Cytarabine

Yep - it provides the risk of damaging the carrier deck, killing crew and destroying aircraft parked on deck. The appropriate response to this situation would be to come alongside and punch out. I get the ‘in a sim’ wanting to see if you can land an unmodified Viper on a carrier, but modifying to make it ‘carrier capable’ doesn’t make much sense for day to day usage. If carrier ops are your thing and you want a Viper equivalent get the Hornet!

Well done. Beating an R-77 is pretty similar. I suspect though you are wasting the chaff, you can beat the missile at that range kinematically without using decoys, save them for when shot at within RNoE (or against longer ranged missiles).

Here is my little training scaenario I have put together (on the NTTR map as it is where I like to have my training scenarios). Pits you in an F-18 against 2 modern Russian combatants. The first is a co-altitude Mig-29S with a loadout of R-77 and R-73 missiles. Once you splash that you will face off against a Mig-31 with a loadout of R-33 and R-40 missiles which is flying well above your starting altitude (and fast). (Of course more realistically you (and they) will have wingmen, but this is just for practice). https://forums.eagle.ru/attachment.php?attachmentid=226808&stc=1&d=1581065100 F-18C - Project HAVE DONUT II.miz

My approach (after reading up, watching lots of videos on the topic (recommend DCS Debrief, Growling Sidewinder and Spudknocker on this)). I then have a mission similar to the Viper instant action Intercept mission, just with a Hornet. instead; 1. Full burner - speed is life and the Hornet is not the fastest aircraft going around but you should comfortably be able to get to Mach 1.2-1.3 at a respectable altitude with an air to air load. Lose the tanks however - they should be empty anyway at this point. 2. Don’t fly directly at the target, fly somewhat offset. You want to start creating problems for them and their missile to solve. An offset shot lowers the closure rate and thus their effective range. 3. As soon as they fire (or you get close enough that they will have fired an ET which gives no RWR indication) crank. Try not to bleed your speed too much. At this point you are going to be around 20nm and it is decision time. If; A - you are outmatched - shoot within RMAX (in TWS) as you turn in and continue the turn to place the bandit at near the gimbal limits, then once the missile goes pitbull continue the turn and escape. Your opponent is going to either expend energy defeating your missile (facilitating your escape) or will eat a missile. Win win. B - you want (or need) to press - don’t shoot but still turn keeping your speed up until just within gimbal limits changing orientation and chasing a bandit which is no longer head on aspect should bleed the missile or energy, then at around 15nm turn back in aiming to be nose hot just as you enter RNoE and fire, continue the turn and once the missile is pitbull turn away and extend. At this range your AMRAAM is almost guaranteed to kill and if it doesn’t your opponent will have expended a lot of energy leaving you in a good position to recommit and score the kill. Doing this you should be virtually untouchable even in a multi target engagement. The other one to try is the 4 v 4 Mig-29 ACM mission which you can edit to update both sides loadouts. While with Sparrows it is a challenge, with AMRAAMS and TWS it is stupid easy applying these sorts of tactics

Agree entirely. Really for all the flack ED get from some quarters both the F-18 and the F-16 in their current incomplete states are a lot of fun and will only get better. I have trouble deciding between the two so am glad I have both!

They changed it as it was not realistic to feed TOO targets into PP.

Just checking you have the correct laser code? The TGP (and most JTACs) default to 1688 while the LMAV default is 1111.

If you notice the HAFU is smaller when you don’t have your own track, this is a surveillance track from the AWACS and depends entirely on the classification as HAFU from the AWACS. When you have radar contact yourself it then goes yellow as you will notice the bottom will still be a chevron (the AWACS is calling it hostile) while in the absence of your own IFF it can’t call it hostile and make it red ok the radar and a diamond on the HUD. Once again you IFF the target the combination of the lack of a mode 4 response along with the AWACS classification will make it meet the rules for hostile.

I think it is going to have a few use cases; - Finding moving vehicles which can then be used to slave the TPOD to (or an IR-MAV) to engage - SAR and long range weapons like the SLAM-ER could be interesting, particularly at striking large targets at extreme range. - The Harpoon will clearly benefit a lot from the sea mode for engaging shipping targets. So another tool which will be be useful in some situations.

Hornet is life. Granting that both get completed eventually... Hornet is still life; However, to show I am balanced here are some pro’s for the Viper - Faster (as long as you don’t want to you know, carry stuff) - Can get 9G turns (making sure the pilot blacks out as quickly as possible) - Has the HTS pod in future (so you can tell the aircraft with some real reach where to point their MITL cruise missiles) - Has lovely color LCD displays (that you need to squint to read in VR) - The HSD display shows more information than the SA display in the Hornet (no, seriously this is a pro) - No need to learn carrier landings (because case III recoveries on a pitch black night with a pitching deck are hard)

This I can't wait for. Well worth sacrificing 1 AMRAAM for I think!

Well you largely do have point of origin as a classified as you receive a HAFU from the AWACS by datalink (which if they classify as hostile and mode 4 shows no reply you can classify as hostile) and that is one of the methods AWACS will use to call a hostile (took off from enemy airfield). If you see an aircraft take off from a hostile airfield you can use PLID to classify it as hostile yourself. At the moment we only have the manual IFF mode, there is an automatic IFF mode to come I believe which should take some of the pain away.

It seems to me it is just a different workflow to the Viper or Hog with the plan to be that you designate an area of interest in the HUD (or JHMCS, HSI, ground radar etc) and then are heads down in the FLIR display to identify and designate the target, at which point there is an indicator on the HUD to assist steering and engaging the target. It makes sense that way why there is no indicator in the HUD.

There clearly is code for grading landings as AI landings get graded and I think with the supercarrier module we are going to get landing grades. While Bankler’s is not the formal grading system it is great for getting your landings up to snuff (my highest is a 70 after a lot of practice) and until I started that I had no idea how bad my landings were! The real grading is (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_signal_officer?wprov=sfti1) 5 - OK underline (perfect pass under unfavorable circumstances) 4 - OK (pass with only minor deviations) 3 - Fair (pass with one or more safe deviations or corrections) 2.5 - Bolter (safe pass without stopping) 2 - No grade (pass with safe but gross deviations or corrections or failure to respond to LSO calls) 1 - Technique waveoff (counts to your landing score) 0 - Cut pass (unsafe pass with unacceptable deviations) Foul deck waveoff - no points but doesn’t count against you as it is the decks issue

True though the F-15 has its design origins in the 1960’s as a response to the supposed wonderweapon that was the Mig-25 and the original specification requested for the Mirage 2000 for the AdA was a Mach 3 interceptor in the early 70’s as a couple of examples. Now it is not to say that speed is never important - the Mig-31 makes good use of speed to allow itself to protect a large volume of airspace, however like all things it comes with sacrifices.

The Super Hornet which replaces it (and the F-35C) is no faster. Put simply the Hornet is not designed for high Mach. It’s engines are plenty powerful enough (it has a higher thrust to weight than the Tomcat, the Tomcat is one big mutha) but it’s inlets are of a more simple design which limits its top end performance and has comparatively high drag. The JF-17 should be slower overall as well (but might depend where in the flight envelope). Simple fact is that most aerial engagements are not at supersonic speeds and planes designed to go fast at low level make other compromises (or employ relatively expensive things such as variable geometry wings). While going very fast has a role, for the most part the compromises are not worth it (as evidenced by the fact the F-16 and F-18 are being replaced by a slower airframe which lends additional capabilities).

Once again you are at an oblique aspect where NCTR cannot look down the intakes to the compressors and thus cannot get an ID.

Okay so looking at his contrail you definitely do not have a nose hot aspect from him, thus you cannot look down his intakes to get an NCTR recognition and thus cannot identify him as foe. To classify a bogey as hostile you need to have 2 of; - Lack of Mode 4 response (thus a hostile Mode 4 response) - NCTR identification classifies as a hostile aircraft - Other donor on the datalink classifies as hostile or - PLID as hostile (though then it is all on you) So to ID in an environment where you lack donors you need to; - Place target under cursor in radar - Sensor select depress --> IFF interrogate --> if no response you have 1 out of 2 - Get nose hot aspect from bandit within 24nm --> NCTR --> if hostile airframe --> hostile Until then it is unknown. In future when there is air-to-air with the targeting pod it might be more useful as you could visually identify the aircraft type in situations where NCTR does not work (such as this) and then classify them as hostile yourself using the PLID button on the SA page.

You can change the range by going to the top or the bottom (but unlike the F-16 it doesn’t move the cursor straight back to the centre.) You have to either use the cursor to select azimuth or the button next to the MFD unfortunately.

This is entirely moot given you have made a purchase, and while it is heretical on the Viper forum I would go Hornet first; - weapons variety - the Hornet will always have more variety of weapons owing to the fact it has to perform all of the fighter/strike roles for the carrier air group, while the Viper in USAF/ANG service is in cooperation with other specialised airframes (so no SLAM-ER, Harpoon, sea mines, Walleye for the Viper) - carrier ops - with the supercarrier coming carrier ops look set to be more detailed than land based ops currently - more complete - the Hornet feels more down the road to completion (both still have huge gaps though) - discounts are a long time off for the Viper So in conclusion - buy both, get Hornet first.

It is not so muchb the missle alone but also the launcher, which would be required if the Viper was to carry more. The F-16 was designed as a lightweight fighter, and in original design had no BVR capacity, this was added later (some air defence and foreign variants do carry the AIM-7). When it was designed the USAF already had a very effective (arguably worlds best) air superiority platform in the Eagle, the Viper was the cheaper complement to the Viper. The F-15C is a bigger aircraft designed to fulfill the air superiority role only (not a pound for air to ground), the F-21 is an export model that may never be and the F-18 operates in a very different envirnoment than the Viper (carrier, where it could conceivably be the only air superiority asset in theatre). It's not necessarily useless, but it doesn't support the concept of the F-16. If your fighter depends on being fast and agile, making it slow and draggy is not going to be a winning idea.

High textures, no MSAA, no global illumination, 16X AF, Have 1.4 x PD by Oculus Tray Tool... I wonder if that is it?? Will test (Nope it wasn't that)

Drag is often more the issue than weight. Drag makes you bleed energy more and reduces performance, and with multi-missile launchers when you fire the missiles you are left with the launcher. A heavy multiple missile load out may be useful in limited scenarios (shooting down waves of bombers) but that is a rare event. The concept of a heavy missile armed fighter was tried by the USN on a couple of occasions (Douglas F6D and F-111B) and neither idea progressed to an operational fighter.

Extreme measures to reduce wing flex.

Here you go, done with the F-18. It is a short track so if you go to external views it should happen pretty quickly. https://forums.eagle.ru/attachment.php?attachmentid=224556&stc=1&d=1578401723 (Thank you by the way for such a quick reply!) Contrails.trk