Rick50

Just saw this, pretty good short doc about the Comache:

thank you sir! No wonder I didn't see it, I didnt figure it for being hidden inside DCS 2.7 subforums! Eh, it's all good!

well, it would make sense to some degree: hide your capabilities means your foe is never totally sure about anything. Maybe it can do this, maybe it can do that, maybe it isn't possible to do what I think they'd want to do. It can promote a lot of extra second-guessing, that leads to significant mistakes earlier in a conflict.

Nice. What is "Airland" though? A search got me bed mattresses...

Ok after doing a couple tests, it SEEMS to be similar to deleting a post. I think. Basically after using it, the post no longer appears for me. And I'm guessing it's still visible to moderators, and probably invisible to other forum members... I've no idea where this thread should have been in the first place though!

yea... I'm curious what "Hide" refers to... is that basically the same as deleting the post? or does it do something else?

Yes it does!

Hi, I'm wanting to delete a post, but I can't figure out how to do so on this new forum. With most forums this is an easy task, but here I'm just not seeing how to go about this... help?! MAybe my memory is fuzzy, but I also thought that the earlier ED forum had a sub-forum for discussing such things as deleting posts, forum functions and general site maintenance discussion, but now I don't see any... was it removed or did I imagine it?

Wow, cool thanks!! So a Russian action movie from 1991... yea, I guess when all you have is Soviet era helis and a limited budget, and not much CGI if any at all, I guess a Hind is good enough to pass as US Coast Guard!

Uh... WAT?!?!? Anyone know the backstory of this? What movie was this for?!? LOL!!

Starfighters, Phantoms, Mirage III... I'm onboard for first day buy on all three! And maybe we can get Jocko 417 to paint them up real purty! (he's done AMAZING work for the AI Starfighters...)

Thing is... in the cabin pictures I've seen so far... there's nothing obvious I can see in the pics to hook cargo straps to. Ok maybe the airframe lightening holes, but those would not be strong enough to properly cinch a load for contour flying and straffing runs. At least, not from what I can see. IT might be that cargo points might be quick-detach, like a larger version of a QD sling mount for a hunting boomstick, but I dunno.

Hmm, interesting... I didn't realise that max thrust was so very different under such changed conditions! I guess it makes sense, different volumes of air consumed, means different volumes of fuel can be burned for a given time period which means different work performed. Also could maybe result in different fuel-air mix, which would affect work output... a little like piston engines having different horsepower depending on atmospheric density, assuming you don't have a turbo or supercharger to compensate (whether in a car or plane)... I just kept refering to the widely published static thrust and never really thought about how a turbojet actually performs in the complex real world rather than in simple open source Janes listings!!

In real life Super Tucano, there is a single seat variant... but most of them seem to be bought as twin seat. I believe this is because while it IS the true attack variant, some nations want it dual purpose for training new pilots as well as operational use. But I strongly believe its because the real Super Tuc is used for fairly complicated close air support, often employing smart munitions, and sometimes have the targeting pod installed, for search, target ID, and laser targeting. Since the world is FAR less tolerant of "collateral damage" these days, and cities and towns are FAR larger and more numerous, and that's where most targets are hiding these days. It's getting more dificult to ask a single pilot to do all that while flying the plane, couple that with coordinating by radio with friendly ground units like maybe a downed pilot needing CSAR rescue or a Special Forces team that's been surrounded by an enemy, as well as ELINT and other intel data sources looking to find a specific, possibly mobile target in a non-descript car or truck... the need for a dedicated operator increases significantly. Sure, Hornets do their own targeting all the time, but most of the time they are assigned a killbox, or have ground teams or UAV's doing the lasing for them... the Tucano is often doing all those jobs, maybe split between multiple airframes. Also consider that the SuperTuc seems to be often operating either in a small team with limited or no extra support, unlike a typical Hornet or Viper "Gorrila package", with dozens of units all heading to a target area, with Rivet Joint and AWACS support. That Tucano team is likely having to deal with ATC and deconflicting civilian traffic, so the pilot workload won't be lighter than in a fancy fighter, often without an AWACS. I know the Brazillians do have an AWACS type plane, but most Tucano customers have very limited budgets and can't afford and maybe don't have a strong need for that kind of support aircraft. But no, there's no single seat DCS version at this time, nor is there a working targeting pod turret, and there are some wpons that have not yet been added to the mod that are able to be carried on some of the newer Super Tucanos, as ordnance testing and integration is ongoing. One example is APKWS and the Stormbreaker smartbomb, which are cleared for the ST if they have the full software updates from Sierra Nevada.

Consider that some combat heli units do practice hot refueling, meaning they get fuel while the turbines and rotors are still running. I believe they also will re-arm rockets, shells and missiles too. I don't think this practice is all that common, as it means more training expense and significant risk, but for nations that can afford to do such training, like the US Army, it does happen. I would have guessed that the Soviets might have practiced the same, maybe a few years after Hind units became operational and the ground crews got a year or two of experience. You know, to be able to do full-intensity operations and such. Usually cannon rounds on belts are stored and transported in steel ammo cans or wooden crates... I would imagine that for special purposes, not regular ops, it might be possible for them to carry a few extra steel cans, and cargo-strap them secure. Or even chain them down, maybe using a "come-along" or something? Maybe. Perhaps there's no mounting points for D-rings and such in a Hind, but I'd think that were a significant design shortcomming, considering the operational need for unusual flexibility in real world mil ops... but again, I don't know, and I'm very much not an expert in the Hind or Soviet military helo ops! Edit: Is it possible the "750 rounds" was confusing variants? Meaning, how many rounds does the 12.7mm Hind-D or Hind-A carry in the main belt magazine?

It's kinda funny, I think at one point, Doc managed to put seemingly 100 shells into the Felon! I'm sure that plane can take a few .50cals in a few locations, and not affect teh flight, and probably take a few more in certain locations and still make it to home base for a 2 week repair... but getting 50 to 100 rounds of .50 would likely shred even the biggest, baddest jets! I'm not all that convinced an A-10 could take that many .50cal / 12.7mm rounds and still be totally ok! Not saying that .50cal is ideal to shoot down jets, it's very inefficient today when you have 27mm and 30mm autocannons to do the real work, but 50 hits on a fighter jet is STILL 50 perforations in a vehicle that almost always responds badly to any physical damage.

Hmm, good to know!

Nope, at least not anytime soon it's not! Consider that the map you posted actually covers three map modules right now? The Persian Gulf map, the Syria map, and at least part of the Caucasus map. Which probably together only accounts for about 10% of the area you want. Now, yes, we all see the potential for lots of scenarios on such a map, we'd love it. But there's a few MAJOR limitations for a map that size: that's a LOT of map for a developer to make. It takes years of development to make a map for DCS. The ones of today's sizes. To make your map, would probably take an extra 2 years longer to make, maybe even more than that. The second problem is terrain data storage: you're gonna need a bigger boat! Or a bigger terrabite drive to store it on. The third problem is handling all that extra data running through your computer while flying missions. And with such a large map, you might expect to have jets all over the map doing missions, which could be so many units that the computer can't number crunch fast enough... Personally, I'd love to see maps of that size, and eventually it WILL be possible to do. But it's probably gonna be maybe 10 years before we see that happen. I want to see a similar size map covering Norway Sweden Finland and the north western corner of Russia, that featured in the old EF2000 sim of the 1990's. But in those days the terrain was laughably simple. The entire sim's install was only 89 megs of data, not just for the terrain, but all the vehicles, the Typhoon, the AI Flankers and Fulcrums, the whole "game"! Keep in mind, today's DCS user made skins include some that are LARGER than EF2000's entire install, I just noticed a Tomcat skin/repaint for the Heatblur that is 120megs!! Not exactly typical, and many skins are just 3 to 9 megs, but my point remains: the more detail, the more storage you need, the faster the computer to process that extra data, the longer development time to create and then tweek the map product for good enough framerates... It WILL happen... eventually. But not anytime soon. Just too many hurdles at this time. Just imagine the complaining that would result when people with mid-range computers and 5 year old vid cards try such a giant map with VR... you'd never hear the end of it! (not trying to pick a fight with VR users though)

Well maybe it's both true and false at the same time: it may be that the ammo tray/box can only hold 250. But maybe the 750 rounds was meant to be including an additional 500 rounds in the rear cabin, for use in combat when far from the FARP. They could just touch down say 10km from the fight, and hand load them into the main magazine, and help to provide close support just 10 minutes later. Maybe? I doubt that was done very often, or even once in real life, but maybe that was a planned tactic for a full Cold War battle? I don't know anything, just speculating out my butt ! But it does sound like something the Soviet Army officers would have considered doing in those days. I do vaguely recall there was talk about carrying extra armaments in the troop cabin, and I wondered how much weight that would be, how it would impact the flight characteristics. It may not have been realistic, might have just been game-play oriented for the old DI "Hind" sim/game, which is where I first heard about it, but now seems an unlikely item, at least for lots of rockets and ATGM's. But maybe that was doable for a modest number of cannon rounds?

I wonder how much differences in thrust would make to this discussion? Meaning, if we are talking the Tomcat with 23,400 lbf to 30,200 lbf of thrust in the B with the GE-110, compared to just 20,900 lb from the Pratt & Whitney TF30 in the Tomcat A. That's a huge loss of thrust, either to sustain angles, or build and keep energy. I bring this up since unlike the 1980's rockets with 1 to 1 thrust to weight, the earlier jets may have had a lot of top speed, they did not have all that much thrust to climb agressively at higher angles of attack that you see in a knife-fight. As an example, the F-5E is quite agile in a fight, but one thing it struggles with, is taking the fight higher, because it doesn't really have that much thrust, and so often in dogfights, if the fight keeps going, it tends to decend to the hard-deck.

LOL !!! Ok the first video, I think ALL of those shortcommings are entirely resting upon the limitations of the SFM and nothing else. I doubt very much the mod team could improve upon the way the SFM behaves, I think that's out of their control. I think the longer term solution is to try to see if they can upgrade to one of the more complex fight models, but I don't really know how doable that would be for a volunteer freeware team. Can anyone chime in on that, whether such an upgrade is possible? The dogfighting is pretty funny! But at the same time, it's of limited realism. First, the Skyhawk choice is a good one in that it's a somewhat realistic possible example of a very real threat to the Tucano. But... it appears as if the pilot in the A-4 is an AI, rather than a human online pilot. I suspect that a human opponent would have much different results. I think if you were going against a human online A-4, he'd probably give you no more than 10% of the opportunity to have him in your HUD, and even less opportunity to make your .50cals actually connect. Consider that you'd only have about 1/3 of the firepower of a good American warbird of the distant past (2 50's instead of 6 like the Mustang or Corsair, or even 8 like the Razorback), you'd need to get luckier than the aces of the distant past. The Su-57 mod, well, I believe it too suffers from the limitations of the SFM itself, and is clearly an AI with all the limitations that brings. Having seen other vids (Growling Sidewinder's Su-57 dogfight for example) shows that a human pilot with that mod would be a MUCH more dangerous opponent, and I doubt you'd even get a single opportunity to even shoot your .50cals at him. And that's just using the SFM of the SU-57 mod, the real jet would be even more dangerous in a guns-only fight, which itself is not all that likely, considering the missiles, stealth, datalinks and real aerodynamic maneuverability, not to mention the ability to work as a team with other Russian aircraft, the competency of frontline pilots in such jets and so on. The AI doesn't seem to have anywhere near the competency needed to make use of even 10% of the SU-57's amazing agility in the mod. Consider that the SU-57 mod doesn't even have the ability to model actual thrust vectoring, nor of the "canards" up front built into the leading edge by the intakes (at least I think that's their function). I know it's just for fun, but it's also kinda stretches some credulity to face off a Tucano with a top 5th Gen fighter... it's not likely to even be in the air in the same continent at the same time! What I mean by this is, if the Felon is out hunting for flying targets, any airforce would ground it's Tucanos right away, maybe even try to hide them in a HAS bunker! But it's all good, partly having fun, partly seeing a "what if" scenario is cool too! Limitations of SFM, and the limitations of the AI, but it was entertaining!

Cool mod!

IF you are good at fabricating and "fixing", you could add an extension to the T.16000m, which greatly reduces the spring force, by way of leverage. There's at least one version that you can download an STL file, and get it 3D printed. Casmo the DCS Youtuber actually did this so he could fly helis with more precision (actual Kiowa Warrior pilot), and he shows the spring was barely able to hold it in place, a whisper would push it over! For me the shortcomming of a T.16000 is more that it doesn't have several hat switches, so while that might not be needed on say a Mig-21 or earlier fighters, it does pose issues for the Flyin' Mainframes like the Viper and Hornet. It'll be less of an issue in future planes maybe, as HAL9000 takes over some functions that are now done with 12 hat-switches!

WOW... despite the cost... it's amazing that doing a flight in an F-4 Phantom is even POSSIBLE these days, given its age and cost of maintenance, at ANY price! anyway, back to the T-45 mod, yes I know we have been waiting for 2.7 to drop, because the team wanted a 2.7 compatible release... but we fanbois need to have patience, it's more than simply them getting the update, and fire it up for 15 minutes and say "yep, good to go let's release now!". It will likely take weeks to test all the avionics modes, the flight parameters in all modes of flights, and then figure out how to do the changes needed, do it, then test once again... meaning, it's not likely to be something they'll finish by the weekend. Or even this month. BUT... the upside is the first testing can begin, which does bring us closer to a nice download, eventually!

Redneck nuke? Slim Pickens' next ride? Fresh water resevoir for extra long missions? Piddle pack x-tra large?