Nerd1000

You should execute a high-side guns pass followed by a shallow climbing turn to regain altitude advantage. If you miss your first pass the spit can potentially get guns on you as you fly past him- this is why your zoom climb should include a turn, as it makes any shot the Spitfire takes a deflection shot (and they're much more difficult, as we all know). Doing a steep zoom followed by a tight, low speed loop is great for getting another pass in quickly, but at the peak of your loop you'll be 'hanging' in the air and exposing the largest possible target area to a plane that is shooting up at you. Another option: When I played another WW2 sim that shall not be named (but it rhymed with bore under) I often combined a high yo-yo and a barrel roll to set up extra passes on lower-energy enemies. Basically after the first pass I would start a high yo-yo to one side (typically the left, though I can't say why- it just felt better) then transition into a barrel roll as my speed dropped to bring me back onto a course that was pointed at my target. I would fly a lag or pure pursuit course to get in position behind him again. If the defender turns the same way as your initial maneuver you just continue with the high yo-yo (omitting the barrel roll) and come back down behind, and if he turns the opposite way you do the barrel roll and have a bit more catching up to do.

You should execute a high-side guns pass followed by a shallow climbing turn to regain altitude advantage. If you miss your first pass the spit can potentially get guns on you as you fly past him- this is why your zoom climb should include a turn, as it makes any shot the Spitfire takes a deflection shot (and they're much more difficult, as we all know). Doing a steep zoom followed by a tight, low speed loop is great for getting another pass in quickly, but at the peak of your loop you'll be 'hanging' in the air and exposing the largest possible target area to a plane that is shooting up at you. Another option: When I played another WW2 sim that shall not be named (but it rhymed with bore under) I often combined a high yo-yo and a barrel roll to set up extra passes on lower-energy enemies. Basically after the first pass I would start a high yo-yo to one side (typically the left, though I can't say why- it just felt better) then transition into a barrel roll as my speed dropped to bring me back onto a course that was pointed at my target. I would fly a lag or pure pursuit course to get in position behind him again. If the defender turns the same way as your initial maneuver you just continue with the high yo-yo (omitting the barrel roll) and come back down behind, and if he turns the opposite way you do the barrel roll and have a bit more catching up to do.

The MiG-21bis uses the RP-22, which is a monopulse radar with cassegrain antenna.

this is an example of the 'magic smoke' that makes all electrical systems work. If you switch an electrical device on and the magic smoke escapes (typically accompanied by a fizzle or pop noise) the device will no longer function :lol: In other words, it's a joke based on the fact that electrical systems often catch fire when they fail!

It's not just the R-60M the AI cheats to use in head-on engagements: I've seen them take head-on shots with the R-3S!

Perhaps the RCS variable is a multiplier, and the game accounts for the actual cross sectional area of the airframe when calculating the true RCS for the current situation.

IRL it was likely that at least one of your R-3S or R-3R would suffer a failure shortly after launch (old vacuum tube electronics weren't so reliable, especially after being subject to a 9g rocket boost) so firing them in salvo was practically a necessity if you wanted to score a hit. DCS missiles are always 'ideal' missiles in terms of reliability.

Radar lock works the same way no matter what you point it at, so it should (theoretically) be possible for a radar like the RP-21 to lock surface targets that have a strong radar signature compared to the background. Tanks are right out, but locking up a surface ship was probably achievable.

The 'effectiveness' in question might be drag: it's well known that the P-51's radiator was particularly carefully designed for minimal drag (and under some circumstances could produce a tiny bit of thrust).

The Su-27 series gets most pitch/roll control from the tail surfaces, so if they remain attached...

Also the gunsight has a few outstanding issues: The gyro ranging vs aircraft doesn't work (diamonds around pipper do not move properly when the range setting is changed, leading to incorrect ranging of the target), the gyro may be wrong (I can't score hits on a B-52, even with radar ranging) and the CCIP bombing mode isn't realistic (the real plane had no such function- instead you would need to adjust the depression angle manually like on the F-5E). They recently fixed one issue with the gunsight, which was that the fixed net was the wrong size. There are some minor graphical issues with damage- I've had both ailerons shot off without losing roll control- but I suspect that the real reason for this is that the ailerons weren't truly destroyed. It's just that the damage graphics don't always line up with the actual damage model of the plane.

Someone in the industry once told me that the main method for detecting an incoming IR missile is UV. As I understand it, the sensor looks for a combination of emissions in the IR and UV that resembles the exhaust of a missile's rocket engine, figures out what direction the missile is by comparing the signals from different sensors, then displays a warning to the pilot. How it decides what's a missile and what's not, categorizes threats, and otherwise 'works on the inside' he couldn't tell me (all super classified!). Apparently the Americans won't even let you open the boxes that contain the equipment for repairs- if it breaks you send it to the US (presumably on secure air freight), and a couple of weeks later the device (or a replacement) comes back, fully functional. I do find myself wondering how many high tech sensor systems have gone on trips halfway across the world to have a $0.05 resistor replaced... But that's just how the US defense industry works with classified equipment. They're not very trusting people :D On-topic, the flares are dispensed from the Viggen's countermeasure pod using the 'Countermeasures fast release' control, which needs to be assigned to a button on the keyboard or a controller (it's not clickable in the cockpit). They're not really that effective because the dispenser only launches one flare per second (or therabouts) which isn't enough to distract most IR missiles before they reach you. Still better than nothing, I suppose. AI Viggens cheat: they can launch flares from both wings without carrying any pods, and whenever they do so I turn green with envy.

It used to do this in previous builds, but the effect disappeared when the radar got broken a while back. Pity the clutter is still 'fuzz' rather than actual false returns as seen in the F-5's radar, but this fix is definitely a big improvement on the previous state of affairs.

It seems that there are 'light' and 'heavy' versions of many of the heads available for the Hydra 70. The M156 is a bit heavier than the M67, so the M67 rocket will probably have a flatter trajectory (easier aiming) but produce less damage on impact. In practice the HE and HEAT types are the only ones you should use: HE vs soft targets like trucks or aircraft parked in the open, HEAT vs tanks or APCs.

In the Ka-50 (and probably the Gazelle too) you can hear this happening. As you increase collective the sound of the engines becomes more more high pitched even though the rotors maintain the same RPM. The reason is of course that the governor is allowing the gas generator section of the engine to spin faster, supplying more hot exhaust to the power turbine and thus more torque to spin the rotors :thumbup:.

Like most planes the eagle has a rwr blindspot above and below the fuselage.

He's using his own radar to track the Mirage, so he can see what the Mirage pilot is doing. The Mirage followed his left and right turns, indicating that it could see what he was doing as well- given that both were beyond visual range, the only way for the Mirage to track him was using its radar.

What about the other way round? RB74 on the inner wings and BK90 on the fuselage pylons?

But it would be great for an extremely unrealistic campaign! I've been contemplating the possibility of a ace-combat style (though re-worked for realistic planes) Hornet campaign where you're assigned to an elite team of pilots from around the world and sent on a near-suicidal mission to stop an evil supervillain bent on world domination. Nukes would be ideal for the final level of such a campaign- their plans having been foiled, the villain sends nuke-armed bombers out to take revenge on everyone you love (and also New York, because it's always in the line of fire from supervillains for some reason). You've use most of your weapons, you're low on fuel, and there's and not much time to catch them before they drop their bombs... but being the bad-ass hero of the story, I'm sure you'll find a way to save the day. If not, your base (and all the characters on it) goes up in a mushroom cloud.

For the Lols (and also because the Viggen has no other 'all aspect' missiles at the moment :mad:) I decided to try the RB-75 against air targets. Long story short, the RB-75 seems to have a) no seeker FOV limit and b) the relentlessness of the T-800 terminator. This Tacview track shows the problem: In a head-on shot against a MiG-29 the RB-75 misses on the initial intercept and, undeterred, does a 15g 180 and continues to home in on the hapless MiG until it hits, having slowed to around 600 km/h with no apparent loss of maneuverability. Naturally, I intend to abuse this in multiplayer, if I ever get within 9 km of a fighter before being hit in the face with an AMRAAM

I think the problem is that the AI cannot see the target- evidently they all suffer from a situation specific form of night blindness that makes them unable to spot objects on the ground after sunset. It would be nice if you could give them a command to stay in formation and drop unguided bombs at the same time that you start dropping yours (a 'drop on flight lead's command' order). That way you could get the AIs to assist in all manner of attacks, including lofted bombing or radar bombing in bad weather.

Two changes were made to attain higher manifold pressure: 1. Squadrons were issued fuel with a higher octane rating. 2. The Boost controller device on the engine was adjusted to a higher maximum manifold pressure. And that's all they did! Well, they probably also issued some technical instructions to pilots and ground crew regarding use of these new settings (be careful not to blow up the engine, etc).

My wingman is an AI, and he's a total moron: the last time I brought him on such a mission he got one spike from a shilka that was 20 km away from the target and immediately climbed to 6000m, exposing himself to the nearby SA-6 battery :doh: Naturally the SA-6 locked him up, causing him to jettison all his hardpoints. Having done that, he flew around in circles at around 500 km/h until the SA-6 hit him :mad:

They could give the Spitfire an option to use its notorious 150 octane/+25psi boost setting. This setting would allow the spit to compete with the Kurfurst and Dora at low level (they'll still hold the edge up high). It's a bit of a bandaid fix, and would inevitably lead to whining from K-4 and Dora drivers about how it's unfair that Allied planes get 150 octane but they don't get C-3 fuel, but I think it's still better than nothing (and it makes the spit more contemporary to the German planes).

The Spitfire cooling system is quite adequate if you keep the speed up. Your problems start when you dogfight at low speed and high boost- there's not enogh flow through the radiators. I should also note that there's a reason the spit needs a lot of cooling. That engine delivers 1700hp, but the efficiency is frankly a bit rubbish: compression ratio is only 6:1, and the supercharger eats something like 300hp while operating at somewhere between 50 and 65 percent efficiency, which means that a lot of that power then goes straight into your cooling system via the intercooler. So the Merlin is actually quite wasteful with your fuel, and a fair bit of that wastage goes into the radiators. It also generates over 300hp's worth of jet thrust from the exhaust at 400mph, which gives you some idea of how much heat goes straight out the exhaust stacks...