drPhibes

Awesome! Thanks a lot :)

TACAN (or VOR/DME for the civvies; functionally they're the same thing although they operate at different frequencies) is an enroute navigation aid that provides bearing and distance to the beacon, not a precision landing system. A TACAN approach can guide you down to visual minima, but for CAT I minima or below you need either ILS, MLS, SCAT1/GBAS, TLS or one of the different types of proprietary military laning systems (TILS, ICLS etc).

Yup. Unless ED place Navy ICLS beacons at all the airports (like they did with the TILS for the AJS37).

The Warthog grip has no tamperproofing (i.e. "warranty void if broken" stickers) anywhere, so there's no way they can tell that you've opened it unless you screw something up. And if you do screw something up you shouldn't be trying to get them to fix it for free anyway.

Have you tried searching the "Official updates" section on the forums? ED also has a FB page.

[Rant mode on] A seven page speculation thread about an aircraft Leatherneck have said they weren't making (5 months ago; a blink of a eye in "DCS-time"). I guess that's the ED forums in a nutshell... [Rant mode off]

Don't underestimate the manic OCD of the rivet counters. I have seen people seriously complaining about things not looking right inside the wheel wells and other completely inaccessible (unless you're studying it in the model viewer) areas of DCS aircraft.

The fact is that nukes, with the exception of the 2nd and 3rd ones ever detonated, are purely strategic deterrents. They serve no real purpose other than preventing "the other guy" from using his against you, and are completely pointless in a simulated battlefield where global thermonuclear war isn't a possible outcome.

How is TACAN related to a discussion about ICLS and ILS?

A brief (and somewhat simplified) guide to inertial navigation: IMU: Inertial Measurement Unit. A sensor package with accelerometers and gyroscopes. INS: A computer system that uses the data from the IMU in order to determine your current position. It may be completely independent of external signals, requiring manual position updates (including your initial position) using known landmarks, or it may be integrated with GPS (typically using a kalman filter, which combines the short term accuracy of the IMU with the long term accuracy of GPS). First of all, all the IMU does is to measure acceleration in the X, Y and Z axis. From the acceleration measurements, you get speed by integrating the acceleration, and distance traveled by integrating the speed (but this is typically done by the INS; the IMU is just the box with the sensors). In order to keep the accelerometers aligned in inertial space, you either place them on a gyro stabilized platform (gimballed IMU), or use complicated transformation matrices which require a lot of computing power (strap down IMU). The A-10 uses a gimballed system, and during alignment, the platform is positioned in the orientation which gives the minimal initial value for the X and Y axis accelerometers (i.e. minimal gravitational acceleration in the sensor's axis) and the maximal value (1g) for the Z axis (-Z to be precise) accelerometer. The gyros will measure the earth's rotation, and thus a baseline rotational value (measured over a relatively long period of time) is needed in order to compensate for this in the INS.

I had a quick skim through the E/F flight manual, and I can't find any references to regular ILS there either.

To be precise, the ABRIS system in the Ka-50 uses a Ashtech (Magellan/Thales) GG12 receiver, which is available in both a GPS only and GPS+Glonass version.

I would guess so, judging by the signs right below the table they're on.

Nice piloting indeed. With nose damage like that I wouldn't be surprised if the localizer/glide path antennas were damaged as well (they are located right below the weather radar in the a320). Does anyone know if this was the case?

The AT-6 Harvard/Texan is another example (although not fully supersonic at the prop tip, there are regions of supersonic flow, giving the characteristic rasping AT-6 sound).

That's an interesting question. I've read somewhere that the bleed air for the blown flaps (and the "puffers") is taken from the hot side of the engine (i.e. where the water is injected), so I guess it's possible that this could lead to ice accumulation when the steam condensates on the cold upper surface of the flaps. But that's just a wild guess.

Sorry to nitpick, but the landing gear lever is a switch with a large knob attacked to it. Not a lever where you have a range of landing gear positions between fully up and fully down. Using an axis for this function is not only pointless, but it is "wrong" (i.e. it isn't that way in the real aircraft). it makes about as much sense as using an axis for the ejection system or the canopy latch. We're talking about the request for a landing gear axis, not the nozzle position...

Why use an axis for a function with two discrete states (up or down)? The landing gear lever in the plane is simply a SPDT toggle switch with a long lever attached to it.

I'm not fluent (HA HA) in fluid dynamics, but my educated guess is mass/inertia and parasitic drag due to friction when air passes over the blades.

There is no target tracking in the Viviane system. You'll have to keep the crosshairs on the target the old fashioned way.

That sounds like the TLS; Transponder Landing System. I'm not too familiar with this system, and it's not mentioned in ICAO annex 10, but apparently it's certified for CAT I operation by the FAA. It has certain advantaged for sites where regular ILS doesn't work optimally, but I don't think it has been widely adopted (at least outside the US). Here in the frozen wastelands (Norway) we use a GBAS system (SCAT-1, not GAST-C/D; at least not yet) for precision approach at the airports where terrain conditions preclude the use of ILS.

IIRC the ILS knob shown in Wags' video had 20 channels, which fits well with the AN/SPN-41A ICLS. Regular ILS was originally a 20 channel system with (LOC) frequencies from 108.1 to 111.9MHz with a channel spacing of 200kHz, but this was expanded to 40 channels (with the new channels placed 50kHz above the existing) sometime in the 1960-ies. As for the technical aspects of the ICLS system, it's actually quite similar to the TILS system in the Viggen, with pulse coded scanning microwave beams, as opposed to the space modulated VHF/UHF signals of the regular ILS system.

You can agree until you turn blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that updates won't be released until they are ready for release. Contrary to what some seem to believe, fixing bugs isn't simply done by a magic code generator or automatic debugger. Pushing out half-finished fixes usually does more harm than good.

Yes and no. You're right about the low hangar ceiling at certain bases (or at least the hangar door at Säve), but for improvised- or temporary bases like the road bases, the folding fin is not an essential (or even useful) feature. For rapid deployment from a road base you need the aircraft to be ready to fly. Which it isn't when several maintenance folks are needed for erecting the fin. A folding fin on the DCS Viggen adds as much to the gameplay as an animated engine change or an animated conscript cleaning dead bugs off the canopy.

The Kubinka tank museum might be worth a visit.