Zilch

I can't cite my source on this, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with the physical space of it. As the F-5 rotates on takeoff, that 6th bomb on the MER would strike the ground, or get too close for comfort, at least. It's not a weight issue, but a geometry one.

Pretty cool you found footage of this! There's a chapter on the YA-10B in one of the books I had as a kid, but that's the only mention of it I've seen. What ever happened to that airframe?

Keep in mind the difference between these cases. The Saber and Mustang carried similar weapons, but there are some important differences. Number one that comes to mind is bullet dispersion. The Mustang's guns were two groups of three, with each group (SWAG math) around 15 feet apart from one another. This creates an interesting problem if you want to hit a focused area with all six guns, and it gets really complicated at different ranges, bank angles, pitch angles, and so on. Look at a WWII fighter's gun harmonization diagram, and you see that usually the guns don't all cross paths except at one point, usually around 1100 feet in front. Any closer than that, and your striking power gets gut pretty quick. Chances are good that if you're up that close, you're hitting with only three of those guns, max, while the rest shoot wide. Too far of a shot, and you get the same effect but after the convergence point, and with less kinetic energy in each round as they loose speed and start to drop and tumble. The F-86, like the P-38, had all its guns in one cluster, pretty much eliminating this problem. If you hit with one, you usually hit with all six, making the guns far more effective across a broader range, from close in all the way out to max effective range for the M3. Two, is that the F-86 was shooting a jet-powered target, with its engine in the back. If you're on his tail, line up the sight, and hit with all six guns, they'll rip right into the engine itself more easily than the P-51 shooting, in the above example, the FW-190 with its engine in the front, which was covered by the entire aircraft and some armor plate. Attacking from above or below may help this a bit, though, but then you have a higher aspect angle, so the aim problem becomes harder. Another difference is that the F-86's weapon was similar, but not identical. It carried the M3, versus the M2, which is lighter, has a higher rate of fire, with more accuracy, so total projectile mass on any target hit would be usually higher than you'd see in your average P-51 shot. This does not mean there's no problem with DCS's AI with regard to BFM, in particular the MiG-15 is quite a challenge sometimes. However, without track files or even TacView, it's hard to say what a actually is going on. I like TacView a lot, you can actually see the bullet dispersion in real time. Often I think I had a good shot, but the baddie flies away merrily, but on watching TacView I see that I scored hits, but the target was flying in the outside edge of my dispersion cone, and only got hit by maybe 10% of the rounds that I fired that burst. He was too far, too close, too far from the center of the cone, you name it, and I'm hitting with one or two guns (17% or 33%) of what I *could* be hitting him with. That focal point, 1100 feet in front, at which all six guns are likely to hit, is a very small volume of space when you consider the speeds and angles involved in a dogfight. It's hard enough to get into elbow position, and doing so at a specific range is a real feat of skill. Snap shots? Good luck! You might hit with a lucky round in a vital area, but it's unlikely. That, and in a traditional dogfight against a front-engine aircraft, chances are high that you're not directly hitting the engine from a rear quarter tracking shot, may be causing what you see. And, hey, the FW-190 is built like a work truck. Sometimes, usually around 1100 feet, I'll find that the Mustang's guns will rip apart a FW-190 in far under a second. More often, if the range, aspect and whatnot are off just a bit, I have to hose the target down a lot more for the same effect, which also causes the guns to heat up and lose accuracy...it goes on and on, doesn't it?

This would be great! Florida and the Caribbean area has tons of traffic and we could explore lots of SAR, contraband interdiction missions aside from the usual force on force stuff we're used to. Also, lots of people live in Florida (greetings from Melbourne!) and we'd love to fly DCS over our home turf. It's a lovely spot to look at and we have lots of aviation and space history and landmarks. The Space Center in particular with the Shuttle landing area, launch pads, Patrick AFB (or SFB, as it is now), MCO and MLB airports, FLL and MIA, so many more. TICO airport has the VAC museum, who's F-8 will serve as reference for the upcoming Crusader module. It would be a great map but probably pretty resource intensive to create. But, hey, Florida is an easy place to get to. You can include Pensacola for training, even Hurlburt Field! Tampa for MacDill AFB. NAS Key West for F-5 dets! You could expand this out to include The Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Haiti, the D. R., Mexico, Jamaica, Belize (Harrier action, and even ancient temples from which to launch X-wing from!), Guatemala, Honduras... SO MUCH potential for scenarios it's actually making my head spin. It's an aviation goldmine.

Would you believe that some of us just like aircraft? A lot of these machines have distinct features and historical significance and are worth learning about on their own merit? Amazing! It's not a damn arms race where you're buying capabilities with your tax dollars. If that were the case we could just buy $10 F-15C and call it good. Best KDR for the money, right? We buy this stuff because we love a given aircraft. Maybe you worked on the plane. Maybe you wanted to fly one but couldn't. Maybe your uncle flew one and you want to see through his eyes for a bit. Or you just think it looks cool. Whatever. Cripes sake, man. Three comments down after a *beautiful* video and you're already pissing in the soup. If you don't want a module...don't buy it? Why is it not enough to abstain from a purchase?

Keep in mind, too, that by the time a USMC Harrier pilot gets to the Harrier, they've got more flight hours than many professionals. Fleet pilots do this as a full time job, with hundreds and thousands of hours in fight and training, and the training never stops. For (most of) us, it's a hobby and we get hours in the dozens, if we're lucky. Also, they can feel their jet. Any upset or change in attitude can be felt by the seat of the pants, spine, and so on. All we have are visual cues, so we glue our eyes to the cockpit a lot more. It's something my CFI pointed out. Students with lots of simulator experience tend to glue eyes to guages more and he had to break that habit for us. What you're seeing may not be an issue with sensitivity at all. Cool thing about DCS, too, is you can adjust your axis curves to suit. Another thing you'll notice is that unless you build a sim pit, your stick's pivot point is far shorter than theirs, since the real jet's stick pivots from the floor and ours tend to pivot right below our wrist. It may also make it feel like smaller stick deflections do more than what you see in the videos and thus, harder to make those minute adjustments that are so critical in landing, aiming, and AR. Again, mess with the axis curves (or build a sim pit) until it works.

That's some calculated flying. Especially that last high yoyo he pulled, I probably would have been tempted to pull up and fire instead of waiting. Also, that second 120? A cat riding on its nose could have swatted your rudder. That thing was close, good defense!

Gunned everything up to the Foxhound, then smacked the MiG-31 with a missile that didn't kill it, it ran for home and I ended up bingo chasing it down. DCS World Problems...cant wait for the new damage model and AI behavior. ;)

Man if they go with the Mk. VII Viper, they're just handing over the MP servers to the Cylons. I demand the Mk. II with steam driven instruments! Sure people are gonna want the glass cockpit and third cannon, but you're just gonna be frakked once that EMP hits. Besides, the Mk. II is just sexier, anyway. And, hey, it's totally logical that they make the Raptor full fidleity. Heatblur's AI Raptor is great and all, but I really want multi-crew in that thing!

Yes. ;) Over a new map, it seems!

Dude, just...stop. You're arguing with multiple combat veterans based on what? What's your real world involmnent with the jet, incidentally? Stop messing this up for us. We have several people who have real world experience with this stuff and I'd love to keep reading what they have to say. Your comments are likely to drive them out. You wanna make the forum less informational?

It's a challenge as old as any niche hobby that becomes popular over time. Remember when computers were new, and the only people who used them were enthusiasts who made the hobby better for no other reason than the love of the craft? The trend is this. The truly devoted spend resources trying to make a hobby better, more user friendly and/or attractive. This benefit attracts new followers, with maybe less love of the craft but they still appreciate what they have and contribute to make it better. As the hobby gets better and barriers to entry drop, people join in. The newer folks may or may not appreciate the history of the hobby. They may even get a feeling of entitlement, expectations of how things should be, and since larger numbers bring increasing anonymity, behavior gets worse. It has happened with video games. It has happened with PC's. It has happened with phones. It has happened in online communities. It may be happening here, too. Unfortunately, with all the benefits to us and ED that MAC may bring, we all may face the reality that with increased popularity and ease of access also for increased risk of toxic behavior from people who have recently arrived to the community and may not appreciate the trials and work the older members went through to get the hobby in its current state. MAC is a boon to the hobby, for sure. However, I'm worried that if it works and more people come on board, we may see more toxic behavior like this. It's just a numbers game. We can have, I dunno, 50,000 members. If only one percent of them are toxic, that's 500 toxic people. They can do a lot of damage. I'm not sure what to do about this. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. The community will only grow, and that's a good thing. It'll bring in more talent, interest and revenue for ED and the 3rd Parties to keep cranking out the product we love. However, we need better ways to make sure our online haunts are civil, and I'm not what those may be.

So...what is this thing I'm installing?

Repair didn't fix it, either. It does seem like a copy protection or account authorization issue, if I had to guess. Any ideas on this? I'd love to give this plane a spin, it looks like tons of fun.

I did. Updated, module manager install, restarted DCS. I'll try the repair and see.