ouPhrontis

Here's the actual brief material, with full coordinates, noise abatement and merging procedures etc. http://www.edwards.af.mil/Portals/50/documents/R2508/AFD-150213-040.pdf http://www.edwards.af.mil/Portals/50/documents/R2508/AFD-110126-047.pdf Full route and brief is in this User Manual; http://www.edwards.af.mil/Portals/50/documents/R2508/AFD-070103-052.pdf Current brief material; http://www.edwards.af.mil/Portals/50/documents/R2508/R-2508%20User's%20Handbook%2003%20MAY%202018.pdf

I think that's best, with all the accepted time-period issues, it is loosely based upon a fictional NATO and Warsaw Pact scenario, it's odd enough with P51s being seen buzzing around.

I understand there's a want to keep a certain barrier for content with ED simulations, perhaps in case anything is perceived to taint the brand. Though I am curious as to what the barrier is, a portfolio likely perhaps, or feed someone with Garibaldi biscuits and complements. I am becoming tempted to begin development of content for DCS, I had once upon a time recreated in high fidelity a map for FarCry of the Isle of Portland using isohypses* from the 19th century. But without knowing how it's done in DCS World, nor the specific SDK \_(o.O)_/ *Converted via various means to an awful gray-scale and then tidied up by hand with the SDK tools.

Sadly I've never had stick time in the air with a rotary wing, especially not a Gazelle so I only have the word of pilots I've flown with, or the written word of those that flew Gazelles and helped work on this module. I understand the flight-model for the SA342 has been revised recently, so reviews still up on Steam et al of around 2014 are probably stale, not sure how recent 'recent' is. I'm unable to compare this module to the UH-1H either, but I am toying with that as a next purchase, so I'll bookmark this thread such that if I do; I can contribute to it with a comparison. I came straight into the SA342* about a month ago.

Wasn't there an ED sim with at least some crude "sunny becoming overcast" or <foo> becoming <bar> and later <baz> weather system, or am I thinking of a different sim?

Meh, female ATC at my old haunt; EGHH Hurn. Business like and proper, bring it on.

Just to reiterate; once in flight and trim, you will feel resistance against the stick and rudder if presenting the control surfaces into airflow, so in that regard it might feel as if it's self-centring, if you're properly trimmed out; the aircraft (most GA) will settle back down into say straight and level if you pushed fore-aft on the stick for a bit and didn't alter the power; extreme attitude chances not-with-standing. Though on some I've flown; they've no rudder or aileron trim, so you're always holding those in whatever manner required to maintain the desired attitude etc.

To the first, it depends, because as airspeed builds then a resistance will start to build when you attempt to deflect control surfaces into the airflow, especially against trim, it's not a fully centring force though, just the resistance felt diminishes as you relax pressure on the stick and rudder. To the second, no you still need to trim, but it's done perhaps opposite to what most PC/sim only pilots might think, in that you hold the aircraft in say level flight with pressure on the flight controls (stick, rudder) wait until airspeed settles (power etc as required), and then trim out the pressure until no more pressure is felt (trim being a luxury on ailerons and rudder), then you should be able to release the controls and it'll 'fly itself'. So that feedback or resistance can be somewhat analogous to the spring pressure on a desktop stick. The trim in a real aircraft deflects the control surface usually via a tab actuated in the opposite direction, so that the elevator is bias by X amount one direction or another without the pilot required to exert that force on the stick, but this is not self-centring. Trim is required to be fitted elevators (at least GA as I understand), but tends to be a luxury on ailerons and rudders. I use to have to hold a boot load of right rudder on the takeoff with the HR200 for example (this varied too from one HR200 to another, just adjusted differently), no trim for that fitted, plus some slight right rudder was held in throughout the flight, though this could be adjusted out with the right tools when on the ground.

If you have some spare time and don't mind the slightly cringe-worthiness of the first one; then; https://youtu.be/HvDz4MrYXNc and maybe; https://youtu.be/pQvF7V-VEYI

Perhaps we could have a feature(mod?) that sets a range of switches to a pseudo-random position, that way you'd be running through your pre-start and might find something. Some switches might be wisely excluded from that though, say batt or whatever. But outside of that; I'd prefer they be set in a realistic manner, not just all off for the sake of wanting to switch-flip. It's a simulator, let's stick to a standard.

I think you're gonna struggle to get the same feel as a rotary wing cyclic with a short throw sprung desktop joystick, I manage but it requires subtle inputs and forgiving it for the centre spot. An actual cyclic is quite a long throw control column, pivoting down near or sometimes at the floor with no centring.

It's gone for me in 2.5.1* Strike that, it's still there, sure the dev's know full well, but edited this so as to not confuse people.

I'll still have plenty of time for the AV-8B, the SA342 and then might be convinced of perhaps the F-14 with a RIO.

I've got some limited experience flying gliders, only ASK13s, and powered aircraft, say HR200, R2160 and stick time on some others, like a DA40, and being a hangar-rat around plenty of others, like a Beagle Auster D5, there's some light resistance with the mechanical linkages (to varying degrees) and so the stick in some will remain pretty much where you left it, unless there's say a stiff breeze, or with others a light fart, this was more noticeable with gliders as very little resistance was present on the ASK13s I flew, to the extent we needed to either have locks in place, or hold the stick with a lap-belt, none (with perhaps the exception of the DA40 as I only got stick time in the air with that BMW of the sky) had any self-centering mechanism. The rudder in the HR200 and R2160 were also connected to the nose-wheel steering, so that on the ground just remained whereever the nose-wheel was pointing as it's locked in place with a terring lock.

There may be a limit to what can be done, depending on how ED are making the ground, say if the terrain mesh is of a uniform edge length looking straight down, then you'd have issues with high-fidelity cliffs. I don't know how they've chosen to do it. For example some game engines like ones used in the early FarCry it took gray-scale images as a height map, so you only had some sort of meter-square (or whatever) fidelity canvas to work with, I'm not saying that's how it actually is with DCS World; as I don't know.

Not even sure what the legal standpoint is, or if it's some gentleman's agreement and people being polite. It might end up being a horrific turd, but I'm gonna gather material for an F6/FGA9 and see what I can come up with; already have service manuals and pilot notes. Know that these were fitted with MB 2H, and that I'm looking at possibly two 'pits, one ground-pound t'other intercept. If it's horrid enough maybe it'll spur someone to dive in and save it.

The ailerons can be considered somewhat redundant when the elevons/stabilators can operate asymmetrically for invoking roll, as Mirmidon said. But still interesting to know the mechanics of it.

Nice olde dit from some Navy pilots; "Wings Folded Richard (Dick) Green - VAN Team #3 A little over 50 years ago (Oh, m'gawd. THAT long ?), an event involving VC-35 took place that got attention from all kinds of places. Certainly, every SPAD driver in the Western Pacific heard about it, and an "artists impression" showed up on, of all the unlikely places, the cover of an issue of Popular Mechanics. Some 12 to 15 years after that, an issue of Naval Aviation News dealt with the imminent phase-out of the AD, and cited a lot of the history of the various models. Intending to praise the workers at Douglas for building such a tough bird, I wrote to NA News about the following incident (condensed version), and gave them much credit for the fact that I was still around and kicking. NA News was nice enough to publish my letter in a later issue, and author Rosario Rausa picked up some of it and included a paragraph about it in his book "Skyraider - The Flying Dump Truck" which also contained a lot about VC-35 operations in Korea in its pages. I am still, at this late date, being asked " How, in the ever-lovin' blue-eyed world, could that have happened ?", by people who find out that I was there. Well, just in case there are any Association members who also wonder, read on. May 11, 1951 started out like a normal day, with a predawn heckler mission off the Princeton. We had a good flight, finding plenty of targets, and eventually ran out of anything worth dropping on anyone, so we returned to the ship and trapped. I headed below while my pilot, LT Frank Metzner, debriefed. I then got a message from him, saying that the Air Group was heading over to Pyongyang for a party, and could use all the help they could get, so he had volunteered to join them, and would I like to go along? Since I had always considered that we were a team, I wanted to go anywhere he did, so I said "Sure, let's go", and off we went. I don't recall too much about the strike on Pyongyang, so I guess it must have been pretty much routine. Events that followed, however, are burned permanently into what I like to call my brain. Enroute back to the Princeton, the ship called and diverted our AD-4N to a small Air Force "grasshopper" strip at Kangnung (K-18). Seems that they had a sick SPAD on the ground, with a few bombs aboard that the Air Force didn't know what to do with, and wanted to get rid of. Our orders were to land, get the ordnance transferred to our racks, fly North, drop our load on a target of opportunity and get back to the ship by a certain time. So far, so good. We landed at K-18, supervised the transfer of six 260 pound frag bombs to our aircraft and, having plenty of time, went over to the mess for a sandwich and coffee. Shortly thereafter, the Princeton sent a message that moved our rendezvous time up by a bunch, and we suddenly found ourselves in one hell of a hurry. We sprinted across the runway to our bird, and LT Metzner climbed in and started the engine while I ran around checking the wires in the VT fuses of our load. I gave him a thumbs-up and headed for the port hatch, while he released the brakes and started to taxi, almost leaving me behind. I managed to catch a hand-hold as the plane went by, crawled into my seat and slammed the hatch. By the time I managed to get into my belts, harnesses, etc. and plug into the ICS, we were at the end of the runway, and I called him to read off the Checklist, but he said "We don't have the time for that", and called what passed for a tower there for take-off clearance. What I didn't know, and what he had forgotten, was that while taxi-ing he had had to go between two other aircraft and, lacking enough room, had folded the wings. I hadn't noticed, because I was too busy getting ready to launch. So there we were pointing down the runway with the wings folded and asking for take-off clearance. I don't know whether those people who answered us thought we flapped off into the blue like some big seagull, or whether they cleared us and then ran outside to watch the show, but clear us they did, and we roared off down the runway, fat, dumb and happy. About halfway down the runway, I was wondering why we were still rolling, since we had plenty of speed. Then I thought, "He's holding her down so that he can impress the locals by standing the aircraft on its tail and taking off straight up" It was about that time that, for some reason, I leaned forward and looked out my little window on the port side. The view I got almost stopped my heart, and all I could think of to do was to hit the ICS switch and calmly say (Yeah, right - I screamed my lungs out !) "WINGS !!! WINGS !!! As it happened, LT Metzner was also wondering why we were still on the ground, had located the problem at about the same time that I did and had assessed the situation--definitely un-good. His automatic reaction was to chop the throttle, but then realized that there was no hope at all of stopping the plane on the wheels short of all the rocks, surf and other assorted bad news ahead of us so he decided to belly in. To do that, he had to get the weight off the wheels so that he could raise the gear, and thought that, considering our load of ordnance, with enough power he could get the plane to "mush" into the air long enough to do the job. So he went full bore and pulled the stick back into his lap, but he had miscalculated a bit and we were very quickly at what ground witnesses said was about 200 feet. Our situation had deteriorated somewhat. We could fly, but only straight ahead since we had no working ailerons and straight ahead was not a good direction because of the aforementioned rocks, surf, and a lot of empty, cold (even in May) ocean, with no rescue aircraft around for an hour or more. The only viable alternative was to get back on the ground, and fast, so he kicked a little left rudder and we promptly augered in at about 30 degrees. I remember seeing the port wing stub hit the ground, but after that things got noisy and confused, so I have to rely on what we were told by outside observers. The initial impact tore off the port wing and stub, and the partially raised landing gear, and we went flat on the belly, leaving the prop blades standing like a row of fence posts in the ground. The radar nacelle was next. Skidding on our belly, we were almost home free, but across the end of the runway was a wide ditch, with three foot embankments on each side. We buried the engine into the nearest bank, which tore off the engine and the starboard wing and flipped the bare fuselage end-over-end through the air for about 60 to 70 yards. We hit, rolled several times, and came to rest. I remember hanging in my harness and not moving. I was temporarily blind, I was numb and couldn't feel anything, and it was unbelievably quiet, which convinced me that I was dead. So I just hung there, waiting to see what was going to happen next. What happened next was that I started to hurt, all over, which was a surprise. I had always assumed that dead people didn't hurt, so it seemed reasonable that I might be alive, and if so, I had better get out of there. I started fumbling with my harness and with my hatch, which wouldn't budge, and about that time I heard LT Metzner's voice coming from above me, telling me to get out that way, and that the plane was on fire. That got my full attention, and I looked up to see nothing but black, except for a white square in the middle, which I took to be an open hatch. I shed my harness, etc., crawled up to the white square and he helped me climb through and fall to the ground. I ran a few steps and sat down. (Hey, I was tired!) He then came alongside and said something that contained the words "fire" and "bombs" in the same sentence. That provided further motivation, and we staggered away as fast as we could. A medical jeep arrived in short order, picked us up and took us to their dispensary, while the guys were expressing their amazement that anyone had survived the wreck they just watched. Neither of us was badly damaged, and I was very grateful to be alive, but LT Metzner looked like he would rather not have gotten through the whole episode. His pride (and he had a lot of that) had been shattered. While we waited for the Princeton to send transportation, I reminded him that he had saved both our hides at least once, and probably twice, and that everyone makes mistakes (even a doozy like this one). I also told him that I wasn't going to hold this little boo-boo against him. And I didn't. He snapped out of his blue funk in a few days, and we were back in the air again, just like before. Well, almost. We had a new, iron clad rule. We WOULD go through the Checklist before take-off, no matter WHAT. I also revised the Checklist a tad. "Wings Locked" was now No.l on the list. Also No.4 and No. 7. He took the needling graciously, though, and we never mentioned the "embarrassment" again."

I'd wonder if the ailerons would even actuate at all whilst configured that way, accepting that FBW will be also employing the stabilators to invoke roll moment.

Well if that's the case then it's better to know than not. I'd still like to know for sure, as this is a very tempting project, material is out there and relatively obtainable, people still fly these today; including civilians. With just a few quick searches I found even more examples of these kites in my local area.

Undoubtedly, certainly helps make the landing run less exciting, don't wanna be chasing the duty pilots out of their deckchairs.

On licencing issues, Hawker Aircraft was declared defunct in 1963 and Hawker Siddeley too in 1992. So who remains to be contacted regarding permission for simulating the aircraft, BAe, RAF? I have procured pilots notes and service/repair manuals for the F6. Once upon a yesteryear I did pre-visualization, CGI using 3DS-Max 5, maybe it's time I dusted off some olde skills, if they still exist.

Last I recall seeing it the A-10C does have a single brake axis option, and not having independent brakes wasn't the end of things, as one could steer the nose-wheel.

The Hunter fits well, the regions we have (and will have) fit (or can be interpreted to fit) with the conflicts the Hunter saw; the Suez Crisis, the Aden Emergency, the Sino-Indian War, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, the Rhodesian Bush War, the Second Congo War, the Six-Day War, the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War, and the 2007 Lebanon conflict - to lift from W'pedia. For whatever small benefit there may had from being able to pop up the road and ask nicely to be able to take measurements and photos of the F 5 WP190; I'd love to help in starting a simulation of this magnificent air-frame. They even have the 'Sabrina' pack and so forth on display. Yes it takes years to get it realized, but it starts somewhere.

Yes, so not quite the punchy acceleration to get a fast jet off a carrier, but more of a steady onset.