Fishbreath

Huh. I'm not sure what to say there—if I have some time over the next few days, I'll play with it. You shouldn't need to turn off the bank channel.

Altitude hold is controlled by the collective brake. In the real helicopter, holding in the collective brake lever (turning the brake off) allows you to move the collective. Releasing the collective brake lever engages the brake, locking the collective control at the current setting, and sets the autopilot's hold altitude to the current altitude. Last I checked in DCS, the autopilot still applies its control authority to the collective when the collective brake lever is held in—so you're 20% down on available collective travel when altitude hold is engaged. You have three options: 1. Bind collective brake to a key, and hold it in while changing altitude. Because of the issue described in the paragraph above, this is functionally identical to... 2. Bind collective brake to a key, and tap it to set a new altitude when you want to change altitude. This also robs you of 20% of your collective travel, since you're fighting the autopilot—it's trying to hold the previous altitude. 3. Turn off the altitude channel while you're changing altitude, and re-engage it at your desired altitude. This gives you full climb performance, since the autopilot has no collective authority when the altitude channel is disengaged.

One way of doing things: 1. Note bearing from waypoint x to waypoint x+1 in briefing. 2. Note range/bearing from a designated RSBN station to waypoint x+1. 3. When you reach waypoint x, turn to the noted bearing. 4. Fly that bearing until your range/bearing from the designated RSBN station matches the noted range/bearing. That's the easiest way, and provides an easy way of correcting any error you accumulate along the way: just fly along the radial until you hit the correct range. You can also note the bearing to a given point on the map from two RSBN stations (or two NDB stations (I forget what they're called in Russian, exactly <.<), or a combination thereof), and fly until you match those bearings. That's a little harder, because it requires tuning back and forth between two stations, and the data you need to correct error is on both of them. (Fly along the first radial you match, then watch for the second bearing to line up.)

Sure thing—there's so much to know about the MiG, it's hard to keep track of it all even if you've read the manual a dozen times, and there are so many things that make me say, "That can't possibly be how it is for real!" It does seem like it's not a lot of safety margin, but the MiG's landing gear seem to be relatively unforgiving anyway, compared to heavier fighters like the Flanker and the Eagle. I guess it's just down to priorities in the design.

The MiG-21's tires are rated to a maximum of 370kmh. (First result in the manual, searching for 'tires'.) You should be off the ground by 350kmh, even overloaded. There's much more to tire wear than size. If the MiG's tires are thin-walled (as you might want on an interceptor if you're trying to shave weight wherever possible), the simple heating from rolling friction could be enough to pop them. The Su-25T and F-15 are bad examples; both have much more modern tires, I'd expect. The F-104's typical landing speed was about 315kmh, but flapless landings (a reasonable emergency case) could happen at up to 450kmh, so it makes sense that its tires would be able to take that. A light, empty, flapless MiG-21 lands at about 350kmh, IIRC.

As the couple of posts after mine said, it doesn't seem to be possible.

I can't promise it'll be this week, but in the not-too-distant future, I'll try have a look at your mission file and see how easy it is to translate into lua.

Pressing the button isn't instant 100% brakes--it ramps up. You can modulate it to get a certain amount of braking less than 100%.

The pilot's operating instructions for the real MiG-21bis instruct pilots to maintain 870kmh TAS for best climb performance to 10,000 meters. It struck me as odd, too, but I'm not one to quibble with the manuals. Edit: see this thread for exhaustive discussion.

The standard climb profile is: 1. Take off at afterburner 2. At 600kmh, go to military power. 3. Climb to 1000 meters while accelerating to 870kmh on the true airspeed indicator. 4. Climb to 10000 meters maintaining an indicated airspeed of 870kmh. I've never timed it, but following that profile gets you up high very quickly.

Space constraints, maybe? There's not a lot of forward surface area in the MiG. Alternately, it might just have been poor Soviet electrics—did other radars from the late 60s/early 70s have distance measuring capability down to close-in gunnery range?

I think that's reasonable. The only A-G loadout I could see the MiG carrying at 10,000-plus meters is a nuc, and I don't get the sense that mission planners would budget return fuel for a high-altitude MiG-21 nuclear bombing run. :P

When you switch between AUTO and MAN modes for the gun, you have to change the wingspan setting. Automatic mode uses the scale printed on the knob, and manual mode uses the scale in the window.

Yes, the engine sounds got some love in a recent patch.

Which is more realistic: 1. Aircraft continuing to taxi, because these are military airfields, and there's *would* be at least one bulldozer on hand to clear off a blocked taxiway, even if that reality isn't currently simulated, 2. A long line of AI planes waiting to take off because they're not smart enough to taxi around, and the game doesn't let them taxi through?

I've never had any issues using it to shoot at bombers, at least. I find that it takes long enough for the sight to settle that I can only rarely line up a shot on a fighter steady enough for the sight to be accurate.

Huh. That's odd. I'll try on a Phantom later tonight.

The lead computation worked fine for me just now, both in manual mode (with manual ranging/bracketing of the target, like the P-51 sight) and automatic mode (at 300m). Remember, for wingspan, in automatic mode, you use the scale printed on the knob, and in manual mode, you use the scale in the window. I've never been able to get radar ranging information to the gunsight, though. If the sight can indeed do that, awesome—I'd been under the impression that it couldn't, too.

That's not been my experience at all--there's the nozzle power switch on the right vertical panel with the rest of the systems power switches, but the LV33 switch doesn't seem to cause a loss in power to me. It just prevents entry into afterburner, as far as I can tell.

I have the Engine Nozzle Control Switch bound to an easy-to-reach key, to kind of fake having a detent. It makes it much easier to use military power without accidentally getting into a reheat mode.

With 100% thrust, it's certainly plausible that a parachute placed directly behind the engine could pull the plane backward. (Thrust reversers operate on exactly the same principle, and they work well enough.) It's less plausible that the parachute would stay attached, but I don't think the forum has ever reached a consensus on that.

Everything Yurgon said is correct, but there's one additional caveat. If you're in a hover, you can turn off the heading hold autopilot channel and turn freely with the pedals. Once you're on the heading you want to be, you can turn heading hold back on, and the autopilot will hold the new, desired heading. This is 'cowboy doctrine', as it were; you aren't supposed to turn off any autopilot channel but altitude hold. That said, it's always worked well enough for me.

IIRC the reason we have the MiG-21 we have is that both groups who worked on it (originally Beczl, eventually Leatherneck) had better access to information about Polyot than Lazur. That said, the GCI version would be nifty to have, too.

Don't we have the version of the MiG-21bis which has the ILS instead of the datalink?

If you're using the ramp start option, the landing/taxi lights are on to start. The switch is in the front left corner of the cockpit near the gear handle, if I'm not mistaken.