SCPGrinder66

Yes, at 15 units AoA there is a lot of nose-up trim...totally normal. One of many reasons for coming into the break with wings swept in manual (which requires a lot of nose-up trim) is that as you roll out on downwind you are already pretty close to your on-speed trim. You still have to add some as the aircraft slows and the flaps come down, DLC gets engaged, etc. But with practice, you'll get a feel for how much and it should become second-nature. Downwind, you are on-speed descending to 600 with the throttle. By the time you are abeam the LSO platform you should have that 'easy to keep it' feeling you mentioned above. As you make your turn, your focus then should be on angle of bank and descent rate so you arrive at the 90 in good shape - around 450 ft. Then you are looking left for the ship and the wake and you are going to continue the turn while descending and aim to tuck the wake under your left armpit. Sounds weird but it works - and ideally your RAD ALT (set at 375-ish) should be going off as you cross the wake. Overshoot the wake just a little bit and keep the turn in while aligning with the center-stripe and roll out at about 320-350. You should be very close to 3/4 of a mile, still on-speed....and from here your visual scan starts 1. meatball - 2. line-up - 3. AoA. The velocity vector should be near the front of the ship and a little right. You'd rather be high - looking like you are going long - rather than too low because you can punch the DLC a couple times to get back down on flight path much quicker than trying to spool up the engines. The throttles should be be moving all the time as well as the stick as you are making all these adjustments. Don't dive for the deck, use DLC and throttles to keep your AoA while descending. Just keep doing all that until you hit the deck - if you keep the AoA you have a much better chance of catching a wire.

Before you even get serious about carrier landings, I would just take the aircraft up to 1000 ft + and practice flying around in the landing config... staying on speed with gear down, full flaps, dlc engaged, full speedbrake. Once trimmed for on speed, you should be able to keep her within the e-bracket using throttle alone. Once you get on speed, she will basically fly herself with you manipulating the throttle only. You can even bump the throttle a bit higher and adjust trim (if necessary) to keep the aircraft from descending - fly around like that just practicing controlling it and feel what minute changes to throttle and forward and aft stick pressure make as well as pushing DLC forward.....you should notice a major shift in descent rate and then back off DLC (or pull it all the way in) to retard that descent. Once you get that down, add in some turns where you initiate with the rudder, add in some stick pressure while giving it a bit of throttle ....the goal should be to keep the orange donut while you are doing all this. If you lose it, learn what adjustments you need to make to get back on speed while in the turn and especially as you come out of the turn (as if you were turning onto final). When you master full control of the aircraft in this config, where you are making all these adjustments as second nature, then take it to a runway and do touch and go's until you can put it in the same spot (or close) every time. THEN go to the carrier! Good luck - like anything else: perfect practice makes perfect. If you've even been near a Navy base, you'll see that when sections come in to land they almost never full-stop first approach. They usually do 2-5 touch and go's every time. Even the pro's have to continually practice - it's a perishable skill.

OMG can we please stop with the wind riders agressor bull<profanity> skins...or can you guys move them to some fantasy server or separate category....this is supposed to be simulation not dungeons and dragons elite fantasy grand master token-holder decorating contest for cryin' out loud.

- you need to have it trimmed to stay level at 800 feet at the initial without major stick input - take it upwind a bit further until you get better - at the break, bank, pull, throttle to idle, speedbrake out, hold pull, adjust bank to stay level (leave wings aft) - at 300knt, hit wings forward, ease pull, gear down at 250 - roll out on downwind, flaps down at 220, dlc engaged, trim nose up, descend to 600, throttle should be moving alot to maintain 600, adjust trim as needed - at 180, left rudder to initiate turn, add throttle as you begin descending turn, alt 600 down to 500 - at 90, maintain 450-475 alt, look for ship/wake, keep moving throttle - reduce throttle as you roll out in the groove, but keep it moving ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- looked like you started your turn too early at the 180.....should be at 1.3 miles but fly past LSO station until you see the white roundown... radar alt should be set around 375 and should go off right as you cross the wake I don't think you're pulling hard enough at the break, should be around 4 g's.... also going auto with the wings as soon as you break is causing you to balloon up to 800-900 ft...... bank more, pull harder with wings aft until you see 300 knt, then thumb auto sweep.... that will put you further out abeem too....should be 1.2-1.3

He means you'll never get it right with your arm hovering out there in space, so you're practicing a bad technique. If you can lower your stick height so that you can rest your arm on your leg or on something that can be a consistent height, it makes a world of difference - especially when you get into formation flying or tanking. You have to continuously trim the tomcat, so find a position where you fly the majority of the time with your thumb on the trim hat. When you get into ACM, trim is the last thing you are worrying about, so your thumb goes to the weapons selector, chaff/flares, etc. When in the pattern, you'll mainly be on trim but once you get in on speed you can relax a bit. On final you may go to DLC for a couple quick hits so your thumb would be like in the pic you posted. With more practice it becomes subconscious, you don't even think about where your thumb is.

You know what would be really cool with this campaign? Bear in mind I am writing this after getting absolutely smoked in the 2 v unk multiple times .....but it would be awesome if there was a way for us to send in our tacview files for analysis by an expert like BIO. Even if there was a cost associated with it, I think it would be a lot of fun - and would help us get better at employing the tomcat the correct way. I realize there is much that an expert would not be able to tell the general public. But it would awesome to just have some tips that build on what is already being said in the included briefs/debriefs - and it could be prefaced that the tips are for the game, etc.. Examples would be like, "your combat spread should be wider", the wingman should attempt to be at co-altitude with the bogeys cover a/c", things like that. I haven't been online since this came out because I am having a blast trying to figure out what I did right/wrong, but sometimes I need more feedback on MY flying. I try to incorporate all the info that is out there in various channels, but if I fail I don't really know exactly what I did wrong in many cases...

Got it! Thanks

I was flying 04 2v unk where you are the wingman. On the way to India, I took a 1.5 mile spread as mentioned in the briefing docs but about 6-8 miles out, Sniper 4 broke out of the spread formation and flew over behind me.... went ahead and pressed spacebar and the bogeys were literally right under us upon fights on call.....of course we both got our asses kicked and couldn't use AIM-7s that close in. it was weird. Briefing said they were supposed to 40 miles to the western side of range.... It brought up a question that i had in 03 too.... So, after the check in at Bighorn are you guys flying all the way to India (and turning around) before pressing the spacebar to start the fight? or are you doing it somewhere between IP and ST? Thanks

Same. Using Jester a bunch at the beginning will make you really appreciate a good RIO when you get one in multiplayer!

Great campaign! really enjoying the realism of departure from Nellis, checking in, radio comms, etc... Learning alot....enjoying Bio's commentary Can't seem to locate the 'quick practice missions' though, are they coming later? Thanks

saw them on the tube....nice work on that shb:thumbup:

NATOPS does discuss forward stick movement in order to stay in the 10deg pitch realm during flyaway

You might also need to look at your trim indicator prior to launch....I usually give it some nose down especially if I'm tanks only....you definitely shouldn't be shooting up to 30 deg.... remember you're not supposed to exceed 500' on the fly out to 5nm. hard to tell what's going on with the stick just looking at the exterior in those vids.

you need to push it forward of center and gradually release as the nose comes down... if you practice FCLP touch and go's with full flaps you have to do the same thing as you leave the runway because of all the nose-up trim

Isoko....amazing....release! plz

isoko….:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

isoko, when are yours going to be released? Looking forward to it. I always used your skins in the aero**** Tomcat....awesome work! BTW, thanks to all you guys who have released skins so far! I dabble a little bit in skins myself, but with the F-14B, we're a little bit limited and the best one's are already being handled it seems. One thing I'd like to see more of is guys trying to replicate the HGU-55 helmets - I lived in VA Beach right outside Oceana and spent a lot of time on base and never saw the old lids on any A+ or B pilots... Looking forward to the A model, the door will be blown wide open when that drops.

A little Tomcat action.

Looks good man!

Ha! I fly WN prob ave 1X/month but I only go to MDW....if you ever take that one let me know:thumbup: We should fly some multiplayer sometime... I've been on Hoggit Training quite a bit - evenings. Its pretty good for carrier ops, not too crowded & most people at least try to fly the pattern correctly... I'm usually on there as FROG...which is F*cking Reeally Old Guy, coined by CVW8 when I briefly flew with them back in hornet mod days... Anyway, hope we can meet up on there or in the real cockpit sometime. Later, Dave FROG Sem

For the texture labels you just copy them (Color and RIO folders) into your DCS directory > Mods > aircraft > F14 > Textures ... of course, make backups of the originals Only downside is you have to re-do this every time there's an update The Cockpit Textures and Exterior Textures were lower res versions of the original files that were supposed to help make VR run smoother but I had problems getting those to work, so I only used the labels... that's all you need for better readability. I don't need them anymore after flying enough that I generally know where everything is now...

Chopper I just re-read above where you said you're not a PS user with all the layers etc... Sorry I may have not been much help with the above info. If you definitely want to do this yourself, there are some really good tutorials on youtube, but not for DCS. You should look for 'creating liveries for FSX' - there are thousands out there and it really is the same concept as far as working with layers. There's a guy called Mr Turbine77 that has a series that takes you from newb to PS expert if you are REALLY interested (and have a lot of time). If you just want names on your canopy and that's it I think several on here can help you out.

If you have the paintkit, open EXT_01 (right side) and EXT_02 (left side) in photoshop. On the right of the image window you should see a vertical list of all the layers in that file...all the HB liveries are in the folders. click the eyeball to turn off whatever default livery it opens with. it should be a blank template...find the livery you want to put your names on (ex. VF-102 2002) and click the eyeball thing to make it visible. click the arrows > until all the layers are expanded...you should see a layer in there for the HB cockpit names. right click and copy that layer... turn off the eyeball for the HB cockpit names so they disappear, then go back to your copied layer and rename it something else...like 'my cockpit names'....make sure the eyeball is turned on for your layer. click in the text box and type over the HB names, or delete them and type in your own. you should be able to see them on the canopy rail...you might have to move them around a little to get them to be in the same place (like if your name is longer etc) just use the move tool to slide them. if you need to reference where yours are in comparison to HB's, just click the eyeball on HB's layer... Once you are good with placement etc., go through the layers within that livery folder and make sure the eyeballs are clicked 'on' for everything you want and those you don't want are turned off (like HB's names layer)...save the .psd now but don't close it. Once saving is complete, go back to the right side layers list, select all the layers top to bottom (remember, only the ones where the eyeball is 'on' will be visible), then right-click on them and select flatten image (not merge layers). everything will be compressed into one layer - usually it's called 'background' - Now you will select 'Save As' from the file menu... when the window opens, pick where you want to save it to and make sure you select file type as DDS (hopefully you have the Intel Plug-In for PS - if not search for it and install into PS before you start this whole thing!). when the plug-in window opens, select BC7 Fine, Linear then save. Once you've done this for both right and left sides (EXT_01 and EXT_02), go into your DCS directory >Core Mods>aircraft>F14>Liveries>f-14b>VF-XXX and rename the original HB EXT_01 and _02 dds textures to something like HB_F14_EXT_01_bk.dds then copy your .dds textures into that same folder with the same name as it was originally from HB (i.e without '_bk')... that should do it. There is definitely more than one way to do it, this is just what works for me. you can check it in model viewer or just go into the game and look at it. You might need to make adjustments - but all you do is go back to the paintkit .psd where your 'name layer' will be saved, adjust, and repeat the whole process....

I was just playing around with trying to make a video for a buddy of mine who is interested in DCS and I stumbled across this view <F9> and managed to get an OK flyby while 'VR-ing' from near the LSO platform... Anyway, when I played it back I was blown away by the sound...ridiculous

Excellent! Thanks for posting... I have not previously seen any of these either.