Raisuli

Your English is way better than my French, so you win there! A lot depends on your switch. Does DCS see three positions, or only two? To give an example of a two-way switch with three positions and the flap switch you can make up auto/half and down full/half, so moving the switch up puts you in auto flap, returning to center sets it to half. Down is full, return to center is back to half. If it's a true three position up is auto, middle is half, and down is full.

Wait...you build a sandbox where we are allowed, nay encouraged to shoot each other in the face with high explosives and solid rocket fuel, and you want us to be nice? "Terribly sorry, old chap. Didn't mean to fire that Phoenix up your keister." "Sorry? You pulled the trigger!" "Well, yes, but I felt badly doing so..." I'm going to land on the Vinson a few times. Finally put one in the water; the Stennis is looking mighty fine next to that contact-paper flight deck! I remember it looking a little different.

"Grove" is too close. There are things that need to be set, and while you might be able to set them in a script, just taking control at low speed can be a challenge. I made one that puts me at the top of the downwind at 800 feet, 250 kts. I have to active pause to clean up the HUD, get TCN and ICLS set up, dial in the BRC, set the RADALT (also known as "Push to Test"), drop the hook, then unpause, airbrake to 180, gear and flaps, on-speed 600 feet, and on a good day five seconds later I'm turning on to the final. If you're a hot stick shorten the downwind. I suck. There are about 30 other things to do on this mission, but that's one of them.

So...it took me a little while to wrest control back. I got it down on the right bloody planet, and only small parts fell off! :joystick: :thumbup:

Caught a wire... Low over the threshold, 880FPS descent rate, left of center line. 2 wire. Not smiling. The LSO just slapped me and suggested I get back below the waterline where I belong. She was being a little harsh; we were going to retire that aircraft anyway... Seriously, though, I'm getting better at this. And flying the Huey. Didn't crash the chopper once in about 20 landings flying laps around Nellis.

Fixed that. Still have this little problem. The rest of the gauges look fine, but none of the lights show up either.

Only 167 pages to catch up on? Yike. So. Installed. Ports are set. Cockpit layout is exactly the way I want it (used pixels rather than mice; I'm old school). It's absolutely beautiful, much like the painting by Albrecht Durer in Zum Gilden Stern in Nuremberg. And just as static. Seriously, hefeweizen helle gross und elf Nuemberger brats, bitte? Is there a quick howto to get the actual data showing up on this beautiful cockpit I've designed for the Huey? I've read all kinds of documentation on setup, nothing on making it actually work. I'm sure this is PEBKAC, but a pointer, please?

Meanwhile I'm collecting hours on-speed, making turns. Also worthwhile.

And in DCS I watch the ball set into the deck just before I cross the threshold. I'm almost on CL most of the time now, but I just can't seem to get the glide slope right. Low. Always low. I can hear the "power. Power POWER!" in my head. Glide slope is my next project. That and a steady hover in the Huey. You get diminishing returns working on one thing to exclusion. After ten or fifteen passes on the carrier I just get worse. I watch all of those approach tracks in slow motion so I know just how badly I suck, where the mains hit, and which wire I would have got. I'm a nuke. Obsessive is my middle name. (I saved a track of the worst landing you can survive in DCS. Ramp strike; or at least the mains hit the white part of the round down. Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, but still got a wire and stopped. In DCS the aircraft looked flyable, IRL it gave the fire teams something to do)

Because that's how I play my game? Drop bombs, fire GWDODs, shoot guns, or just do 7-9 touch and goes, then land? It's amazing how you develop the muscle memory to land that way. Since we don't have FLCPs set up I do most of my touch and goes on the carrier, but that's a special mission setup to keep the aircraft light enough.

One of these days I might come out as a closet rotorhead. Still like burning holes in the sky in a fast-mover, but learning how to hover and land is turning into a hobby. My odds of surviving a landing in the Huey are going up; still have trouble with a steady hover, and I land...somewhere...eventually... Landings are very precise on a continental scale. Why yes, I did land in North America; why do you ask?

I am cutting them some slack, but really you only need ONE aircraft to film start up and shut down. As someone pointed out already it just got bad toward the end, but there are lots of big airplanes so I watched it anyway. The only part that bothered me was Boyington throwing his guys under the bus for a paycheck. Granted, he was as flawed as the rest of us and needed it. I still visit him whenever I'm at Arlington.

I was supposed to be in the EU in a couple weeks, but someone closed it.

My cat in an undisclosed location. He's not my CO; she got carried off in a straight jacket after trying to counsel me on my flying technique. That's the boat's CO. I'm hoping the SC skippers are a little more mentally stable.

Half the battle is knowing what things are called. Knowing what they look like just starts the treasure hunt for the proper name :)

All four. Pretty impressive splashes, too. Got it to 78% damage or something like that, flames, big hole in the side. Keeps right on going. By the time I get back to the CV and land (have to dodge the sea sparrows; the CO doesn't like me much) the flames are out. Heck of a DC department.

Oh heavens no. If the SC doesn't make a splash on the 15th I'll just keep running into the one I have. I've thought seriously about crashing into the Kuznetsov, but when I tried to get it to 27 knots something broke and it ended up dead in the water. In other naval news I keep hitting a Krivak with four harpoons and not only doesn't it sink it doesn't even slow down. Four harpoons midships waterline (read engineering spaces) would not be good for the propulsion system on a mortal ship; if the Kuznetsov had that engineering department the carrier itself could fly.

I have a medal of honor, silver star, purple heart...Maybe they think if I get enough medals I'll go on the speaking circuit and stop breaking their airplanes. Seems like a desperation ploy to me. Really, it would be nice to clean that up, but I suspect this is something near to if not at the bottom of the list. Minor things like aircraft, frame rates, and feature sets are distracting them from the important stuff like...um...er...

That would explain it nicely. Thanks!

Following an F-15 on MP and noticed the heat blur from his engines was messing up my HUD, which is interesting given the HUD is inside a closed cockpit. Didn't grab a screen, and was more or less waiting for another instance when someone posted this on the photos board. Pretty clear what I mean. Explain to me how heat shimmer gets between the hud and my mk1 mod 1 eyeballs without roasting something? Might be known (my search-fu is weak; I'm an old man).

Missiles have inadequate warning labels. It looked friendly to me. I'm sure there's some consumer protection agency out there with which we can lodge a complaint. As for RPM failures...never seen one, but I never auto-start. Either airstart or push most of the right buttons.

If you crimped them into dupont connectors it would be a little neater.

Yeah, but if you seal the relief valve things break. Someone will just open another thread...it's sad, but that's the internet. It was such a nice place until AOL happened. Really.

64 hours in the Hornet (the first 24 or so were probably spent goofing off, certainly not doing anything worthwhile because I was using an ergonomic horror show for controls). I'm just starting to get comfortable with it, even if I still forget to configure things now and then. 217 landings, so 3.4 landings per hour rather than the 7 to 10 I'm shooting for. I can get a landing on the CV more often than not, though the LSO has been known to give me a USUCK grade and the CO threatened to eat my cat if I land on his boat again. Still haven't caught a basket, but I don't spend much time working on that. So, leaning the Hornet in a vacuum and just wondering how many hours the hot sticks have. I have 3 hours in a Huey. My hover looks more like an epileptic seizure, but I can land. On a runway. Somewhere. Just clear the airfield and hope the shrapnel doesn't hit anything vital. Last night I learned the collective needs constant stroking.

It's not Easter yet. Russian Orthodox still use the Julian calendar.