WHOGX5

I don't know about the USAF, but the Swedish Air Force had turnaround times of about 10 minutes for complete refueling and rearming of a combat aircraft while in a forest somewhere, with 6 ground crew. I'd imagine the USAF would get somewhere close to that during an actual full scale war at a fully equipped airbase.

When it comes to utility helicopters there really isn't a better choice than the HH-60G. It's old enough to have available documentation and it's new enough to be extremely capable. It is all-weather capable with GPS/INS, forward looking infrared and weather radar. Sling loading, hoisting, aerial refueling, etc; it can do all that stuff. It's even capable of shipborne ops with folding rotorblades. It can perform any roll from transport to CSAR and spec ops insertion. I dare anyone to find a helicopter variant that is more or equally capable with the same amount of available documentation and access to SMEs.

Don't think so. But as far as I know, in real life pilots never land with night vision goggles. You always flip them up and do a regular ILS landing instead.

This. While other pilots can give and receive bullseye calls left and right, us viper pilots have to do some form of eyeballed trigonometry to figure out a very rough area where something might be. Either that, or interrupt AWACS with a "Hey...., Magic...., could we get uhh, a BRA for that last bulls call?"

The F-14 is a decent SCAR/FAC(A) platform, but I wouldn't call it "very good". It has antiquated link functionality, different functions in different cockpits reducing the ability to share the workload between pilot and WSO and antiquated avionics giving poorer situational awareness in general. That's the strengths of aircraft like the F-15E, F-16D and F/A-18D/F, that pilots and WSO's can share workloads and they also have advanced avionics and datalink functionality giving them amazing SA which increases their ability to coordinate. I can teach my children to ride a bicycle through a discord stream too. It's still not as effective as being there. If I'm actually in the cockpit myself, I can look at information I need to look at when I need to look at it in order to help the trainee, rather than telling him to "look at that thing. no, not that thing. below that, yeah. zoom in a little. yeah, thanks", then he looks back and he's flying through a forest somewhere. They're not completely different.

I can only speak for myself and those that I fly with, but the F-16D would increase our combat capability a lot. It would give us the perfect platform for SCAR, FAC(A), mission commander, etc. Those roles could also be performed by platforms like the F-15E or the F/A-18D/F but we don't have those in DCS unfortunately. And as I mentioned previously, our efficiency in training new pilots would increase by magnitudes. Trying to teach someone something advanced and avionics heavy is a PITA at the moment as we either have to do it as their wingman or via a stream of some sort. Neither is nearly as efficient as actually being there in the pit.

Unable to watch the track at the moment, but I've noticed two things that mess with D/L Having units with A-A TACAN set to 1-36 or 64-99. It seems like being on red team degrades your D/L even if you have an E-3 on your side. So see if any of these apply to your situation and see if changing them fixes things.

On a related note to this topic: Would it be possible to save even more space by having the base textures set in a common folder as in @Megalax's example and then create some sort of decal layer with transparency for the names for each individual aircraft?

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There is literally no reason to use the F-16 in BFM at the moment. The Viper was made to fight at high speeds and high G's. If you try to do that in DCS you'll black out instantly so I don't even bother. I'll wait for however many years it takes for ED to update the G-LOC until I touch BFM again in the Viper. After that, we can start talking about aircraft performance.

Where is the seam located? Each map has some defined limits that are technically outside the map but can still be flown over so if it's north of Adana or something like that it'd make sense for a seam to be there.

My statement about the NS430 was meant as a bit of satire in line with how people on this forum usually responds to requests like this. I couldn't care less if someone wants to put a crappy civilian GPS into an aircraft that already has an integrated military GPS/INS system. Like, why would you even want that? And there are some features in the roadmap which are a part of tape M5.1, like the JSOWs for example. I think the AN/ARC-210 was confirmed as well.

+1000 Like @ebabil said, it would greatly improve our ability to train newer pilots in DCS. Modelling an F-16DM-50 wouldn't require too much work comparatively speaking. A modified external model, added rear cockpit and some slight modification to the flight model. For all the different DCS communities that focus solely on teaching people how to fly rather than fighting competitively it would revolutionize their ability to effectively train new pilots in more complex subjects. Even though I'd be more than willing to pay for it, I think it'd repay itself in increased F-16 sales and the F-16 would become a natural starting place for aspiring virtual pilots coming to DCS. Just imagine the possibility of taking potential DCS customers along for an actual combat mission during a free weekend. That's impossible at the moment as all we have is the F-14 and that requires a competent RIO to be combat effective at all. And sure, you could record a video instead but it's not the same as actually being there in the heat of battle...

Exactly. Did the F-16CM-50 M5-M5.1 at Shaw AFB's 55th FS carry NS430s in their aircraft in 2007? Did they even have it in inventory?

In the HAF -1 under the Have Quick section it says that it takes 30-45 seconds from powering the EGI until satellite acquisition. GPS TOD will be entered automatically when contact has been established with a satellite and it will say GPS SYSTEM instead of just SYSTEM in the DED TIME page. It also says that GPS TOD should be manually updated again when you have a GPS HIGH horizontal accuracy status (alt. <300 ft) or when you have confirmed that your EGI is tracking four satellites at once to make sure your system time is accurate. However, it doesn't specify how to actually update the GPS time. I'll have to see if I can find that somewhere.

+1000 Not only place and pull chocks IMO, but pulling safety pins as well, charging the JFS after a failed start, hot refuels, etc. Maybe even require them to have the ladder mounted on the aircraft to be able to swap between JHMCS and NVGs........

Even though I'd prefer a 2009-2010 HAF F-16D Block 52+ Peace Xenia IV, I think the best option for ED would be to model a 2007 F-16DM-50. All the avionics would be the exact same as in our current F-16CM-50 and the only work that would have to be done is to model the rear cockpit internally (mostly copy paste) and externally, integrate the rear and front cockpit and make some slight adjustments to the flight model. Then we would have the first multi-role trainer aircraft in DCS that is actually combat capable. This would allow experienced pilots to teach new pilots everything from takeoff and landings to SEAD and BVR from the backseat, fully able to see what the trainee is doing. It'd even allow potential DCS customers to come along for an actual combat mission during free weekends and experience the joy that is DCS without having to invest hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours up front before knowing if they'll even enjoy it.

@Flyer0001 The upper part of the boom has collision. You are approaching the tanker way, way, way to fast and you're bobbing up and down like crazy. First thing you gotta do when learning AAR is to approach very slowly in a calm and controlled manner, maybe 2-3 knots of closure with very small stick movements to stay in position. When moving to pre-contact position, remember that it's always better to be low and aft rather than high and fore. The biggest risk is having your tail fin strike the boom which is exactly what happened in your track. So center both the position lights, hold position, and then when you have contact you can drop aft and down a little bit if you need bigger margins. Once you've got the basics down you can start speeding up the process and cutting corners, but never sacrifice precision for speediness. It usually doesn't end well.

ILS is completely screwed up at Al-Dhafra so that's probably why the glideslope was acting up. If I remember correctly one of the ILS frequencies there is even outside of the ILS frequency range so you can't even tune it. We've completely moved over to flying on the Syria map where the ILS frequencies actually work so I have no idea if ED has fixed anything regarding the frequencies on PG. Also remember that if you don't receive any glideslope information the horizontal ILS bar should be dashed. As you can see in the picture it's solid, so that means that you're receiving glideslope information.

No, you'll have to either replace them manually or have both in your kneeboard at once and have the night kneeboard pages in one direction and the day ones in another. I always have to load my custom mission data cards for each mission so I just change them manually. I would give my left family jewel for the ability to use VRK kneeboard in 2D DCS. That is the single best mod for all of DCS, and only VR users can use it. I wish DCS would add that sort of functionality into the game natively. It'd also be nice to have the kneeboard pages actually rendered in the cockpit in DCS so you can adjust how bright they are with the flood lights, rather than having to make different pages for day and night missions.

You should check out these kneeboard pages with airport information, frequencies, etc. It's really good and covers all theatres. It has both day and night compatible pages with different colours/brightness. https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3312200/ There is another F-16 simulator mod that is free and contains tonnes of good checklists, performance charts, etc. That's what I have in my DCS kneeboard. There are some slight variations in DCS, but 99% of it is accurate.

Ah ok, gotcha. The issue with track files is that you can't choose to view a specific part of the track. You have to watch it from beginning to end and at which speed you can fast forward is dependent on how much performance your PC has. My PC ranks somewhere between obsolete and antique so I gave up before I got to the good parts...

I fast forwarded your track for 15 minutes and didn't even see you spawned in so I gave up. It can depend on many factors; elevation, aspect, distance, etc. About the link, it's very dodgy. It seems to interfere with TACAN so if you have assets using channels 1-36 & 64-99 it may interfere with D/L. Also link seems to be degraded if you fly on red team in an F-16 even if you have an E-3 supporting you, but I haven't had the time to verify that, it's just a hunch at the moment. So if you ccould post a shorter track file, just you in SP air spawning and trying to lock something, that'd be much more helpful.

They'll be giving the F-16 more attention soon and start adding/fixing features. Before that happens though, they gotta get the F/A-18C, Mi-24 and AH-64 out of early access...

F-14 is more complete but the F-16 is a better aircraft. Main downside of the F-14 is you can't really use it to it's full potential without a human RIO. You can still have tonnes of fun in it however.