Chuck_Henry

The F-14B indeed received DFCS in later years. I can’t post it per the new site rules, but the NATOPS manual references it.

While true, there is no aircraft in the world that experiences reverse ground effect. It would literally defy the laws of Newtonian physics and blade element theory.

We didn't even do that in the T-6 or T-44 in flight school, and those are much lighter than an F-14. First time I'd even think about crosswinds were as I took the runway for takeoff. I'd align with the centerline and verbalize, "Winds are left to right/right to left," and set aileron into the wind before setting takeoff power. Before that, my hand wasn't even on the stick or the yoke.

Military logbook hours are takeoff to landing. Ground time does not count.

The concept of aimpoint is your friend here. You want to see your intended point of touchdown remain in the same spot relative to the windscreen and the gunsight lens. If you're on final and start to see it rise, you're falling below glideslope. If you see it start to fall, you're going above glideslope. This will absolutely take some practice. I'll refrain from beating the dead horse of the F-5 not being a fancy 4th-gen jet where you can just "put the thing on the thing" and nail it every time. I also recommend utilizing the PAPI/VASI where it's available, as well as raising your seat. I used to fly the T-38A and T-38C (briefly) in P3D, and unless there are some significant dimensional differences between the cockpits of the T-38 and the F-5, I'm fairly certain the default view for the DCS F-5E has you sitting too low.

???

I mean, you’re theoretically correct in the case of winds straight down the runway, or no wind at all. If you have a crosswind, though, which in real life there’s always some, you use bank angle to maintain centerline and rudder to keep the nose straight down the runway. Otherwise you land with some crab, which not all landing gears are built to withstand. The F-5, with its stubby wings, is perfect for the wing-down/top rudder technique. That’s really what I’m talking about here. If winds are no factor, then yeah, you shouldn’t need rudder.

INS waypoints are really the only other option. It's not legal (in the FAA sense), but it's better than no lateral guidance at all. In real life with no NAVAID serving your intended airfield, you'd request a PAR or ASR approach, or at least radar vectors for the visual approach. Just like the F/A-18, the F-14 lacks civilian ILS/LOC capability, VOR/DME, and RNAV-certified GPS. Welcome to yet another reason why ED needs to start making real progress on that Air Traffic Control overhaul. Edit - If you have a tablet with an Electronic Flight Bag app like ForeFlight or FltPlanGo, you can use the DCS-to-GPS mod to give yourself a pretty nice moving map tool, and essentially radar vector yourself. That's what I do when I'm not flying the F/A-18 or A-10, at least.

Subtle rudder input is definitely more crucial on final approach than any other phase of flight. That being said, somebody on here who's flown either the T-38 or F-5 in real life said the actual aircraft is more directionally stable than the flight model in DCS. So take that for what it's worth. I recommend beginning your approach turn once the intended point of landing is 45 degrees behind your wingtip (this is a technique in the T-38, anyway). You should have plenty of time to stabilize your lateral flight path on final.

PM me your email address. I have it.

Nah, that's what an iPad mini + Foreflight are for. That's actually surprising that they'd have that. All of the AETC T-38s are C-variants now which have GPS/INS and an MFD.

Seconding this. The F-5 has incredibly sensitive controls, both IRL and in the sim. Unless you have an extension on your stick, I recommend at least curves of 15 for both Roll and Pitch. To put it in perspective, I keep curves of only 5 for the F/A-18 and F-14.

Did the Lot 20 F/A-18 even have GPS? I thought it was purely INS. I ask because the VRS F/A-18E for P3D has POS/INS and POS/GPS options, whereas our Bug only has POS/INS.

Is there a published Vmca for the F-14? One would imagine that with mishaps like LT Hultgreen being possible that there would be, but Ctrl+F "Vmca" or "minimum controllable" in the F-14B NATOPS doesn't reveal anything.

My unwarranted 2 cents - it depends. If we didn't plan to shoot an instrument approach (weather goes to crap and we have to pick up a clearance), I'd rather do a GCA. All you have to know are the mins and do what ATC tells you. So long as you don't go lost comm, you're good. If it's an IFR flight and we know well in advance we're shooting an approach to a full stop, and there's ample time to plan the approach you're likely to get (to include feeder fixes, IAF to FAF arcs, etc.), I'd rather shoot an ILS or LNAV/VNAV. Best case - you ask for radar vectors and get that ATC guidance, but when safety really matters (on the glideslope) you're flying raw data. Worst case - you have to do the full procedure yourself, but it's not so bad because you've planned for it.

You're right, actually. I was thinking of RNP AR.

Very curious to know what they said that doesn't line up with your experience. Having no IRL F-14 experience myself, I more or less took everything they said at face value.

This is a video of an F/A-18 going missed approach off a TACAN and getting into an emergency fuel state because there were no other options. If Approach Control doesn't do PARs, you are SOL if the weather is so bad that you need a precision approach. US F/A-18s just received RNAV certification, but to my knowledge NAVAIR will not sign off on LPV for any naval aircraft. I even have it on good authority from a P-8 pilot who was in my T-44C Ground School class that even they aren't authorized to do them despite essentially being 737-800s. LNAV MDA and LNAV/VNAV are all you've got, and while the latter provides vertical guidance it is not legally a precision approach. That means you could fly all the way down to minimums with a centered CDI and be way offset laterally from the runway. It's as ridiculous as it sounds. I get that Ground-Controlled Approaches were much more common when the F/A-18 debuted compared to today, but for the Navy to have never provided them with civilian ILS capability in the interim was rolling the dice with people's lives in my opinion.

That's interesting that NATOPS recommends against wing down-top rudder. That's the only crosswind landing technique taught during Primary in the T-6B. I suppose they didn't trust us to take out the proper amount of crab just prior to touchdown, which would create excessive side loads on the gear.

So, do I need NMEAconnect or some other app for my iPad to actually receive the information being broadcast from DCS over my Wi-Fi network? I just tried setting this up with version 1.3 and ForeFlight, and nothing happens at all. If the answer is yes, would someone be so kind as to post some by-the-numbers instructions on how to set that up?

A more realistic proposition would be to upgrade the APQ-159 radar scope of the F-5E to the digital navigation/radar MFD of the F-5N currently in service with US Navy/Marine adversary squadrons. Just looking at the cockpit of the F-5E, I have trouble imagining where they could place the NS430 anywhere that makes sense.

Wags mentioned it on the Fighter Pilot Podcast when Jello asked him why they didn't decide to produce a Super Hornet instead. It was much more difficult to find accurate, "fair game" documentation on the Super Hornet compared to the legacy Hornet.

At the risk of really getting into the weeds - is it standard procedure, or widely-accepted technique? I haven't scoured the F-14's NATOPS as much as the F/A-18's, but I definitely don't remember it saying anywhere that the pilot shall only utilize the analog instruments for landing and disregard the HUD. Yes, the HUD lags compared to the VDI, but I have personally found it to be a great secondary tool to cross-check, particularly when it comes to my power adjustments. I don't know what it is, but even after Heatblur updated the FPM to be more reflective of the real aircraft, I'm still just as able (possibly more so) to recognize changes in my descent rate using it instead of the VSI. I've also noticed that if you keep the FPM in-line with the HUD projector, that more or less equals a centered slip/skid ball. For what it's worth, these are the kind of discussions we like to have in IRL ready rooms. At the end of the day, put the aircraft on deck safely using every tool available to you. It's up to you as an intelligent aviator to decide when to use certain tools and when to disregard others. Personally, I like to turn the HUD off every now and then for the sake of keeping my pure analog gauge skills sharp, but most of the time I keep it on and split my instrument scan roughly 60% on the gauges and 40% on the HUD for a sanity check. Bottom line - Recognize the capabilities and limitations of your avionics. What 1 person (albeit an experienced F-14 aviator) says about how to fly and land an aircraft is a great place to start, but not the end-all-be-all.

I wouldn't necessarily call the F-5E abandoned. It's feature-complete in every sense of the phrase. Belsimtek just picked a rather bare-bones variant of the F-5 to simulate. I mean, for Christ's sake, it doesn't even have ILS, VOR, or an INS. Technologies that all existed upon the aircraft's inception and could have been easily integrated. You're far from the only one who wants a more modern, or at least more capable, version of the F-5. I wouldn't say I've pushed it to the side of my virtual hangar in favor of the newer modules, but I definitely fly it a lot less than I used to. I pretty much treat it like a T-38 now. Every now and then I'll hop in to sharpen my skills for flying an entirely manual airplane, particularly when it comes to flared landings since you shouldn't do those in the F/A-18 or F-14 (my other 2 modules). Besides that, I have zero desire to take the F-5E into combat ever again. I would love an F-5N with the redesigned radio stack and center MFD.

Also having this issue.