NullSpace

As another relative new player, I have a piece of advice for learning weapons: low-tech first. This comes from much more experience pilots I fly with, and it's been helping me a lot. Learning basic dumb bomb drops without the TGP early on will help you learn situational awareness and target spotting. I started off using GBU-12's and Mav's with the TGP, and just recently I've started doing a lot of practice with Mk-82's, and I have to say that I feel like I'm improving overall skills much more this way than with the TGP. Like I said though, I'm pretty new as well, just passing on advice that seems to be helping me.

Jet, that actually can't be an issue if you're using Mavricks alone. The TGP has both FLIR and CCD cameras, but mav seekers are EITHER FLIR or electro-optical. So it couldn't be that. Note that china hat forward short (I think? I just remember what it's bound to on my x52) will change your seeker view from wide-angle to close, it could be that you're accidentally jumping into/out of narrow FOV and losing your target. To clarify: that would be short "V"

Same in TrackIR and I assume most of the software. I found the thing that took the most practice and adjustment was getting used to holding my head still while I clicked buttons.

Likewise, my SP rarely crashes. The campaign does have some issues, JTAC seems to be fairly messed up, but still...

Oh, yeah, I think you may be right, good catch.

Install DCS: World, and then A-10C, the A-10C install should install it as a module to DCS: World. You can also download Black Shark on the eagle dynamics site and then use the CD-key you got from steam on that, to install that also as a module for DCS: World.

Haha, alright I figured it was something like that. The most annoying bit is that it counted it as a fratricide, so It messed up my otherwise perfect ending screen. So just avoid parking in A.I.'s spawn locations, A.K.A the standard a/c parking spots on the ramp. Thanks for the tip! -NS

Okay, this is a question, and potentially a bug report. If this is something that I've missed before, that is a known issue, then fine, but I thought I'd mention it. After flying a Georgian Hammer campaign mission, went RTB, landed and parked. Then, after sitting on the tarmac for a moment (Waiting for Razor to reach their waypoint), another A-10 seemed to appear out of thin air. Given that it was attempting to occupy the same space as my plane... this didn't end well: ...whoops I can upload the track later if needed, anyone seen this before?

Info from a friend of mine, who's a certified flight instructor (Civil, not Military). Basically, in real life, you have the element of physically feeling the acceleration and movement of the aircraft as you are controlling it, which is a huge element for flight. He's told me that he likes sims for learning the systems and procedures, but the actual act of controlling the aircraft has a bit less carry-over than you might think. Again though, I'm not an actual pilot, just a simmer, so this is all second hand.

Happy New Years all!

Depends what you mean by controls, direct flight controls, or are you including things like navigation and such as controls? Agreed for sure man! Flying IFR in FSX is great, especially since the ATC is (while FAR from perfect) is a lot more full featured than the basic airfield ATC you get in DCS.

First off, agreed that FSX is a great general-purpose sim, if you're looking for something you can mess around in to fly all sorts of different planes, especially GA and civil aviation, I'd highly recommend it, spent years flying that one. Where I'd respectfully disagree is that you need to get it in order to learn to fly DCS A-10C. The A-10 is actually a relatively easy bird to fly. Not to say that it's easy to fly in combat, etc, but just doing takeoffs and landings and etc, it's pretty stable and simple. I would say that if you're really only interested in military sims, and have no interest in getting something like FSX for general aviation, you can probably do fine just learning to fly in the A-10. Again, FSX is awesome and a great way to learn to fly simulators, but I dunno if it would be a good idea to purchase a sim like that JUST so that you can learn basic flight.

Well I'm glad I'm not totally off the mark. So the correct terms to use would be: HADB for dropping from relatively straight/level at high altitude, and dive bombing for... dive bombing?

I'd also put in a word for the Cyborg X / Cyborg FLY 5. I just upgraded from that to an X52, the Fly 5 has served me decently for a few years doing civillian sims, and recently DCS A-10. It's not a fantastic stick, but it's cheap, fairly portable (if that's something you want), and apart from my twist axis dying after a while, served me quite well. The fact that it's got two built in throttles is nice to have as well.

I suppose I've got an answer and a question. Not terribly experienced with this sim, but I am a math nerd. It seems to me that just in terms of physics, dive bombing will give you, kinetically, a more accurate projectile (assuming you release on target. Releasing weapons in a dive would give them a greater speed towards target, not to mention a shorter distance to travel, so time of fall would be smaller, and there'd be less time for the weapon to drift off target from drag/wind/what have you. Then again, this is just the vague musing of a guy who doesn't know all that much in terms of physics. To you guys who are more experienced, is this an actual advantage for CCIP/dive bombing?

I went ahead and made a mission where I ramp start at Senaki-Kolkhi which has some friendlies on the ground so I can rearm/such. Then I put clusters of targets of all shapes and sizes on the map, so I have waypoints for each, i.e. 1/SOFT TARGS, 2/TANKS, 3/AAA, 4/SAMS. That way I can take off, potentially practice attack runs or threat avoidance, and then practice landings.

Another high-detail attack plane would be great, the SU-25 seems like a good option, a bit more flexible than the A-10C. I'd vote for TM/KM partly just in the interest of keeping it around the same timeframe as DCS A-10C. What with combined arms, FC3, and such in DCS world, having planes which make realistic sense involved in combat together seems like a good plan. Yes. This.

Another newbie pilot here. I've played around with FSX and a bit with some low-detail combat sims, but this is my first study sim. This thread has had a whole bunch of awesome advice so thanks to all the experienced pilots who've been posting in there. It's good to have a friendly and welcoming community while putting in the practice hours. Got me thinking, is there somewhere on these forums a newbie pilot like me could go to find some more experienced DCS A-10C pilots who'd be willing to fly around with me/give me some pointers? I only ask because I've seen several experienced pilots in this thread offer just that. If that thread already exists and I'm just missing it, many apologies >.> Also: Same for me, but my eyes aren't good enough :)