Victory205

Antiskid Spoiler Brake should be on for all field landings if the antiskid is operational. It’s turned off for taxi because there is a possibility of the system sensing a release below around ten knots. Coming aboard the ship, antiskid spoiler brake is always off. Don’t want to chance a release of the brakes on the ship for obvious reasons. Just to be sure. Antiskid prevents wheel lockup and skids during landing rollout and has nothing to do with spoilers, another than the antiskid shares the same switch that uses all eight of the spoilers to dump the lift when the throttles are at idle and weight on wheels.

LOL, I love the numbers- 599, 661 ft/sec... Are you sure it’s not 598 or 662? The width of the lines on some of the charts are 20 ft/sec. I don’t have an F14B/D low speed acceleration matrix like the F18 and F14A, so can’t provide a comparison. It’s important that when you don’t know, to say that you don’t know. The F18E/F are going to show lower accel and Mmax when pylons are installed. Most of you are aware that the wing pylons are angled out to facilitate safe weapons employment and jettison separation, which increases drag commensurately. Also, referencing the OP’s drag race that began on the runway aren’t valid given the DCS wheel drag anomalies. Again, we’re working on all of this.

A clean FA18C out accelerates an F14A significantly in the subsonic realm. It's when you add the ever-present F18 C/L tank where things get a little more even. The little Bumblebee could go, but it ran into a wall. The real difference is the transonic and supersonic range. The fixed inlets and fixed wing on the Hornet vs the increase in ram air thrust from the efficient variable engine inlets, coupled with the drag reduction from the 68 degree wing sweep, allowed the F14 to have a much higher top end and made it quicker to get there. The F18EF, because of their pylon configuration makes that aircraft even slower. You are right to look at all of this with a wary eye. I could fill volumes with some of the BS that is repeated out there by social media geniuses who just make it up on a whim. One thing to keep in mind, the performance charts are estimates based on data points extrapolated from flight test. The very high mach realm was almost never sampled except on PMCF flights, and the last thing the crew was doing was timing the acceleration for later correlation. The accel was never done level as per the charts either, because doing a level accel wasted too much time, airspace and fuel, nor were the extreme high mach numbers commonly reached. The A had a 1.88 limit, go beyond it and if something went wrong, you were going to be defending your career. The reason you were doing the Mach run was to check the Mach Levers at idle thrust while above 1.5IMN. Also, a post maintenance check flight never carried weapons to match the charts, so don't think the acceleration performance was verified by Fleet pilots. Different story on tactical bug outs at relatively low altitudes. We got to those max Mach numbers routinely when doing NFWS, Red Flag, FFARP, DACT, etc. because were were clean and working from ashore. If we were carrying anything close to one of the charted performance weapons load outs, then we were likely on cruise, with tanks, saving fuel on CAP in case we needed it for combat, not wasting it on speed runs for glory. Hope this make sense.

Tuesday.

Depends. You are barking up the right tree in that a stabilized tracking scenario is best for, well, any gunsight system, but it isn’t quite that simple. Any closure, or opening also induces error, as does atmospheric changes, like a decent or climbing shot, or any tiny perturbations in flight path for any reason. Did you know that the impact point is different between the 6000 rpm and the 4000 rpm firing rates? Fun stuff.

I tried the F5 module just to see the clouds, and it crashed on loading one of the instant action missions. Looks like there are issues across the board, which is to be expected. It will get worked out.

That is so cool. We can sample flying now using fuselage lift only. What fun! Wings are for kiddies!

You can't in real life either. I would suspect, from what you are saying about other modules, that it is probably too easy in those, based on perception. Are you aware that with an STT, that the F14 gunsight is "historical"? It shows the bullet impact, one time of flight ago.

This is going to take a bit of explanation on the gunsight operation and modes. Might be better to put in in the normal section of the forum when I get a chance to write it up? Short answer is that the BATR worked exactly as you see in the sim. It was often in a different place than where the pipper was when the trigger was pulled, depending upon a host of factors. The radar "scintillates" along the airframe when close to a large target, and the dynamics of the shooter aircraft have large effects on the bullet stream prediction error, especially at longer ranges given the design of the gun sight, the mode employed and the fact that the BATR wasn't the holy grail in terms of accuracy. It wasn't meant to be, it was a training aid for snapshots. One thing you all need to get a grasp on- no aircraft system is as precise as you seem to expect from growing up in a digital world. Things like the breakaway X were advisory, there is no minimum range for a 20mm projectile. When you stopped shooting was based on the threat of collision or damage from the target destruction. For missiles, we memorized LARS for the weapons and used them according to the latest data feedback, which wasn't programmed into the AWG9. When I was the Training Officer, we put the "LAR of the Day" in the flight schedule and someone from each flight was selected randomly to draw it up from memory accordingly, including threat LARS. It's difficult to get hits with a gun at range, especially with a 50 rd burst limiter on a maneuvering target. DCS seems too easy to me. Another aspect is that we didn't carry gun load outs with tracers. You could see the vapor trails or aberrations from the bullet stream at times, but while we exercised the gun systems routinely, I don't ever recall having tracers on board. Fill your windscreen with your enemy as close as you dare and pull the trigger. Press the target.

That's awesome. HB has the level of detail realistic on the gunsight. The radar lock would wander across the skin of the target, causing ranging errors, affecting the solution. The bullet at TOF cue would also behave exactly as you described. You are a half a mile away, get closer if you want to hit anything.

FWIW, the lens uses roll angle to set the GS location for the proper hook to ramp clearance for the aircraft on approach. It is valid on centerline only, so yes, it is different for aircraft with different hook to eye values.

Generally speaking, you need airflow across the rudder from the prop wash at high engine power to do a proper hammerhead at low speed. The best way to do a vertical reversal in an F14 is to use it’s ability to generate high rates using its excellent pitch authority.

Performance data for the A at 35K from .8 to 1.6 IMN with 4/4/0 and FAMMO at 60,000 pounds is ~180 seconds. At 25K, it takes slightly more time to accelerate to the same Mach number (which results in a higher TAS at the lower altitude), around 190-200 seconds. The data is estimated based on flight test with P414A engines. Big difference in transonic acceleration if the aircraft is unloaded. The data assumes not, the anecdote from the book is undetermined. BTW, the F18 is much slower than the F14A at the top end, especially as weapons, pylons and tanks are added. Referencing your book excerpt, the Legacy Hornet with 2x2 likely can’t reach 1.6 IMN at 35K in level flight. Even then, you are talking close to a minute longer to reach it’s Mmax compared to the Tomcat reaching the same velocity, with plenty of additional speed available when the Hornet hits the wall. My guess is that the numbers from the Paradox Book reflect an unloaded with a descent in the profile. Either way, it’s a pretty thin example and the numbers demonstrate that. Authors are pretty bad at getting details correct. All of this is in work on the DCS F14 as well.

FWIW, while testing something else using the current Open Beta release, I had a look at this F14A-P414A configuration- All runs included two tanks at 30,000 MSL. 2/2/4, max velocity was 1.22 IMN stagnant. 2/2/2 1.65 IMN very, very slow acceleration. 2/2/empty rails, 1.8 but still slowly accelerating. There is Ps Chart data for the 2/2/2 Tanks config that shows Mmax at 30K at 1.56 IMN. The sim is slightly faster than the charted value. Referencing the OP's post, at ~38K it shows 1.75 IMN. Interesting at how much those two aft AIM54's affect total drag. Max velocity in the 2/2/2 plus tanks config at 1G occurs at ~37,000 at ~1.82. The issue is known and is in work.

Have you gents found where the OAT indicator is located on the F14A or B?

The answers to life's deep quandary's will not be found on youtube. While there are some answers to this question on some of the technical boards, the answers are generally speculation, but the real answer is RAM rise at high IAS obviates the need for anti-icing on aerodynamic surfaces. Fly in excess of ~400KIAS, and the frictional heating will put the leading edge temps above freezing in most ambient conditions. The problem is approach. Despite having bleed air heat applied to the inlet guide vanes and bullet nose, the Tomcat would accumulate ice above the upper intake outlet doors. When the aircraft trapped, the ice would break free due to the deceleration, fly forward, and immediately get ingested by an engine a mil power during the trap. I don't think that DCS puts a whole lot of emphasis on modeling icing conditions. Might be fun to pick up a load, accelerate and see if it melts. Ram rise even at high subsonic speeds is in the plus 30C range. You don't have to worry about airframe icing transonic and up. When the OAT is below ~40C, the moisture take the form of ice crystals that won't stick to the airframe. Some aircraft are not as susceptible as you'd think. The Boeing 757, 787, 777 series only apply bleed air deicing to a few slats on the wing only, and probably could have been certified without airframe deice at all.

You are all guessing, speculating and making non-sequiturs in an environment in which you will never have access to the truth.

I thought about doing something like that if the T45C ends up being a decent platform when it is released. Hopping in someone's back seat might help get some folks up to speed, but a lot is a pilot going out and practicing basic instruments in the landing configuration before trying the ship. Won't know until we get our hands on the flight model, but they've had some good input. We shall see. If you fly good passes, staying on speed with a centered ball all the way with minor deviations (half ball high, maybe a quarter ball low), then you don't really have to worry about the trap model being too forgiving, do you?

In the interim, put me on the LSO platform. You want realism? I'll start waving your arses off for being long in the groove, fast, lined up left or right, overweight, or a ball high or low at the wave off window. Most of the landings that end up with "unrealistic" traps would result in technique wave offs. Your lousy approaches would get you sent to the beach as a disqualification and remedial training. Put me on the platform Skipper, I'll straighten these guys out! Oh, and stop dumping fuel on the ship!

The F4 was a great airplane for its day, and remained a force multiplier until the end of its service life. It is a natural progression for new technology to replace old. There is a tendency here for sim pilots to constantly compare NATO aircraft against each other. We spent far, far more energy worrying about how to fight our enemies, not whether the F15C block whatever was better than the F18 block something or other. That's all ego bluster that has been facilitated by social media. I didn't care a whole lot about threats that were on my side, other than the best way to integrate their strengths to get a target properly hit. It's why both the A7 and F18 were valuable, they were versatile platforms and were integrated into a strike plan accordingly. BTW, few pilots in my day knew the exact block their own jets were, and we usually had a few outliers. It didn't mean a whole lot operationally. Software and missile availability was more important within variants. I'm the wrong person to ask about DCS weapons fidelity online. I don't recall ever going on line on any server here for a host of reasons having to to with the typical artificialities that create pages and pages of miserable, irrelevant posts. It just isn't interesting to me. Fighter sized targets were detectable in TWS a long, long way out, much father than the typical threat radar range we faced, depending upon RCS and overall geometry. Detailed, faithful RCS data isn't something that will likely ever be modeled in any simulator. Hopefully you understand that RCS is contingent on a host of factors, starting with aspect. TWS could track targets orbiting waiting for a tanker or holding somewhere before commencing a setup of some sort. RIOs had their favorite techniques to break out formations and deal with ECM, but one must remember that ROE and weapons load out drove the way the radar was used. The less experienced, the more RIO's seemed to rely on TWS. During Bright Star, we had RIOs that picked up fighters about the time their landing gear was retracted after takeoff, switched to pulse to say "They're in line of bearing left", then back to TWS, and there they were. RIO's had to be descriptive in the search modes, TWS or STT let the pilots glance to the HSD to get the picture. There is a lot of angst about notching (and a lot of misunderstanding, even from some real world pilots) on what could or could not defeat certain missiles. All I can say is that an enemy going nose off in an attempt to defeat my radar or missile didn't bother me at all. We had tactics to exploit that, and getting your threat to turn away is a good thing, keeping in mind that this was before adversaries possessed active missile technology. Hell, we were the only US assets that had it as well. The AIM54 wasn't used more often primarily because of ROE. Few BG commanders wanted to risk Blue on Blue, and some overall commanders used things like NCTR vs TCS as a means to secure certain missions for their own purposes. The AIM54 was extremely effective against maneuvering fighters depending of course, like every other missile, range. There were hundreds of AIM54 shots in continued testing that we were briefed upon. I had full confidence in the missile to do its job when properly employed. They were carried during Desert Shield, and Desert Storm, usually in a 2/3/2 load out, which should speak volumes as to what the USN thought about them. There were places where certain techniques could be employed to ensure that friendlies weren't engaged, or where in order to protect HVA, we were going to shoot a threatening target and accept certain risks. Better be on the RTF profile, if you get my drift, and the boat is surrounded by nasty floating SAM sites, which AFAIK, aren't modeled in DCS. That's part of why the rhetoric about "challenging" the ship is naive, risible fodder. You are getting your arse destroyed several times over, by systems you don't know exist. If you ever have to hit a target, you'll understand that air combat isn't about 1v1 or sterile setup bragging rights. First thing I want to know is where are the EA6B guys, and what can they eliminate...

There really wasn't anywhere in the envelope where the F4 was superior, even though the static installed thrust was similar on the two aircraft and the Tomcat was heavier. The F14's aerodynamics were superior across the spectrum, including intake design, lift generation and less drag. I thought that the F4 would likely have an acceleration and perhaps a max speed advantage in parts of the altitude regime, but the guys who flew them said that it wasn't even close. The Phantom looked better in the groove, and if anything, it responded a little quicker to power inputs because of turbojet vs turbofan, and it didn't tend to float power off. That said, there were far more ramp strikes in the F4 than the Tomcat (the latter having one or maybe two that I remember). Tomcat also had far more endurance at lower speeds. One of the issues we had with the F4 guys was getting them to change their mindset about speed. They'd haul around a 400 KIAS wasting gas all of the time, bitching that their wingman was taking too long to join up. I had a helluvatime getting one of my CO's to slow down while holding overhead IKE when we were out doing a couple of weeks of active duty. He was "holding" at 350KIAS, lapping everyone else in overhead holding. We normally did 225-235 waiting for a ready deck. The F4 guys only got a handful of sims, and four or five hops in the aircraft during their transition, which wasn't enough. We found that the F4 gents were uncomfortable going vertical with less than 450 KIAS at first. I'd recommend that the transitions go out and do a series of burner loops at decreasing entry speeds to build confidence in the aircraft's capabilities. The common question was "what speed do you think I should I start?" I'd recommend 280, which was quite conservative, and their faces would turn pale. The F14A could do a comfortable loop entering at 225 KIAS, the B 180KIAS. Mind boggling coming from the F4. Those entry speeds sort of put the whole "Wings give away your energy state" argument that you hear so often. If you look at the wing schedule, the F14 is at it's corner velocity with the wings pretty straight at typical fighting attitudes. If you think a Tomcat can't get his nose on you if you go vertical, think again. Hopefully you gents have figured that out by now. The Phantom guys certainly loved their aircraft, but it just didn't have the performance anymore. Kind of like the rest of us when the F22 showed up. We had a Marine F4 unit literally across the ramp, and would call over on an ad hoc basis if the situation presented itself, especially during a mundane, mid week lull. It was usually over quickly 1v1. I remember bringing back a HUD tape sitting in the saddle, pipper tracking on an F4 as he rolled helplessly, commenting, turning up the volume so the Phantom Phanatics could hear us saying, "look at that, what a great airplane..." Pissed off my CO, and ex- F4 RIO, who was sitting there and often replaced "F's" in his correspondence with "Ph's", and constantly gushed over how manly the old Phantom was. We combined with them out at Nellis working with USAF F15's who were doing AMRAAM development in the early days. A couple divisions of F4's out there doing pincers and post holes with AIM7's and terrain masking with Tomcats hurling AIM54's is a different kettle of fish. All of a sudden, an AIM7 is tracking at you and you had no idea where it came from. The sky is a deadly place, it isn't a sterile environment where you know where all the threats are, no matter how sophisticated the jet you happen to be sitting in might be.

Good man. I would add that the F4 was a pretty easy fight for the F14A. Even the slatted F4S wasn’t a big deal. Amazing at how may F4’s were built. We had a ton of former F4 drivers in Tomcat Squadrons, and they all loved the F14. The RIO’s were in Electronic Heaven.

The “killing” in DCS is fake, the swearing is real. Does that help you understand the OP’s request? It wasn’t a deep treatise on the futility of war and mankind’s endless proclivity to engage in senseless slaughter, he simply doesn’t want real F Bombs reaching the ears of his family, while fake bombs fall on a screen that only he can see.

I agree with the OP. While cruise language gets extremely salty, there are sim players sitting at their rigs, flying with little kids in the room, or perhaps showing the module off to people who don’t want to hear and are offended by the blue language. Not a bad idea to have an option to leave it out. Squadrons are a cross section of personalities and backgrounds. Best Man in my wedding ended up being a NTPS instructor and lead the aero department at the USNA, a Christian who didn’t cuss at all. Very talented, very professional. In AOCS by the way, my Marine Drill Instructor did not curse while performing his duties. Later, after we were commissioned and engaged him in normal conversation, he talked like most Marines, but when he was playing the role of a DI, he didn’t curse, which of course, made him even more intimidating. I asked him about it, because all of the other DI’s used constant, colorful language. My Drill Instructor simply said that he thought it unprofessional. He was unbelievable intelligent, had all of our names memorized when we showed up, knew our backgrounds, pretty well too. He ended up by the way, getting commissioned himself, and earned NFO wings. He ended up being a SEAL. Toughest, most impressive SOB I ever came across.

Well, if you insist on referencing names as if they are the burning bush- I know all three of those guys, one’s dead, one’s a grifting egomaniac (think Trump), and one of them, the most respected in the community of the three, I talk with regularly. Okie didn’t use full flaps outside of the normal envelope. Same with the MCB CB and the air source. There was no reason to do so. I’ve talked about how full flaps were used within the placarded envelope as have others, and what the problems were. Okie was also the Maintenance Officer in the largest F14 squadron in the world and knew the consequences. I’m only interested in the truth, as is the team, and we are all adamant about getting the module as right as it can be, given the limits of the DCS engine and available resources. The hero/celebrity worship is tiresome. A long time ago I was setting up the cockpit on a sunny morning at KLGA, when a little kid with a cute little mullet style haircut burst into the cockpit, standing between the seats at the center console, pointing and jabbering at the buttons and lights, smiling the entire time, giddy with excitement. He jumped into my lap as we gave him the standard lights test show, and made the airplane talk while I chatted with his mom, who had joined us, quiet and shy, standing there in the doorway. She was very interested in learning to fly, and as she pointed out features to her little three year old bundle of energy, it was obvious that she was familiar with many of the controls and indicators in the cockpit of a jet airliner. We spent about ten minutes chatting pleasantly, talking about flying and kids. I remarked about how cool her son was and how he seemed to love airplanes. We were a couple of parents sharing the joy of being parents. I wished her well, encouraged her about flying, and gave her precocious little boy a hug before they left. The little boy’s name was Maddox, and his mom’s name was Angelina, and they both learned to fly, she even bought an airplane. Nice lady, just a regular mom, like all of the other moms out there. It is a mistake to worship humans.