Raisuli

Well, that is interesting. I've seen commentary about F-16 and AH-64 missing a single axis each. Your viper is fine but the Mi8 lost one. Seems like there's some variability.

Might have to replace a few of Jester's color commentary with Monty Python quotes; at least those are funny.

I have...what, almost 400 bindings to mess up? It takes about an hour and a half to get the setup done on a complex aircraft. FC3 I can live without, losing the F-5, as some apparently have, would be irritating. Really want to take some of the updated mods out, really, really want to look at the map, but I had already planned to sit on this for a while to see what's still borken. Might be worth waiting for the first or second hotfix, give or take the reports from the front.

During the cold war the Baltic was primarily a WP lake; too much Poland and Soviet States (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Kaliningrad) with neutral Sweden and Finland to the north. The only passage was a rock garden with Denmark on one side and no help on the other, which isn't to say Sweden didn't pull the America's chestnuts out of the fire when they escorted a crippled Blackbird back into friendly territory. I believe those Swedish pilots got their Air Medals thirty years late, and IIRC they flew a Viggen variant. For carrier aviation to get involved in a European war the best bet would be the North/Wadden sea out by Bemerhaven. It's a stretch no matter how you play it launching off a carrier into a European battle, and if the fight gets close enough to the left coast for it to be easy the war is already lost. Of course with a European map the scenario is what you make it, so put some water somewhere (even in the Baltic) and carrier ops are automagically a thing. This is a game. Details. If we can have submarines in DCS we can put a carrier on the Rhein. Heck, we can probably turn left at the Main and do liberty in Wurzburg. Work our way to the Danube and I'll get schnitzel at Figlmuller's in Vienna.

He didn't eject, he was looking for a better vantage point to observe the bogey. The landing was probably great. He'd have something to say about the rollout later... Your fault for landing too soon after the gear went down. He had his head in a *cough* manual and didn't realize you were on final until he heard the thump, then had to put the manual down, zip up the flight suit, say something offensive, and find the right checklist. All of these have perfectly normal explanations. Nothing to see here.

Europe was a problem for the Army and Air Force. Do need Bittburg for that very reason, but that is a redonkulously dense piece of real estate. I don't think there's a single point anywhere in that area more than 500 meters from a town, village, farm, train track, road, or substation. Well, unless they release a post-apocalyptic central European map that's all desert. I don't see that map happening in any kind of warm, fuzzy detail given the current limitations. The Navy's job was to keep supplies from the US flowing into Europe. Then again, we have carriers on the black sea. Blow up a few bridges and we can launch aircraft from the Rhine, but watch out for Lorelei.

Navy would have had it's hands full with the G-I-UK gap(s). Have to bottle up the Russian fleet and keep the sea lanes open or logistics becomes untenable. Naval air power would be there to support SLOCs, which includes defending against the long range bombers/ASMs. Would have been pretty exciting, especially those first few days. Trust me, in the early 80s that all anyone droned on talked about. He deleted his computer, not his monitor. Just saying.

Wait, what?? I can't hold a hover close enough to pick up a bad case of...whatever that is Laobi always goes on about, but after how many years I've never even heard of this? Now I have to check it out when I get home. I avoid that octagon on the AH-64 because I already know I've already hovered myself into a neighboring map. You misspelled 'Cyrillic' . Just wait until you have to hear the difference between shcha and shcha. Those are two different letters, and SWMBO just laughs at me. Then I make her pronounce TH properly...

I've read in a couple places the WSO/RIO did just more than that. Visibility is crap, but there's the whole IFR thing, so he should be able to maintain a bank, or even orbit a point on the ground. Neither of those seem over the top from a code perspective for a company that models the filaments in light bulbs. HB says no, and realistically he is just a software crutch for lack of a real GIB. There's quite a bit in the pipe for Jester and the aircraft; I'm pretty sure their feature list is pretty full right now. It'll be fun to see where all this goes.

Dang it, you're always one feature request ahead of me! Well...except he's still not going to be my auto-pilot in a pinch.

Jester: We've got a B-1 at one o'clock Me: ...and two o'clock, and...

As far as I know you aren't going to hunt me down at home and beat me with a shillelagh for asking... Airspeed callouts every five or ten knots. Really useful when my head is out of the cockpit but we really need to keep the speed up. Can't imagine a situation where that might make a difference... Supposed to be a two person crew. Crew resource management; I do this, you do that. Come on, Jester, do that. Do something!

I don't recall ever hearing a 'Betty' on a submarine. 593, 637, 688...I heard a lot of bitchin', but no Bettys. Maybe she got added on the 688Is or one of the follow-ons. Of course in my day submarines were made out of wood (and weighed the same as a duck). I, for one, met all current standards for behavior when I was in the Navy. Yup. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Far, far ahead of my time, even as a teenager.

Controls: Screen Red Filter should probably be on/off/toggle rather than INC and DEC, particularly since clicking in the cockpit yields a binary switch. Differential braking doesn't seem to be a thing; maybe that's due to the nose wheels demanding their directional authority, but this seems more pronounced than on other aircraft with NWS so I thought I'd mention it. The vertical velocity meter seems like it's a little over-caffeinated. That might also be expected behavior, but it's really twitchy. Again, 'more than other aircraft', but this isn't other aircraft. I'm fine if it works correctly. There were a couple other minor things that have been bugging me lately, but I had so much fun with that zoom climb I lost track of time and She Who Must Be Obeyed wants her dinner!

This. No particular mod, just in general. I've done QA on pre-alpha and alpha software for years and don't bat an eye when a bug comes up in DCS. There's so much to do and so many places to do it I really don't even care; note it, move on to something else. Of course the hard part is distinguishing between bugs and loose nuts behind the stick...

Laage Fliegerhorst <edit> Nah, not quite right. Lemme dig a bit more </>

They've thrown a few teasers about Fulda, but as with most things I'll believe it when I get a release date. Don't care how much they push the date back, but if they post one at all it's in the late stages of development. Until then it's just a rumor

German jet. Colors on the right stabilizer are also German, and on the left that's Luxembourg to me, and a NATO star. I've been patiently waiting for a central Europe map but I'm not going to get my hopes up. Is there that much green anywhere in Afghanistan? Update to Caucus? Just showing off the new MiG-29A?

Really? I think he's a huge improvement over the F-14, but maybe that's because I never flew that one very much. I'm completely stunned at how much I like the F-4; sort of a DCS version of a steam gauge Cessna with a real bad attitude, an afterburner (or two), and a butt load of bombs. Jester has his moments, but on the whole with the context button and all the shortcuts I can generally get what I need out of the back seat without too much trouble. It's also important to remember he's EA, much like the rest of the aircraft. Kind of like a JO fresh out of flight school; give HB some time to get him dialed in and add the functionality he lacks. "The 'hey, you're way too fast' on runways is more about map designers than Jester. He's pure software and they depend on zones being set right, which sometimes they aren't. Honestly that kind of stuff is just noise and I ignore it like all the other noise in life. I already know my airspeed; there's a gauge for that. Jester's callouts are a convenience. Right now I'm collecting hours in the F-4 to get used to it and practicing delivery. Level turns, wrap my head around the relationship between vertical velocity and throttle inputs, getting used to the trim, wrapping up my 'operations manual' so when I start flying something else I won't forget how to fly this, trying to land. One landing might get compared to Meg Ryan, the other induces snark, which tells me I'm inconsistent. If you ignore the words and pay attention to the point he helps dial in those landings, and again the altitude callouts, while convenient, aren't required. I also have an altimeter. Jester will never be a human WSO with whom you've flown enough to get a working relationship going, and in MP I can totally see where a two-human crew will be a lot more effective than one person with software in back, but on the whole if you can ignore the warts it's not too bad for a bit of software that's a whole lot more complex than you might imagine.

I just ignore it. He goes away eventually.

I'll bet your team is pretty bummed out right about now. Not much sucks worse than last minute problems with a release, particularly last minute problems that don't resolve easily. Meanwhile, which map will I play on today (assuming I get time to play)? Decisions, decisions...

Dang it, now I have to fly my existing aircraft on an existing map today rather than crashing flying new aircraft on a new map. Oh, the suffering! Of course we suffer! But in silence! Always in silence do we suffer! We never complain about our suffering! Off to blow stuff up. Hope you guys have a great day!

This is probably my fault. The CH-47 found out I pre-ordered and sabotaged it's own engines. And avionics. And graphics. Please direct all vituperation my way. Helicopter mods fear me. Poison ivy, on the other hand. If it's in the same county I'll find it. Fell into some mountain biking, didn't realize it, and continued on up the trail. Two days off work with weeping blisters all up and down my back and it turned into systemic urticaria. Don't tell the CH-47; it will use poison ivy oil as engine lube if it finds out.

Wow. Got flashbacks of Laobi's Venn diagram.

This is Mk 3.something. For those intimidated by these home pits don't be; I started out with an Apple ][ Joystick. My first "high end" HOTAS was a CH stick and throttle on a desk; the first mod was to wrap leather around the stick to get rid of the plastic feel. I first decided I wanted a 'cockpit' in August of 2002 when I saw my first flight sim cockpit; that was the convention where Robert Shaw autographed my copy of 'Fighter Combat'. My first "simpit" were some button boxes powered by Teensy (Arduino compatible) controllers in mid 2018; those sat under my monitor stands. Six years and a lot of time and money later...I need to wrap that stick with leather.