xaoslaad

Looks great. I can't wait for this module. Should be an interesting chopper to fly.

Depends. It has to be an F-14B Upgrade and have the semi permanent LANTIRN pod attached. There were F-14A Upgrades with the pod attached as well as I understand it, so ground attack doesn't necessarily have to be limited to the F-14B. There were only 80 some odd B's so having 157 bombcats implies some must have been A's. Even if you counted all the D's (which aren't involved in these numbers.) you'd still have to drag in A's to account for the number. "The A/B initial upgrade, includes structural modifications to extend the F-14's fatigue life to 7,500 hours, improved defensive capabilities and cockpit displays, and incorporation of digital architecture and mission computers to speed data processing time and add software capacity. Block I adds a LANTIRN Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) pod with a built-in laser to designate targets and allow F-14s to independently drop laser guided bombs (LGBs), a modified cockpit for night attack operations (night vision devices and compatible lighting), and enhanced defensive countermeasures. The A/B upgrade had to be incorporated into 157 F-14 aircraft before the Block I upgrade could be added. " I believe there were F-14A/B/D bombcats and non-bombcat F-14A's and Bs. And: "The pod also featured an internal computer with ballistics data for the various precision munitions carried by the F-14. Data is fed to the pod by the Tomcat’s AWG-9 (F-14A and F-14B) and AN/APG-71 (F-14D) radar, but the LTS in turn only sends video and guidance symbology to the crew's cockpit displays. This means that few wiring and software changes had to be made to the Tomcat in order for it to operate the LTS. All pod controls are in the RIO’s cockpit, but the bomb release button is situated with the pilot. The LTS had a price tag of around 3 million US Dollars each and due to these high costs, only 75 were bought for fleet use. Typically, an F-14 squadron brought 6 to 8 pods with them on deployment, which would be permanently fitted to the non-TARPS jets."

Found this quote: A feature on the F-14A, which has, since been phased out of the B and D models is a pair of triangular vanes, which retracted into the leading edge of the wing gloves. These vanes deployed automatically at Mach 1.4, providing extra lift to the nose of the aircraft, unloading the tailplanes to some degree. As a result, they assisted the F-14 in pulling up to 7.5 g at Mach 2. The vanes were rendered inoperative if the angle of the wings were less than 35 degrees. Below that sweep angle, the effect of the vanes on the tailplanes led to pitch instability at the speeds associated with that angle of wing. With the B and D models these vanes were eliminated from the design in order to provide additional space for avionics in the wing-glove area.

There were somewhere around 712 F-14's in total. 86 were B's. About 55 were F-14D's whether D or D®. Just looking at the math it's easy to see the A was the most pervasive model in the fleet. There were only 3 deployable squadrons of F-14D's, and due to the limited number of aircraft they actually rolled one back to B's. Looking at the D's I'm guessing somewhere in the 3-5 range. All others would have been A's.... Besides you can't be Tom Cruise in a B and kill Goose. "As the F-14D was produced in such limited numbers, new builds only numbering 37 while 18 F-14A's were converted to F-14D's (known as F-14D®), there have been problems keeping the three deployable squadrons, the RAG and the various test units (VX-9, PMTC) up to strength. Thus in mid 1996 it was decided that VF-11 would convert back to the F-14B and shift to join VF-143 as part of CVW-7. VF-11 has now completed this process and is active at NAS Oceana with F-14B's (in the process becoming the only F-14 squadron to have operated all 3 variants of the Tomcat), its first cruise as part of CVW-7 is scheduled for 1998, assuming present plans remain unchanged."

I've used mine on the ports of my Z77 MPOWER motherboard (http://us.msi.com/product/mb/Z77_MPOWER.html#hero-overview) and plugged into a USB 3 hub plugged into one of the USB 3 ports and never had a problem. The only way in which I may be weird is I do not have TARGET installed. No crashes, no problems though. On Windows 8.1 64-bit.

Awesome! Thank you for the news. Can't wait for the update to hit us!

So you have a 4k 58" TV. I have a 4k 28" monitor. You don't think that maybe there might be a difference in what each of us can see? And I am not saying no one plays with a TV, but do you honestly think that is the more common scenario? I could probably bring my PC downstairs hook it up to the larger lower res TV and see lots of things I can't normally see on my monitor as well. It's like your answer to visibility problems is 'buy a 4k TV and attach it to your PC'. That is not reasonable for most people for both cash and space considerations.

A 4k at reasonable sizes for a desk solves nothing. If anything, it's worse. And labels, especially the blue ones, when there are no text accompanied, are probably closer to reality as even they are very hard to see. The red ones are a little more glaring to my eye, so not quite as good/bad.

I gues those perfect clear conditions with no weather werent good enough.

Its an an-26b, not a fighter in those screenshot. Something that many people here who claim to be pilots, air controllers, and whatever say should be visible at 10 miles.

That picture does not seem based in reality. As far as I can find there are just two internal stations, with the outboard one being used primarily for A-G weapons (though admittedly capable of carrying A-A missiles). Where did it come from. Any accompanying text to explain? Doesn't look like enough space for 6 missiles. Maybe 3 if you had a proper ejector rack for two. http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/3168/146hx9.jpg

People just have strong opinions in their mind about what the ultimate experience is. Some people think anything less than a full cockpit isn't enough and diligently (and impressively) work on each individual panel, switch and knob. The thought just makes me tired, not to mention I barely justify the space a weight bench takes up in the house, let alone the space a cockpit would take. It's cool, just too much for me. There is nothing wrong with a $25 or $30 Logitech stick to start (or play permanently if that's all you want.) Having (had) bad Saitek controllers I can't get to work reliably, and considering the money they charge for this 'mid-range' junk I steer people to the high end if they're serious about getting a HOTAS. I have a Warthog and though it was expensive I cannot deny now that it is worth every cent. Compared to a $200+ Saitek none of the axis jump or jitter or have noticeable slop that requires dead zones to cancel out. Not to mention the stick on the throttle doesn't drift to the right for no reason, unplugging the controller doesn't bluescreen windows, etc. I have an appreciation for the fact that this stick and throttle just works, which is apparently something that's tough for Saitek to get right at the almost $200 price point. I'm probably going to look at Crosswind pedals in a few months as the Saitek combat pro pedals, after opening them up, have depressed me that this cost near $200 for a bunch of crappy plastic and a circuit board with metal pedals. I'd have preferred some of the parts inside were made of metal. My point is: for an extra $300-$350 up front I could have not wasted almost $400 on Saitek junk that has provided at least as much frustration (particularly the x52 pro) as utility. Since there isn't an overwhelmingly huge range of HOTAS's and I steer people as far away from Saitek as I can based off my experiences it pretty much leaves me suggesting the high end. You can call that snobbish, or forceful, but in my mind I am trying to save people money when they become frustrated and start looking beyond the mid-range. I cringe every time I hear someone say they just bought a Saitek controller.

I want to be this guy when I grow up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWD7UV78MpM

Ya, I found the detent mod for these and opening them is simple. I could see the problem just pulling out the screws and the bottom cover. The large piece of plastic is flimsy and doesn't fit well to the shaft it turns. I an push it and watch nothing else turn. When centered and pushed the other way it turns the shaft immediately. Basically crap plastic parts that were either manufactured imprecisely or that have worn down over time due to normal use. If I wanted to mess with it I could probably get a tighter fit; instead I'll probably look at crosswind pedals in a few months and be done with Saitek products for good. They're just plain lousy. I hated my X52 Pro for all the weird crap it did both due to poor drivers (why unplugging a USB device should ever bluescreen windows...) and manufacturing (thumb stick drifting by itself, etc.). For now they're workable. No good, but workable.

I would guess not. The F-14 never used harms. I think it was something like they began looking into it and that was it.

I noticed my Saitek PRO Flight Combat Rudder Pedal break pedals wouldn't always return to 0 if I didn't either pull up on the pedals or forcefully push them down so they spring back. On closer inspection I saw there were adjustable 40, 55, and 70 positions you could place the pedals in. They came in the 40 position by default, but after playing around a bit in the 55 position I can no longer make them stay out of zero when no pressing them. I think what was happening is that, because the pedals are metal and so heavy the springs can't force them all the way into the up position when the weight is extended to far out and over the pedal. Bringing it closer in allows for better behavior. Even though it is a little less comfortable for my feet overall it has the nice side effect as well that the pedals no longer bump up against my desks modesty panel without placing a spacer board between it and the pedals. The only aggravating thing left in these pedals is the actual rudder axis. It seems if I push them left they will snap back to center, but if I push right they are mushy and don't always return to center. Has anyone else experienced this and found a way to improve it? Playing with the tension hasn't done anything to improve it, whether all the way out or all the way in. I don't know what else to try and I'm not anxious to pull them apart unless there is an easy fix/improvement someone knows of.

Also, make sure the patriot radar (and possibly launchers; not sure if even they can rotate) is facing the front. The dish has something like a 120 degree arc in the direction it is facing, so you can't be as sloppy about the direction they're facing.

I have been making some updates to the front page and third party sections, but I think they're all in limbo until someone approves them...

Make sure the pitch roll stabilizer is still active. middle green light, center console. Hard maneuvering causes it to disengage. I like to fly rough so i find myself often dealing with this and having to re-engage it. The other point i would make is hold the cyclic somewhere, if its not what uou want let it settle for a moment while you hold the stick position and ease it where you want it slowly. You can easily get into a mode where you end up constantly over compensating, pushing the nose down, then pulling it ip and so on. Let it settle, compensate slowly.

You keep doing it. Max zoom looking at things you know are there, versus scanning at normal zoom looking for targets are two entirely different things. Are you just trolling everyone on this thread?

It seems like that freedom would be desired in a dog fight where you're trying to keep eyes on a bandit. Being locked into a confined position would seem unhelpful. But then I know nothing, so there may be huge advantages to be confined.

The maxfps setting is actually interesting. Even though 3d renedering is off and the game paused it was showing 120+ fps when I hit ctrl-pause. I wonder if this explains a lot of the heat the system is generating even when it shows pretty much idle. I used your setting and brought it down to 10 (I even tried 1 but the menus were pretty unresponsive). When I unpaused it was burning up time rendering nothing when I unpaused as well. It is much lower now so it will be interesting to see if it changes anything. Thanks for yet another idea\tweak.

After a couple people hopped on last night we were back to rubber banding. Im really at a loss. I hope someone else figures out something as I seem to be looking in all the wrong places.

Out of curiosity have you tried putting the network settings down all the way to ADSL 1024? I have a system running as a server (not as powerful as yours but should still be plenty powerful for our small group (i7-4800MQ, 16GB RAM, 240GB SSD, I217-LM nic, etc.) My weakest link for others for the time being is my 15/5 Mbps internet connection, though even on my LAN where I have a 1Gbps connection to the DCS server, playing solo I often see insane rubber banding. When I move in a month, I intend to get much faster internet service, since the provider (TWC) is in the middle of a DOCSIS 3.0 rollout and bumping speeds for their highest tier up to 300/20Mbps for not all too insane prices. I don't think I get to start out that way, but hopefully before long they'll bump it up. That should make the picture for others a little better. It's not a large group so I don't expect we need bandwidth on the order of larger squadrons for the time being. 20 up should be fine for the near future. But again to be clear when on it myself I have a gigabit Ethernet connection to the server so I don't really expect lag, but I can see huge amounts of rubber banding. I went to 2048 down from LAN for awhile and things got better, but turning it down to 1024 made it even better, almost to the point where the lag doesn't exist ever. I haven't been at this setting long, but the results are encouraging. Tonight when a couple others are on it with me will paint a better picture though. I have messed with Process Lasso to ensure DCS was running high priority and on two separate cores, but none of that made a real difference, so I've stopped doing it. I haven't broken out wireshark or anything to see what crazy stuff I might see, but I do use dd-wrt on my wireless router and I have noted that the WAN interface traffic isn't getting out of the Kbps when I'm testing solo and having horrible lag, so I don't think I'm hitting a bandwidth issue. Other things I have done are disable IPv6, remove ISATAP interfaces, remove stupid shims/drivers Intel drivers like to install (go in the Device Manager, View>Show Hidden Devices, look under Network Adapters), and the like. Why I need a kernel debugging driver I don't know - thanks Intel. Anyway, basically make the network stack as clean and concise as possible. I don't know that any of it has made a lick of difference, but can't hurt.

Yes it does. Amazing how not so long ago our wheels could be connected by a line and we were happy.