Wichid

Absolutely. Supporting a dev community with a SDK would be awesome. I'd buy an afghanistan map or a third party dynamic campaign generator etc etc etc...

The speed brake is found on the right hand throttle, it's a rocker/slider for the pilots thumb. I don't think you can (or would want to) mouse click it. I've mapped it to the X-52's slider on the throttle which has programmed bands - 0-10% & 90-100% for in and out. I just leave it in the middle otherwise. Yeah as per, Lane - you probably don't have the radios configured, or you are using the wrong radio. Use the UHF generally for your wingmen & flight.

The iPhone 3G is quite a bit slower than the 3GS.

NVM I released too late. I took into account the second it takes to release and the bombs were on target. Thx!

Which Iphone do you have? 3, 3GS or 4? the 4 has a nicer screen but you can read them on all.

Hmmm so I dropped a pair at 300+mph at about 500 ft and they both went long and the target drove off laughing. Should I be lower or faster? Or was it that I just released too late?

It views it the same as a web page in that you can pinch and zoom and scroll etc. I think the problem with ePub type formats is they are really just designed for plain text (AFAIK) so you'd need a PDF for the flight manual with it's formating and layout. Here's the flight manual screenshot from my iphone: photo by __Wichid__, on Flickr

I think getting the dive angle right might be my problem with Mk-82 AIRs. These always seem to miss for me and go long and wide. How should these be dropped? Low and fast? Or in a 30 deg + dive?

Yeah the Iphone can read the PDF easily. Get iBook for free or just email it to yourself. I use this for files I like to keep at hand: https://www.dropbox.com and read PDFs from it. It's free and has a iphone, ipad app as well as syncing files between all your PCs.

Here's a quick video of a practice I did yesterday. I've been learning this for about 3 days so I'm no expert but this is what I've learnt so far. Set up your Joystick for incredibly fine movements at the centre. I use a curve on the X & Y axis of 30, others use 50. See what suits you for refueling. I can't imagine refueling with a linear axis (anyone done this?) If you are fighting the stick then this will solve this problem. Safe the aircraft including turning PAC off. If PAC is on the aircraft trim will be wrong when you open the slipway. (Anyone else notice this? The aircraft noses up when you open the slipway as PAC seems to disable). On training missions I tend to start in the air and the aircraft is armed so this caught me out the first time. Fly up in formation to the tanker before declaring pre contact, match speed and trim for that speed. When you slow down or speed up the trim will be wrong but it will be right when you match speed again for refueling. Announce your ready pre contact after moving up behind the tanker at a walking pace. Don't aim for the height as this is too much of a down angle. You want to be about 10 ft below the aircraft with a fairly horizontal boom angle (30 deg down?). If you use Track-IR (and if you dont buy one) pause it whilst looking up out of your cockpit. This will let you see most of the tanker, you want to keep the tanker steady on your screen as you refill so this locked reference will help a lot. If you keep it steady the boom operator will fly the boom into your tank. If it doesn't go in you are probably at a wrong angle - re-approach from a new angle, usually higher, or you are closing too fast. Don't worry about colliding with the nozzle or the colored pipe, this is non clipping and won't damage the aircraft (i've had the nozzle go through my canopy a few times). AVOID the grey boom, this will collide and kill you. Use the airbrakes and nose down if you have to. Work the throttles very carefully to close very slowly and when you make contact keep the boom in the green. So far I have to either move in and out slowly. I can barely keep it still so it's just a matter of moving around the length of the boom trying not to disconnect. You'll need to predict what your input will do to your speed as it takes a few seconds for the engines to increase / decrease speed sometimes. If I was better at this I would make much finer adjustments. If you disconnect don't panic, just press the NWS button to recycle the valves and move in again. Press the NWS button to disconnect or wait until the tanks are full, then return to formation flying and depart.

Agreed

Good luck!

Good point 711Hancer. I remember finding this out on a single mission and being mighty confused. Recently I've been pretty lazy and just hook the data point on the TAD with a mark point and then find it with the TGP. I've had other flights roll in and destroy my targets whilst messing around the CDU. Grr stupid jets with their afterburners and fancy radars!

+1 for head tracking. It's really immersive and fantastic for situational awareness. I only pause it sometimes when mid air refueling to keep relative position to the tanker.

The X-52 Pro is a better colour and the LCD will show some meaningful information from the game I think. I have the X-52 and don't really miss anything. I prefer to use the mini stick for slewing and use the front hat for countermeasures. I just found out that the X-65 doesn't have the two stage trigger. So clicking the first stage to lock on to the target would be hard. I love that feature of PAC.

Excellent! I've been moving back and forth when refueling as the slightest change in throttle is too much. I have a glass desk so will see how I go.

Oh yeah!

Woo, yeah I'm counting the days.

How do you like the TM Warthog? I have one on order to replace my X-52.

I'm a sucker for the AH-6 Littlebird or the AH-64D Apache. The littlebird would have a such an interesting 'feel' to it compared to typical flight sim helos.

Along a similar line I've been training for the past few days with aerial refueling and you really notice how manual the aircraft is compared to say a F-16. I love it, it's great but a tiny adjustment to throttle means adjustments to cyclic or trim etc. Stick with it. The sim is well worth your time. I enjoyed and found value in the training missions very much.

BTW I settled on a curvature of 30. Can now link up and hold for refueling reasonably well whereas before I kept oscillating with small adjustments.

With the X-52 I hold down the pinky switch + buttons to get alternate commands. It really does the job that way and I'm quite happy with it. One other thing I did was I only used the Saitek software to setup bands on the ministick to slew the targeting pod etc. With the X-52 I also set the curvature for X & Y axis to 30 so it's nice and precise in the centre.

64bit and I wish more open world type games were too. Yay for DCS.

Yep this is pretty much bang on. You might want to include some other things depending on the HOTAS you get. I use my pinky switch to get alternate functions from my hats. This is what I based my commands on: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=58484 If you get an X-52 you might encounter the issue I had where a programmed function in the Saitek software freezes the inputs if the command name is longer than the LCD. The name will hang on the LCD until you pull the USB plug out or the PC blue screens. Keeping the function names short avoids this.