Raisuli

Would it date me to say something along the lines of 'pay no attention to the rudder behind the curtain'...nah, just forget it

So, maybe I'm dense (osmium comes to mind, particularly the 'black' bit), the image with the back cockpit panel skin the right rudder is missing, the version without the skin the right rudder is visible...what did I miss?

So...had the Forest Fire out for, maybe the second time, and since I'm bouncing between ships in an egg beater actually took a look at it rather than blasting by at hundreds of knots. Anyone else notice the radars all spin backwards? Maybe it's just me. Been a long time since I did radar training at A school, but every other ship in the fleet spun their dishes the right way.

How do you get the DDs to go into flight quarters? Apart from the (probably apocryphal) story of the helo that went into a backwards hover in front of the bridge of the USS Neverdock; the pilot pointed at himself, then at the OOD, then pointed down. Apparently the OOD asked someone what that meant (they tend not to the the brightest bulbs) and took the ship to flight quarters so the helo could land before it ran out of gas. <edit> And the answer is: Once your wheel touch the ship goes to flight quarters. Watched the nets go down on the next several landings. NOW we just need HIFR capabilities. That would be cool... </edit> This is not it, but once I landed everything was rigged for flight. Dicey landing with that aft flag pole up!

It's a surprisingly fun distraction. Did really tight figure 8s around the pyramids with it, then landed and got the heck out of Egypt before they could track me down. It lacks a little polish here and there, but...dang. The only thing that will out turn it is a hovering helicopter. Even the I-16 is a sled in comparison

At my age? That would probably be fatal. I'm going to get my controls set up and find out...there are worse ways to go! <edit> Mission Report: The OP was blonde or brunette, and I have to say the blonde, but that might be because I rarely fly soviet...aircraft. I've probably been in the MiG-21 a little, I flew the MiG-19 a bit when it first came out, but I have several hundred hours to one in western style aircraft and had the most difficult time with the L39. I'm sure some practice would iron that out, but there were also some really strange graphics issues with it that were extremely distracting. Nothing in the F2 view so I suspect a problem elsewhere. The Blonde is a little underpowered, even for a blonde, and the differential breaking took a little practice, but it was a lot of fun to fly. Once you get her up to speed, and that takes a gentle touch, she'll get you where you're going. Landing was a breeze and she tracked right down the centerline. As a bonus I took the redhead up as well. I have a thing for redheads anyway, and in fact I'm married to an ex-soviet redhead. In some ways the blonde was more fun, but that fiery redhead gets going a lot quicker and the steerable nosegear gets her going in the right direction right away. A little bit more dancing on the landing; anti-skid was on but the brakes put her into a skid anyway. That could easily be operator error. Since I already have all three I don't need to choose, but I'd need more time to pick between the blonde and the redhead. The brunette will probably be relegated into the hanger with the other 'soviet' style aircraft and might not get much time in the air. To answer the original question, C-101 for me. Might be the western bias, but it got the most time doing laps around Tel Nof.

Just to complicate this to death speed is everything. From the looks of the photo in the OP they were making some turns. If you're doing 30(+) knots there's a lot of froth; I have pictures of that from a two screw ship boat. If you're doing 15, which is a pretty common 'get from point a to point b' speed, there's not nearly as much wake. I have those pictures as well. It's all about power curves; power is a cube function of speed, wake is a function of the amount of power being applied to the water, cavitation, blah blah blah. So if the boat needs to make all thirty knots of wind across the deck, big wake. If there's a ten knot wind, less wake. If it's doing five turning circles on station, you get the DCS wake. That doesn't even get in to the bit about the tail end oscillating when all those turns are happening. Not sure if that affects the deck in close because I've never been above (or on) the deck of a carrier doing 30(+) knots, but it sure gives you a ride on smaller boats. Then there are the poor slaves in the berthing compartment converted from the ships brig, with port/starboard racks right over the top of the screws. Above 15 that 'sleeping' area is a hazardous noise area, and the whine from the steering hydraulics, which never ends, is loud enough to keep the dead awake. <edit> That was unsat. Got my power curves bass-ackwards. Good thing I don't do that stuff anymore... </edit>

Ah! Learned something that really wasn't too surprising given Russian design philosophy. That makes it a good day. Thanks! Of course given my advanced level of ignorance about the Ka-50 I learn things all the time since I started to fly it, which is kind of cool.

The dust effect from the helo landing was also much, much better. Makes me wonder if some of those Soon(tm) to be released modules aren't waiting for core features in 2.9 or 3.0

Does seem like an odd use for a dedicated attack helo, particularly with one that has such crappy visibility. The AH-64 (sorry to mention that here) doesn't sling cargo, does it? Plenty of trucks with rotors if you want to haul the mail

Central Europe has been on the wish list since Central Europe was formed. It is the ultimate cold war environment and perfect for so many DCS scenarios and campaigns you can't count them all. A DCS map also has the advantage of being a much better place to host a war. One of the problems was the redonkulous amount a detail needed to pull off the map, but it appears some of those limitations have been conquered. Hopefully we will see the heart of Europe in my lifetime, but you never know.

Wrote it from scratch, and it's not even a mission. There are no waypoints (none that I pay attention to) on the -18. I might have spurious waypoints that might get used for something else if I'm up for a different reason. Ramat David got completely fouled up on that mission (it's about half red now, and doesn't work right), so I've gone back to Sinai. I'll run one of the formations (and make sure there are no waypoints configured) a little later, then take a screenshot once the UFC lights up. Since you're asking specific questions I am of course questioning my answers, and want to make sure they are accurate! The whole point of the exercise is a portable TACAN station that sits on a small trigger point. When the trigger is activated a lead aircraft appears and I chase it around for about five hundred miles. During that chase I noticed the UFC lighting up with AP settings, which seems odd because all I do is throttle/pitch/roll to stay in formation with the lead aircraft, which has sevety or eighty waypoint/turns programmed into it's route.

B-24J. Davis wing. Twice the load of a B-17, and even able to carry a group of blue Aussie infantrymen home in the bomb bay.

Getting my head wrapped around the auto pilot is going to be a project in and of itself. Once I can fly without thinking about flying I'll worry about rapid unscheduled disassembly of opfor equipment. That's my current project, just flying from A to B and landing within a cubit or two of where I aiming on the landing pad, even without downward visibility. Once I get close peripheral vision seems to work, and until then knowing what reference points to use. What's worse is it seems many people fly differently. This summary and Volk's videos would appear to disagree, which is not a problem; it just means I need to find the methods that work best for me. However, it does sound like FD has a place in that mix. Might need a button on the HOTAS somewhere. In the meantime has anyone else noticed flying helos and jets are complimentary? The same skills that get my helo in a manual hover (with no autopilot channels on) also help with AAR or formations. This thing is a blast. I've played with it a little (even back in BS2 days) but never really got into it until recently. Of course it's just been recently I had the skill set to have a blast with it. Wonder if those are related...

Hop in a live F/A-18. Push the A/P button on the UFC. Looks like this, other than the only controls being used are the throttle and stick for pitch and roll (no buttons involved). <edit> Oh, and the CPL is live also </edit> null

Bet I know what it is. The north east side of the base thinks it's red. The southwest and center of the base thinks it's blue. I can make it all red, but the red areas won't go blue or neutral. Be a pain in the butt to re-build that mission from scratch, but if I do that at least it will be a lot cleaner.

Noticed a couple things since I came back to the Syria map; first is RD doesn't 'exist' anymore. No ATC, as in it doesn't show up on the ATC menu anymore, aircraft that are supposed to land there go to Megiddo. Stuff like that. Lights work. TACAN works. Just me? Time for a rebuild? Did I miss a memo and that base is closing for remodeling (the O-club is rather dated)?

So, I completely unbound the UFC-> A/P control. Not even a keyboard command. Still pops up, which obviously makes it a bug and ED...you get it. #include entitledWhining.h Or, I could try a full (slow?) repair as BuzzLine suggested. Or I could just ignore it. As I've said, it's not a problem, just a puzzle. Even if there is a glitch somewhere in the code they'd have to re-open the Kola super deep borehole to find anything that low on the priority list...

In an actual, 1v1, head to head guns-only battle? Sure. Will there be a winner? Maybe. Will it be you? How good are you at deflection shots with those spud guns on the -21? Against all knowing, all seeing, dead-eye accurate AI? Don't hold your breath. Against Growling Sidewinder in an I-16? Make sure your parachute harness is tight. The problem with jet vs piston is the jet might be able to dominate the fight, but the piston aircraft will turn three times and do a loop before the jet can come back for another pass, and the jet will always overshoot. Then it comes down to whether or not the piston fighter can get rounds on that retreating target, or whether the jet can get rounds on an aircraft with a 90 degree tail crossing angle. The bigger variable is SA. There are a lot of UToob videos of this exact scenario for various values of jet vs piston. The results are almost always the same. I occasionally did the Final Countdown things with an F/A-18 vs Me-109 in the channel, and unless I've got missiles it's nearly always somewhere between stalemate or the AI hunts me down and shoots me as I land low on gas. Long ago I disengaged at sea level and the AI got me while I was climbing at 350 knots at 28,000 feet (??!!), but that was back when the AI didn't bother with trivial nonsense like physics. Might be different now.

Everyone says hold trim in all the time, where I tend to hit trim only after I get where I want to be; more of a tap. Let me think. Who is more likely to be right...the clueless newb, or everybody else... Might need to remap my trip button. Thanks again! Watching Volk's video now. Going to re-watch it later. A few times.

So...good point...I'm trucking along chasing after a train for the practice, then out of the blue the helo suddenly banks hard right and I'm all in with the stick to the left just to keep from sliding into the ground. Get the same thing with pitch, and if I can't react fast enough it's Ka-Fireball time. That never happens with the autopilots off... Any ideas on that, because I don't have sudden control inputs out of the blue if I turn them off. If they're on and I'm maneuvering it's a crap shoot.

And once I get in a hover I turn them on I think I found the problem. Yet another DCS bug...I changed the switch I had mapped to 'Auto Hover' and yes, you guessed it, DCS doesn't seem to realize I'm using the old switch and not the new one. You would think since nothing else had been mapped to the old one yet it would know better. I hadn't actually tried to use it before, either... Um. *cough* I'll just...move along now... Thanks a bunch, MAXsenna! You really did help with this!

I do, I just don't always look at them (they're mapped). Or at least I think that's what those cool illuminated push buttons mean. I know just enough to think I know more than I do. This time I looked down. I've been killed by the autopilot a few times, so it's off a lot if I'm out joyriding. Wheels up, 40M (or am I set to feet?), +/4 on trim, hands off the stick, feet on the floor 2023.08.28 KA-50 AutoHover 2.trk

Yes, yes, and yes. Previous mission (no track; too much goof-off time) I had it trimmed to +/- 1 lateral motion with hands off the stick, and down to zero more than once. ~80 meters, and the wheels were even up! Yeah, if it wasn't for bitch' Nastya I'd land with the wheels up a lot. Haven't gotten used to that in a helo yet!

For my next dumb Ka-50 question...auto-hover. It doesn't like me. I can get trimmed into a dead hover, hit auto-hover, and Bitchin' Nastya just laughs maniacally at me from the avionics bay, which means I'm missing something. Watched Cap and didn't see anything different in my setup. Yes, Nastya, there is a track file! I was pounding the auto-hover button quite a bit here... 2023.08.28 KA-50 AutoHover.trk