Scrim

"And as usual, I base this on nothing at all." Seriously? ED hasn't even given a small hint about the next update, let alone the 1.2.8 update, so no one has a clue about how long it will take, and therefore, not an even half reasonable idea about what may perhaps be in it.

As per the title, I have experienced that the Doppler completely stops functioning after a repair. Heading and such can't be adjusted, and it can't even be turned on.

Yeah, I don't get it. Wasn't that gunpod exactly the same one as the one already in DCS, available on the Mi-8?

I thought the SAS was the autopilot, albeit a simple one. Using the same hat switch thing, it really works well, what I'm wondering though is what the numbers on the dial that's turned for heading and such actually mean. Like, when I turn the heading knob to 3, what does that tell me?

Thanks for the tips, especially about the SAS and treating it like a full blown 747 :P Flying somewhat stable now, but I still don't understand quite how to use the SAS. For starters, exactly how do I use the heading knob? When I turn it, it alters the direction I'm traveling in, but I can't seem to find any sort of ratio between how much I turn the knob and how much that turns the helicopter. I don't really get the altitude one either. It turns on just fine, and I can make it take me lower and higher, but when I stop pressing the button upwards or downwards, I immediately start gaining/losing altitude, depending on how much collective I have, so what's the point of the altitude feature? Can anyone sort of give me a dumbed down explanation of how the autopilot/SAS works, i.e. what the different features do, and how I'm supposed to use them in flight?

Well, I've bought the Mi-8 quite a while ago, but have flown it very little, because I simply feel that it is the most uncontrollable vehicle in DCS. I fly the Huey quite well, but getting my head around the Mi-8 is like running head first into a brick wall for me. I used to be quite bad at the Huey at first too, but there I felt I almost always learnt a little something for the future after every crash, but in the Mi-8 it's just crash, fly again, nothing new. So, for those who've grown rather proficient at it, what would your tips be about learning how to take off, fly around, land, etc. this helicopter?

Very well, I shall change my complaint: There was no simulation of the AI pilot and co-pilot climbing out on to the skids to remove the flex guns :P

When ordering AI wingman to jettison their weapons during the Rebel Base mission, he not only jettisoned his rocket pods, but also his 2 flex guns, and both door guns.

The above has not turned 180 degrees in the past 30 minutes.

Yes, if you put the maximum wing hardpoint load on the F-35, which still won't come close to the A-10 in that regard, there is no stealth to talk about any longer. In Georgia, there was no super capable air defense network, it was a small conflict zone, and during all that time they were conducting SEAD missions to minimize Georgian AA capabilities. I agree, of course you can't wait for Task A to be completely finished before moving on to Task B. But if you're sending stealth CAS planes in to an area where stealth is absolutely vital to the mission, you're doing something wrong. Perhaps you don't wait for complete rule of the skies before doing certain things, but you certainly do modify your tactics and procedures until the enemy's AA capability is reduced, regardless of what aircraft you have. You don't do CAS very far behind the front lines, and around the front lines there just won't be the same types of AA, and there will be SEAD around. Exorcet: Yeah, I'm ignoring you until you start arguing without taking everything people write out of context and using outright false claims. Have a good day.

Yes, but the thing is, if there are so many ground threats around that your CAS assets need stealth to accomplish their mission, you are fighting a losing war. And the stealth CAS ability of the F-35 is embarrassingly bad. If it carries anything outside the internal weapons bay, kiss good bye to stealth. And the internal weapons bay only has room for 2 GBU-12s. And if they do bring that, they'll need an escort, because then they are flying without air-to-air capability into a battlefield where the enemy is so strong they still have a majority of their radars and advanced SAMs and AAA intact. That certainly wasn't the case in Georgia when and where the Russians sent in their SU-25s. And I have to disagree with the B-17/B-52 comparisons. They were flying strategic bombing missions, and here we're talking about sending planes into suicidally strong enemy territory for CAS missions, that are about as tactical as it gets with planes.

That is a pathetic way of arguing, and I'm not responding to it. Every single one of those arguments I explained, but you took the conclusions out of context to look clever or something. Ridiculous.

I think it's the other way around. A-10Cs would be slaughtered by MIG-21s flown by even half good pilots. On the one end you have a radar equipped, Mach 2 interceptor with long range radar guided air-to-air missiles. On the other end you have lumbering CAS planes with short range air-to-air missiles.

MIG-28!!!

Well, considering the extreme low altitude they'd have to go with for it to be more effective than shrapnel, they'd be flying so low they'd hardly cover an area larger than the measurements of that, eh, uhm, "weapons system"? Probably a good reason why they never used it :P

*sipping my tea* Jolly good man. Definitely seems like PR is of to a better start this time around, really makes me think the 21 will come around at last.

I had a similar thing today, though I'm not sure if I experienced it awake, semi awake, or fully asleep. Well, can't have been fully awake due to the weirdness. I wake up (semi awake, or fully awake in dream) to hear the alarm clock beeping like crazy, and being told to knock out some tanks (flown a lot of A-10C lately). Since I'm very much aware that it is my bed room that I am seeing, and not the cockpit of an A-10 or the barracks of an air force base, I quickly reach the conclusion that I'm just having a really weird dream. And thus I out right Rocky Balboa punch the off toggle on the alarm clock. 30 minutes later I awake to the realisation that the tank thing was a weird ass dream, but that my alarm clock was very much real. The closest thing to any aero related matters that happened at this point on wards was perhaps me rushing of to work at a speed that would've impressed a scrambling RAF pilot during the Battle of Britain. :doh:

Oh, I thought you meant they were getting rid of the BUFFs in favour of the new stealth bombers.

Question: Are you going to do any pre-order thing, or another Kickstarter thing? Now that things look like they're under way with a good management and PR, I sure would like to contribute, especially since I missed the last one, and it didn't end up with you now in the end.

Don't think so. Last time I checked, I'm pretty sure they were keeping the B-52 on for a while, due to small issues such as the new stealth ones supposed to replace it costs a shit tonne to keep operational, and can't fly through rain, sleet, hail, or clouds in general because the coating would be too damaged by it (When Penguins Flew and Water Burned). Which may or may not be an issue if your squadron is scrambled to drop nukes or whatever else would warrant sending such expensive, stealth bombers, and there's a cloud over the base. Or the target. Or anywhere along the designated routes to and from the target.

Except that is exactly the same old nonsense generalisations and unbased assumptions that's been spouted by the same people for decades now. And it's still to come true. When the repeater rifle was finished, did that make bayonets obsolete? No, and the difference between a repeater rifle and a bayonet is mind blowing compared to the difference between an A-10C and an F-35. Do the sensors of the F-35 have X-ray vision that enables it to send a Maverick through clouds against tanks? Oh right, it doesn't. Oh right, it can't even carry air-to-ground missiles without breaking its stealth, now can it? It only has 2 internal pylons, which is all it can use if it's to maintain stealth. So in essence, for CAS it can only carry very little if it is to remain in stealth, at the expense of air-to-air weapons to defend itself, and in case of a relatively low cloud cover, it will RTB because it can't see anything. What this means is that not only the A-10C, but other already existing planes, like the F-16 and F-15E are better suited for CAS. The only even remotely superior quality of the F-35 would be sensors, and if you're familiar with the transition from the A-10A to the A-10C, you won't argue that any of those sensors or sensors of equal capability can't be used on upgraded A-10s, F-16s, F-15s, etc.

Which other jet in their inventory can carry such a diverse, large payload, with the same long loitering time? Guided munitions doesn't make tank busting cannons obsolete. There are, and will be plenty of times when flying high and dropping LGBs. That won't fly in a war where you can't guarantee that the bulk of the enemy's advanced AAA and mobile SAM systems have been knocked out and can't be replaced. Let's face it, the USAF is ruled by the fighter mafia to the extent that getting assigned to nukes puts staff officer careers on hold. They tried to retire the A-10A before the Gulf war, only to see every single argument against it crumble to dust along with the tanks, APCs and IFVs of Iraqi army at the hands of A-10 pilots. 20 years later the dust has settled, and there are enough new toys around to try the same thing again. Just some rhetorical questions: LGBs existed during the Gulf war, and the A-10s still knocked out more tanks. How did that make sense? If the A-10 indeed is obsolete, then how come the Marine Corps and Army, who are the ones calling for its help during conventional wars and benefit directly from what it is unique in bringing to the fight, protest so loudly that the latter had threatened to fly them themselves if the USAF makes true on its threat to retire the A-10 fleet?

Because the skills and marketing people you'd need are so vastly different from those for making air sims that they'd end up making a loss because either the price of the joystick wouldn't be high enough to cover expenses, or it would be high enough, in which case few would buy it.

The sole edge the F-35 has, or rather will have when finished, is a radar that is primarily designed for air to air combat, but can also be used to some extent to search the ground. However, couple that with the fact that the F-35 will be to expensive and to fragile to send low over the battlefield, and that there's nothing that renders the A-10 incapable of being equipped with exactly the same radar, or one solely dedicated for ground targeting, and I really think it becomes a quite mute upper hand. No, just no. No. No. No. Knocking out tanks is CAS. I'll... I'll just leave it at that.

Yep, totally a question for BST, that.