CBStu

I am a new guy too although I did a lot of flying through most of the microsoft sims 15 yrs ago. I started w/ the two free planes that come w/ the sim. Tried the SUxx and as soon as I saw all the instruments etc were in another language I got out and tried the P51. Liked that so bought the Spitfire. Took 20 attempts to get the dang thing off the ground and then crashed every landing. I love watching A10s on youtube so bought that. Easy to takeoff, fly around and land. Cool so I tried to use some weapons. Did the tutorial and quickly realized it was WAY over my head. So I bought the fully armed P51. That is fun but I just do the quick action missions and will often just fly from field to field. I have tried the dogfight against the 190 or 109 and have been shot down every time. I bought the FA18 because I had flown it on XPlane and enjoyed it except for the way overdone automatic flying assist and the idiot LSO in my ears. I have probably 3-400 DCS straight in carrier approaches now and can usually get it on the deck even if I maybe would have broken the plane in RL. Some day I may be able to do a pattern carrier landing but I think that will be a long way off. What I have found is that I try to practice one skill like the carrier approaches. They involve using the ICLS so I am also learning the UFC and the HSI screen. At some point I guess I get tired and start crashing more instead of less. At that point I switch to the P51 and shoot the crap out of that transport plane. Or I take the FA18 to land and do the airport to airport thing while practicing using the TACAN. I enjoy the learning but for me this is fun. When something gets too frustrating and isn't fun, I switch to something else.

Some of it seems to be that the treated(?) glass of the hud kills detail. Look at that grey area on the island just to the right of the hud. It looks pretty much the same to me F2 or the first F1 view. Of course it is smaller and not as clear in the zoomed out F1 view.

Not really a solution but I often use the function to keep the display from moving left or right on it's own. Sorry I forget right now what it is but I programmed my 'H' key to activate it. I know that it is supposed to tell you something when it is off center but it also makes anything to the one side of the pitch ladder invisible.

I am in a similar place. What I have decided is what Deano suggests, long straight in approaches. I also cheat a little by looking at the airspeed and I have the engine page on the right screen. I use N1 as kind of a tachometer. I know that airspeed will be in the 135-140 range and N1 about 70. So when things aren't working out these are two additional bits of info to throw into the equation. I know when all is well, all you should need are the velocity vector, the e-bracket, and the AOA indexer, but when those are not right, additional info helps me. The speed is very important as approach is dang close to stall speed. If that strip has ILS, you might want to set that up too. If not, find a strip that does have ILS. Flying as you are in the video just make the downwind leg 10 miles long and 3000 ft altitude so you have a 10 mile approach. I am currently using the Quick Action Case I Carrier to practice. You start 8 miles out which makes getting the ICLS set up kind of stressful cause there isn't a lot of time. Last night I did about 30 carrier landings. Toward the end, I noticed my success was actually going downhill, so I quit.

Did more flying today. Tried the instant action Case I which gives the option of a straight in approach. It starts only 8 miles out so very busy. Decided to figure ICLS instead of Tacan so getting the two displays and radio set up while the plane is losing speed is tough. Flew right over the carrier the first 3-4 tries but like a lot of things, some practice really helps. I sure hope they get the HUD brightness knob functioning soon. As it is the ICLS cross and the vector pretty much blot out the carrier when you get lined up until quite close. But, out of 30 tries, I got it on the deck maybe 10 of them. 10 I crashed and 10 I did my own wave off. I looked at the TrackIR and will definitely grab that in maybe 6-8 weeks. We will be moving in 3-6 weeks so very busy now. Thanks guys for all your help.

I am thinking about TrackIR and will definitely try the CAT III tutorial. The carrier deck is completely empty so I tried adding a plane and put it right on top of the carrier icon but that didn't work. How can i get some planes on there simply to make it look more realistic?

Thanks guys. I set up a simple mission and it works very well. One little problem is the time stamp in the lower left of the hud sometimes hides the ship. I run most of the approach w/ the ship in the left side of the screen. That allows me to turn a little more left as I get closer so I am lined up w/ the angled deck. I will work on the Tacan setup in the next few days. That is another skill I need to learn.

Not having VR or Track IR, I have a real hard time doing the normal carrier pattern because I can't switch back and forth normal view to left/up view very well. Is there a way to fudge a straight in carrier approach similar to the 'Instant Action' straight in ground landing? I feel like w/ my equipment and skill level limitations, I'd like to try a simpler carrier approach. I got reasonably proficient in XPlane but the FA18 there has a few shortcomings so I much prefer flying the DCS FA18. I tried doing a cat shot and kind of a pattern but w/ the down wind leg very long so I would have a long approach. But the three wingmen are crazy and it is really difficult to even see the grey carrier on the blue ocean. I will try again after I turn off the labels since they are also hard to see being just a slightly lighter blue than the ocean.

Me too. The 'engine' page is fine but others are very difficult to read. I have messed around adjusting the brightness and contrast and seems min brightness and max contrast is best. But, when I discovered the 'engine' page is fine, I realized it's a bug. Trying to zoom in enough to read the display and still be able to fly the plane doesn't work real well.

To me this is normal. The more stuff going on the more powerful PC needed for it to work. Since I have never had a 'best there is right now gaming PC' I am always adjusting things to see what hurts fps the most (so I cut that back) or what I can set higher w/o much fps effect.

I do the same and even carry it over to XP as much as possible. I have a couple of Word docs that I put notes on. One sheet for each plane so the stuff that isn't the same for all, is quickly found even if I do need to hit pause sometimes. For me, flying w/ just a stick, setting up the P51D for rockets or bombs was only possible using 'active pause' and the mouse to zoom in and move the switches. Very tedious. Now I have three keyboard buttons to set for bombs and 2 for rockets and I can do them while flying.

Sandman you were correct. I used the Stennis and I cranked up terrain to high and shadows to medium and the ship definitely looks better. But if I need a bunch of add-on stuff to get LSO, ILS etc, and then need to buy a carrier plane, I think I will wait for the carrier module. BTW after I crashed on one of my touch and goes, a couple of FA-18s came aboard. Fun watching them pull away from the wire and park at the edge of the deck. But the ship is going up and down while the planes are stationary. So they cycle from wheels gone below deck to wheels maybe 3-4 feet above the deck. Jeez.

Could be. I will try w/ higher settings. May screw up the flying but will be a good test.

So it took 2 hours to figure out how to create a simple mission that includes a carrier. I have no carrier planes so did some touch and goes w/ the P51D just to see what the carrier looks like. looked at the Stennis and another similar one. Uh, they look like a model a 12 yr old made from a shoe box, tape, and some grey paint. this can't be all there is right? I do carrier approaches in XP w/ an FA-18 and was expecting to do similar here. How does one get an LSO, ILS, catapult, planes and people on the deck etc?

I fly DCS and XP. I try to set the controls up as close as possible for all of the planes. But my 'all' is only 4 planes. I started here last early winter and when the sale was on I thought it would be really neat to fly the A10C so grabbed it. Flying the plane is no problem. not hard to get flaps and gear up and down. Find the stall speed and add 20 knots to it works OK. but then I tried to fire the gun. Got it firing and real quick ran out of ammo. tried to fire a rocket and never got one off. Did one of the tutorials especially about the 3 main screens. So far above my head so decided to go back to try simpler WWII planes. Crap, can't even get the Spitfire off the ground. The included P51 was a lot better and I bought the P51D when I found out the free version had no armament. So yeah, this is a LOT harder than I expected but still fun. I can fly the P51D reasonably well, even if I have never won a quick action dog fight.

I keep seeing references to a free aircraft carrier. I can't find it though. I saw a mention that it had some connection to the FA-18 release but no idea what that means.

Lixma thank you so much. That worked great.

Flying the P51D, I am still old school and use the number pad to look around. Hitting the 5 to go back to straight ahead works great except. I have moved myself back a bit in the cockpit. Just enough to see the top of the frame around the bubble canopy and also the throttle and pitch levers. So I look left and then hit 5 which moves me back to the default position. Is there a way to memorize my moved back position so 5 puts me where I want to be.

I am a 2 month newbie flying a P51D in the quick action intercept. Seems to me that bomber is extremely hard to kill. Realizing my skills are on a newbie level, but many times I have seen smoke from both engines, white or black, sometimes white from one and black from the other, and it just keeps flying. So, from the smoke, I assume I have been making hits. It is also quite fast. I have been doing 370 and barely able to gain on it. And that is while it is streaming smoke which one would think would reduce it's speed. Does this seem normal to those of you w/ more experience?

I agree, I am doing this for fun. I fly on XP11 also. So when I get frustrated w/ either, I switch to the other and keep flying. I have 100s of FA18 carrier approaches over there and still don't make every one. I am newer here but I have a few dozen of each of the P51D 'quick action' flights. Shift R gets used a bunch.

I figured out the active pause. On the top left of the controls setting page is button for which profile you want to use. So you can do different settings for different planes. The default is 'General'. I never looked any further until today. If you click on the little arrow to the right of the word 'General' you get a drop down menu w/ two profiles for each of your planes. IE; a P51 Sim and a P51 Game. Which of these you choose determines the list of possible controls. In my case, the 'General' profile did not have a 'Pause Active' in the list. But 'P51 Sim' does have it. So, easy to set a single key to activate it. I am also starting to understand how to use the views. I always had trouble getting back to a centered forward view after looking around. Num5 does that just great. Overall this DCS world is super capable. Reminds me of trying to use Photoshop. So capable but also so dang difficult to get working. DCS, OTOH, promises some really great sim flying as I learn.

David that active pause works great but three keys is a bunch to do. I tried to find a way to assign it to one key but no luck.

I find that I use keyboard keys for some stuff. For me my right hand is on the stick, left hand can hit all it's buttons, and also keyboard buttons. Flying a 737 in another sim it's easy to use the mouse since everything happens so slowly. Here in the P51, I find it difficult to use the mouse to move switches because right hand is on stick and no way I can use my left hand to run a mouse. A thing I also find strange is that when I hit pause, a lot of the clickable cockpit stuff doesn't function. But at least, I can find it while paused, and then click the mouse a second after un-pausing. BTW, I have one of the small tape label makers and all my stick buttons and several keyboard buttons are now labeled. Wife asked why there is an 'L' on the 8 key. Heck, I have to put Left aileron trim somewhere.

I went for the P51D. It is a quick transition since it is nearly identical to the TF51 that comes w/ DCS. The landing is a tough one though. Seems it is almost impossible to land softly enough to keep from breaking one landing gear. So far it seems best to land at a somewhat high speed (120) and fly it to the concrete and don't drop the throttle until on the ground. I want to be competent enough to get it right 90% of the time. Then I will move to the F5. Thanks for all the recommendations for planes and also the YT tutorials.

Fantastic info guys. I have a honey do list for the afternoon but will get back and watch the videos tonight.