ShuRugal

The beam on the missile is just as tightly focused (if not more so, it doesn't need a search function, after all) as the fighter. Neither the fighter nor the missile produces a collimated beam of radar energy, so they are both subject to the inverse square law, and once the round-trip is factored in, that means that the return signal drops of proportionally to the fourth power of distance, regardless of what type of radar the signal originates from. No, the point of having a large dish is to capture as much of the signal as possible, since the signal spreads out as it goes through space. Irrelevant, as neither the missile nor the fighter projects a collimated beam. See above. This much is correct, my numbers do ignore differences in dish size, which will allow a greater area of signal capture to the fighter than the missile. I don't know off the top of my head how much the signal gain improves with dish diameter (and that shit is too closely related to my day job to want to do in my off time), but it would offset the range-related gains somewhat. However, even if my numbers are off by an order of magnitude, at a 40/10km range comparison, the missile still comes out seeing 1.7x the energy as the parent aircraft.

make up your mind, does the weapon have a low PK, or does no one, including the RUAF, have any idea what the PK is?

the strength of the radar return signal, as seen by the missile or aircraft, drops off with the fourth power of distance. This means that if you are 40km from your target, and your ARH missile is 20km from your target, the missile is seeing 16x the return signal as the aircraft. This means that a missile at 20km with a 1kW radar would see the same picture as a 15kW fighter radar at 40km. At 10km, our hypothetical 1kW missile has 256x advantage in returned signal strength than our plane at 40km. This means that our 1kW ARH sees 17x the radar return energy as our 15kW plane. The advantage stacks up fast as that missile closes.

Do you? look at the timestamps, his post came through at the same time you posted your edit, which means when he was typing his reply, you had not yet posted your edit.

If the missile follows a proper loft trajectory, it shouldn't. The further off-axis the missile is from the launching aircraft, the greater its line-of-sight will diverge from the launching aircraft, thus the less it will be able to see the ground-return of the radar. IE: We can see here, that as long as the missile is not directly between the launching aircraft and the target, when the missile looks at the target, it cannot see the ground-reflection of the radar beam. However, current missile behavior in DCS appears to be such that the game is acting like the radar source is the missile, SARH missiles are effected by ground return interference even though they cannot see the ground return. Chaff would be subject to a similar problem at close range (under 10 km): The radar beam is so narrow that it would not illuminate the chaff while in a flanking aspect. However, radar missiles are still decoyed by chaff in DCS, even when that chaff should not be reflecting any radar energy, because none should be striking it.

I just had a thought that it would be nice to have the option in the main menu to reinitialize inputs. I occasionally have problems where one of my devices will not be detected by DCS on startup, which requires me to exit and restart the program. If it were possible to have a button in the input options menu to force the game to re-scan input devices, this would be a nice time-saving feature.

in the initial 1.5 release, all missiles were ignoring all countermeasures. the last patch restored the previous status-quo.

I don't know the exact scan height of the N001 in degrees, but it has a vertical FOV approximately equal to what you can see through the HUD. If you look at the HUD scale for the radar vertical setting, you will notice that there are two bars sticking out the right of the scale, which move vertically as you pitch up and down: these bars represent the vertical FOV of the HUD in relation to the horizon. The short vertical bar to the left of the scan elevation number represents the vertical FOV of the radar scan zone. You will notice that these are approximately the same height, and it is because the radar scan zone and the HUD are the same vertical height, as viewed from the pilot's seat. At a range of 10km, the scan zone is less than 1km high (you will notice that the bar moves more than its own height between each number of vertical displacement when range is set to 10km). Thus your experience that targets separated by 1km altitude are not simultaneously visible at 10km or less is exactly correct: The radar scan zone is not high enough to see them both at the same time in a horizontal plane.

Ordinarily, I would say land without speedbrake: do what Rongor said and look up the correct approach profile for your chosen bird, and fly it. However, I just made a landing which required the use of my brakes: Over the final-turn point at 13km altitude, diving down into the glideslope at ~60 degrees. kept throttle on idle and used speedbrake the whole way. Final touchdown speed (SU-27) was ~280 kph, sink rate <1m/s. However, this was a severely non-standard approach and would probably get your wings taken away if attempted IRL outside the environment of a planned demo at an airshow. My speed over the inner marker was 500 kph, and i didn't extend gear and flaps until i crossed the beacon because i was too hot (i know damage is not modeled yet, but i don't want to form bad habits for when it is). For standard landing approaches? don't fool with the brakes, just fly your approach with enough precision and forethought that you don't need them.

Had to use chute, nothing Else

the upgrade is not free, and AFAIK ED has stopped selling upgrade keys.

A note on landing at heavy loadings: I have been practicing low-angle takeoffs (maintain <10m to runway threshold) and found that the aircraft begins to make usable lift at ~330 KPH IAS with a nose-up and of 8 degrees. for landing a heavy bird, I believe that a final flare angle of 10 degrees, 300 KPH IAS, and somewhere around 80-85% RPM would produce a finely-selectable sink rate at high weights. EDIT: yup, 300 IAS @ 10deg above horizon resulted in a touchdown with 3m/s sink, tires intact, fuel state ~8500kg Probably could have upped IAS to 320-340 and got the sink rate a little gentler, but this worked. Tacview-20151019-171950-DCS.txt.zip

I think your first picture actually looks more realistic: IRL you never see solid black shadows outside (and only rarely inside) because ambient scatter, both atmospheric and from other surfaces, provides enough lighting to tint the shadow a different shade.

Well, the -21bis is definitely unsuited for such an environment, especially in the absence of AWACS or GCI. However, there's no reason a model with a modern sensor suite and weapons loadout could not be competetive: The range is adequate for the current map size, and the airframe itself is an excellent boom-and-zoom platform. The problem with using the -21bis online is that the aircraft selection from that era is very small, and is currently nowhere near as popular as FC-3, so it's nearly impossible to find a server running suitable missions which is populated with other players. fair enough.

I know this has been batted around by fans before, but can't seem to find much from LN about it... Are there any plans to produce one of the upgraded radar/avionics packages for the 21? The airframe itself is fun to fly, but employing it online is pure misery with the sensors currently installed.

Donno if anyone else is experiencing this, but the fuel meter and status lamps are inoperative for me in the MiG-29S. Loving the new cockpit, though, great work!

what needs to happen is that the client autodetects the available bandwidth and adjusts itself correctly. Good information, I hope ED gets on that dedicated server soon... As an intermediate solution, would setting the monitor configuration script to have no main viewport reduce the load?

similar crash, logfile contains "WARNING DX11BACKEND: setTechnique() must be non zero" before dumps. Logs.rar

well, that stops -me- rubberbanding, doesn't help much with other clients....

I've experienced somewhat higher levels of lag-related issues since 1.5 beta rolled out, but the server i was just on absolutely takes the cake.... check out this tacview, shot on the TAW server. everyone is warping around at mach 150-200+.... lag-tacular.rar

To set up for a good zoom climb, I do the following: 1: Climb to 7km on MIL power, adjusting pitch to maintain mach 0.9 (afterburner is too inefficient below this altitude in DCS) 2: level out and accelerate via afterburner to mach 1.3-1.5 3: gently lift the nose to 5 degrees and climb to 12km. Your rate of climb with this speed/pitch should be 40-50 m/s, and you should still be accelerating slightly, or at least maintaining TAS. 4: level out and accelerate until fuel state is ~800 kg, or mach 2.5 is achieved, whichever occurs first 5: pull back at a steady 3G (watch you AoA/G-force indicator) until you are nose up @ 55 degrees. This will put you into a zoom climb that will get you to a minimum of 25km, depending on how steady your hand is on the stick. One mistake many people make is to try and jerk the nose up. While this works fine at sea level, at high altitude the air is too thin to maneuver sharply, and all you end up doing is aerobraking. it is important to keep your AoA well below stall threshold at all times during a zoom climb.

Yes, my point is rather that why is it taking two years to do all this? The bird was nearly complete when it was released to beta, baring the ironing out of a few minor kinks. The heavy lifting, as it were, has been done with, and it was supposed to just be spit and polish remaining. There was an english cockpit two years ago. Devrim did it in his spare time, free of charge.

This might be a silly question, but how can this module possibly still be in "Beta" status after over two years? I purchased this module shortly after it was released, in part to have a new Russian helicopter to play with, and also to support a developer of helicopter modules for DCS:W. After two years of "Beta" status on the MI-8, however, I have to ask where has my $50 gone? I know I am not the only person who purchased this product, but were sales so small that they were insufficient to fund completion of the module? Just curious to know if BST is planning to ever finish this module....

Liked the new vapour trails, and the -21 is always pretty to look at.