Kang

I'll bite and just ask: what would you envision it to work like? AAR autopilot? Fuel state going up in close proximity to tanker?

Now, as I said, I did like these things in the old 90s simulators, but I still totally fail to understand your point. Having the whole 'picture airbase' instead of a menu doesn't solve that problem. It merely adds to it, because on top of reading the menu and figuring out what does what, you now also have to figure out which 'department' the particular menu you looked for is supposed to belong to (and not all of those are very logical, really), plus - even if that doesn't deter you - as a new player you wouldn't even know which parts of this picture are a thing to begin with. In all seriousness, there is a menu point 'Training' that is quite clear in where a good place to start is. Whoever needs a flashing neon pop-up saying 'Start here!' next to it to find it, is quite frankly most unlikely to have a lot of fun in DCS.

That is true. When travelling at higher speeds the effect is much less pronounced and you will start going out of control rather slowly. In fact, slow enough to watch it happen. If you are flying low and over favourable terrain, you might even manage to drop the helicopter down safely, if you manage forward speed, main rotor RPM and sink rate just right. And you have some luck. Nonetheless you do need the tail rotor to have full control, the Mi-8 will not just keep on flying straight if you lose it entirely.

I take it that given the much higher speeds and often longer firing ranges the whole system is just a little more prone to error. A slight bump on the stick, a little change in angle and it's off again. Getting the automatic ranging should take one task off the pilot's back, as you could now fire from anywhere within the range, but it also meant you wouldn't have that one engagement range you would know what deflection to use at.

1. 'LOST' indicates the missiles has lost track, passed the target or is otherwise not on track, generally. Mind you, this is far from perfect. I've had a few cases of the system concluding an AIM-7 was lost, only to have it hit the target a few seconds later, still. It's a clue, not really a fact. 2. When the diamond (or square if you are feeling lucky) is dashed instead of solid, it means you lost your radar lock and the indicated position is taken from the radar system's memory. If this happens for a very short time only and the radar gets the target back, it just keeps on tracking again like nothing happens. If the target turns you are likely to lose the contact.

1. You might get the urge to revise your next-of-kin information. Things start spinning, slowly at first, then out of control. 2. Depends on how full load we are talking. Generally speaking you can limp around on one engine.

Oh, mid 1990s Microprose… Those were wonderful for what they were, especially when they had some nice details and animations and the like. But for all the fun they were, the clear-cut menu is definitely more efficient and much, much clearer especially to new players.

...and it shall be a marvellous and mighty plane. Almost feature complete at release. It shall be surrounded by a hype that might even dwarf the almighty CEII reveal hype thread. And we all shall know its name is going to be... Stinson L-5.

That is exactly what it's doing, but at the end of the day, that's how it calculates the lead for you. Mind you it's pretty much a mechanical device, there is no microcontrollers to do any actual calculations and there certainly isn't any way for the device to have a finely resolved picture of angular movement to even start those.

Not really. I found once in a while it helps to toggle the comm menu on and off again, switch to cursor mode on and off again. Doesn't work everytime, though.

Probably a side-effect of the 'fix' about the exterior lights illuminating the cockpit at night.

From the other side I can only tell you that the MiG-19 is my favourite thing to fight against when flying the F-86.

Like the idea. As you said, it's pretty much a static object. Maybe along with it, it would also be nice to have a 'bomb target' ground object, like a FARP with a painted on bullseye or such, and one of these stand-up gun targets.

They are the crew for the port side catapults and run over the foul line for their dear lives when you come in for landing.

Which tanker craft are you using? Perhaps exchanging it for a different one might temporary solve your problem. No idea if it's true, but I always feel the KC-135MPRS drogue 'snaps' on a little bit more than the ol' S-3B's, for example.

Worry not, I'm sure the Chinese have kept their copies of the Russian manu... proper documentation of their own and slightly similar domestic developments.

Considering how long that has been an issue, I'd say you best stop carrying HARMs around too much.

Yes, that is a thing for everything going beyond the speed of sound.

The only trouble I have with it is that the logic that makes it appear/disappear automatically seems not to work perfectly as of yet. I would love an override button to toggle it myself.

At the end of the day, if your HARM is on the way towards the right target, it doesn't make much of a difference anymore. It's mostly the different displays. SP is self protect. You can select targets, but you have no distance information at all. A bit like a quick shot, when a pesky SAM just pops up while you are busy with your actual mission. TOO is target of opportunity. It's more like actively looking for emitters. The view 'from the seeker head' on the display lets you judge the position of the SAM (or whatever) a little better, get a guess at the range and evaluate the threats a bit further. Also much easier to distinguish between several radars that are at similar bearing.

In the manual, I'd wager. Page 49, to be precise.

If you duck down a bit in the cockpit you can read a handy chart on the left cockpit wall that tells you which system needs which ground power switch to be set.

I'm afraid you can't.

I noticed a slight issue with SnakeEye bombs in multiplayer: If I watch another client use these in freefall mode (as in: no fins deployed), they still appear as fins deployed to me. Complete with deceleration and thus a completely different point of impact. Basically I see them fall half a mile short of the target, explode and then the actual target still gets destroyed correctly. So just a visual thing, really, but would be nice to have that fixed.

Which plane are you flying? Something that can happen is that yourself (or an autopilot in some types) trims aileron a lot to counteract battle damage or asymmetric loads, which does not get set back to neutral automatically.