scaflight

Of all these videos here, are -any- of the Eagles deploying countermeasures? It has been a recurring thing that I've been wondering about, but I just wrote it down to my eyesight being bad.

Ttaylor: Nice one! But I think Rifle is for A2G missiles. You'd call Fox One I think for SAR, Fox Two for IR.

I'll hit some of you up after I'm done with my exams, hope to get large-ish Fishbed formations going. :) MSI Afterburner is a great kit, absolutely. Now, it is pretty preposterous for our scope to not give vertical information when the target is unlocked. Was this a real restraint of the technology, or just as massively a hit and miss design-wise as the RWR's presumptuous lack of direction indication?

I think that is quite separate. I filed it here, but also noted their previous AI disclaimer.

I feel like instead of trying to tweak it unilaterally, ED and LN should work out common solutions. This is a part of DCS development that I don't know anything about, and since it has gone (to my knowledge) unreported I can't easily speculate on the extent of such standardization.

Is there a universal AoA that reflects optimal descent? (I guess I'm just restating my above question :))

Is there a set AoA that we can establish, after which we only touch the throttle until flare? What does the actual manual say in this regard? (AoA gauge sure is a ton more visible than the VSI)

ttaylor: How do you dodge AIM-120s with (what appears to be) such confidence? Most of the time I have positively no idea when a missile is inbound, and so the RWR alert forces constant turns until I'm flat out of energy and clueless as to the position of my enemy. And with 10 Gs pulled I should sure ****ing believe you lost your ordnance! Haha!

Oh, that was painful to watch. My immediate reaction to your lack of operable missiles was to look for pylon power (but your camera never looked down there, argh!). If you like checklists, pylon power is a first for A2A and A2G. :) You'd never think it, but it's incredible how much the forward metal on the canopy and the rear sight gets in your way. Irks me quite a bit, since enemies seem to end up there a disproportionate amount of time >:E Like you (I suspect), I started out wanting to do a very analogue kind of joystick assignment: I took what was on the real stick and put it on my Saitek, and left a lot of buttons open. I've since come to the conclusion that cockpit management in a dogfight pairs poor visibility with lack of a tactile sense, and it's not a ton more realistic to want to flick the switch with the mouse. In real life a pilot can feel the row of switches while maintaining visual on the bogey, and in this god damned aircraft a visual is the most important thing. I've therefore moved the IR-SAR switch to joystick pan (left of pickle), and I switch the 1-2 and 3-4 stations on throttle index finger pan. I hope it'll pay off. I don't know if you have your afterburner set to kick in at >90% throttle, but beware if you do that coming in and out of AB kicks out a cloud of exhaust which is immediately visible. When I fly with a friend of mine and we try to get visual on each other, that gas cloud is a lot more visible than any flickering of lights. In a dogfight it's the easiest way of all for an opponent to see you. edit: I was going to add, but the one below me also posted, that station numbers are arranged with odds left, evens right. 3-1-(Center)-2-4

At 1:11, there appears to be one bomb each on the 3-4 and one on 1-2 station. It could therefore be speculated (dubiously) that the aircraft started originally with a partially assymmetric loadout.

Sometimes you really should keep your head on a swivel to understand what's going on around you. If friendly SAMs are launching, perhaps Migs should be launching as well? A single RWR beep, and you know you have to play the shadow. That you must use his curiousity against him to strike him directly in the face. Sometimes you get them on radar, then they disappear the next second for no discernable reason. Then the siren starts and you pop, turn, and run. In the frenzy you miss the obvious. Defeating Sparrows in a turn is no stress, defeating AMRAAMs in a straight line is stupid. My target is dead ahead. So close yet so far. I longed for encounters with other Fishbeds, but if this was not sufficient... maybe it's not meant to be. :) PS. Please reduce canopy clutter. I love it, but I hate it.

Hi. A two-fold bug report. 1. My tests show AI fires rear-aspect IR missiles at any aspect, and that they achieve a hit with this tactic. R-60, R-60M and R-3S tested. When I attempt the same tactic, my IR missiles refuse to move. (7 samples. Mig-21 at Good and later Excellent. 32,000 feet, 40 km apart.) 2. They always achieve radar lock before firing IR missiles. This gives an unnecessary clue about a missile being fired. Additionally I suppose it could be a clue that the IR missile gets radar tracking capabilities, but that's speculation on my part. I saw your post regarding AI wonkiness but thought to file this regardless. Thank you for the product.

I love the humorous text narration, very good work.

Isn't the circle meant to be on the bottom? That way you were meant to be able o align it with the moving PRMG lines when coming in at an angle to the approach course.

Turbohog: You have to press the IFF to check? It won't tell you right after the normal lock? Until higher fidelity airframes with less automatization and fewer modern solutions come around, the Fishbed isn't really being judged on its merits. Flankers and Eagles and Fulcrums don't just fight with weapons that aren't available to the Fishbed, but achieve a completely different level of situational awareness. That's not only down to easy-to-use technology, but a completely different cockpit workload (a very substantial lack thereof). For most, the pattern is HUD->Radar/EOS->Visual search. Meanwhile the portion of time spent heads-down in the Mig is vastly greater than in any other airframe (a lot of time in the A-10C is spent looking at displays that if anything can help increase your SA). I'd love it if MP could be more 80s-tailored. I could say that I'd love it if there was something similar to fight against, like another Fishbed or something of a similar era, but mostly I think I wish there were fewer aircraft so vastly better than the Fishbed. :) In a more low-tech scenario with Fishbed-based CAP I think scenarios without the FC3 airframes will be a lot more entertaining and lead to more merges. To me it's only really those aircraft and their proliferation that determine the Fishbed-hostile dynamic on MP servers. Disclaimer: I suck at DCS, I play on public serves like those of 104, and I only sometimes play with friends in 2-ship or more.

Stray cat: Landing in the Fishbed at 55% throttle is an excellent way to conserve fuel for the ministry of state defense - not only does your litre count go down for this approach, but you won't spend any fuel on the next trip after crashing the aircraft! :) I rarely move under 75% throttle for an approach. The Fishbed won't punish you for reaching threshold at 350-60-70 kmh, so stay fast and stay safe. =) At the rest: Should this switch be manually toggled if flaps can not be lowered or during windmilling approach (p.164 in manual)?

For those that haven't tried it yet, RCtrl+L is the default keybinding for the pilot's torch. A brilliant addition! Tangentially related. :)

Good Golly did this aircraft put the fright in me! 700 meters from the threshold on a silky smooth approach, I make out the shape of a Mig-21 holding short. As the distance falls, I suddenly have 0 FPS between the ~300m and -50 meter mark - and some would call this a relatively critical part of the approach. :D By the time I get frames again I've somehow not lost my wheels on the hardest touchdown ever. Great job though, can't be overstated just how well made this product is.

Beware the lack of jammer utility. The summary in that thread, which I believe stands due to no update on the field from ED, is that SPS-141 in MP A2A will have tangible effects, whereas against any ADS it will not do anything. Tangentially related. :)

Use morse code as identifier. Most codes are one, two or three letters; each letter can be from one to four bits of sound, long/short or da/di. You have to write them down for each ADF freq you expect to use. When two signals are received, the speaker will give you both while the ADF needle will only pick up one of them. You should be able to tell when this is happening because obviously, 1) you're not hearing -the- code you want, and 2) the codes are mangled together making long, nonsensical sounds. A lack of pause between characters is the easiest way to tell I supose. To distinguish there's no way but to tune left or right/up or down to get away from the errant signal.

This is a subtle but pretty important point. It's even opposite for the GAR-8 volume knob and the radar range knob, and they're right next to one another :) Would be swell if consistency was observed throughout the cockpit.

Said link works for me. The unparsed link is http://aviationshoppe.com/manuals/f-86_flight_manual/f-86.html if your browser is having problems reading parsed links. In which case copy-paste this one. Considering the slow progress on the Mi-8, I'm not holding my breath for a manual.

Hi I hazard putting this in here because it's plainly where most of the Sabre fans are currently browsng. I'm looking for an MP server with some good missions for Sabres and P-51s, you know, the kind of large scale stuff you routinely see on 104th and so on. Are there any, or perhaps some of you are clued in on whether there will be any popping up in the near future? Thank you in advance for any help. Also sorry if it's the madly wrong forum. :) I JUST WANT TO :joystick:

I personally find, maneuvering against the Sabre, that I am able to get on its tail far more often than I can get behind the Mig. The Mig seems able to do some aerobatics I wasn't fully conscious of. It also leaves extremely little smoke behind. I am of course an utter noob at BFM, but could I hazard to guess that the Mig-15 performs a lot better than it did in real life? (A part of me also wants a "North Korean" skill setting in the editor ;))

Is there a special dance to making a non-Steam Sabre work on Steam DCS World?