CBStu

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.

Newbie here trying to figure out what new plane I should buy. I fly the stock TF51 fine but found it has no guns. I bought an A10C and found I can fly it fine but the electronics are way beyond me, at least at this stage. I watched a tutorial and 50% of that was way over my head. So I thought a WW2 plane might be the way to go since they are much simpler. Bought the Spitfire and can't fly it. I have about a 10% chance of getting off the runway and those few flights I usually crash on landing. What can you recommend? Also is there somewhere I can read reviews of various planes?

Also I am not sure that the runway number is exactly it's course. They seem to me to be close but not exact. In another sim I do a lot of short hops and I set it up so I start on the runway. As I am sitting setting up the flight, I note the heading displayed on the instrument panel. That is the exact heading number.

Thanks guys. Yes TF-51. No wonder it won't shoot. I will try your suggestions for getting to a browser.

In quick action flights: 1- How do I shoot the guns. I see the toggle just ahead of the stick but it doesn't do anything. Another arm switch somewhere? There is no mention of guns except for gun heat in the control menu so how do I set the joystick trigger?. 2- After a crash is there a way to get a quick start or do I have to quit and reload the flight? 3- Is there a way to run less than full screen so I can pause a flight and get on the web for info?

I can't really help much w/ one exception. A year or so ago I wanted to upgrade my card and one thing I ran across on the web is to be sure your power supply will run your new card.

I am newbie here too. Flew the F51 that comes w/ the world. Was looking around while the sale was on and grabbed the A10C. WOW, I can take off, fly around and land OK, but still haven't figured out how to fire the gun. Watched a tutorial on the armament and didn't even know what half of the terminology meant. So thought I'd drop back to a WW2 plane since they are much simpler. Saw a neat module for the Spitfire where you can follow a campaign via a real Spitfire pilot. But you need maybe 3 modules to make that all work. So I thought I'd just fly the plane and decide later if I wanted to do the rest of it. That Spitfire is the worst sim plane I have ever flown. Dang near impossible to get off the ground and the 3 times I got it in the air I crashed on landing. Yesterday I was determined to be able to fly it so I went through the tutorial and spent 2.5 hours trying. Pretty much the same results. Also the instruments, especially airspeed, are terrible. I don't know how close you are expected to sit to the dash but I had to program two easily reachable key board keys to zoom in and out. Went back to the F51 and immediately took off and landed. I did break the landing gear a couple of times but my success rate is about 80%. Oh, and I can read the gauges too. BTW, I am a newbie here but flew all the Microsoft flying SIMs back in the day. About 6 months ago I got back into sim flying w/ XPlane 11. No expert there but I can fly the 737 and use it's autopilot and I can land the FA18 on the carrier w/ maybe 85% success. I will be doing both XP and DCS because there are things I like in both.