KidCharlemagne

Beautiful! This should be the official wallpaper for the A-4.

With all the talk of a new Nimitz model with ATC/Marshall, LSO, and deck crew, I've been hoping the LHA would get the same treatment. If that's the case, I would absolutely pay for it.

Excellent! Thank you very much!

Is there a way to slow down the tankers? I always seem to see them doing 450 kts+ in cruise. I've been manually editing each mission generated to slow them down, but I'm curious if there's a faster way. Thanks in advance!

Damn, I'm impressed! I'll be looking forward to trying it out!

C.W. Lemoine has an interesting video about getting struck by lightning while flying with VFA-204, in which he briefly talks through the lack of ILS equipment in the hornet and shows footage of a PAR approach. The whole video is pretty interesting to watch and listen to, but he specifically talks about approaches at roughly the 10:30 mark.

That makes sense. Thanks!

I just treated that as a hyperbolic way of saying "slow down a jet". We all know it won't actually stop it.

I'd love to! I definitely agree there! From a purely mass-related standpoint, the initial collision with the hose is not much of an issue. From my post #36: "At that point, oscillations or resistance are most likely aerodynamically caused and probably aren't due to mass." Here's where I disagree. The aerodynamic force that seats the drogue to the probe is the same force that imparts a braking action. It's true that the control system responsible for extending/retracting the hose will begin to retract the hose if too much pressure is applied, but that doesn't completely alleviate the resistance on the receiving aircraft (see my passage in post #25 for an explanation of why this is). At its most basic, the connection of the basket to the receiving aircraft is increasing the aircraft's coefficient of drag and is probably roughly equivalent to extending the airbrake slightly. This is exactly as Deano said above. So the "braking action" is due to the pilot reducing throttle, but also due to the aerodynamic drag. I agree that this doesn't create a seal, nor does it need to, as that is already accomplished by the equipment inside the drogue.

I think you're right, any new mass or drag imposed on the aircraft from a free-body perspective will just result in needing a little more thrust to balance the new negative forces in order to return to equilibrium. That's true, but only from an inertial standpoint. The mass will resist any new force while it's in the transient state. Once any initial oscillations have been damped out, the aircraft reaches a steady state from a mass/inertia perspective. At that point, oscillations or resistance are most likely aerodynamically caused and probably aren't due to mass. What part of the original assumptions are you objecting to?

You're right, I had missed that post. Good to hear that it seems realistic!

Thanks for letting us know! I did a quick search but didn't see the post. Could you point us in the right direction?

If I may, the hose and basket absolutely cause a drag effect on the aircraft being refueled. The extent to which this is felt and interpreted by the pilot flying the receiving aircraft isn't something I can accurately comment upon, but the effects are certainly there. For this explanation, my convention is: Force in the direction of the aircraft's travel = positive (e.g. thrust); force opposing the forward movement of the aircraft = negative (e.g. aerodynamic drag). We've already established that the basket is connected to the aircraft. Any structure that is attached to an aircraft is going to create some amount of parasite drag, and the basket is no exception. The drag being produced is actually fairly significant, given that the basket is designed to produce drag in order to keep the hose taut and allow the receiving aircraft to hook up. That being said, there is a spooling unit in the tanker that reels out or retracts the hose based on the forces being introduced to the hose system. However, this unit has necessarily high damping constants to make up for the positive feedback being produced by the hose, the receiver, and the environment. Notably, the hose is subject to rather complex catenary force, which is only approximated by the hose controller since catenary is notoriously difficult to calculate on the fly. This is in addition to the previously mentioned and ever-changing rigidity of the hose depending on fuel flow rate and any resistance introduced by movement of the receiving aircraft. Because these forces are only approximated, there is a dynamic push-pull happening between the tanker, hose, and receiver. The spooling unit does relieve some of the negative force being produced by the drag of the basket, but it is incredibly optimistic at best to pretend that retracting and extending the hose artificially would entirely negate the effects of the basket on the receiving aircraft. There are also the "soft" effects of the basket, especially the interruption of smooth airflow over the receiving aircraft. This is one of the more negligible aerodynamic effects of refueling, but it certainly contributes to the system. I'd be curious to hear some real Hornet pilots weigh in, or really anyone who has flown on the receiving end of a drogue in real life. My references are my own experience in avionics control systems and engineering flight test, as well as the papers: "Modeling and Simulation for the Automation of Aerial Refueling of Military Transport Aircraft with the Probe-and-Drogue System" by Nicolas Fezans and Thomas Jann and "An Introduction to the Navy's Physics Based Model of the Hose and Drogue Refueling System - Design and Validation" by Kenneth E. Boothe, Robert Vess, Eric Koehler, Elizabeth Knoblauch, and Steve McLaughlin

Hollywood, Prior to the latest update I was having to reinstall/manage all the plugin files manually as my DCS installation didn't seem to be recognized. Since the latest update, however, it recognizes both normal and beta installations and has become much easier to use! Thanks for the update! KC

Hello all, I'm out of ideas and could use some input. I play DCS on a Lenovo Explorer, and enjoy it tremendously other than the intermittent drops to the SteamVR loading screen. I spent some time playing with Resource Monitor and Task Manager open, and noticed that the dropouts seemed to coincide with short periods of 100% disk usage, which looked to be coming from the process WUDFHost.exe. CPU and GPU were both hovering between 60% and 80%, and memory was only at ~12GB of 16GB. My specs are: i5-4460 at 3.2GHz GTX 1080 FTW 8GB 16GB DDR3 1600 MHz For the most part my settings are on high, with shadows turned off, grass and clutter at 0%, trees on 70%, MSAA off, AA on 4x. I've spent some time researching the WUDFHost program and some problems that people seem to be having with it, but I haven't found any clear solutions. Does anybody here have similar issues, or know of any fixes to the problem? Or, am I completely off base and chasing a dead end? Thanks, KC

Thank you so much for sharing! I've always enjoyed working in flight test, so it's fun to see test cards from other countries and platforms. I'll try flying this procedure this weekend! KC

Hollywood, The path I have entered is the full path for the DCS folder, i.e. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\DCSWorld, checked the "DCS custom parent folder" option, and clicked the set button. I still get the "no DCS World installation" message when opening the VoiceAttack window. I appreciate your help so far! KC Edit: I deleted all the .lua files that I had made any changes to then ran a file validation through steam to re-download those .lua's. Then I copied the exported files over, now Vaicom is recognizing the sim again!

Hollywood, I verified the program files using Steam then reinstalled the exported .lua files but still no joy. I should also note that the auto installer can't find my steam DCS installation, regardless of whether or not I entered a custom path into the config window. Any input moving forward? KC

Hello all, After updating DCS, Vaicom no longer appears to be recognizing DCS. For instance, when I use ctrl-alt-c to open the configuration, the module/aircraft I am using no longer shows up in the display. I updated Vaicom to 2.5.5, reinstalled all the exported files, and restarted numerous times in administrator mode, but nothing seems to be working. Any ideas? KC

Thank you so much for sharing! I'm starting on some desktop Hornet controls and these plans will be very helpful! I'm currently waiting for my forum registration to be approved at hornetpits, so is there any way you could post the files here? Thanks, KC

This definitely deserves more attention! Looking forward to playing!

It's good to see someone else using the Lenovo Explorer! I've been using mine in DCS for about a month now, and I have been very pleased overall. There are some issues with the SteamVR loading screen popping up here and there, but it has definitely been worth the investment. I've played DCS in an Oculus Rift as well, and I've found the explorer very similar to it. The FOV is definitely better in the explorer, and the addition of a few degrees of peripheral vision makes a big difference when you aren't thinking about it; The small sweet spot of the Explorer means you can't really focus on the additional screen space without adjusting the goggles, though. So it helps lessen the binocular feel of the headset, but it doesn't quite translate into more screen to look at. Given that the explorer is so cheap, however, I'd say it's definitely worth a buy if anyone is looking into a good starter VR headset. I would love to see some native WMR support for DCS next!