Vampyre

If all you want is a dogfighter then the Spitfire or Bf-109K-4 are both very nimble dogfighters and the best turners in DCS. I hear the I-16 is also pretty nimble as well. The P-51D, FW-190A-8 and FW-190D-9 will out turn all of the jets in DCS. I've shot down a number of wannabe jet jocks in both the P-51D and FW-190D-9... mainly because they didn't know how to fight to their platforms strengths. That's the thing about dogfighting, It's mostly about how well the pilot uses his aircraft and less about the actual platform being flown. The DCS F-15C, while being disadvantaged by its FC3 status, is a respectable dogfighter among its contemporaries. With each particular airframe you fly you will need to learn the idiosyncrasy of each of them to get the fullest performance. Now if you are looking for something modern that are better turners than the F-15C then I suggest the MiG-29's, Su-27, Mirage 2000C, F/A-18C or the F-14B. I prefer the F-14B and MiG-29's myself.

They are already working on two branches. DCS:World and Modern Air Combat. I imagine MAC will be nothing but turning and burning and blowing stuff up. That will leave DCS to be a more fully fleshed out combat simulator. I get a lot of enjoyment flying the UH-1H and Mi-8MTv2 in the pure transport role. I'd love to have a flyable C-130, B-1B or KC-10 in game.:pilotfly:

Gen Sir John Hackett's books on WWIII are probably the best you will get on the subject. Third World War- https://www.amazon.com/third-World-General-others-Hackett/dp/0722141823/ref=sr_1_8?crid=2LNV1OIF5H86J&keywords=sir+john+hackett&qid=1579904756&sprefix=Sir+John+Hack%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-8 Third World War August 1985- https://www.amazon.com/Third-World-General-John-Hackett/dp/B001L1UGPG/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2LNV1OIF5H86J&keywords=sir+john+hackett&qid=1579904880&sprefix=Sir+John+Hack%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-2 Third World War the Untold Story- https://www.amazon.com/Third-World-War-English-library/dp/0450055914/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3UG8ICUET5D3V&keywords=the+third+world+war+the+untold+story&qid=1579905033&sprefix=third+world+war+the+un%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-1

It looks fine to me. It starts to look more faded the longer it has been applied. The constant sun bleaching, chemicals such as fuel, oil, hydraulic fluid, Turco, and even salt from the environment cause the color to fade rather quickly.

Awesome news! Looking forward to taking her for a spin.:thumbup:

There are four levels of tiedown on the ship. Initial, Intermediate, Permanent and Heavy Weather. Chocks and chains are mandatory any time an aircraft is on the ship. The only time they come off is during the short trip to and from the Catapults/Landing area or while the aircraft is being moved under tow. The aircraft can be started anywhere on the deck and will always be started with Initial tiedown. On the Hornet that means six chains for startup and shutdown. Intermediate tiedown is for aircraft on the flight schedule but not flying in the current event. On the Hornet that is nine chains. Permanent tiedown is for an aircraft not expected to fly during the schedule or while the carrier is not performing flight ops. On the Hornet that is 12 chains. Heavy Weather tiedowns, self explanatory really and on the Hornet is 18 plus chains depending on how many are available within the individual squadron at that time. All the chains are marked with the squadron identifier and/or color coded for easy identification As for the remove before flight pins, on the Hornet the pins are pulled before startup but that is not the case for other aircraft.

The NM air guard used to fly F-16's before the picked up the spec ops role in 2010. The F-16 unit of the NM Air Guard was the 188th Fighter Squadron and they were known as the Taco's. They had a large Roadrunner on their tails.

F99th-Vampyre F-5E

The F-4E version ED are supposed to be working on was only used by two air forces. The USAF and ROKAF. Everyone else used either the vanilla F-4E or a locally modified version not used by anyone else. The F-4E with the DMAS/ARN-101 upgrade would be great for DCS. That upgrade dramatically increased it's A/G accuracy which then made it just as capable as the F-16A. It was also the baseline for the F-4G Wild Weasel V. The basic slat winged Vietnam era F-4E would be an interesting module. The problem with late modifications is that they aren't really useful for simulating the earlier versions. take the F/A-18C for instance. A Cold War scenario wouldn't be able to use them and be accurate. Everything up to the lot 12 Hornet did not have MIDS and you can't take that datalink function out to make it more compatible. I suppose that is one of the failings of this study sim type set up ED has going. In DCS, I'd like to see the F-4D, F-4E DMAS/ARN-101 and F-4G on the Air Force side and the F-4J and F-4S on the Navy side. Will we see it from ED? Probably not. From another developer? Maybe. Heatblur are doing A and B variants of the Tomcat and possibly the F-14D if they can get the research material. The F-4 is one of those aircraft that a developer could make multiple variants of and still sell a bunch of modules. The F-16, C-130 and S-70 are similar in this respect.

F99th-Vampyre F-5E

162851 was a production validation/verification aircraft for the F/A-18C. From what I can find it was a test aircraft used by NWC/VX-31 it's entire life. There were probably internal things that kept the aircraft out of fleet service. Being an upgrade from the A, It would be extremely difficult to change the fuel system, structures and emergency escape systems. The avionics would be the easy part in this case. I'm not saying it wasn't done, It would be hugely expensive and not suitable to be done to many airframes. The A-C conversion looks like it was only done to this single aircraft. In most cases, when someone says a Hornet was upgraded from A to C they usually just mean the avionics and weapons system. Structurally and systems wise, they are still an A. That is why the Navy uses the A+ and A++ designations to denote airframes that are essentially avionics/weapons upgrades to the C standard. As for the B to D conversion, I doubt any Navy Hornets were converted. If it were done, it would have been essentially the same thing as the conversion of 162851... It would be redundant. When the B/D were initially being built they were intended to be trainers. All B's were trainers. The D's were used as both trainers and actual combat aircraft. As a trainer, the Navy and Marines used the D with flying controls in the rear cockpit. The D was used in the Marine Corps with a missionized rear cockpit (no flying controls) as an actual combat aircraft to replace the A-6E Intruder.

I was almost a takeoff casualty as well. My #1 engine was not developing hardly any thrust on my takeoff roll. I aborted on the runway and stopped to troubleshoot the issue. My gauges were showing that the engine was operating but it was not providing thrust. I ended up getting a new plane. That fixed the problem. I had a pretty good time right up until I had a sudden blackout while turning on the SA-3 STR... I don't think I was hit by anything. A TACVIEW would be nice. Thanks Alpenwolf and 104th for the fun event!

Go to jester AI menu, select crew contract, select no talking,

You don't know what you are talking about.

F99th - Vampyre MiG-28

Yeah, I saw that a couple of days ago working on one of my missions but I forgot where I stated that. Apologies for the bad info. It really should be a thing though.

Thanks for the Tacview file! Cheers!

While we are talking about my opinions and biases I suppose I'll elaborate even more. The GR1B version of the Tornado was a post Cold War upgrade (1994). Up until about 1991 the Tornado GR1 couldn't even self lase for itself. That was a capability the F-111F had 10 years prior to the Tornado getting its first pre production TIALD pods in Granby. For the Brit Tornado, it was all iron bombs, cluster weapons and nukes during the cold war. Maybe they had the odd buddy lased LGB as well but I suppose they were few and far between with the lack of a self designation capability. Only at the very end of the Cold War were the Brit Tornados starting to pick up more roles. Besides the extra roles they did pick up detracted from the Strike/Interdiction mission. So, yeah, I am still of the opinion that the F-111 is the penultimate Cold War Strike aircraft. The Marinefliger and Italian IDS did have Kormoran 1 and HARM for anti shipping in the Baltic, Mediterranean and North seas in the 80's. That would have been a better example of their extra cold war roles though I doubt they were able to use the full capabilities of those missiles in the 80's. The Luftwaffe Tornados were doing the same thing the Brit Tornados were doing with iron bombs, cluster weapons and nukes. In the early 90's the F-111's were getting upgraded with digital avionics with the AUP, AMP and Pacer Strike programs for the F-111C, F-111E and F-111F respectively and the FB-111A's were being optimized for the tactical mission with the F-111G conversion. The upgrades they got were paving the way for the new weapons that would soon be available. The Cold War was over though and the US (as well as the Europeans) had to rationalize their forces. The F-111 represented 3% of the force in the USAF and took 25% of the budget. Had they not been so expensive to operate they might have stuck around a lot longer. When they were retired, most of the F-111's were well under their max flight hours and were on average about 25ish years old. It was cheaper to replace the F-111's capabilities with upgraded versions of the F-15E and B-1B. The European rationalization was to shoehorn more missions into existing platforms and get rid of older planes which is why the Tornado picked up the majority of it's extra capabilities after the Cold War. As for not having all the weapons in the world on every jet in DCS, I don't care about that. I prefer a reasonably accurate historical modeling of an aircraft's true capabilities over some hodgepodge unrealistic frankenplane any day. An aircrafts deficiencies are part of the challenge of operating it effectively within the game. That is the draw. I'd love to see more planes from the 70's-80's Cold War time period. I view that to be the most interesting time for jet fighter development. For a Cold War Strike/Interdictor, all you need is iron bombs, cluster weapons, GBU's and nukes. We already have plenty of other planes in DCS that can handle the other missions better than a Tornado or F-111 ever could.

Hey, no worries man. Herding cats is hard. You did good. I had a great time and I'm sure most everyone else did too. Good job to the MiG-21 drivers on attacking the Stennis. After I was shot down I watched a stream from blue side perspective. Lets just say the panic was real when ya'll hit that ship. When I ran my track, Tacview recorded it as if I was about five miles away from where I truly was in the actual event. I know because I got shot by a AIM-7 right after I fired an AIM-9 that hit a Tomcat right in the teeth. That never happened in my track file as my AIM-9 just sailed off into nowhere. In the Tacview file I did see my target rolling out of control falling to the sea when my AIM-9 was supposed to have hit him. I'd gladly trade an F-5, or six for that matter, for a Tomcat kill.:thumbup: Alpenwolf- There was a question about the black top gun skins (MiG-28) in the beginning. You may or may not know this but if you use USAF Aggressors for the F-5's in the red coalition you will have access to all of the skins available to the US without them having to be on the US/blue side. Good job putting this together. Looking forward to the next one.

Any chance we could get a Tacview of the event?

No, the F-8 has the two nose MG's and two wing root MK's. The A-8 has those plus two additional MK's in the mid wing section just outboard of the landing gear. - To further confuse things, the G-8 had the MG's and mid wing MK's removed keeping just the wing root MK's.

F-8 doesn't have the 20mm wing cannons of the A-8 and is equipped with wing mounted bomb racks (which can't be seen in this photo). Plus, the markings presented are of a machine from one of the Schlachtgeschwader, either 2 or 10.

That is an FW-190F-8.

Apples and Oranges. The A-10 fights air to air because it doesn't have a choice in the matter. It's low speed limits it's options for a disengagement to escape. Aircraft like the F-111 and Tornado, with very high top speeds, have the ability to walk away from enemy aircraft without the need to use weapons. Fighting Air to Air is not the job of an aircraft whose mission is to attack targets on the ground so it is not an important capability to have. For those who want to fight Air to Air in either the F-111 or Tornado... well, it's a losing proposition in both cases.

Just like the Tornado's guns. Sidewinders were impractical on the Tornado as well. They are intended for self defense. There is not a whole lot of use for them skimming the deck at night in the weather. The point of a strike aircraft is to hit a specific target, usually infrastructure, not to be a multirole do everything fighter. The USAF decided not to equip the F-111 with the Maverick even after the testing was done with it (including firing) because it was not necessary for the intended mission. Same thing goes for the F-111D and AIM-7G Sparrow integration which didn't make it past prototyping before they terminated it. In DCS, we already have the multirole F/A-18C, soon the F-16C and for CAS/Armed Reconnaissance we have the A-10C so it is not a missing capability argument. It sounds more and more like a where it was built and who used it argument. Personally, I'd rather have the F-111 because of its capability, my own experiences with the aircraft, It's storied history and because it is the penultimate cold war strike aircraft. I'm sure if I lived in one of the European countries that flew it, I might think the Tornado was the best too and I can't fault you for wanting to fly your own countries aircraft, heck, that would be a better argument. If it is a choice between the F-111 or the Tornado, I choose F-111 because I have my biases. Now if the choice was F-16 or Tornado, I would choose Tornado... also because of my biases. I know what I like and the Tornado falls short when compared to the F-111. Hopefully we will eventually get both.