Pocket Sized

It's a hell of a lot better than attempting to turn with the stick in your gut and no energy.

Let me give a little lesson in Energy management: When you're maneuvering, your engines constantly trickle energy into your aircraft. You convert that energy into turn performance by pulling the stick. The harder you pull, the more energy you use. When you yank the stick, you dump all of that energy so quickly that the engines have no hope of keeping up. You end up mushing around at 120 knots without really turning... this is the most common mistake I see new pilots make. For a normal dogfight loadout (missiles, near full internal fuel), corner speed is about 350 knots. As you get low on fuel, it goes down to 320 knots or so. Practice doing sustained turns at full afterburner, pulling as necessary to maintain corner speed. Too slow? Relax the pull. Too fast? Pull harder. Avoid trying to turn at very high speed. The faster you go, the harder it is to slow down without extending the airbrake and idling the engines. Once you get that mastered, you can really start having some fun. At 400 kts, pull 9G until you're down to 350, then hold it there. Then experiment with performing maneuvers in the vertical, pulling less as you go over the top and pulling more as you recover from the dive to keep your speed under control. Keep in mind that a heavier loaded aircraft will bleed MUCH more energy in turns. Flying at high altitude has a similar effect, so start off by practicing at 5k-10k ft and without any external fuel tanks. I hope this helps!

I used to hate the way the F-15 flew as well. Getting to know the control system and maneuvering more aggressively totally changed my view on the Eagle. Results may vary. As others have said, the Mirage and Hornet have digital FBW, making them even more predictable than the F-15. Although there is one key difference: the F-15 just has augmented hydromechanical controls, so it responds much more snappily than the fully digital systems. FBW aircraft have a very nice "damped" feel to them. Personally, I love it.

Story time! Back when the Eagle was still somewhat new, they kept getting reports of canpoies coming off in flight. None of these accidents were fatal. In fact, the airplane was landed just fine. The pilots said it was quite comfortable if they stayed below 300 kts. "I felt like I could have worn a scarf and let it flap in the wind as I came down on final approach" So the USAF grabbed some poor sod and made him take off without a canopy installed on the aircraft. Thus, the "Bald Eagle" test flight program was born.

Yep. I just tested it an hour ago, it can plainly be seen with the control indicator up.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1774163&postcount=8

Will the rudder pedal limiter be enough to prevent exceeding the aforementioned ball deflection at high speeds? My haphazard guess is a pretty firm no. This is a bit of a tricky issue to tackle from a piloting perspective. Those massive rudder surfaces are fantastic for swinging the nose around at low speed, but can put extreme loads on the stabilizers at high speed... which most of us seem to have discovered the hard way. Just like the negative AoA departure, I believe this is something that can only be prevented through piloting technique. (AKA don't touch it unless you're trying to maneuver at high AoA)

Not sure if it was fixed, but manual fuel regulation increases power at all altitudes (more noticeable at high altitude)

Unless the real Gazelle has a component that is designed to fail after a few moments of over torque, I don't understand the current behavior at all. You go into the redline for more than a second or two, and the engine shuts down and can't be re-engaged to the rotors. To my knowledge, all turbine engines have a sort of "self preservation" governor that will prevent it from exceeding certain limiting parameters, usually EGT. Once this limit is reached, the engine won't throttle up any further and the rotors will underspeed if more collective is added. You are correct though, it prevents immediate damage/destruction of the powerplant, but won't keep it from degrading over a longer period of time. The Mi-8 models this very accurately in my opinion.

I know this thread is old, but the aircraft will become more sensitive to stalling as Mach number increases. At high altitude, you have to be very gentle to keep the wings happy. At 50,000 ft and M0.8, the aircraft will begin buffeting at less than 5 degrees AoA (as opposed to 15-19 when low and slow)

g9By6bPn3DM?t=55 XUvTxrbqh0I?t=24 I think the sounds are pretty damn good at the moment. Edit: for some reason the links aren't starting at the correct time... 55s for the first one, and 24s for the second.

Although he could have stated the issue more concisely, OP has a good point. There's no reason the RWR lights should be as dim as they are.

Wait, I thought you were supposed to pull them up in case of engine failure to switch the rotor governor to single engine mode?

Yes. When the twist grip is in the full throttle position, the governor has full authority over the engines. My understanding of a document linked in another thread is that the twist grip determines the maximum throttle setting available to the governor, but I'm not sure.

Yes, the RWR should probably get the same treatment the Su-27 cockpit indicator lights got in 1.5.4.

How could anyone have forgotten that?

"Most users ever online was 1,654, 12-08-2016 at 8:47 AM" When the Viggen was announced on Nov 28, there were 600-800 people viewing the leatherneck subforum alone. Surely there was something really big on Dec 8th that drew 3-5x the normal user count onto the forums? I checked all the usual places (changelogs, module releases, news updates) and found nothing that coincided with the date in question. Ideas?

Good explanation! I didn't even realize the blades were twisted, definitely explains why the blades flex so much under negative G.

In short: it seems like polychop is using a "simpler" FM coding approach than the other helicopters in DCS. Their method is inevitably going to have limitations compared to a "physical" flight model. What do I mean by physical flight model? [Youtube]ydvhyIJ-mCI#t=12s BST and ED calculate flight dynamics by modelling the forces, paths, flexing, etc of each blade individually. I have yet to see anything that points towards the Gazelle using this type of FM. That being said, with enough time, the current FM could be made quite accurate. I'm just afraid it will never really feel "organic" like the other helicopter FMs do. Just my 0.02.

Try seeing if there's any difference with the SAS switches on or off. It sounds like a yaw SAS problem but your comment about the apparent CG shift makes me think there's an issue with the pitch SAS as well.

Negative curves would make it impossible to accurately control your lift vector in a dogfight if you're using a standard desktop stick.

Oh, my understanding was that it only limited G onset rates and such. Even if there is a G limiter, it's not adaptive to gross weight like the one we have (not even the warning buzzer changes depending on weight IRL)

There is no G limiter in the real Flanker. The stick pusher is activated purely via AoA to prevent control departures. The G limiter we have now is a, uh, "helper" to prevent people from tearing off their wings constantly. Disabling it is actually more realistic than leaving it on.

Good, because that shouldn't be possible to do.

I still don't understand how curves = cheating. They make the stick more precise towards the center and less precise near the stops. There are real aircraft with control systems that do exactly that! Also, if you watch the stick and control surfaces in game, you'll see that they don't move instantly. Even if they did move instantly, I kind of doubt that it would even be noticeable from a multiplayer standpoint.