PFunk1606688187

I think nobody thought this was possible though. The rebels most likely don't have the capability and until now nobody thought Russia was dumb/reckless/neglectful enough to allow one of their batteries to make this mistake. I mean if anybody thought this was a real danger the airspace would have been closed. Businesses might like to cut corners but risking an entire aircraft for a little fuel economy is not a rational choice any corporation is going to make, not given the costs. This is an entire continent of air traffic that ignored this danger, its beyond finding someone to blame for being reckless. I think its absurd for people to start acting like the biggest issue here is anything other than somebody shot down a civilian airliner. There is a component of this discussion that should address that but too much weight is put on it. Ironically I'd say its safer to fly over Ukraine now than yesterday, even though now everybody is avoiding it like the plague.

I think its funny that people are talking about this like the Malaysian aircraft was the only one there, like everyone knew it was bad but them, as if its some isolated case of criminal neglect. Lots of aircraft were using this route, its just dumb luck it was them that got shot down. It could just as easily have been a Lufthansa aircraft or something instead. Does anyone know a site like Flightaware that has better coverage for European and Asian flights? It doesn't show the flight history for that part of the world like it does for NA.

How does a Boeing 777 provoke a SAM system? By turning the weather radar on?

Well then there really isn't much left to discuss, unless we want to start making grotesque analyses of what happens to people when they get hit by Buk missiles.

CAS is an insanely complex battlefield mission that you can't even get half of the real complexity through interacting with AI.

To complement this great point I would say that the single most important thing for being prepared for having a more knowledgeable partner teach you is having your control scheme totally prepared and memorized. Any time I've tried to teach someone to use the A-10C I had to make sure he had his controls mapped, all his hotas commands understood, so that when I told him I was broadcasting SPI the things I needed him to do were instructions based on HOTAS commands with explanation of what it meant in the context. Basically if you don't know what the basic HOTAS commands are or don't have them mapped by memory to your stick then you won't learn anything, you'll just spend the whole time trying to figure out what button he wanted you to press. Being in the pit will then be an exercise in frustration because he won't remember the default key map probably and he can't tell you what you mapped it to on your joystick. Making sure you know your HOTAS commands and have all the other essentials mapped or memorized means you're speaking the same language and things go smoothly that way. At that point it then just becomes context and repetition til proficiency. You don't need to know everything that DMS Up or TMS Left Long does in every context, you just need to know how to do it on command so that your teacher can explain to you. Then as you learn he won't have to say things like "Set your TAD as SOI with Coolie Left Long then use the Slew to put the cursor on my SPI and press TMS Up Short", it'll be instead be him saying "Hook my SPI".

Or you just leave it alone because thats the altimeter setting most aircraft use on landing and the one DCS is giving you is weird. Go to liveatc.com and try to find a single aircraft being instructed to change to QFE for landing. I doubt you'll find many. The standard is QNH. This is an airspace organizational thing. Its used to ensure that the thousands of aircraft in the sky are all operating on the same parameters across much larger areas of airspace than a given altimeter setting might be relevant in, meaning that controllers will tell aircraft to be at a given flight level (they're called flight levels above the transition level) and that deconfliction of several aircraft is automatically achieved with basic heading and altitude instructions. With everyone on different altimeter settings you end up with a confused mess. This has no bearing on DCS. You can easily choose to never change to standard altimeter. The transition level is arbitrary though, and a place like Britain has a lower one for a reason, not the least of which being that there aren't many terrain obstructions at low altitude. Having the transition level at 6000 near the Rockie mountains... well that'd be silly. When you pass 6000. In real aviation commercial pilots actually will often change their altimeters to standard before they cross the transition level because they've been cleared to or above it. It doesn't matter when you cross the exact altitude, it doesn't have to be exact. But if you had to pick an exact moment to do it its when you cross the transition altitude with your altimeter set to QNH, local baro, because thats your only reference point. But 6000 is low, particularly with the mountains in Georgia, so if you're going to respect a transition level try and find out what the real one is. The people I fly with use 10 000.

Thats not QNH. :P I believe thats QFE. QNH will cause your altimeter to read the mean elevation above sea level for the specific pressure zone you're in, which can possibly be varied I believe if you're in different parts of a map under dynamic weather. This means that a correct QNH setting will cause your altimeter to read the elevation of the runway at touchdown as indicated in the charts, not 0. Its a real pain that there's no way to get QNH from DCS other than through observing what setting gives your known elevation on the ground.

As far as I know it gives you something other than QNH though.

From PeterP's head position mod: Its worth noting also that you can save any of the snap views, not just the default one. RAlt+Num# should do it, if I recall correctly. Changing to snap view mode, ie. locking the view to the specific snap view, is activated by pressing RCtrl+Num0. You then press any Snap View button to lock to it. You also need to select an option in the options menu called something like "allow user saved snap views" or something.

The four digits on the altimeter dial that you alter represent barometric pressure in Inches of Mercury. Standard baro pressure is 29.92, which is what you set above the transition level at an arbitrary altitude in any piece of airpspace on the planet (so everyone is on the same altitmeter setting at very high elevations regardless of what it is locally). Transition level throughout all of the US and Canada is 18000 feet for instance, but its much much lower in Britain, like 3000 or 6000 I think. Below that level its almost always prudent to set your altimeter to read actual elevation adjusted for sea level. This is called QNH. The only real reason to make baro pressure read 0 feet at airfield elevation is for doing circuits. So if you want (and I would think its pretty much a smart thing to do) to set your altimeter to read actual elevation set it while on the ground so that the altimeter reads the elevation of the threshold you're taking off from. Of course using transition levels in DCS is an arbitrary thing most people wouldn't bother with, but why anyone would want to fly around at with your altimeter wrong everywhere but over a particular runway is beyond me.

Its generally used at low dive angles. Optimal slant range is generally between .5 and 2 nm depending on your application. There's no reason you can't do a high angle dive with it but thats not the bread and butter tactic for the GAU. High dive angles would create a much greater risk of pressing too far and increasing the danger of failing to recover the dive before impacting the ground, or at least bringing you dangerously low in doing it. A higher dive angle would make the dispersion effect more focused though owing to the flashlight effect being less stretched across the ground than at a flatter dive angle so you could probably get away with firing from further away. I try to make it a rule to not deploy speed brakes during an attack run. Your aim is to maintain as much speed as possible for the escape. Idle throttle is fine though and I usually go idle or stand the throttles up depending on the kind of attack. In a very shallow dive I probably won't chop them at all. Last thing I want to do though is forget to stow speed brakes during a SEM and bleed off even more energy at 4Gs. This pig doesn't like to keep energy soon as you put some Gs through the frame so don't give it anymore help. Are these free fall bombs or the LGB training bomb you're referring to? How are you selecting the weapons profile? If you select the profile by pressing the OSB next to the given bomb on the DSMS main page you will not select any modified profiles you've created. This could lead to you releasing bombs in a way you do not expect. Its hard to know though without knowing more about how you're intending on releasing these stores. I don't think so. Your only recourse would be to set SPI on the point you want to aim at, Step and fire at another target, then snap to that old SPI. Generally I just aim and fire in sequence. No reason to complicate things. If there's a SPI to engage it was created well before I started my run.

If that appeared in a patch note surreptitiously I'd start giggling like a school girl.

Stand off at distance, not within weapons range, and you should find it easier to scan. The TGP has a readout of the MGRS grid you're looking at. If you had a proper map you could correlate this to what you're seeing on the TGP but I know of no high quality map available of DCS' Georgia that would match the kind of map real pilots would have available. The practical reality is that the Targeting Pod is not a search pod, its for targeting. This roughly means you know at least what vague area your target is in. Its not used for general target discovery because that'd violate all kinds of smart pilot stuff like not having your head stuck in the cockpit for 20 minutes twiddling some slew hat vainly hoping to find stuff. This is different if you know there are targets in a much more specific area, but if you don't know where they are to within say a couple hundred meters its like staring through a soda straw at 8000 feet. The simplest method is just to use your eyes, spot what looks suspicious, use the HUD to put a SPI/Mark point right on top of it. Of course you could attack it without using the targeting pod. If you can't spot targets and figure out how to kill them without using a targeting pod you're using that TGP far too much like a crutch. TGP is nice, but only one of many tools. Don't put it on a pedestal. Of course the TGP would be a lot simpler to use if we had the HMD. Then it'd be almost like cheating. Another thing. Our TGP has crummy fake FLIR that hardly creates the kind of contrast you'd expect in many situations. That hinders it usefulness overall. You could of course try to tweak gain to see if you can make it a bit better. This can help for finding targets sometimes, particularly at night. I dunno about anyone else, but I try to run away before thats an issue.

Its on the outboard side of the throttle so you can't see it to click it, therefore it must be bound to a key or joybutton.

The formal list will say "do this" and when you go watch a real pilot do it you'll probably wonder why he's ignoring the carefully edited list. The on call Sandies (CSAR) A-10s in Kosovo would "hot cock" their birds with all switches thrown so they only had to turn battery and engines on to be ready to go. Suffice to say that was probably not part of the vanilla procedures.

A-10 was designed to operate out of undeveloped air fields. Pretty sure its rated for at least some kind of dirtball. Nevertheless the reason it gets stuck has nothing to do with reality but the game engine being silly.

http://www.476vfightergroup.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=29 This comprehensive checklist based on real world documents has all the non-normal and emergency procedures included. This includes single engine restarts under all conditions. It also omits a lot of utterly pointless stuff that you wouldn't even pretend works in DCS. In an order mostly reflective of the order you asked them, with a few skipped our out of order, here are my best answers to your questions: Non paved terrain in DCS is like tar. The only way off of it without rotary wing assist is if you never lose momentum. If you find you're going to end up on the grass push full power to keep your speed up. Once you're on it and stationary you're not getting off. UHF radio is the only radio that is powered by the Battery and Inverter, the other two require an engine driven generator to energize them. You would use the UHF radio to request start up clearance. Set means you've set the frequency for radio check. In practical terms this also means your UHF radio will still work if you lose both engines in flight while waiting for APU to spool up. Emergency Disconnect level is the big looking paddle on the reverse side of the stick that overlaps the pinkie button area. You can set this control in the HOTAS menu and there is no way to activate this control with your mouse. Speed brake switch is spring loaded to the centre position I believe. Releasing either forward or back snaps it automatically to the hold position. I don't remember how the speed brake test works, but I think part of it involves the MRFCS panel. 476 checklist does include this check I believe, though I never do it. I never do oxygen checks. This test is largely fluff in DCS. Environmental systems are not modeled beyond having the green oxygen lever on to prevent hypoxia I believe, though I've never experienced it owing to never having forgotten to have my oxygen on. Never touched HARS myself in a start up, as far as I know its automatically on until you engage EGI. There are some settings for the magnetic declination I believe for the region you fly in, but again its pretty much not needed. I'm not sure how robust its simulation is either if you were to try to use it to its full extent. The controls are aft of your ILS on the right console. 7. None of these things are modeled as far as I'm aware. Air refueling door is on the outside and I imagine that is one of the checks the Crew Chief does. The handle is on the left front console, looks kind of like a tongue. Its on the inboard side of the same panel that has your engine fuel system controls. The light to indicate the door is open is on the right side of the HUD. TCN and ILS can be turned on at your discretion but usually no longer than needed for a purpose and not before configuring for take off I believe except for preflight testing. TCN could be needed for flying a documented departure procedure using DME and bearing indications on your HSI. ILS wouldn't be needed except on a landing, but I believe a robust safety procedure would be to set the local ILS ahead of time sot hat if you do you have an in flight emergency you would have it ready to go and not need to mess with it while fighting an engine issue or something similar. Pitot heat tube test would again likely be something the Crew Chief checks. There is no indicator inside the aircraft for it being on or off other than the switch itself. Stat page tends to not have any meaningful function to us during start up. You can ignore it except perhaps when diagnosing problems. IFF is also not functional in DCS. HARS should be on automatically when you activate several systems. CICU should be turned on early. Delaying it this long makes no sense. Never done a CMSP bit. Never had to, though once or twice I've had issues with my pods being detected by them. Can't be sure if that was from a bug or from random failures. Again, ignore HARS. SAS could be disengaged because you pressed the Emergency Disconnect Lever after previously activating it. You set altimeter to local baro pressure. ATC in DCS gives a setting nobody would use normally. You want the pressure setting to make your altimeter read actual MSL elevation. You can most easily accomplish this by setting it at the threshold of the runway you're taking off from. DCS includes documents that cite runway information that includes this. As far as I understand it there is not necessarily a set in stone SOP for exterior lighting and it varies from squadron to squadron or by airfield. Setting the pinkie switch on the throttle determines one of three modes for exterior lighting. The aft most position should set lights to "panel" setting, this means all switches in the cockpit will set it rather than the other 2 preset modes of either all off or with nav lights steady and formation lights at I think 40%. The procedure the 476 uses is nav lights to flash as soon as you power on the battery. Taxi light on when taxiing. Configuration for runway entry is nav lights to steady, anti-collision strobe to on, Landing Lights on. If night time set formation lights as needed. Other exterior lights as needed, for instance you might turn the nose illum or the nacelle lights on for greater conspicuity at night and I believe they use it in real life to aide the boom operator during night AARs. However, lighting can be done how you want it unless you're pretending you're entering FAA airspace or something at which point you might be able to find some document to aide you in figuring out what to use. For a comprehensive and thorough but not terribly fluffy start up you can watch this video. It shows the most formal way of interpreting the 476th checklist. In practice though most people don't do half of it, I think Eddie was just showing off the fullest extent of it for the video, though he is a lot faster with things than I am. In real life though start up would be even shorter owing to Mission Data Cartridge setting up a lot of the things he messes with. Notice also how a lot of the things you ask about he will plainly ignore. I dont' think he even thinks about HARS in that video. I hope you can interpret which questions I was answering btw. :P

As far as I know DCS doesn't have FLIR, it just imitates it using a contrast filter or something.

Its in the -34, non nuclear delivery, for the A-10A. Its on Scribd I believe. Full document designation is in the picture. Lots of cool info in there, a lot of it clearly out of date, but lots principles that hold true.

I suspected PAC-1b wasn't implemented as my own recollections of trying to adjust the pipper while depressing the first stage trigger exhibited jump-back to the original aim point.

This is from the old A manual but its hard to imagine the capability is degraded in the C. I'd have to do some focused testing to verify how much of the above would be relevant to our DCS product however.

Tank gate does balance fuel systems but without the aide of boost pumps and works in level flight only when fuel is above 1300 pounds in a given tank. It is also affected greatly by aircraft attitude. In the real world C model -1 one, at the end of the somewhat lengthy non-normal procedure for LEFT/RIGHT TANKS UNEQUAL. there is this note: NOTE Conditions permitting, the tank gate switch may be used; however, the fuel imbalance must be closely monitored. and this: WARNING If the tank gate switch has been activated, do not hot refuel until it can be verified by ground test that the tank gate valve is closed. Hot Re-fueling Job Guide provides ground crew/pilot verification procedures. Seems as though Tank Gate isn't the preferred method for solving fuel CG balance issues and is more there in case the boost pumps totally fail. Relying on a steady automatic system also seems more prudent than relying on something which can get away from the pilot and create dangerous CGs if he isn't paying attention.

Only time I've ever had issues with controllability are when I've lost chunks of my lifting surfaces. Departures have never left me doubting recovery except maybe in a glide at 100 agl. From what I understand the A-10 doesn't like stalling and likes to come out of it naturally on its own.

If you want to put the stick between your legs like in the real plane the narrow pedals would almost definitely make this a no go.