NullSpace

Dropped in an application, should I jump on teamspeak right away, or wait to hear back on that?

Hello! I'm an experienced but pretty rusty A-10C pilot. I'm also comfortable enough with many of the aircraft to take off/start up/fly around, though I'm a pretty poor helicopter pilot. I'm trying to find a group to fly with, and I'm not really sure where to start looking, so apologies if this is the wrong spot to ask. I'm generally more interested in the "PvE" teamwork mission environment, and would love to find some folks to fly/practice with, in the past that's made the game so much more immersive.

More generally, for people just getting into flight sims, it's easy to forget how unfriendly to newbies the game is, even with the interactive training missions that the A-10C has. Doesn't seem that way to those of us who've been playing this stuff for a while, but if you haven't done much simming before, DCS can be very intimidating and overwhelming. There's about a million different things you could forget while flying the sim, making the forums a friendly "no stupid question" zone is one of the best things we can do to help get new people excited about flight sims.

Agreed. I'm happy to wait until EDGE comes out, but I'm going to be hesitant to invest in more DCS modules until they fix some of the longstanding issues in their existing products.

As mentioned above, depending on what kind of flying appeals to you, different aircraft will fit the bill best. If you like detail/modeled systems, and you're interested in fixed-wing aircraft, I would have to recommend the A-10C. It's extremely detailed, but is also pretty forgiving. It is easy to fly at a basic level, but complex and detailed enough to give you many many hours of fun learning all the different systems and mastering different styles of attacks. All the modules on the site are part of DCS: World. You can buy them one-by-one, in whatever order you like. Tho only exception to this is FC3. Flaming Cliffs 3 includes the F-15C and A-10A, however, none of these are really study sims, though they can be quite fun.

Along with the above, it's important to note that the MWS has absolutely no idea what it's yelling about. It sees something that looks like a missile plume, and then fires an alert. That's exactly why it will go off for friendly missiles, ground-to-ground weapons, etc.

Also remember that while in alt-hold mode you'll still get blown around by the wind, so if you want to keep your orbit centered over a target, you're going to need to do some corrections for that as well.

I have flown these before and found them very enjoyable, would recommend them if people are willing to spend a few bucks. Frankly, it's worth what you think it's worth. If you're someone who isn't willing to spend money on addon campaigns and missions, which is a totally reasonable opinion btw, then just don't. Many great missions continue to be produced free. It's been my experience that the level of quality on these is a good bit higher than on most of the similar free missions I have tried. That said, you decide what it's worth to you, if that little bit of professional "polish" isn't worth $4.99, then there's plenty of great free content for you out there.

It seems to me that they basically get assigned based on flight hours/kill count. Seems I always first get the Air Medal, then the Purple Heart, and so on.

I'd be happy to help, but let me make sure I'm looking for the right thing. While I've been flying for a while, new to controls tinkering. Should I be looking in the bind-able controls ingame, or somewhere else?

Afraid I can't offer suggestions, but I second this as being an awesome addition to the sim. Taking a currently not modeled part of the a/c and making it a useful tool.

Another note about starting from ramp. If you want to be able to refuel/rearm, get ground power, etc. then you'll want to make sure there's a friendly ground vehicle at the airport you're going to be starting from. Just click the little "tank" icon on the left bar for "create new ground vehicle group" and make sure it's the same team as you, then place it next to the airfield. Doesn't matter what sort of unit it is, I don't think.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend trying instrument landings until you're really comfortable with visuals (Maybe you are, and have been practicing them like crazy since last post. If true, disregard this comment :) ) What sort of an instrument approach were you using? I didn't see either your TACAN or your ILS on, but I saw you messing around with you CDU a bunch. I've heard that you can make "GPS" approaches with the CDU, is that what you were doing? Comments, you seemed to touch down pretty long, didn't have tho whole runway. Also, at least in my viewing of the track you veered off the runway at the end of your landing rollout.

True, I was talking about setting up some form of controller profile to bind various buttons to F1-F12. You'd probably want to have some kind of a mode switch for this, as it would take quite a few buttons, and wouldn't be useful most of the time.

Frankly, it's hard to use the A-10C to its fullest without a keyboard. Not to say it isn't possible, but to be able to easily make use of the CDU, as well as a handful of other functions, it can often be best to use the keyboard. That said, what kind of stick do you have? You might be able to set up a profile to allow you to do this.

I'm a relative newbie, and I've found flying online with people to be a great way to learn. I recommend looking for a squad of people who are fairly laid back, and going to fly with them, ideally, you can find more experienced players who'll be willing to teach you. Also, read the manual. Yes, it's massive, but there's lots of good info in there, and you can avoid people simply telling you to RTFM when you ask questions :) (Okay, maybe they'll still tell you that, but you'll know they're wrong)

A note, if you're in a hurry the quick and dirty way to do this is to add a few taps of nose down trim before you roll in. Obviously, this isn't as reliable or accurate as getting up to speed and trimming for that, but I find adding just a little bit of nose down trim before rolling in for dive bombing makes the plane much easier to control. [offtopic] As for the X52, I can personally attest that it's a great HOTAS. I mean, you get what you pay for, but it's a nice stepping stone between very cheap sticks and extremely high end ones. For the price it's great. Plus, with a couple buttons set as modifier keys, you can get just about all the DCS HOTAS functions mapped to it, plus a few other things like flaps, gear, etc. [/offtopic]

I've seen this happen sometimes too, always thought it was strange, especially losing all three. Ah, but this is DCS, where all ground surfaces other than runways and taxiways appear to be made of 1 foot deep superglue. Might be nice to have some way to "tow" yourself onto/off of the grass so that you could both clear the runway and recover from crashes. With regards to repairing on the runway, I think we're talking about two separate kinds of game you might be playing. Sometimes it would be appropriate to repair on the runway, sometimes you would just be annoying people and getting in the way, it all depends who you're playing with, and how much realism you're interested in.

camsr, I think one aspect of this is that the way you've been doing your landings actually makes it HARDER on yourself to perform. It will take a bit of time to get the hang of, as PFunk said, Pitch for speed, power for sink rate, but once you do, the whole process is much easier. You don't need correct your speed and such with the brakes at the last minute, instead you have plenty of time to get lined up and at the right speed and sink rate. That makes it easier when landings are more complicated (i.e. ILS, engine damage, high crosswind, etc.)

About 120 knots should be the correct Vref for an A-10C, though it varies a bit with fuel load and stores carried (Someone correct me if I'm wrong). The glide path you're shooting for would be 3 degrees, so put the TVV between the -5 pitch line and the horizon line, a little closer to the -5 line. I'm not sure what happens if your ASI dies. Assuming that you've actually lost your airspeed and not just the HUD or such, I would assume that they would extend. As we're mentioning damage, keep in mind that if you lose your left hydraulics, you will lose control of your flaps. However, when losing hydraulic pressure they extend, so I doubt that's your problem. Again, what speed are you approaching the runway at, if you're above 185kts, flaps will be up.

Not exactly. To reiterate what's been said already: If you have the flaps set to MVR or DN, and you go above 185, then they'll auto-retract. If you leave the switch for the flaps where it is, they'll go back out to wherever you have the switch set to when your airspeed drops below 185 knots. In short, at KIAS < 185, flap position = switch position, at KIAS > 185 flap position = up. Does that clarify?

Couple tips: 10,000ft is not a good height to be at in terms of SAMs, you'll still be roughly within range of MANPADS, and easily within range of most SAM's. In general the A-10 is just too low and slow to get up and above most radar SAMs Calling in SEAD using F10 and then selecting the flight listed as (SEAD) is a good idea. Keep in mind that it's also a good idea to call in (CAP), otherwise you may just get mowed down by enemy fighters If you have to attack into heavily defended area, mavericks are going to give you a much better standoff range than LGB's (I think, anyone who knows better feel free to correct me!)

Oh well in that case fixed lo should be perfect. You shouldn't need to mess around with your fuse settings either, fixed lo should always drop low-drag.

All I know is I've never been much good at hitting anything with the AIR's, but if you're doing medium or low altitude dive bombing, slick MK-82's can be quite accurate.

I think this might be a little bit misleading. Setting a given MK-82AIR to fixed lo should make that bomb ONLY drop in slick mode. If you set it to Pilot Opt (Or something, I'm not entirely sure if that's what the label was), that if you fuse nose it will drop slick, or fuse N/T it will drop hi-drag.