Hadwell

the MFD symbols are pretty easy, anything with a T shape, that includes ones with a < or a > are enemies, anything with a o or an O is a friendly and the hud shows tas, the airspeed indicator shows ias... depending on what mode you're in i think....

you need to set a key for repeater mode, there is no default one, but they've updated it, so now it looks like this

yeah lol like people constantly saying one plane has a better turn radius than another... well pretty much every plane of the same role in the same era has a better turning radius than any other plane, at their own best speeds and altitudes... but what would be a more accurate thing to say is... what plane turns better than the other at the speed of the slowest (or plane with the most lift) of the two planes best turning speed.

mk.5 and mk.9 are two totally different beasts... mk.5 is like a feather on the breeze, mk.9 is far heavier and faster...

lol the trimmer is just to make your plane sort of level, not fully, just enough you're not having to push or pull A LOT on your stick, just less than a lot, you are supposed to have to hold your stick in one place to keep the plane level with autopilot off, never let the trim fly the plane for you, they put a stick in the plane for a reason... other than that, as everyone else says... autopilot...

DCS is single-threaded, single-threaded means it only uses one core a cpu core can only do one thing at a time, so it very quickly switches between tasks, so fast you don't even notice it's only actually running one thing at a time... each of those individual things the core is doing is called a thread, and DCS only really uses 1, even though behind the scenes DCS uses lots of threads, their all sitting there waiting their turn on 1 core, even if your machine has 4+ and could technically be doing more than 1 thing at a time. same thing goes with GPUs... DCS doesn't support SLI, so if you're running a GTX690 for example, you're actually running a GTX680, since your second gpu core (that makes it a 690) is just sitting there parked... this being said... for dcs, as it currently is, to get good framerates, its not the quantity of cores your cpu has, but the quality, and for gpus... better to spend a few more dollars and get a gtx 980 over say... a pair of 970s (just an example)

overclock it to 4.5~ GHz, get a GTX780 or better... i get 60 fps on average with everything in drop down menus on high, civ traffic off, 2xAA and HDR off, preload radius at 150,000, trees 6000 and clutter/bushes at 450 although in some situations it will drop to the 20's and 30s... on average 60, max 140 this game, regardless of the plane you fly, has the worst min to max framerates of any game I've ever played

but airplanes often consist of 2 or more different lifting bodies... you need to take into account that it's 2+ flying things attached to each other that create a stable platform that an engine and person can sit in... the fueslage, wings and tail section share a symbiotic relationship, and just knowing the wing type won't give you any indication of what AOA is needed and the reason i say weight is because you will need to use greater forces on the tail to keep the nose up... if its nose heavy... creating more drag, in turn needing a greater AOA to keep level at any given speed

the fuselage is also a lifting body, and where its mass/center of lift is relative to the lift of the wings also changes the AOA required for level flight. so like i said before... trying to figure out what the exact numbers for why the mig-21 flies the way it does is pretty useless... but i will also add... unless you're a genius at fluid dynamics... pretty darn hard to find out...

http://airfoiltools.com/airfoil/details?airfoil=tsagi12-il so now you can see what i mean when i say so close to symmetrical it might as well be... and where i got the info for the airfoil type: http://m-selig.ae.illinois.edu/ads/aircraft.html

oh, in that case... the mig-21 doesn't have any wing camber, but the thickness of the wing does change...

alright, thanks for the info, going to need to practice some more i think...

well more like semi-rocket.... i want it to dumb fire like a rocket till the enemy passes close enough for the seeker to start tracking... but if the missile would go all squirrely cause the seeker will just follow whatever... then yeah... not really helpful...

do you know what a deflection shot is? knowing where the enemy will be when the bullet gets to it? why can't you do that with seekers? why can't i know where the enemy will be so that when i fire my missile, a few seconds later the seeker picks it up? or now that i think about it... yeah i see what you mean... if the seeker just picked up on anything, it'll go all wobbly trying to follow everything at once...? I don't know a lot about missiles, i don't really like them much, since i spent the vast majority of my time playing ww2 sims...

that might be true... it depends on what the enemy is doing... take a look at the video on the first post in this thread... in that situation... do you honestly think he's transitioning through the seekers FOV at any insane rate?

last ditch effort... or im really close to an enemy and can tell he's going to pass in front of me soon, i can launch the missile before the tone cause i know in a moment im going to get the tone anyway, allows me a few more seconds to escape if i have to...

yeah it just doesn't make any sense to me though... even if the chance is slim, i personally would still have the seeker turned on... in case it does find something... also known as... if a friendly can fly between me and my target and the missile switches to the friendly, then there's no reason an enemy can't fly in front of the seeker instead

if that's the case, then if i fire it at an enemy, and a friendly flys infront of the seeker, why does the missile still have the ability to switch to the friendly? there's no way it should need to be attached to a pylon in order to track a target, otherwise as soon as it left the pylon it'd go dumb... and look at the aim-120... its even more fire and forget than that... also IR missiles DO track the sun... but they don't have a 360 degree panoramic view...

super helpful, much info, very good. [ATTACH]109635[/ATTACH] 22669d1287389321-fighter-performance-actual-plane-analysis-making-best-mig-21.pdf

I think you can tell just by looking at the plane that the wings are not symmetrical, there's definitly more weight above the wings and forwards of the wings than underneath the wings, you will need some downwards aoa at high speeds to keep it level... that being said, their so close to being symmetrical, might as well call them that... as for exact numbers, well I'm sure knowing what they are doesn't allow you to change them, will still need to fly the plane the same way... to rephrase... the center of mass on the mig-21... theres no way in hell its also the center of lift.

you can launch missiles at any time so long as the correct pylon is selected and their powered up, don't even need a lock... what's lame is that IR seekers still need to be attached to the pylons to start tracking, that doesn't make any sense to me... i think if you were to dumb fire 4 R-60M's and an enemy were to fly infront of one, it should start tracking on its own shouldn't it?

the P-40 couldn't hold its own vs a spit mk 5 no way in hell, but a later model spit in a turn fight i bet it could...the mk 5bs etc are like leaves in the breeze, they almost float, the mk 14 etc are a lot heavier, closer to a p-51 than a mk5b... would be worth trying anyway, curious...

the P-40 could hold its own against a 109G2... so yeah probably it would be ok vs an mc205.... maybe... from what i can remember, the P-40 is really amazing at stall fighting with its flaps down, it can almost turn with planes like the zero... and i find myself saying this a lot... you can shoot down any plane with anything if the enemy pilot doesn't leave himself an exit or makes a mistake... Why do you think i have "the fun is in the fight" in my sig? i never use the aim-120... I never take the best, because I like to think I'm, as a virtual pilot, better than that. so yeah i'd like to have an mc202 or 205 and a p-40 :D and the reason longer planes are worse at turning is because cog changes, and long things have better streight line stability, at the cost of vertical instability, since the distance between the wings and the tail is greater... like anything that flys, floats, rolls or swims, the longer it is, the worse it is at turning...

the MC-205 had a db-605 engine like the 109, but wings more similar to the P-51, i guess it's what you could call a 109 sized P-51... i think a A model 190 might be able to out turn a MC205, but probably not a D, since they had to lengthen the tail on the D because of the bigger engine, both of which hurt its turning performance mind you... lol if you put an mc-205 in this game, it would get eaten alive by everything, it would be the worst performing plane in the game, and people would only fly it for that reason, or because they liked italian planes... its bigger and heavier than the 109, but uses the same engine... the mc205 is to the P-47, what the 109 is to the corsair, except that the corsair had bad high altitude performance compared to the 47...

don't forget though by 1944 a lot of the veteran lw pilots were on the eastern front in russia trying to stop the russian advance, and after d-day, there was basically nobody left on the western front who had much experience... most of the time, it's not the plane, but the pilot, and people here are right about the p-51 and p-47 being more important for their fuel capacity than anything else Us sim pilots, a lot of us have more experience in all be it virtual combat than 10, maybe even 100 of the best pilots in all the wars ever fought in the air combined... it's easy to forget that... plus... we don't have to worry about dying if we crash or get shot at in a sim... we are all given the opportunity to learn how these planes could really have been, where a real pilot in the actual plane would be scared to really push his plane, even if he was really experienced...