esb77

Of course. Would be nice to have one of the slightly newer multi-role variants, but Su-27 family and F/A 18 family sit on the top of my list of most desired airplanes for DCS.

There was definitely elevation gain when I watched them. Not much, hard to tell with the camera angle, maybe less than 15 m, almost certainly less than 50 m. For an airshow performance as long as you have smoke off, gains of 10 or 15 m or so are going to be hard for spectators to detect, that's less than the length of the plane. When it comes to quality of cobra maneuvers usually what I've seen in terms of criteria were: yaw control, roll control, maximum pitch achieved, and good recovery. Ideally meaning no uncommanded yaw or roll, pitch of up to 130 to 135 degrees, and little to no loss of altitude during/after recovery. I've had one really good cobra so far, I think I made about 125 degrees, but I didn't pay attention to altitude change, because none of the sources I used on how to perform the maneuver listed controlling altitude gain as a concern for proper execution.

I tend to control speed after takeoff by just increasing pitch, at least when I'm being lazy and don't throttle back. I try to get the gear up before my IAS passes 400 km/h (I'm in the habit of getting it up before 350 on the Su-25), and so far I haven't had any problems.

You'd probably need differential throttle settings to do this. While in a high attitude position the vertical stabilizers are going to be in disturbed airflow, and what airflow there is will be close to 90 degrees off of the direction the rudders would need in order to give yaw control. In order for rudders to give good yaw control you'd need to reestablish relative airflow in the nose to tail direction, and have regained a bit of airspeed. If you want to try it you should cut throttle on one engine to idle, and have the other at 100% either at or just before you reach maximum pitch for your cobra maneuver. Rudder yaw control is only going to come back at, or slightly after the exit from the maneuver. My HOTAS doesn't have a split throttle so I haven't tried yaw control with the engines yet. At least not in aerobatic maneuvers. Actually, in that second video at 2:55 you can see from the smoke that the rudders are in disturbed air, they're definitely doing it with some combination of differential throttle and/or thrust vectoring.

Well, I've gone into the ground a number of times after failing to recover properly from Cobra attempts. In most of those cases though, both engines were stalled out, and on one occasion I was going backwards (don't ask how I managed that because I have no idea). I think in all the cases where I managed an engine restart I got out o.k. Wasn't really spinning in any of these cases though, and in a few of them I may have spent too much time trying for engine restarts rather than reestablishing aircraft orientation. I suspect that if I had tried for my relights after getting control of the plane I might have made it out of those ones. Also, starting altitude was usually between 3000 and 3500 m.

The exhaust nozzles are centered roughly 2m above ground when the plane is parked or taxiing. So if the engines are on, the thrust is applying a moment to the airframe, and if the thrust changes rapidly (as when the nozzles open or close) it's entirely possible that this moment is large enough to produce a visible change in the compression of the nose gear's suspension. That's just the expected physics, nothing special required. Not even especially difficult physics either, Newtonian laws and a bit of calculus would get you a fairly decent model. As far as breaking free, it really depend on what the static versus dynamic friction values are supposed to be interacting with how fast thrust changes when the nozzle position changes. It may just require the sort of anticipation in throttle operation that is needed when you're trying to free a Su-25T that's stuck off road or in snow in DCS.

I'm glad it helped. Don't feel too bad about the necro, it reminded me that this thread existed and gave me a chance to correct some information that was out of date to reflect what's currently in the sim.

So this is for an Su-27 UB, taken from a passenger account, and at best a semi-reliable source, but for what it's worth: 220 kts at 10,000 ft 85% throttle Fast pull back all the way on the stick, nose up to 90 deg (UB max pitch is lower than single seater due to different center of gravity) Nose down to recover, increase throttle (100% mil or AB not specified), 83 kts speed at end of maneuver. In metric that'd be roughly entry at 440-450 km/h, 3000 m alt and about 170 km/h airspeed at the finish. No indications in account of whether these were IAS or TAS. Up to 130 degrees pitch was mentioned as normal for the single seat Su-27 under similar conditions. Fuel load was not mentioned, but it was the last thing they did before landing after a 1 hr flight with a lot of aerobatics, so probably not all that much. Also no mention of needing to turn off the pitch limiter, as I said, semi-reliable or perhaps merely incomplete source.

Well, mounted on a truck you don't have to pass airworthiness inspections anymore. Besides, how else are you going to discover how well your truck handles in reverse at 300 km/h?

Yes, when an airplane not designed for supersonic flight gets to the transonic speed range (usually about .85 to 1.0 Mach) it will suffer from a variety of aerodynamic problems. Buffeting is one of them. In the game however, buffeting does not have any bad affects other than making aiming weapons very difficult. Entering a dive at high speeds however, is not a good idea. It can take over 7000m of altitude to pull out of a dive if the plane is too fast.

For the small tactical bomber/attack jet category the A-6 Intruder might be an interesting choice.

You have to instruct both your wingmen and the reinforcement flight to attack. The most effective way to do it would be to take control of the SEAD Su-25T yourself, and order the two ground attack units to orbit in friendly territory. Take out the radar SAMs, then fly back behind friendly lines. Jump back to your original plane, and go after all the Linebacker units, or at least the ones grouped with the leading Bluefor elements. Then task both wingmen to engage mission, or to engage targets of opportunity. Or if you like to micro-manage, you can do engage my target. That's how you'd get the most kills and fewest lost Su-25s. It also takes a long time and you may fail the mission. The one with SEAD tasking doesn't have the LLTV pod on of course, but your starting plane and the other anti armor plane in your flight have it equipped. I haven't noticed any problems with wingmen not being able to see well enough to hit after I've given them appropriate taskings. You can just do engage mission, or engage ground/air defenses from the start, but the AIs are typically not that bright (often their priority for SEAD is AAA first, then IR SAMS, then radar SAMS), and are of limited use before they get themselves shot down. If you can clear out all of the SAMs quickly, they will do a fair job on the armor units on their own. Another note, if you send them in too aggressively and they have to evade SAMs they usually jettison all of their weapons while defending, and will have to RTB.

Air to air radar systems are somewhat complex. Ideally you want to know what the system is doing in terms of emitting signal and receiving useful returns AND how the computer and display try to display some (but usually not all) of that information to you in a readable and hopefully useful way. In other words, it would be a VERY good idea to read the manual so that you know what's going on.

Ok, explanation time. The radar search volume is the area that you're basically shining a radio frequency searchlight through. The numbers for high and low are not angles of deflection from the airplane's centerline even though that would be a pretty sensible system. If you take those lines from your diagrams, what the numbers represent is the altitude above ground of the upper and lower edge of the radar search pattern at the range of the TDC. So if you are sufficiently nose down and you haven't stabilized the radar to point at a particular altitude, or if you slew the radar search area down far enough you can get to the point where both lines intersect the ground. The vertical angle of the scan arc has not changed, it's just that the top of the arc and the bottom of the arc intersect with the ground at a range of 20 nm, so the distance above ground level is zero. See the crude diagram here. The upper limit UL and lower limit LL of the scan arc both intersect the ground before reaching the range of the TDC, so their altitude at that range is displayed as zero. Hope that helps. Summarized from page 85 of the LOMAC 1.1 manual. Note:Modified diagram to better reflect how radar system probably really works.

Start out treating the Hip as a funny looking fixed wing that needs a lot of rudder input. Take off and land like a fixed wing plane would. Feel free to use the whole runway length, though you probably won't need it. From that starting point, gradually practice getting more precise with where your wheels touch down, and making slower and shorter approaches. Keep practicing carefully and your landings should become more and more helicopter like, and you shouldn't run into problems with VRS surprising you. Another thing you can do is a lot of hover check and hover taxi practice. I find that the key thing are the VVI gauge for descent rate, and also the collective pitch indicator. When you hover check before takeoff, note what your rotor blade pitch is, and realize that that's roughly what will be required to not fall out of the sky when you slow enough to loose translational lift when you land. It can be a big adjustment, depending on load you might need 5 to 8 degrees of collective to hover, but 3 degrees is often more than enough when you're coming in on your glideslope on approach. I've seen other more experienced pilot say on the forums that a lot of people who think they're dying to VRS are actually just not increasing collective (and where applicable also engine power, not a worry on the Mi-8 where the engine governor will handle it as long as you don't do crazy things) enough when they transition from flight with ETL to a hover. If you have the option it's not a bad idea to try to get low enough for ground effect to kick in (roughly 7 to 10 m agl for the hip in DCS) before slowing below about 45 km/h. Or practice going from normal flight to hover and back again repeatedly without loosing altitude in the process (or at least not descending faster than 3 m/s). That will teach you how to manage the loss of translational lift without loosing control of vertical speed. Practice at 1000m until you're good at it, and then landing should be quite manageable.

The Kh-25ML's performance in DCS changed radically when they introduced the advanced flight models for missiles. It went from a max usable range of about 12 km (using a Shkval system on a Su-25T) to a usable range of maybe 6-8 km now. Usually 6 or less in my experience. The aerodynamic modeling is greatly improved, the question is if the data they have for the missile characteristics is correct or if there are factors in the real missile's aerodynamics that are odd enough that their generalized model doesn't approximate them well. No idea what the answers to that are. It's possible that with the old model the Kh-25ML was unrealistic, and now it's correct. What ever the case is, it is no longer a good stand off missile in DCS. To the options of baiting missiles till the launcher runs dry and going in fast and low (I'd recommend cluster containers), I'll add this: Use the mission editor to grab some command authority and send in a SEAD flight before you hit the target.

WAIT! Hold it one second there. Do you mean to say that, "tactical bushes," are actually modelled in DCS? Somewhere that I forget the URL to there's a very long and detailed guide to attacking ground targets with an attack airplane that was written by a former A-10 pilot. It covers everything from guns and bombs with basic sights to guided munitions. It includes a section on dealing with the Maverick's (or at least early versions) habit of locking onto targets such as bushes, sheds, large rocks, portable toilets, etc. I believe it was caused by the missile guidance preferring the block of highest contrast compared to the background for the optically guided versions of the missile. Not sure if the guidance logic was any different for the IR seeker, but in that case a vehicle with a running engine has a good chance of being the highest contrast area, at least in the early morning, the evening, and at night. So do check the version of the Mavs that you're using, it may make a difference. To butcher a quote: "You can't just translate into target designation. You must think in missile guidance system logic." ;) I mostly fly helis in DCS these days, but now I have a sudden urge to hop in the A-10C (don't have FC3) and see if it's Mavericks are also attracted to tactical bushes.

To sum up the explanations so far: How powerful a heli feels in hover is a function of the available excess positive lift. The Mi-8's larger rotor is more efficient at converting power into lift than the Ka-50's smaller rotors. Both helis have a similar amount of engine power. So for a similar take off weight the Mi-8 will tend to have more available excess lift. Also note that calculating the lift that a helicopter can generate is still fairly complicated, even if you simplify a lot of things. Engine power is a factor, but there are many others, some of which may have a greater effect on the final output. Hope that makes it clear for anyone still confused.

They used farm fields as airfields for planes like Spitfires and the P-51 during WWII. Modern jets are a LOT heavier, but the tire contact area isn't all that much bigger, so they are likely to have problems on soft dirt. On packed dirt, like a dirt road or dry lake bed, an A-10 and most of the Soviet jets should do just fine. That's in real life. In DCS terrain seems to be broken down into: paved, not-paved, water. The airplanes only function well on paved surfaces. This may be a matter of map quality rather than physics engine. With rain, ice, and snow, you can see differences in aircraft taxiing behavior. So something like coefficient of friction, roughness, or rolling resistance (drag basically) has to be accounted for in the model. For the most part it's not that important for the missions in DCS and the various modules, so whether it's a physics simulation limitation or a lack of information about the driving qualities in the map files so I'm not really sure what the exact cause is. So to answer your question, including the implied parts: In real life some aircraft in DCS can taxi on unpaved surfaces, some can't. In DCS the taxiing properties of surfaces that are not runways or taxiways may not be very accurate.

Not sure how well il-2 models the aerodynamics, but if you're switching from a reasonably accurate WW-II sim to the DCS jets, be aware that an accurately modelled prop acts as a gigantic airbrake when you throttle down on approach. Turbofan engines do not provide the same braking effect, and the difference can take some getting used to.

I started on the Su-25T, and liked it so much that it's still my favorite, though I'd wager that changes whenever they get around to releasing an AFM for the Su-27. The Su-25T and the A-10 C (which is a separate module purchase) both have a fair number of tutorial missions included as part of the game. Also unless it's been taken down since last time I looked, if you look at the Flankertraining website in Ironhand's signature there are a whole bunch of useful training videos for the Su-25 and Su-27. There are some fairly good ones on youtube as well, at least for the Su-25. Some of the info may have changed, for example some of the missiles have lost on the order of 20-50% of their effective range since the old days (yeah, I'm looking at you Kh-25L) but the basics are all still valid, and doing the basics well is what makes you a really effective pilot. For the quickest possible in cockpit training probably start with the included Su-25T training missions from DCS World. Just beware those crosswind landings.

Different design philosophy to a certain extent too. The SPO gives a prioritized very basic overview. For details you need help from AWACS, ground control, or your brain and your eyeballs. The western RWRs have a lot more functionality, but learning them well enough to get full use out of them is more complex and takes longer. In a WWII style conflict where you're planning on cranking out massive numbers of planes and sticking pilots with low flight hours in the cockpit the SPO is probably a better system due to simplicity for the pilot. If you have the time and budget for training, and plan on most of your pilots bringing most of your planes back more or less intact from sorties the western style RWR systems are a lot nicer.

There is a manual. Two manuals actually. It's covered in the LOMAC FC3 manual. It's also covered in the Su-25/25T manual for DCS World (which is mostly recycled content from the LOMAC manual, but with a few extras, and none of the junk related to A-10s, Mig-29s, F-15Cs, Su-27/33s). These are PDF files that are included in a DCS World install, though I forget where exactly in the file structure their default pathname is. Detailed instructions are in the manual, the other option is to cycle the laser on and off. Though I seem to remember sometimes doing 2 Vikhrs in one pass without cycling the laser. Don't remember how I did it though. Maybe it was a seven or eight second pass. In any case the issue is the weapons control computer simulation, not the laser thermodynamics simulation. Starting at about 20 km from target you won't have time to overheat the laser in a single pass before you overfly the target and loose designation due to the gimbal limits of the Shkval's camera system.

My understanding is that there were two series of T variants, and counting both as Ts the total number of production planes was about 16. Which is not a lot. In terms of combat effectiveness it's much better than the original Su-25, but it got dropped for lack of money, lack of clear need, and lack of sexiness compared to multi-role derivatives of the Su-27. If I had to place a bet on what really finished the program off it would be lack of sexiness. Air forces are usually led by former pilots, and pilots usually want the sexy airplanes no matter how useful the ugly planes might be. If you want to fly highly effective CAS and have enough budget to afford the guided munitions a Su-25T is worth 2-8 Su-25s in terms of effectiveness. If you're under budget pressure, but doing serious precision damage isn't really important the Su-25 is the way to go. In terms of speed and agility, it really depends on fuel and payload. The base planes aren't all that different. That said, unless you're doing SEAD you almost always want Vikhrs on the 25T and Vikhrs are both heavy and high drag.

To cancel bad AP trim hit the emergency wings level mode. Then let it stabilize before you disengage. Don't use AP taxiing, taking off, or landing. You can use it down to 5 to 3 km from the runway if you have trouble getting on glideslope manually for landing approaches, but if you keep it on until the last moment you're really asking for unpleasant trim surprises during touchdown. Due to the geometry of how the radar altimeter works the AP is quite happy to fly you straight into mountains if the mountains are steep enough. Read the manual and practice. Then do it again a bunch of times until you understand the AP. It's very useful if you know how to use it properly. Also note that for a player controlled plane the auto pilot should be off by default in most missions and the starting trim should be neutral. If you don't turn the AP on, but are still having problems then you probably have some sort of control configuration problem or your input hardware (stick, pedals, keyboard, etc) may have a problem.