at least that's what it is for RC helicopters, pretty sure I read it in the shark's manual too). It's easier to get a feel for it when you are starting from a hover. Start a slide slip, but give some pedal to keep the nose on target, play around with fore/aft cyclic to keep your distance constant, and once you reach a certain point in sideways velocity (depending on load, wind, etc), you run out of pedal travel and you can't increase the speed any more. It's really something you have to try until you get a feel for it, and it takes a bit of practice.

Oooh, that's nasty. Strange though, the stock cooler should be able to support stock clocks with no problem.

Idle temps look good now?