Bearfoot

Thanks for the clarification. Appreciate you taking the time to respond. If the new model is more in line with the SME input, then so be it! Of course, if we can be open to the possibility of a user-adjustable "shake intensity", a la Mig-21, to compensate for lack of a but meter ... that would be great too!

Interesting. Will revise my gameplan!

I see the bandit. I want to accelerate to gain kinetic energy and then climb to loop after the merge. I want drop the tanks just before the climb (so as to burn fuel from the tanks while I am accelerating yet not have the tanks when I climb_. I want to keep my eyes on the bandit and my speed to time the climb just right. I really do not want to be distracted by fiddling with menus at these critical moments. I see the bandit. I want to drop the tanks and turn hard toward him. Same as above for timing/eyes/menu/s. I see the bandit. We are rushing toward each other. He's got some longer range Fox-1's. I want him to fire, I will then evade and engage. But I want to build up speed and keep the speed up as much as possible until I have to actually evade the missile, i.e., burn as much fuel from the tanks till the turn comes. Same as above for timing/eyes/menus. In all of this, I want to be able to yell at Jester to drop the tanks in a fraction of a second and focus on actually flying/fighting, as opposed to pulling up the menu, looking around to figure out where I am, then drill down 2 levels (if not up one level before) to get to where I want. I am not dropping tanks in the middle of an engagement. I want to drop them at just the right time. The current location in the mnu system is not supportive of this AND I do not think reflects the appropriate urgency or is a realstic simulation of the speed it takes to communicate the command.

Wut?

It seems insane to have to drill down two-levels of menus to get there especially when in the middle of a hard turn toward a bandit. I guess a good human RIO would do it automatically? Even if not, it should just be a instant command "drop bags!" or something. p.s. it also seems a bit misleading to go to some sort of "radar" menu item to get to this command. It would be nice if we had a keybind exposed to command this (through Jester) instantly, failing that maybe move this to a top level?

Thank you. It is going to take a while to build up this intuition! I sometimes find that the turn-and-slip indicator shows that the opposite rudder from what I expect. In fact, without any formal (or practical real-world) aerodynamics training/experience, it is confusing to me that in the Tomcat on some turns the turn-and-slip ball slips to the opposite direction from the turn direction. E.g., when turning right the ball goes left thus seeming to indicate left/top rudder is needed or vice versa. Does not happen all the time --- many turns the rudder required is indeed in the direction of the bank. Have not figured out the pattern. Maybe speed or angle-of-bank or how far the nose is above/below the horizon? This Tomcat is proving to be most challenging fixed-wing aircraft simulation I've ever flown!

Ok, thanks. In BFM on max rate or min radius turns, it is overwhelming trying to keep on eye on the other guy when he is not in your forward quarter (and tracking fast aft across the canopy!) AND another on speed and AoA. Was wondering if I should be worrying about the turn/slip reading as well. I'm thinking a full-featured HUD was one of those understated flying revolutions the D people really must have appreciated the most!

WHY: Ok, I know it is a stupid question, and is probably obvious to most. For those in the know or to whom it is obvious, could you explain WHY we want to make sure our turn is coordinated. From Wikipedia: Obviously, this applies so much more to general aviation. Why is this important in military aviation, particularly fighters? HOW: I "step-on-the-ball" --- rudder input in the direction of the ball on the turn-and-slip indicator. At least, till I develop muscle memory enough to figure out how much rudder to use without feedback. I've seen photos of Tomcat's with a yaw string. We don't have that do we? Are we getting one? And would that be better than a turn and slip indicator?

Agreed! And thank Heatblur and their various consultants/SME's for getting it right!

The F-18 is definitely easier to learn. But I would suggest you take on the F-5 next. That is, to really learn how to fly without the help an FBW. The good habits you pick up (and the bad habits you will NOT pick up) will serve you well in any jet for many years to come. Whereas not just the bad habits you pick up but the various important basic skills you will never really pick up in the F-18 will hurt you for many years to come as well if you go that route.

This is gold. Really insight into the practice as well theory. Yes, implementation/execution is definitely not just challenging, but the challenge. The concepts/theory is just the first step, though without getting it right you cannot get success! Ok, summarizing both what you as well as others have said --- the key strategy with the F-14 is get low, get slow, get tight, keeping an energy reserve so that when the other guy gets too slow and/or tries to extend, you pounce.

I know this was adjusted in the last patch so that the buffetting/shaking starts at a higher AoA. Just curious as to the reason for this adjustment. Was it unrealistic in starting to shake so early? Did SME feedback indicate this? If Heatblur doesn't mind sharing, it would satisfy curiousity as well as give great insight into the development/improvement process. Thing is, many of us were using the shake as a good indicator as to when we were on near-but-not-quite-there on the edge. VERY useful for BFM and other maneuvering to keep track of AoA without taking eyes from the outside. With this gone, we have to resort to to other means! But if that's how the real plane flew, than that's how we want it to fly ...

BTW, I agree that what would really be a great improvement to both the fun as well as in learning/improving is TacView enablement! ..... but not at the expense of performance!

I absolutely agree with both of these! (1) Consistent menu structure is simply the sanest way to integrate voice control. (2) The visual popup is not only an immersion breaker, but even when using head movements in VR can be problematic when trying to keep eyes on a bandit. Worse than simply obscuring vision, depending on what angle your head is when calling up the Jester menu, you may find yourself breaking your neck trying to make selections!

I think the Hornet is an amazing aircraft. The computer-assisted dynamic instability FCS allows you to focus on getting the aircraft where to go and not worry about pushing past the envelope, making some crazy wonderful maneuvering easily within reach once you have learned the basics. It corrects for lots of beginner mistakes and lets you just deal with the fun parts of flying without needing too much finesse on the stick. The HUD also gives you all the information that you need at a glance --- speed, altitude, vertical speed, AoA, G's, etc. etc., --- and with the helmet HUD, you get this even when you are tracking the bandit waaaaaaay off-boresight. Learning to fly it is not only easier, there's a lot less to learn (in terms of actual flying). And that's the problem. In the Hornet, it is very easy to pick up some bad habits without even knowing they are some bad habits, such as way too violent/aggressive control movements, because the aircraft corrects for you. And you may never actually pick up some good habits, such as a coordinated turns or good instrument scans, because you don't need to. If you rely on learning to fly the Hornet as your main way to learn to "fly", you will be fine if you stick to modern 4/5 gen aircraft with computer-assisted flight controls and excellent HUD's that give you all the information you need at a glance. But you will find it several times more difficult (IMHO) to break those bad habits and learn good habits if not. The Tomcat has a steep learning curve. And she will punish you --- hard --- if you fall off. Broken wings, flat spins, stalls, GLOC's, adverse yaw, etc. etc. You will crash and crash and crash. And when you are not crashing, you will wobble and slide all over the sky. You will find yourself wallowing like a stuck pig as you are ballistic nose-up with no speed and movement. You will find yourself totally losing track of your speed or elevation or rate of climb or AoA during critical parts of flight (BFM, landing). You will feel foolish. You will feel stupid. You will cry a lot. BUT, in the end, you WILL learn to fly. As in actually interact with the wind and the air to change the motion of your aircraft by manipulating control surfaces, as opposed to using a joystick to tell the computer where to take the aircraft and let it figure out how it gets there. There is a saying, "learned first, remembered best". I think that learning to fly on the Hornet is a mistake because it is more difficult to break a bad habit and learn a good one than just learning the good one in the first place. So, I think your question ("which is easier to learn") misses the point. I think you should ask, "which is better to learn first?". And I think the answer to that is, clearly, the Tomcat. Don't get me wrong, if you were to ask "what is the best aircraft to win in BFM or BVR or whatever", I really am not sure that the answer is so simple (and I might even put good money on the Tomcat being the wrong answer, especially after the F-16 comes out). But if learning to fly is your goal, then the answer is the Tomcat. And all those flying skills you learn will not just make you a good Tomcat pilot, but a great F/A-18, F-16, F-15, Su-27, Mig-29, Spitfire, etc. etc. etc. etc. pilot as well.

Summarize: - Slower I take the loop, the better - Going up --- pull less, at 15-17 units AoA while going up; no less (lose energy than other 4 gen b/c lower t/w). - Going down --- pull more, increase to 20-25 units AoA (or less if you want more energy at the bottom of the loop) Very useful! Thanks!

This was awesome! Really cleared some things up, solidified some vague concepts, and set me on the correct track. The trick now is to put it all into practice! Lots of things to explore here. First getting that "pilot stuff" down: By dropping speed low-but-not-too-low and then pulling a high-G turn. Just to satisfy that itch. Then those tactics your suggest: (1) extend + low-G climb to stay out of guns range if going 1-circle vertical; or (2) take it horizontal till energy of the other guy has dropped enough so he cannot follow me in the vertical. I am anticipating taking on F-16's in a couple of months, though, so I don't know if (2) will work against a capable opponent! I should say that one major problem I have going vertical in the merge with the F-14 is that I cannot keep eyes on the bandit. In the F-18, it's a lot easier. In the F-14 the rear view is blocked enough that I often lose sight especially as I am pure vertical and have to rely on Jester's cues to pick him up as I start to go past 180 and get some of the view back.

Basically, much better pilots than me! More seriously: mostly F/A-18's. I sort of held my own against another F-14 a couple of times (nobody got their guns on each other let alone fired a shot until we ran out of gas), but I was doing the same thing so I suspect a more skillful pilot in the other cockpit could have taken me down

Basically, in guns BFM, I keep getting into vertical turn fights with other types of aircraft that seem to complete the loop and bring their nose on me faster than I can on them. I want to fix that. First some basic aerobatic questions, even if it doesn't help me or is not the correct approach. (1) How do I maximize my VERTICAL turn rate? Is there such a thing as a "vertical corner speed" I should be entering the loop in? (2) How do I minimize my VERTICAL radius? Beyond just pulling max G, of course. Max throttles on the climb and cut throttles in the dive? Or other way around? (3) Then some questions on tactics. We generally end up scribing vertical loops in the sky, and I find the bandit "translating aft on my canopy" very rapidly in the vertical, i.e. gaining angles. And very soon I start taking hits, sometimes from the front as he has started his climb just as I am starting the down part of the vertical loop, and sometimes from the back. Yep, getting owned. What can I do? Go horizontal? Against aircraft that are more nimble but have less excess power, such as the F/A-18, extrapolating from the horizontal, perhaps I could make the fight "two-circle in the vertical" .... but I don't even know how to translate that concept in that plane let alone how to make the fght go there. Help me out here, folks!

Thanks for pointing out the specific section. That was really helpful. I'm giving it a close read right now!

I personally avoid MP servers that demand SRS. I have very young kids who are asleep when I fly (or, to put it another way, I can only fly after they are asleep). Me being forced to talk on SRS is going to wake them up.

Depending on your definition of "Modern" and also what criteria are important for "Best", look up some of the Osprey books

The NATOPS manual provides sets of EM diagrams for two configurations --- "Maneuver Flaps and Slats on AUTO vs Not Operating". How does this related to the sim? I know you can manually operate the maneuver flaps using the DLC if the flaps are up. Is it on AUTO otherwise? And what are our slats and how do we operate them?

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29653/this-is-what-grummans-proposed-f-14-super-tomcat-21-would-have-actually-looked-like

THANK YOU for this server. Love the concept! BFM/ACM practice and thrills, for those with limited time.