Sideburns

Good research regardless! Thanks for sharing, might help me fix my broken board.

The Aim9p5 is the best, but generally not available on CW server these days. The Gar8 is an early Aim9b variant, quite difficult to use and get kills with unless the enemy is unaware. The Aim9p is probably the best one you have access to atm.

It is a joy to see Razbam commit to the Falklands conflict, MiG23 and EE Lightening but as you say who knows what rate they will be released at, presumably not as quickly as people want. I think the Falklands, Sea Harrier, F15E and MiG23 are the priority (and also that's my guess at what order they will release in over the next 2-3 years).

1) 9 normal navigation points, and also has take off base, landing base and alternative landing base (there are more waypoints but these are the normal navigational ones) 2) It is pretty drama free apart from keeping it straight down the road. 3) Unsure in meters, but zone 3 with a brake start can be as short as 1/3 or 1/2 of your typical runway like Kutaisi with a lighter, undraggy loadout (a full set of bombs is a lot drag) 4) Nope.

I had also noticed this, tested and found 200ms pairs 100ms singles for snakeyes and 100ms pairs 50ms singles for AIRS was min safe ripple time (if I recall correctly), mk20 didn't care. Wondered what the real life release settings permit, anyone know the relevant manual for F14 bomb release settings / information?

Aye, good to see we are universally acknowledging issues with all modules when considering balance and mitigations for bugs (and also of course not overload Alpenwolf). As before generally speaking its felt like there has been a balance of bugs, as best of the situation as can be made, and then that the Viggen was being reprimanded for issues or complaints, beyond the raw speed issue, also present in other modules in the CW server. On the pylon point I didn't mean to dig at you. The commentary was meant to defend your point on payloads, that the outer two pylons were pretty useless on the AJ37. But also highlight the asymmetric payload and ability to mix and match a little on the AJ37 to give some flexibility.

Oh man, Cyprus, that could an interesting venue for CW fun and games. DL'ing at 6 but still a beastly download.

Ok, keep misframing my statements. Balance is a dynamic thing, as new bugs and features arise and it is prudent to review it from time to time. Given the Viggen has had so much attention w.r.t balancing it seems odd to overlook other airframes and weapons systems against which it was balanced and in light of some new bugs I have highlighted in previous posts. But as per my question I would be interested to hear other people's opinions. Cheers, you've made your position clear unless you want to say more?

Missing the preceding word which frames the sentence as a question to the audience of the post, as intended, attempting instead to make it look like I made an absolute statement or demand?

I am aware of the situation and do read the posts, did you read my post? Relevant content quoted above for absolute clarity.

So just to clarify on this point, perhaps for people who have seen the AJ37 Viggen has seven* hardpoints, and also respectfully challenge the "not relying on self defence" suggestion: The outermost two wing pylons on the AJ37 were wired for the Rb28 Falcon only. Given that this weapon was not taken forward by the Swedish air force for the AJ37, due to poor weapon performance, the outer two AJ37 wing pylons were unused but physically present. This is why why they appear empty on some diagrams for AJ37, or don't appear at all, until the AJS-37 upgrade. The AJS37 upgrade enabled all six weapons pylons to carry Rb24/24j/74 if desired.** The AJ37 "smart" weapon carriage appears to have been a function of computer weapon handling capacity and wiring, hence some diagrams indicating two Rb24 or Rb75 only in specific locations. It appears from Swedish air force documentation, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8bCDRcq9BVeY0gycWRrMXVIdTA/view?resourcekey=0-oFS9Xlxr5xkcifaQ000kBA page 8,that permitted weapon loadouts changed over time (perhaps the air force figured out they could split the wiring for weapons between nearby pylons) and asymmetric loadouts were feasible. I would recommend considering these if you want some more flexibility in self defence (i.e. single Rb24/24j and/or countermeasure pod) at the expense of a little imbalance of the airframe. i.e. CM pod, Rb75, X-tank, Rb24j, Rb75 is quite a flexible loadout for contested airspace anti armour while being period correct. Conversely four Rb75 (AJ37 computer can only handle two at a time) with two Rb24/24j (outer wing pylons Rb28 only) would not be correct for an AJ37. As per documentation, and the designation of the Viggen, the AJ37 was a strike fighter with an airspace defence / fighter role if required. Gunpod, CM pod, dual Rb24j and an X-tank is a valid AJ37 loadout. Speed and extending from a bad situation still very much a valid tactic for the AJ37 being as it is among the fastest fighters at low level. Remember to eject stores to have the full 1400kph available currently. As always pairing up and flying sensible formations providing mutual support will make you much more effective and survivable in any airframe. Finally if we are discussing period correct airframes and weapons focus should the discussion now focus be on the Su25t, Ka-50 and Vikhr missile (prototypes, limited availability for combat or not available in this timeframe) and also the MiG21 being able to deploy the Grom (this has been questioned, limited evidence to suggest it should be capable). Will we also see similar restrictions or removal for these systems? . At the moment it seems blufor have been quite restricted whereas redfor get minimal restrictions. Appreciate Ka-50 soon to go due to Mi-24, but that should be with similar considerations towards period correct weapons. * Sources also indicate an additional two wing pylons could be configured for a total of nine! But this was so rarely used it is not worth considering for DCS. Limited information on what these could carry but I would assume it is additional dumb weapons i.e. rockets and bombs. ** Carriage on the outer pylon was initially frowned upon by Saab engineers due to the increase weight of later Sidewinders impacting fatigue life of the wing. Eventually the air force and Saab came to an agreement on fatigue life expectations and the carriage was permitted (note this is a long term, over many years fatigue life issue, not the wing snaps immediately if outer pylon used issue).

The ability to limit payload per pylon can't arrive soon enough, by official utility or mod. The Rb24/aim9b is not a practical weapon and having an Mi24 with many R60m and ATGM seems quite overpowered. The Mi24 is also quite a fast helicopter and should be able to dictate engagements with other helos. Having said that as much I have not pre-ordered (F16 pre-order wounds still not healed) I can't wait to see this most ugly yet beautiful thing in the DCS sky.

Ok, you being unaware of MiG21 this goes someway to explaining your approach this discussion. Having said that I assumed, given your extensive involvement in the discussion, you would be aware of the MiG21 issues. Also generally speaking I consider the whole weapons and aircraft choice to be a "balance of bugs" that unfortunately Alpenwolf has to juggle for his CW server. The bugs are already reported but not yet resolved and relatively fresh / easy to find on the MiG21 subforum. The MiG21 suffers from radar bugs resulting it an overly optimistic radar range (fighter sized targets being picked up at 30km, whereas this is probably an accurate range for bomber size targets based on the technical aspects of the radar and some documentation) and it also does not present correctly on other aircraft's RWR (MiG21 does not appear on an RWR until it the MiG21 has detected the target, MiG21 does not give correct lock indications resulting in targets being unaware they are locked or fired upon). Hopefully you will agree this gives the MiG21 a significant advantage when using the radar and radar weapons, but I suspect you will attempt to "downsplain" it again. Just as you have tried to underplay the significance of the MiG21 emergency AB beyond permitted time limits issue affecting speed when really the advantage it provides, given the MiG21 speed limits, is TW increase and improved acceleration beyond what the jet should be capable of. Somewhat ironically at the same time as bemoaning the Viggen's acceleration situation now the speed situation is hopefully in hand. As before I think the acceleration issues would be non-trivial to solve via scripting, and I personally think people's time (mainly Alpenwolf's time) is probably better spent elsewhere given the impact the acceleration has on Viggen usage (and arguably it also has parity with the MiG21 emergency AB time limit situation). Hence why I find your argument unconvincing to change things further or continue the Rb24 restriction based on the Viggen acceleration situation. Not because of the physics involved, which I am well aware of being a physics graduate and having worked many years in the aviation industry. I sincerely hope you give the blufor jets a go, given the free trials, and review the MiG21 bugs highlighted to get a better perspective on things before commenting in the future.

You might want to look up what the J stands for in AJ-37 / AJS- 37. The Rb24j was removed in a major part due to exploitation of the speed issue so it seems harsh not to return it. But it is what it is and I do not intend to waste my time arguing balance when the agenda has been set. I do wonder if the MiG21 should be reviewed from the same perspective given its radar range and RWR bugs? (And I say this as someone currently flying and enjoying the MiG21!) I'm glad we've arrived at, as I introduced it, a "rough fix" for the Viggen speed issue, the main complaint in this context, based on some clever use of triggers. I spent literally 10 minutes figuring out the simplistic triggers I posted, as presented it was intended as a stopgap measure / quick fix and I knew it was not a perfect mitigation. I am aware of how IAS, ground speed, air pressure etc work in this situation and how it applies to my original suggestion, hence why I called it a "rough fix" because it was rough. It is good to see Alpenwolf refine the original suggestion into the mitigation we have, but bear in mind we are limited by the mission editor tools available and time someone is willing to commit to this. I think having acceleration based controls in place would be quite a bit trickier than the speed controls implemented, probably extend into custom LUA scripting. I'm not sure it would be worth the effort based on your unconvincing concerns on acceleration. Lets see how this speed mitigation plays out. Thanks to Alpenwolf for taking the original speed trigger suggestion seriously and working it through.

I mean, if we had an actual cold war Ka-50 or Vikhr missile... you get the point, this argument is bit of a slippery slope. On the carriage of the sidewinders sources seem to go both ways on the AJ37 Viggen being able to carry sidewinders and other weapons at the same time. It would seem short sighted to not give the Viggen this capability given it was intended as a strike fighter. For example, checkout the funky asymmetric loadouts from the official document in this thread, TLDR 2 x rb75, 1 x rb24/rb24j and 1 x KB is described as a valid loadout for the AJ37. Ergo it would have an ability to defend itself while carrying Rb75.

I think the issue would resolve itself, especially if there was warning message as part of the trigger action. While it is a relatively simple trigger to add appreciate this would be for all Viggens in all your missions. It looks like the miz files are a zip file, containing a mission plaintext file which it might be possible to programmatically add the triggers too, assuming one either has the unit names or can script a harvest of them if someone is handy with grep, awk, or similar text file manipulation tools. If you were to supply a miz file I, and possibly others?, could give it a shot to see if there is a cheap way of adding this trigger on a large scale, if that is the blocker on this? As an aside, it would be amazing if the setfailure trigger action worked in MP, then you could trigger a flameout or turbine failure for the overspeed. But this feature is single player only.

This is not quite the only way to get rid of the speed exploit, but I suspect you will still argue for restricted weapons after a solution/patch regardless. @Alpenwolf it is more work for you unfortunately but you could setup a trigger for each Viggen unit in mission to explode if it exceeds a specified speed below a specified height. This doesn't appear to require a trigger zone to be defined. No idea of performance impact for a server wide application of triggers for each Viggen. In the below example if the specified unit, a Viggen, is below 1000 (appears to be in meters) and exceeds 755knts (mixing of imperial and metric units, great), about 1400kph, it will make the specified aircraft explode. I have no idea what the explode unit "volume" parameter means, i.e. no idea if 1000 is large or small, perhaps it is too large and might take out other nearby units. Also note trigger type repetitive action for slots that can be retaken to ensure this fix is persistent. Just an idea to "rough fix" the Viggen overspeed bug in the absence of or until an official fix from Heatblur. Might be worth putting a warning in the briefing if you do this though or it could piss people off. But at the moment the restricted Viggen weaponry is also an annoyance for players.

As mentioned the smoother you are with the D9, and presumably also the A8, the better it will fly. It can turn but you need to load the wings smoothly / progressively, not just give it all the load at once. Flying smoother will also help you retain energy. I'd recommend setting some curves on your joystick to assist with this. But the Fw190 series has high wing loading, so it is not the best at turning... rolling on the other hand.

There also seems to be a bug atm with negative drag values after weapon release, so making such measurements after a weapons release could be a bugged result atm. (This is certainly true of Rb24/24j/74 and tanks, if you test the top speed with a clean Viggen vs a post Sidewinder launch / tank jettison you will see). Or alternatively there is information in this thread. Long story short it does seem like the Viggen thrust / airframe drag / weapon drag situation could do with a review.

The sooner it is reported it as a bug, the sooner it will get fixed

As hinted/mentioned/implied at you tend to do Hi-profile for fuel efficiency and enabling your own sensors at the expense of people being able to see you coming and more easily track you. Lo-profile costs a lot more fuel with a AAA / manpad risk but is generally more survivable from a SAM* and interceptor/fighter perspective, the biggest advantage really being denying the enemy advance warning of your approach, but also at the expense of your own sensor visibility. IRL you'd also find some planes prefer high alt whereas others prefer low alt in terms of handling etc which would have some bearing on mission profiles. Given the short ranges involved with the CW server missions people on both sides have the fuel budget during a mission to effectively do a Lo-Lo-Lo profile at no real cost to combat effectiveness. To me the lo-lo-lo profile feels realistic if you look at the air campaign of the six day war (i.e. deliberate low level tactics to avoid radar). I also find it fun flying low, akin to real RAF tactics, but appreciate others might want a more Vietnam / Korea style high and low alt mix combat situation. It feels a bit contrite/annoying to put in fog or similar to force people up. A more realistic solution would perhaps be AAA / manpads / ground fire spread out liberally either side of the front line to discourage low level as mentioned, make 10-20kft more attractive as a survivable altitude beyond SAM reach, but appreciate the DCS engine can't handle large scale deployment of ground units to fully enable this. Anywho, just my 2 cents. Great server, missions and fun as always @Alpenwolf. Cheers! *Unless your talking, modern rapid response systems like SA19/SA15 etc, but given this is a cold war server discussion...

Speaking of mature tone, right back at you (borderline psychopaths?). It is possible to post a bug without the hyperbole. Never pretended this was a none issue, in fact I specifically said the opposite. You asked for another negative drag example and it was provided. All the best and see you in the online skies.

Atm, with the Phoenix the way it is the midcourse guidance update and going active can produce some fairly drastic, speed bleeding jerky manoeuvres by the missile. I find setting target size to large reduces the going active disturbance and helps the missile retain energy and track the target more smoothly.

@m4ti140 as mentioned earlier in this thread the F16 has the negative stores drag issue, and also as per the attached bug report it over a wee bit. Hence the suggestion, in the interests of fixing the bug asap, it might require ED to look into it the negative drag stores issue, particularly if they are responsible for weapons these days. Anyway, enjoy your hyperbole.

You need to first acknowledge the deficiencies of the AWG-9, it is the first TWS radar available and as such not as sophisticated as newer models. This means if you or the target manoeuvres a lot the track can be lost. As the radar has large doppler filters it is also easy to lose a target while looking down in the longer ranged pulse doppler modes. This leads to a bit of an conflict as you generally want to be high and fast launching your missiles to give them the energy but then below the target ideally to keep them tracked and also give their missiles thicker air to deal with (note above 3 degree the AWG-9 will automatically switch off the MLC doppler filter making it much more likely to track a target as it enters a notch type situation). So ideally, high closure target (manoeuvre to make it high closure if needs be), launch missile high and fast (28k+, Mach1+, gives your stick a damn good starting push), give some time for TWS-A to engage as part of phoenix launch if not already in TWS-A, gently manoeuvre to be below target and keep them there to give TWS best chance of holding the track and then also crank (i.e. turn away from them but keep them on radar) to bleed their missiles if any and slow down to sub mach 1... in an ideal world. Of course people tend to not like being shot at and with an F14 RWR indication and a high fast track on their own radars may guess what you are up to, dive and notch to be below you and beat the AWG-9. Also this clearly assume a 1v1 situation which often isn't the case. But with the right conditions you can get 70-80 mile kills or more on high closure, compliant (i.e. fly in a straight line) large fighter sized targets. It can be useful to force Jester into specific radar modes, either TWS-M to keep the radar pointing forward or TWS-A to follow targets (note you can use Pilot Lock Mode to reset the radar to forward and level but this does reset your picture if TWS-A keeps pointing where you don't want it). Also it can be handy sometimes to do the "point radar at a height at this range" from time to time. I've heard people have success with "vaicomm"? and other voice command software but I just use the menus rapidly. Once the fight gets to 15-20 miles without a lock switch to the pilot radar modes. As ever Jester is not a replacement for a good human RIO. Inb4 people come in to rip apart this specific situation with their own examples.... of course this is ideal and contextual. Edit: As I've explained before I would not use PLM to reset radar / radar picture with a real RIO, unless I had an potential pilot lock situation. But it is handy with Jester to reset things when they go off the beaten track too far.