lmp

Ok, let's break it down... I've finished about half of the campaign (before DCS broke my save file...) and I've had no trouble with the triggers or missions not completing. The triggers are in fact pretty liberal - no need to completely wreck the target group. As long as I bloodied them a bit, it was mission accomplished. How would you prefer that it was used in a total war scenario against an enemy of more or less similar strength? Besides adding to the immersion and realism of - again - a total war scenario, those unit serve an important purpose. They force you to actually do some thinking and planning before you take off. Otherwise you're going to shoot at something you're not supposed to shoot at, or blunder over a Gepard. It's realistic, you don't operate out of airfields in range of artillery. You (probably) won't be destroyed by ridiculous amounts of AA if you: a) plan your route, including especially your altitude profile, ingress, attack, egress; b) drop everything in one go and get out of there, don't loiter and do extra passes; c) coordinate to arrive with the rest of the strike package... so the enemy has something else to shoot at. I initially had problems with this campaign and I was frustrated by it the way you are. Then I changed my approach, put more effort into planning and preparation and it turned out to be quite doable.

If you don't like this behavior, there are switches near the transmitter and antenna tuning knobs which lock them (so they can't be moved accidentally or due to aircraft vibrations). The switches are both are labelled СТОП. If you turn them on, they will also disable this autotuning "cheat".

As in my previous post, I've bolded all Cyrillic text. Some of the letters are similar and otherwise it might have been hard to tell when I'm using Latin and when Cyrillic font. This time instead of a list of terms without any context I'll focus on one particular class of systems - the humble ADF. Why? Because it's the most ubiquitous nav aid on Eastern aircraft. Every "red" aircraft in the game has one, from the MiG-15bis all the way to the Ka-50. The Russian acronym for ADF is АРК. Read it ARK. The full term, literally translated to English, is "Automatic Radio Compass", which makes it quite easy to remember. Automatic Radio Compass, ARC, ARK, АРК. Get it? Common phrases you're going to find on АРК panels (some will also apply to other radio equipment): громкость - volume. канал and plural каналы - channel(s). ближний and дальний - inner and outer. Usually if the ADF has two channels, one will be called inner and the other outer. The idea is, you tune them to the inner and outer NDBs at an airport for non-precision approaches. Modes of operation: компас - Literally "compass". This is what they call the main operating mode. антенна - Literally "antenna". A test mode, which disables the loop antenna so that only the sense antenna is used. On Western ADFs it's usually labelled either "antenna" or "test". рамка - Literally "frame". Another test mode. On Western systems a similar mode is usually called "loop". It's basically the opposite of "antenna" mode - sense antenna is off, loop antenna is on, and there is sometimes a switch to manually rotate the loop antenna. ТЛФ/ТЛГ - there will usually be a switch labelled this way. It stands for respectively telephony/telegraphy. In telegraphy mode a beat frequency oscillator is used. I won't go into detail on what it does because (a) I have a rather vague understanding of it, and (b) it's useless in DCS anyway, cause none of the NDBs require you to be in this mode. Keep it in ТЛФ. On Western ADFs a similar mode is labelled BFO. Ok, some examples now... The one on the Ka-50 is pretty simple: This one's from the Mi-8 and it's a little more complex. There's a loop mode and next to the mode selector there's a spring loaded switch to move the antenna left (Л) and right (П). The Russian words for left and right are левый and правый. Here are some controls from the MiG-15bis: The L-39C has two modes of operation - manual (ручной) and automatic (автоматический): Well, we can't (yet) operate the ADF on the Su-25, but if we could, we'd probably have a pretty good idea how before we even opened the manual ;) :

I'll try to find time to do more (maybe with some examples) after work.

Some common words/abbreviations that help a ton when learning Russian cockpit layouts Stuff common all around the cockpit (these are all abbreviations): вкл - on выкл or откл - off откр - open закр - closed Basic flight instruments are usually pretty obvious, but just so you know: скорость - velocity высота - altitude Stuff found on engine and other systems' instruments etc.: давление - pressure топливо - fuel масло - oil воздух - air гидросистема or гидро - hydraulics system двигатель - engine кислород - oxygen Electrics: аккумулятор or just акк - battery генератор or just ген - generator ток - current, amperage АЗС - circuit breaker Let me know if this is the kind of stuff you want.

Heh be glad you at least have the draft. Figuring stuff out from google translated Russian manuals and trial and error used to be a part of the BST module experience back in the days ;). I remember all the research that went into understanding the Mi-8 and MiG-15 before they got their official manuals. To be honest I don't think I know any DCS aircraft as well as these two after having to do all that work. On a more serious note, as much as I love the Mi-8, the lack of a final or semi final manual after all this time is not even funny anymore. Come on BST. I know you can do better.

I'm not aware of any official declarations or even hints from the developers that the MiG-15bis module will in the future come with a campaign. As for speculations... don't base your purchase decisions on speculations ;). As far as content goes, the MiG-21 module has more of it. It's also a more complex aircraft with a wider array of weapons and systems to play around with. The 15bis OTOH is more bug free at the moment. BTW, in case you haven't played the Mi-8 campaign you mentioned in the first post - give it a go. It's actually quite interesting and fun.

The current Caucasus map is actually not all that inappropriate for the MiG-15bis. If you squint a little and ignore that it's a few decades too modern, there was a number of PVO squadrons operating MiG-15s in the 60s in current day Georgia (look up "14th Air Defence Corps "or "14-й корпус ПВО"). As others said, it's more about the lack of units.

Adding the Lim-2 would indeed make no sense because it's just a locally produced MiG-15bis. I would instead treat them as MiG-15bis and extend the In Service time because in 1958 the aircraft was just two years out of production and not going anywhere anytime soon. I don't know the exact date when the last one was decommissioned, but they were actively used in combat units throughout the 60s and gradually retired in the 1970s, maybe also into the early 1980s. When I said they were being used mostly as trainers, I didn't mean they were in dedicated training units. They remained in combat units, but were considered "second line" equipment for obvious reasons. To give an example, the 9th Fighter Regiment retired it's last Lim-2s in April 1973 - even though the rest of the regiment was flying MiG-21s since the late 60s.

Nice list, thanks for your effort! I don't know if you want to include only USSR service (or USSR built planes) but MiG-15bis (a few were imported, but most locally produced under the name Lim-2) were used until the late 70s/early 80s in Poland as trainers. It's hard to pinpoint the exact date when the last was phased out since most sources don't differentiate between the single seaters and two seat trainers which were kept in service even longer - into the 90s - together with the last Lim-5 and Lim-6 aircraft (licensed MiG-17 and derivative CAS plane respectively).

AFAIK the RP-22 is a monopulse radar, as opposed to the RP-21 utilized by the earlier versions of the MiG-21 which was a connical scanning radar.

You can set a condition for max and min altitude. If you set the tanker to orbit at a fixed altitude, it should be enough. Also you could probably script it so that you need to remain in the zone for some time before you get your fuel, so it would make you somewhat more vulnerable and take you out of the fight... just some of my ideas ☺.

Players and AI use different flight models, switching back and forth between them could be a problem. A possibly simpler solution would be to allow modifying fuel load via scripting (if it's not already possible). This way you could design your missions so that within a certain radius of a tanker you have an F10 command to refill your tanks "magically".

Not true in my case at least. I don't have a superiority complex. Play the game the way you want to. I just see it as something fairly complex to do that wouldn't benefit too many players. I suspect most people who have enough time to regularly burn all the fuel in the A-10's tanks (not to mention mastering the plane first!), have enough time to practice AAR.

Countries belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent States, ex USSR members. It's relevant, because on the Caucasus map, the two countries with airfields are either members (Russia) or former members (Georgia). Well, they seem to do just that in Russia. Results of my quick internet search: http://www.fly-corporate.com/flying-russia-heres-what-you-need-know/ "Crews should expect to be given pressure settings in QFE (field elevation) rather than QNH (adjusted to sea level) for arrival at Russian airports." And some forum threads discussing the issue: http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/572360-russia-cis-use-qnh-feet-below-transition-level.html http://www.pprune.org/questions/488358-qfe-approach-almaty-help.html

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't ATCs in CIS countries typically use QFE rather than QNH? If that's the case, I would prefer if QFE was given at least by the Russian speaking controllers.

I get the purpose of auto startup macros. Some people learn better by watching the automated sequence rather than reading the manual. Besides, there is little skill involved and it can get boring. I don't use them personally, but I get it why they're there. Automatic AAR on the other hand... come on, if it bores you or for some other reason you can't be bothered to learn it, why include it in your mission at all? It's not like the current maps force you to cover huge distances...

You're absolutely right and it's in fact what I meant. I just didn't have the time to go in depth the way you did. My employer would not appreciate it at least ;).

One thing that I think is crucial for adding realistic civilian traffic AND at the same time would benefit even people not interested in civilian traffic at all, is a general overhaul/expansion of the coalition and IFF systems in the game. Not every warzone is binary (think current operations in Syria) and not all IFF systems are compatible. Inability to positively identify a target as friendly or enemy affects ROE and blue on blue incidents are always a real concern. I would love it if some improvements happened in this area.

They have those big screens precisely because they want to have a natural field of view and not a compressed one. Changing the FOV of the world without changing the FOV of the cockpit would create all sorts of problems already mentioned and would also look super weird - it would degrade your looking around the cockpit experience at least as much as the current system. Truth is, if you want to have a 120 degrees field of view that looks natural, you need a monitor that fills 120 degrees of your field of view.

Right, I assumed you had the generator on. It makes perfect sense the way you do it.

It doesn't, because the mode in the video is specific to the MiG-29S and not available on the Su-27...

You need to "read it off the land" really. Pick an IP point based on either the terrain (so a town, hill, lake, road, whatever... x kms away from your target) or waypoint coordinates (so if target is at waypoint 2, you want to pop up and start looking for it x kms before you reach waypoint 2). However, engaging a vehicle sized target at 20km will be difficult when you have just your eyes to spot them. What I would do is get to a point 10 - 15km away (so 10 - 15km along heading 210 from the waypoint in question), pop up to 2 - 3km and try to spot it from there. Of course that's just an example, not taking into account any air defenses, terrain etc. In the Su-25 you generally have to think and plan a lot. Get to know the target surroundings in the mission planner, learn as much as you can about the terrain, friendly and enemy forces in the area before you take off. Plan your approaches, altitudes, headings, directions where you want to turn after the attack. Then on the way use the F10 map (I have it set to not show any units to keep it most realistic) and any maps or images the mission designer might have provided. It'll help you to locate targets faster and more reliably and to not get shot at so much.

Why APU on? In most cases of total engine failure you won't have time to turn on the APU, so IMHO it makes more sense to practice without it.

They clearly weren't. Any kind of proper air defenses, even Shilkas (which predate the F-5E by a decade) will rip you to shreds. And on top of that we don't have any profiles for CBUs and Snakeeyes.