miguez

Thanks Jim. As a quick note, I did not have any time to add more graphics to this lesson, which would be done in the final product. The idea is to use good, clear graphics every once in a while to emphasize whatever it is the lesson is covering at that moment. That would be in the shape of schematics, diagrams, or even 3D animations. So the idea is not to simply have a 1-hour video recording of the cockpit to show you how to do something, it is to blend that with other graphics. I hope you enjoy it! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following updates were posted by me later on in this thread (starting on page 5), but I am copying their content here for ease of understanding the current state of affairs. Thanks for the idea Zard! UPDATE 1 - July 19th 2009 OK gents, here we go. Based on the phenomenal feedback, this is a go!!!! Now it is down to how we shall make this happen. After thinking about different options, and taking what everyone said in consideration, here's how it will work. Instead of creating the whole series at once and putting it into a DVD, which would take 6 months or more, I have decided to break it apart into small bites, probably varying from 30 minutes to 1h30m individual videos. These videos will be available online, so no one has to wait for a DVD to ship and arrive. They would also be organized under certain categories. Each bold section will be one or more videos. The following list is not final, but here's how they might look: Helicopter Flying Intro to Helicopters Helicopter Aerodynamics Helicopter Flight Controls Helicopter Performance Basic Flight Maneuvers Advanced Flight Maneuvers Navigation Emergencies and Abnormals Black Shark Systems Electrical Hydraulic Avionics (ABRIS, Basic Flight Instruments, EKRAN, VHF Radios, PVI-800) Defense Engine and APU Ice and Rain Protection Flight Controls (including trimming) Black Shark Weapons Systems PUI-800 Weapons Status and Control Panel Laser Warning Receiver Shkval Vikhr ATGM Rockets Bombs Cannon Helmet Mounted Sight (HMS) Data Link Night Vision Goggles Black Shark Combat Tactics Planning the Mission Ingress to Attack Zone Target Recognition Coordinating Attack with Wingmen Weapons Choice Evading the Enemy Air To Air So you'd go to the website, create an account, purchase the videos you want to watch, and they are permanently available in your account. At a later date, you can buy more videos, and they'd be added to your online video library. This has several advantages, to name a few: Smaller training videos are easier to digest No waiting for me to complete the whole series. As I finish the videos, I will publish them on the website You can purchase just the ones that interest you There would be discounts for people buying most or all of the videos, so if for example there would be 12 videos available and you purchase 10, the last two would be available to you for free. That is just an example, I have not yet finalized how many videos there will be and how the discounts will work. The final price for the whole series should work out to be around $50. Each video's price will depend on how many videos there will be, which will be finalized before starting the series. Once the series is complete, for those that purchased it all, you could request a DVD set with all videos included, which should work out to be between $5 and $10 for discs, case, and shipping. I am open to suggestions, please let me know what you think. I may have forgotten one or two things in the list of training modules, but it is supposed to be all-inclusive, so if you don't see something you'd like, please indicate it and I'll confirm it will be included. I am looking forward to creating an amazing training series for all! UPDATE 2 - July 28th 2009 I am buying a new computer to be able to get all recordings done in high resolution and at great frame rates. The computer I used to make the start-up video does OK when recording in those conditions, i.e. on the ground, no combat, etc., but it drops in FPS rapidly when things get busy. The new rig should be here by the end of August. Until then, lots of planning and script writing, as well as refining and adding to the list of covered modules. A further evolution of the online videos is that they will each be available in low and high resolution, to cater to all kinds of internet speeds customers will have. Same for the downloaded videos, although in that case the high resolution version should be even higher than what the website will be able to do, so I'll probably have a high, medium, and low resolution versions. In other words, the downloadable high resolution will probably be available at the native resolution I recorded it in, then the downloadable medium resolution will be the same as the website high resolution, and the downloadable low resolution will be the same as the website low resolution. Just thoughts, but it's sounding like a decent strategy. UPDATE 3 - September 17th 2009 All of the equipment I will use for recoding has arrived, check it out here. UPDATE 4 - October 1st 2009 My new computer was damaged in shipping, so it's on its way back to CyberPower right now. One of the videos I'm creating will be target recognition, so I bought this, among others. Should be fun! UPDATE 5 - October 5th 2009 My LLC certificate has arrived, and the computer should be shipping back tomorrow! For more info, click here. UPDATE 6 - October 11th 2009 The computer has arrived! It got here Friday, October 9th, so I spent yesterday and today setting it up and doing initial testing. It has met my expectations! I've been doing a lot of flying and recording to test things out, and it is doing great! After these tests I can finally start to record the first video, which is a surprise for now ;). Stay tuned, we're almost there!

Hey Boberro, Thanks for the info, it worked! I used just RearCameraPos = {cockpit_point[1] - 3.7 ,cockpit_point[2] + 2.4, cockpit_point[3]}, and it seems that cockpit_point[1] is the X axis, or longitudinal, meaning how far forward or aft of the cockpit you want to be. cockpit_point[2] is the Y axis or the vertical, how far above or below the cockpit, and cockpit_point[3] the Z, or lateral, how far left or right you are. Very cool! Is there a way to move that camera with respect to the helicopter once in the game?

You don't need all that stuff. I have a FARP setup with a FARP Tent, FARP Ammo Dump Coating, GPU APA-80 on ZiL-131, and FARP Fuel Depot, and rearming, refueling and repairing occur without a problem.

But do a search first! :) Everyone here will gladly help you, but there are a LOT of questions already answered in this great forum.

Perfect explanation GG and A16, thanks guys.

+1, would love the answer to this!

Here's some info on jet fuel fungus/microbial growths.

Hey AlphaOneSix, I might be a little lost in the exchanges in this thread, so I'll ask. Can rapid fire, as you described it, be achieved in DCS: BS? Also, I don't seem to understand why ripple fire would be used? Finally, if I understand the gist of your post, every laser used in the field of combat, or at least the laser in the Apache and the Ka-50, carry a special code. Is this so that it would be harder to jam it, or so that the missile would not be confused if it "saw" another laser nearby, or both? Thanks,

Saitek X52 TrackIR 3 with Vector Pro HP 9700 laptop - 17" screen, 1440x900

Right, I see I was probably confused, as I thought the original poster was asking the questions with the intent of having a sort of "fire and forget" system, meaning laser a target, fire a missile, move the laser to another target, fire a missile at that target, move the laser to a third target, fire a third missile, etc., meaning attack multiple targets with multiple missiles. I do understand you can move the laser with the missile in flight, I have done it several times too, but I thought the original poster meant the "fire-and-forget" approach.

I am somewhat ignorant on the laser grid issue mentioned, but wouldn't it be impossible for the simple fact that the Vikhr has to ride the laser beam to the target so, until that missile hits, you cannot move the laser away from the target and on to another target?

The link above is missing a ) at the end (didn't make it into the HTML). Click here.

Thanks for the help beczl! I have a problem. Followed the instructions, plus had to create a UH-60A_ER.lua file, otherwise I got an error during program startup. For that, I cloned the UH-60A.lua and changed the first line from return helicopter("{8CC2AAFA-F5F6-498D-83E0-681561D691B8}", "UH-60A", _("UH-60A"), to return helicopter("{A57E6971-D65D-45b4-AB31-545C66240844}", "UH_60A_ER", _("UH_60A_ER"), . DCS starts up now, but how do I select the UH-60A_ER as my aircraft? It does not show under Russia, Turkey, or USA in the mission editor. Thanks again!

Ditto!

Howdy, The batteries do stay on for the entire flight, but they do not provide electrical power for the K-041 Targeting and Navigation System. This system works with AC power. The batteries, even though providing DC power, can provide AC power via an inverter (ON by default when you get in the cockpit), but not enough to run all AC systems. A good way to see this is to have the helicopter fully running on the ground, with all systems on, then turn off left and right generator switches (switches also on the Wall Panel). The Shkval screen will die. So will the Data Link system, which is the system with the RAM that we need operational to transmit the targeting information to the ABRIS. Other systems will not function either, including parts of the Autopilot. Hope that makes sense.

Wow, nice!

Hi Svend, The beeping you heard was the low RPM warning. Your generators, which provide AC power to a lot of the systems and avionics in the helo, are driven by the main gearbox. If the rotors slow down enough, the main gearbox is not spinning the generators enough for them to produce electrical power. So what happened is when you performed the aggressive pitch up, the rotors slowed down, the main gearbox slowed the spinning of the generators, and the electrical bus was denied energy for a small moment. Kind of like when in some airliners, right after engine start you'll see the cabin lights blink. That happens for a different reason, but the "blink" is what happened to your helicopter. The targets you had entered into your ABRIS are stored in volatile (RAM) memory. When the electricity flow stopped, they were lost. Best regards,

Hi sweinhart, Welcome to the community! I can help you out online sometime, and I am sure others will pipe in too. There is a good group of guys who get together via the SimHQ teamspeak server. Look for BobbyC, Crash, Flex, or Darkhorse, or me (Miguez). We usually fly together o the weekends, and everybody is still learning, so there are always questions being answered. I would also be available for one-on-one, just let me know. That's great news on the nVidia 3D glasses, I posted a thread not long ago about those, as they seem to be great. Glad to hear they work well. The crosshairs behave like that because they were not originally designed to be viewed as 3D. Chances are it will take a patch from ED to fix this, and who knows if they ever will get to it (no offense, but there are lots of more important things they are working on right now). Problems like this exist in other games too, if you read reviews of these glasses. Anyways, good to meet you, welcome again, and let's see if we can get together and do some flying!

Hi Lee, Welcome to the community! This answers at least one of your questions. Found it as a sticky on top of the forum.

Played it last night in SP. I am still learning my strategies, even though I can handle the helo and weapons, so it didn't take long to get shot down. The radio calls were very well done, MBot, nice voice and accent! I made my way to the OA waypoint (WP 3 in the PVI), then proceeded pretty much on a 270 heading at slower pace, with the Shkval in scan mode. I ended up close to what I believe was Falcon 2, while TIGER was on the radio taking fire and retreating. The enemy forces seemed to be crossing PL BLUE first, and afetr getting a couple of shots out at what looked to be an M1 Abrams as well as an M1097 Avenger, I was hit without warning (my wingman had gone West on a recce and got shot down). It turns out I was hit once by another M1097 Avenger as well as a manpad. As I said before, I am still trying to develop battle techniques. It seems I am still getting too close to the enemy, something that seems easy to do if not paying attention. All in all, very imersive, and I am looking forward to playing again and trying to win it! Best regards, and thanks for the great work,

Ha, touché!

Camera { current = "Medium"; Low { near_clip = 0.2; middle_clip = 4; far_clip = 60000; structures = {30, 2000}; trees = {1000, 3000}; dynamic = {300, 20000}; objects = {3000, 80000}; mirage = {3000, 20000}; surface = {10000, 50000}; lights = {50, 10000}; lodMult = 1; lodAdd = 100; } Medium { near_clip = 0.2; middle_clip = 4; far_clip = 80000; structures = {40, 4000}; trees = {1000, 6000}; dynamic = {300, 20000}; objects = {3000, 80000}; mirage = {3000, 20000}; surface = {14000, 80000}; lights = {100, 30000}; lodMult = 1.5; lodAdd = 0; } High { near_clip = 0.2; middle_clip = 4; far_clip = 80000; structures = {60, 6000}; trees = {1000, 9000}; dynamic = {300, 20000}; objects = {5000, 80000}; mirage = {3000, 20000}; surface = {20000, 80000}; lights = {200, 80000}; lodMult = 1.5; lodAdd = 0; } }

Yeppers, I was with you, but I wanted to check and make sure I knew how the rotor was heated, thanks!

That's the funniest statement I've read all week!

Hey A16, I believe the main rotor blades are electrically heated. Best regards,