lmp

This is what made all the difference to me. I used to fixate on the lights too much. When I focus on flying formation with the tanker and only glance at the lights, I can finally get where I need to be and stay there long enough for the boom operator to do his thing. I don't know why this wasn't obvious to me at once after all my Hornet AARs, but for some reason it wasn't. The rest is practice. My Viper AARs still aren't as clean as I'd like them to be, but I'm past the frustrating part of not being confident of my ability to fill up my jet safely.

The F-5 could be a great module if it got the attention it deserves from the devs. Aside from the above FM bugs, the TACAN is highly unreliable, the RWR is not working correctly and the radar implementation is simplistic at best. So that's your primary navigation system, your primary defensive sensor and your primary offensive sensor - all in need of some serious work. I used to really like and recommend this plane, but in its current state, I have to withdraw that recommendation. If RAZBAM can continue to do good work on their old M2000C module years after it's been released, I don't understand why ED can't do the same for the F-5.

Because that's where the bombers flew. Flying high gives you a much better range and - as you noticed - makes you difficult to intercept. So that's what the B-29s did. The MiG-15 was built to deal with this threat and so high altitude intercepts were the bread and butter of MiG-15 pilots. Take off, make best climb into the stratosphere and catch the guy before he gets away or you run out of fuel. Just like BFM or making carrier traps it requires thought, practice and knowing your aircraft well. I encourage you to get familiar with chapters 8 and 9 of the flight manual as well as the concept of "coffin corner": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_corner_(aerodynamics) There are several things that work against you at high altitudes. Firstly, your engine can generate (significantly) less thrust in thin air. You cannot maintain airspeed in turns or recover it as well as down low. Secondly, there is the "coffin corner". when it comes to airspeed, your low limit is 300km/h indicated (citing the manual): Your high limit is officially Mach 1: but really, you'll be experiencing serious controllability issues much earlier: Notice how your low limit is expressed in kilometers indicated and your high limit is a Mach number (true airspeed). As you get higher a given indicated air speed corresponds to a higher true airspeed/Mach number. If my online calculator hasn't lied to me, at sea level 300km/h indicated corresponds to Mach 0.25, while Mach 0.86 (so the Mach number where controllability starts to suffer) is 1050km/h. That's a difference of 750km/h to play with. And you get plenty of engine power to boot. At 15500m 300km/h is now Mach 0.7, while your upper limit of Mach 0.86 corresponds to 378km/h. That's less than 80km/h of difference! In other words, at 15500m you are almost stalling and at the same time almost out of control because of being too fast. And you can barely maintain that speed because your engine is at its limit. The good news is, the Sabres aren't much better. They can go a little faster without losing control but their engines are weaker and their ceiling should be lower (it was IRL, I haven't done any extensive testing in DCS). So what can you do at or close to the ceiling? Now I'm no expert, but here's what I do: - Keep your airspeed indicators in your scan at all time. Pay attention to both your indicated and your true airspeeds. - Forget about aggressive maneuvers, particularly in the vertical. Lazy turns and shallow dives and climbs only. - Practice identifying overspeeds early and getting out of them. Read the manual, practice how your ailerons, rudder and elevators react at high Mach numbers. You probably will end up messing up and overspeeding from time to time, but if you can catch it early, you can often correct the problem without a huge loss of altitude. - Pay attention to your fuel state. In order to climb to the service ceiling and stay there you will need to be flying at full throttle. You really won't have much time before you have to turn back. In the end, like everything in DCS, it comes down to practice. Practice efficient climbs to stratosphere altitudes, practice how the aircraft behaves at 8000m, 10000m, 12000m, 15000m. Shoot down some non-maneuvering targets first, then move on to maneuvering ones... Good luck!

I disagree when it comes to the Phantom. Your argument makes sense to me in case of aircraft such as the MiG-15 that I mentioned or, in case of the Vietnam War, the F-100. Yeah, these aircraft saw some combat outside of their famous war, but I can see how incorporating them into realistic historical scenarios could be difficult (though not impossible). The Phantom is a different story. It was the backbone of the IDF in its time, fought in the bloody Yom Kippur war and beyond scoring a comparable number of kills to the USAF/USN in Vietnam. The Iranians used them in their long and bloody, if not very well researched, war with Iraq and continue to use them to this day. That is a lot of really interesting history. We shouldn't let the pop-cultural image fool us into thinking the F-4 was "pretty much just Vietnam".

How does that go against anything I said? I'm not arguing that a Vietnam map would be a bad fit for an F-4E module or DCS in general. I'm arguing that the F-4E would be a great fit for the existing maps - the Israeli and Iranian AFs used the type extensively in combat and the latter still flies it today. I could agree that, let's say, the MiG-15 doesn't make much sense without a Korea map since it didn't do anything particularly exciting outside of that war, but the F-4E is far more than just a Vietnam war jet.

The F-4E that was initially being developed by BST was supposed to be a 1980s USAF variant - I presume that's why this date came up. Of course, plans may have changed since then, we'll have to wait and see. That being said, F-4E would be a great fit for the Persian Gulf and Syria maps. In fact, I don't think I can come up with a more historically fitting a/c except for a few that we already have. I don't understand the fixation on Vietnam, it was far from the only big war where the Phantom played a part. I'd say it wasn't even the most interesting one, but that's of course just my opinion.

F-4 fits great on the Persian Gulf and Syrian maps, and as well as any Western a/c on the Caucasus map. The Afghanistan map is a perfect fit for a lot of existing modules, including the latest helicopters. These two announcements don't have to be connected. I'd love me a Soviet ground pounder, but all clues point to the Phantom.

Another thing to consider is that both the L-39 and F-5 are now quite dated, don't look as good as the newer modules and receive next to no attention from the devs. I can only recommend them to people who are interested in that specific airframe. In terms of gameplay options, visual fidelity, availability of supporting content and chances of having the remaining bugs squashed there is simply no comparison.

I guess it depends on how low quality the HOTAS you're moving up from was. You need to be able to do very fine pitch, roll and throttle corrections. If you have jittery pots or a worn out gimbal, that'll be a problem. If you use the little slider with 3cm of very rough travel on the base of your joystick for throttle control, that'll suck too. And obviously what you use for rudders doesn't matter, you won't be needing them for this maneuver. I learned to AAR only after I got a Virpil HOTAS, but how much difference did it really make? No idea, maybe it just invalidated my excuse. I still had to put in the work, it didn't magically become easy, and it's very much a perishable skill. If I don't practice regularly, my AARs become sloppy.

Try leaving it off for the entire flight - see if it still happens to you. I use the yaw channel very sparingly precisely because it's so easy to have it mess up your rudder trim.

I did precisely that by accident yesterday. I flew the Persian Gulf dogfight instant action mission, which starts you out with the 400L tanks. I dropped the tanks, dived on the Sabres - got to about Mach .9 - .91 - then I slowed down to safe speeds, killed the Sabres and landed with no controllability issues whatsoever. I didn't do any testing beyond that but it seems to me you're good as long as you drop the tanks first.

Wow, I honestly haven't thought of just doing this in the default.lua, but it makes perfect sense. That's a really nice solution, scoobie!

I would be in favor of having more options for digital brake controls. So perhaps instead of just one key to activate the brakes, separate keys that would engage the brakes quickly or slowly (so you could "tap" it to effectively achieve an intermediate position), or maybe separate keys to hold the brakes at 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% deflection... this way we could choose which control scheme works best with the hardware that we have.

A digital piano has multiple (at least two) switches per key which are closed at different points in the key stroke - this allows the piano to measure the velocity of the key press. The pinky lever in the Warthog as far as I'm aware only has one switch. There is no physical way to detect the strength or velocity of a key press using just one switch. You could try it with the trigger (using both stages), but how reliable that would be would depend on the quality of the switches (amount of switch bounce).

When I had the TWCS throttle, I used one of the rudder paddles for breaks in the a/cs that have a common break lever. Worked like a charm. I don't know if the TDC hat in the Warthog is an analog control? If it is, you could make it work by toggling the "slider" option, setting the dead zone to at least 50% and maybe inverting the axis in DCS settings. This way, half of the physical axis (from neutral to maximum deflection) corresponds to the full range of the in-game axis, if that makes sense. I don't suppose you use the TDC hat for anything in the Mossie so that might be an option for you?

There are options in the game already to dumb down navigation but I think the better approach would be to consider it another fundamental skill to learn. You wrote that you already put in the time and effort to learn take-off, engine management and so on. I presume you're not content with just airstarting straight into a dogfight, you want to learn to fly the thing properly. Navigation is then just as important as those other skills are. Set up some exercises for yourself, learn to choose and identify landmarks, get a pen, notepad and a stopwatch handy, practice some dead reckoning. Don't treat it as an obstacle between taking off and getting to the fight. It can be as much fun as learning all the other things you've already learned.

Very well, I will answer the question posted in the thread as directly as I can. "Would you like to see Tank or other Armor modules created by ED or Third Party Devs?" Not in DCS as it is now, ground combat is too barebones to do them justice. I would also not like ED to focus their development on ground combat as I feel those resources should be spent elsewhere. Well then, for the benefit of others I guess, since you're ignoring me while also replying to me. And being off topic. They didn't. They had a helicopter game (BS) and a fixed wing game (A-10C) and an older fixed wing game (LOMAC/FC) and they merged them all together at one point. Then, if memory serves me right, they added the Mustang into the mix. To this day I remember how we all felt this was a logical direction to go... why are you even asking me to explain why ED does what ED does? I'm not in their heads. As for what's my take on where DCS should go - again, for the benefit of others, cause you clearly don't care - I see two good, non mutually exclusive reasons for DCS to expand into new areas. Either a lot of the existing assets, systems and mechanics can be reused or the new area of simulation will synergize well with the existing ones. A good example of an area where this would be the case could be air defense systems. Not sure there's a market for this, but it would make sense to me. We have good enough maps, targets with decent AI, there are obvious gameplay synergies. Existing gameplay benefits, new gameplay gets a head start with most of the core systems in place. A good example where this would very much not be the case could be, say, subsurface warfare - pretty much nothing gets reused here, everything needs to be built from scratch and there are no interactions with the existing gameplay.

It is on topic, because unless you want the tanks and the planes to synergize, then you're asking for two separate games in one... for the hell of it? Why not build a new game from scratch - it'll be easier!

Sure, 3rd parties can build all the tanks. After ED builds all the systems and the tools needed and probably in the process does a proof of concept module or a couple that is. But yeah, after those tiny little details are resolved, 3rd parties can do the work. And then we will be able to drive around in our perfectly recreated Shermans and deplete health bars of AI ground units that have no concept of tactics beyond dispersing randomly and freezing in place until they are all dead. Because guess what, 3rd parties aren't building core systems for DCS such as damage models and ground AI. They could also, you know, hire additional devs to work on all the stuff that DCS players have asked for for years. That's what I meant by "resources".

Well, it's always a trade-off. Consider everything that would need to be developed to create a ground combat simulation in DCS that would rival dedicated ground sims (making it worthwhile to spend $30-50 on an individual module). Now consider what else could ED accomplish with those resources in all the other areas where DCS needs work. Doing one thing always means not doing something else. But ok. Let's focus on benefitting helicopter and ground attack aircraft players. It's the year of the helicopter after all. What would those players notice and appreciate the most? Better AI, particularly on a platoon and higher level? More realistic communication with and between ground units? Weapon and damage modeling (focused primarily on surface to air and air to surface weaponry, because this is where the interaction happens)? Honestly, from the perspective of a ground attack player, I don't really care about the fidelity of engine modeling of an individual tank, or if its gun mantlet armour thickness is accurate. I do care if the enemy troops react in a realistic and believable way to what I'm doing and if my own troops are talking to me. Since pretty much forever ground units under fire move a few dozen meters in a random direction and freeze, waiting to be killed in subsequent attacks and redfor has no communication with ground troops available to them (while the blufor JTAC is primitive at best). These are the areas that need work first. Tank modules can wait. Let's have a believable ground war when looking at it from my cockpit first.

The problem is, a tank module at this point would make very little sense unless ED greatly expanded the ground combat aspects of DCS. We would need new maps, AI capabilities, weapon and damage modeling... the list goes on. So the argument that it would occupy ED resources is valid, regardless of who made the actual tanks. And even if ED went to all this trouble, how much would the air combat and ground combat players actually interact once the novelty wore off? In the end tanks are just targets for attack aircraft with very limited abilities to fight back. IMHO the class of ground units that would make far more sense in DCS are (both modern and WW2 era) air defense units. The limitations of ground combat simulation in DCS would be largely irrelevant and they would by design interact with the existing modules and playerbase.

I'm sure if ED gave backers the option to take the Mossie instead of the 262 most would consider it a nice gesture. OTOH if they forced the backers to take the Mossie and abandoned the 262, yeah, there would be riots :). Also, at this point probably a lot of the backers who stuck with the game already have the Mossie.

@peirof There is a few things that are challenging about AAR and I don't think you've told us which part exactly you are struggling with? The first challenge is connecting. Can you hit the basket reliably? That's the first thing to work on. If it takes you 10 tries to plug it in, then when you do manage it, your stress level goes up (you don't want to waste your chance) and that makes everything else massively harder. If you're having issues here, I encourage you to focus on just this part. Don't bother with trying to fill up the tanks until you can nail the connection 8 or 9 times out of 10. The trick here is sight picture. There are a lot of ways build it, people line up the canopy frame or hud with different parts of the tanker, basket or hose... I would recommend watching some YT videos of people doing it well and making up your own method. Then keep trying until you're good at it (just connecting). One step at a time. The second big challenge is staying connected, which comes down to precision flying. The tip many people give is that "there is no perfect stick and throttle position", "you need to be constantly correcting" and that is true but it took me a while to actually understand what it meant. The trick is to stop looking for that perfect stick and throttle setting. Killing any unwanted drift quickly is more important than being super precise about it. Let's say your plane is slowly starting to drift to the right. If you give it 1% of left stick, hold it, look if it fixed the problem, give it 1% more left stick, hold it, look again... you'll always be behind the aircraft. Instead of doing that yank the stick 10% (or 7%, or 12%, pinpoint precision isn't what you should be after here) to the left, then almost immediately back to the initial position. You want to kill the drift now. The aircraft can't get away from you. Your corrections should be short but deliberate. The aircraft will probably start drifting somewhere else almost immediately but that's ok, as long as you can stop it quickly. Once you get this down, this method works for AAR, landing taildraggers, hovering helos, any kind of precision flying really.

Sweet, and it's even a P, like ours.

According to RedKite, there may be an issue with the manual drift corrections being incorrectly applied between the two map scales: Maybe this is what you're running into? You could retry your experiment without applying any manual drift corrections (and/or any scale switching?) and see if the drift at different altitudes is still so different.