kengou

The F-14 is by far the more complete and "feature stable". For air to air, it's a blast, plus multicrew is really unique. That said, Jester AI is a little inconsistent at times in effectiveness, and as a pilot you'll have less to do than in the F/A-18 since you don't control the A2G ordnance, TPOD, or Radar, you just fly the plane. But flying the plane is a BLAST! The F-16 is very early access. It's buggy and has a ton of features and weapons missing. For air to air, though, it's actually pretty far along and very effective. Incredible plane to BFM in, in terms of performance, although not as many fun quirks as the F-14 or cool high AOA authority as the F/A-18. Just raw turn rate, acceleration, and stability. My vote is for the F-14, but the Viper is well worth the time when it's farther along.

In the latest update the smaller BDA text was changed from being the small text you see in youtube videos into the larger text box. I haven't seen an option to change that but I may have missed it. I imagine there's also a LUA file that probably changes it.

I’ve had the complete opposite experience. The JF-17 seems to lose speed quickly at high G and has a very hard time gaining energy back quickly. It feels like a bit of a pig to be honest. At low speed it’s very responsive much like the F/A-18 but the turn rate and energy of the F-16 just can’t be beat.

Wonderful! Big thanks to you and to Bailey. I updated my spreadsheet with Bailey's values (nearly everything was only off by a pound or two). Added 2x GBU-38 as well. Saves me the time of going into the rearm menu in DCS and writing everything down.

Definitely not pylons because an AIM-120 on station 3 shouldn’t be lighter despite having a pylon compared to the AIM-120 on station 1. but I do think it’s the ME, because last night I tested the rearm menu and found the weight discrepancy wasn’t there. I’ll stop trusting the weights in the ME because they do not line up.

I noticed today several weapons have very different weights on different stations. For example, AIM-120 weighs half as much on station 3/7 as on station 2/8 or 1/9. Cbu-97 also has a 200 lb weight difference in stations 4/6 vs 3/7. Probably more but I haven’t tested every store yet. Anyone know why this might be?

Cage/uncage isn't the same as expanded acquisition modes of other aircraft. To use uncage, put the sidewinder seeker head (boresighted to aircraft or to the JHMCS) onto the bandit until you hear a tone, then hold uncage for a second and release. I don't believe there's a way in the Hornet to make the seeker itself "search" a wider angle for targets. To do that, you would use the radar ACM modes and the AIM-9 seeker would slave to the radar lock. This is how it works on the F-5 and the F-16. Aircraft without radar like the AV-8B NA or the A-10C have expanded acquisition modes since they don't have a radar to help them. The F-14 has it as well, for some reason. Ask Grumman.

Few options to simulate this exist. Turning off the GPS system for one. Or flying on a date in the mission editor before GPS existed. Then you need to perform INS fixes manually.

With dogfight switch aft, the AIM-9 seeker should slave to the radar lock if SLAVE is selected on the SMS page. I don't remember if you need to hit Cage/uncage though. If the AIM-9 is in BORE mode in SMS page, you need to hold Cursor/Enable binding to slew the seeker to the radar lock.

Personally I don't care about advantage, I don't even play multiplayer, I'm looking at this as a realistic implementation. The Avionics in the Hornet weren't designed around an absolute axis in either radar elevation or TPOD. To implement this ED would have to "invent" behavior that isn't in the real jet.

If the antenna elevation was bound as an absolute axis, this would also change how the TPOD zoom is coded and interacted with. It isn't how the real jet is operated, and I don't see why people have a problem with using two buttons for up/down, it works perfectly.

Does anyone have resources for the weights of airframe, racks, various stores, on the in-game Hornet? I know I can go into the rearm menu or ME and just record everything but wasn't sure if this work had already been done or was listed somewhere. Edit: Here is the Google spreadsheet I've been working on to calculate weight, fuel, trim, asymmetry, and takeoff speeds. The weights seem to line up with DCS from my testing but not everything has been tested yet, so please send me any corrections. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HzZWlXcGvsEV_0lo4PrvnG9xfc4BTXWpWJ7RFyhd6hk/edit?usp=sharing

Definitely true, but I would suggest that if possible, 440 - 450 is the best airspeed to get to whenever possible, since 9G is going to bleed your airspeed and this will give you the longest time within "corner airspeed plateau" to pull a max rate turn.

Right now ED is saying they have no data to support HUD symbology with the TPOD on the Hornet. So get used to it. With the 2.5.6 update, the TPOD will slave to a waypoint that is designated as a target point on the HSI, as well as a target point designated by slewing the HUD in CCRP mode. In any case, once a target point is designated (TDC depress on the targeting pod DDI or via the HSI) that point will be a diamond on the HUD that you can see and prosecute.

Around 450 knots below 15,000 ft, I believe.

Every AI aircraft is totally beatable in the Hornet with solid BFM. It's a competitive aircraft with anything else out there in the game, even against AI that cheat. Except maybe the MiG-15, that things a real UFO... Anyway, keep practicing. I agree the G-limiter is not needed whatsoever. It tends to bleed your speed much too fast anyway.

I like how people complain because the TPOD can't be mounted on the cheek station, then ED adds the capability, and people complain again that it shouldn't be mountable on the cheek station. ED really can't win with this community.

Cursor/enable does not lock the sidewinder seeker to a target, only enables boresight. Cage/uncage would lock it to a target once it has a target, or just fire once it has tone as Wags demos in his video.

Yes it only applies when held. I’ve heard and read from Viper pilots that this is real behavior.

Pedals should be near neutral generally at cruise speed and level flight, but like a lot of things, "it depends." Needing extra left pedal means there's torque being generated that needs to be counteracted. Maybe you're heavy and need additional collective to maintain the same speed. Maybe there's some kind of crosswind. It's hard for us to say what your conditions were. Either way, the Huey is very well simulated in terms of physics, so I would start by trying to understand what the Helo is telling you before implying it's poorly simulated.

Sounds like a fine suggestion. Not sure what happened to the thread title though, rather baffling!

The new carrier ATC is one of the selling points of the super carrier, and ED has said the Stennis will be remaining as-is with no more improvements. I sincerely hope the field ATC improvements won't have any cost. In my mind, improving them isn't necessarily an extra but a core feature that's been missing from the sim thus far.

I would guess it can be done via some triggers and scripting, but probably not with actual soldiers standing on the deck. Maybe more like soldiers just appear embarked on the Helo once you land.

I'm sure ED/Wags will release informative in-game videos before release and before the pre-order window and discount concludes. It's everybody's responsibility to be informed on what you're purchasing.

I would appreciate this change. In real life, as you said, touching each switch to confirm its state is an important habit and I'd like the option in DCS. Even a special option to choose the behavior of left/right clicks per module would be great.