Chuck_Henry

Interesting that you guys are doing the A variant. Are the avionics of the C simply too difficult to simulate for a mod-level aircraft, or is it a lack of information? I have plenty of friends at Kingsville and Meridian who could fill in the gaps if it's the latter.

Because the F-14's axis of flight is so high up in the windscreen at normal cruise airspeeds, placing the horizon line with the actual horizon would have really cluttered the upper half, especially when you include the heading tape. That's why Grumman's engineers decided to depress the artificial horizon by 5 degrees. The HUD wasn't operated as a primary flight instrument (that would be the VDI) anyway, just as a tool for weapons employment.

I can't get this to connect to FltPlanGo on my phone. I honestly don't even know if I'm doing the setup correctly. Do I need to enable both AHRS_UDP *and* NMEA_UDP, or just AHRS? Under "where to connect," am I putting my computer's IP address in the provided spot or my phone/tablet's? Exactly how do I open the ports "port_udp" and "port_ahrs" in my firewall? My understanding, and therefore what I did, is to go into Inbound Rules and open ports 49002 and/or 4353 with UDP protocol. You gotta break these things down Barney-style, man. Not all of us *really* understand how these things work.

Wholeheartedly agreed. Heatblur, you've done a great job on recreating the F-14 for us simmers, but this is one of those times that the programmers and the SMEs need to meet us halfway. We don't all have throttles with options for physical detents, and the audible click is inconsistently useful as a tool to mitigate inadvertent or undesired afterburner selection. The menu option for a button press to push through the detent is something the F/A-18C module does objectively better than the F-14B. I'm sorry, but that's the long and short of it.

+1

I'm just waiting for brain-computer interface VR (a la Sword Art Online) to be a thing so we don't even need to use controllers at all, and the sim software itself will simulate feeling the actual throttle and stick of the real aircraft.

I recommend extending your upwind so you have more time on downwind to get stabilized and trimmed hands-off and on-speed by the abeam, then. You definitely do not want to be adjusting that stuff from the 180 to the groove. In the F-14 more than the F/A-18, your eyes need to be outside with just cursory glances inside at your AOA and VSI, not the other way around.

+100 The reality is that, as a military aviator, flying is simply what you do to and from the target. You earn your stripes based on how well you employ your weapons, sensors, or put troops on deck. Managing airspeed, altitude, and navigation is the administrative part of the job. An increasingly popular saying about the F-35 and its high degree of automation and ergonomics is it's finally letting pilots get back to being tacticians and not technicians.

Damn, you weren’t kidding when you said “very recent.” That’s good to hear, then, if the Marine Corps really isn’t done flying them for another 10 years.

Even if you have flown in real life, it can be tough to get it right in a sim. I'm a decent enough helicopter pilot IRL (for a tiltrotor guy), but I cannot and will not fly helicopters in a PC sim. Tactile feedback and "seat of the pants" is just so much a crucial part of VFR flying that we just won't have until brain-computer interface VR becomes a thing.

Yeah, I call BS on that. There is no aircraft in the world that should uncontrollably pitch itself into a stall just because you take off with the flaps up. That would require an insanely forward CG/center of lift. Unless the FCS computer really commands that in the real jet, it's a hell of a bug.

That's only the Super Hornets, as far as I've heard.

+100 After a few hours in the F-14 yesterday, I went back to the Hornet for some airfield touch-and-goes, and I was almost getting bored with how comparatively undemanding it is.

I’ve been focusing mostly on landing pattern work since yesterday. Compared to the F/A-18, this aircraft is definitely more challenging to keep on-speed AOA and at proper altitudes/descent rates, but DLC helps a lot with that. What I can’t seem to figure out is the insane Dutch Roll tendency that the F-14 exhibits. I understand that you have to coordinate roll with rudder much more than the F-5 or F/A-18 (the other 2 planes I fly). I have no problem doing that up at altitude at cruise airspeeds. But in the pattern, it feels like the actual movement of the aircraft lags behind the control input. Any attempts I make to fix the nose swinging from side-to-side upon rolling wings level, even by just attempting to center the ball, results in pilot-induced oscillations. Is this just something you had to deal with in the AFCS Tomcats, or am I not understanding something fundamental about how to roll in and out of turns at on-speed AOA vs. cruising at 350 KIAS? I would post a track file, but my internet is currently down (posting from my phone).

There's definitely a sweet spot where I like my technology for aircraft, both in sims and real life. The F/A-18C is a nice enough jet where you can relax and let it fly itself, but there's a certain degree of satisfaction from more manual interaction. At the same time, I don't enjoy WWII warbirds or old GA aircraft like Pipers/Cessnas as much. I feel like the upcoming (1 more day!) F-14B is going to be right where I like it. Enough rope to hang yourself with in the sense that it's all you flying the aircraft, but not so much of a headache also running the radar, managing engines, or (unless you want to) manually sweeping the wings.

Concur. There was a point early on when Flaps - Full would add too much drag without the corresponding amount of lift. Then ED fixed that, and the flight model felt fine for the most part. Then they changed it again, and it seems draggier than it should be, in the sense that you have to go nearly to MIL power in the pattern every now and then to keep from developing a dangerous descent rate. It's nothing for which you can't learn to compensate with some anticipation, but IIRC the real F/A-18 pilots around here seem to agree the real jet is not that draggy.

I'm also curious what he's getting at. Just about every Youtuber with a pre-release copy has remarked that the carrier pattern and landing are quite a bit harder than in the F/A-18.

When executing an instrument approach, you put in whatever the approach plate says is the Approach Course. This may or may not not line up with actual runway heading. The TACAN Rwy 12 approach into Eglin AFB (KVPS), for example, has a final approach course of 113. ATC is expecting you to fly that and not what you calculated as the magnetic heading of the runway. Will anyone care if you put that in instead? Depends, but probably not. Aircraft separation and obstacle clearance mins exist. But is it the correct way to fly IFR? No. You don't need final approach course to line up perfectly with runway heading. At some point, you're going to break out of the weather (or hit your DH/MDA) and proceed visually. That's when you'll make final lineup corrections. Source - I have a non-trivial amount of time flying military aircraft, much of which has been IFR and some of that was in no-kidding IMC.

From the F-14B NATOPS flight manual - "The thumbwheel is spring loaded to a neutral position. Forward rotation of the wheel extends spoilers and aft rotation retracts them proportionally to the degree of thumbwheel rotation." It sounds to me like you scroll forward on the thumbwheel as much as you want the spoilers to deploy, release to allow the thumbwheel to return to center, and the spoilers stay where you commanded. Then if you wanted to retract spoilers, you'd scroll back on the thumbwheel the same amount you'd initially scrolled forward, and release again.

This is why, even though it's not a true naval aircraft, I still fly in the F-5E very often. Trim and a good instrument scan are paramount. Only real difference is the F-5 can get really squirrelly in the landing configuration due to its high wing-loading and the F-14 has all the lift in the world. Nevertheless, I think it's the best Tomcat trainer available in DCS for the time being.

Those are T-38s, which are very closely related to the F-5 but are considered different aircraft. Their cockpits have received rather significant upgrades, as well.

The F-5 has never been operated from carriers (the airframe and landing gear won't withstand catapult launches or arrested landings), but the US Navy and Marine Corps do use them as aggressor/adversary aircraft since they simulate the aerodynamics of the MiG-21 so well. They won't look like typical Navy birds, but instead sport camouflage liveries akin to those on Russian, Chinese, or Iranian fighters.

This isn't necessarily for proper seat height. This is to ensure that if you have to eject and the canopy fracturing system doesn't fire, the canopy breakers on the seat will safely punch through without also breaking your neck. For proper seat height, it depends on the aircraft, but you're lining up different things such as a gap between the glareshield and the MFDs, or to overlap certain parts of the HUD combiners.

The T-6 Texan II does have a Sparrowhawk HUD, yes. That would probably be the easiest add-on towards making an F-14B(U) or F-14D.

That *is* disappointing. I would really love to see a study-level F-14D (or B equivalent) someday, but not at the expense of accuracy. I can't say I'm surprised. Nearly every combat feature on Dino Cattaneo's F-14D for FSX/P3D was inop with a placeholder page on the MFDs. If he couldn't find any data to implement those features in the 3-4 years that's been out (considering he's managed to create an F-35 module), then I'm not holding my breath for anyone else to do so.