N22YF

Thank you for taking the time to write up your feedback and suggestions for me! I was trying to avoid about making longer, more detailed training missions because I was worried about information overload (there's quite a lot packed in already - I thought it better to leave the remaining details to be read in the manual), but maybe I erred too far on the side of succinctness. I'll revisit! Making those lessons slower pace is difficult because, in the radar lesson, the target aircraft can only travel so slow (especially at altitude), and in the BVR lesson, I didn't think it would be realistic enough if the targets weren't accelerating to intercept, but I'll see what I can do! At longer ranges, targets can be undetectable on radar, especially if they're small, lower, and/or notching (although you won't see them on your RWR if they're notching), so not seeing targets at these ranges doesn't necessarily mean you're doing anything wrong! Also note that often you will see a target on your RWR at longer ranges than where you detect them (and where they detect you) on radar; this is because the radar beam rapidly loses strength as it travels, and it has to travel half as far to reach a target (and set off the RWR) as it does to bounce back and return to the emitter.

I have the same sentiments! Thank you for voicing them. I hope this will be fixed soon!

It's not a wingman, actually - it's a separate AI flight that follows you. (I had to do it this way because the lesson starts in active pause, so a wingman would fly around in confused manner until active pause is released. Instead, I have a separate AI flight which is activated when active pause is released. I just need to adjust the tasking for the AI so it doesn't follow so closely during landing approach.)

Thanks so much for this feedback! I actually never tried flying this mission all the way to landing - I'll make sure to fix this issue when I release an update! (I doubt you did anything stupid! The AI can do funny things like this when left to its own devices.)

Thank you! In many training missions for other modules, I get impatient with how slow the instructor talks, so I decided to talk faster and figured it should be fine since there are subtitles. Glad to hear you thought it was just right! Yes the instrument landing one is super hard! It takes some practice to get used to following the ILS cues well when you have no visual references to back you up. But it's very rewarding when you nail it and come out of the clouds lined up on the runway! I intended that mission more as an optional fun side challenge than a required training step - did that come across? If not, I'll make that more explicit whenever I release an update. This is all really helpful feedback! Thanks so much for taking the time to write it up!

Thanks! Yeah I had the same thought! Maybe someday I'll make an NTTR version, but probably not in the near future - would be a good amount of work to recreate all the triggers etc., unfortunately.

Ah I see! Well in the case of that Fencer, he evaded me and my wingman untouched. I didn't see him on my radar after the dust settled and assumed we'd gotten everyone. The bug is that I later got an erroneous message out of the blue that we'd succeeded in downing all the Fencers, and also that there was no message that Senaki had been hit once that Fencer looped back and bombed Senaki.

Name: F-15C Training Missions Author: N22YF Mission type: SP/Training Controllable: F-15C Quick Summary: Set of 17 training missions for the F-15C set in the Caucasus covering all important aspects of flying the F-15C Topics covered include cold start, takeoff, visual landing, ILS landing, navigation, RWR, radar operation, basic BVR tactics, aerial gunnery, and air-to-air refueling Aimed at beginners but hopefully useful to intermediate pilots as well! Download: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3313014 Full brief/Discussion thread: https://forums.eagle.ru/forum/english/digital-combat-simulator/dcs-flaming-cliffs-3/f-15c-for-dcs-world/7126136-f-15c-training-missions

Thanks! Actually your wingman will get out there and start taxiing after the Su-25s even if you haven't moved yet, so you have a short window to jump out on the taxiway between the last Su-25 and your wingman! What do you mean?

I regularly see people asking about whether F-15 training missions exist, so I figured, why not make some? These missions are aimed towards players who are new to DCS and fairly new to flight sims in general, and so attempt to strike a difficult balance between accessibility (avoiding information overload) and covering everything important. However, I also recommend these to anyone interested in becoming more proficient in the F-15 (I learned a lot myself through putting them together). They're generally intended as a supplement to the DCS F-15C manual, but I also go over some aspects that are undocumented (i.e., not in the manual), such as the glide slope deviation scale, air-to-air refueling, and setting the bingo fuel index. The missions can be downloaded from the User Files section: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3313014 The missions are: 1. Introduction and basic controls 2. Angle of attack and Gs 3A. Cold start, taxi, and takeoff (just the basics) 3B. Cold start, taxi, and takeoff (advanced) 4. Navigation, autopilot, and fuel management 5. Visual landing 6. Instrument landing system 7. Instrument landing 8. RWR and countermeasures 9. [Practice mission for lessons 1-8] 10. Beyond visual range radar modes 11. Beyond visual range missiles 12. Basic BVR tactics 13. [Practice mission for lessons 10-12] 14. Close combat radar and missiles 15. Aerial gunnery 16. Air-to-air refueling To install, place the whole folder "F-15C Training (by N22YF)" into your Saved Games missions folder, which is typically in a location such as C:\Users\[your user name]\Saved Games\DCS\Missions\ or C:\Users\[your user name]\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Missions\ Then, the "F-15C Training (by N22YF)" folder will show up in DCS when you click on "Mission" (not "Training") and then “My Missions”. Subscribe to this thread to be notified about updates/bug fixes! If you try these out, please let me know if you have any feedback, suggestions, or bug reports! You can reply to this thread or send me a private message. Would be great to hear thoughts from both newbies and experts. I'd love to hear from y'all about: Did anything not work? Was anything hard to follow, or could be explained in a better way? Did I make any mistakes or typos? Is there anything I left out that I shouldn't have (or anything I should have left out)? Some example images: Hope these are useful! (Also, is there any interest in A-10A training missions? If so, I might look into taking that on as well - a lot of these would be easy to redo for the A-10A.)

I just played this mission on 2.5.6.55960 (the latest version) and ran into a couple issues: First, my wingman is overeager in taxiing and tries to get in line just behind the Su-25s that taxi out while I'm starting up. If I let him do that and taxi behind him, then he stops short at the runway threshold and won't budge, blocking my way onto the runway. If I'm quick enough and pull out ahead of him, then I have to be really careful to keep my taxiing speed up, or else he rams me! It took me four tries at this mission just to be able to take off due to this issue. I encountered the second issue when engaging the Fencers attacking Senaki. I thought we'd downed all of them, and so I returned to WP 2 and awaited further instructions. Eventually, I got a message that we'd just killed all the Fencers, which didn't make sense coming at that time since it'd been a while since we'd engaged them. When I checked Tacview after completing the mission, I saw that the "SENAKI B" Fencer had evaded us and made a run for it; then, when we'd returned to WP 2, it had looped back and bombed Senaki, and then safely returned to Russia. I have a track file I can try to send somehow if that would be useful, but it's too large to upload here (23 MB).

I just played this mission on 2.5.6.55960 (latest version) and had a very similar issue: I got a bunch of messages about the Backfire that all showed up at the same time but in a nonsensical order. I have a track file I can try to send somehow if that would help, but I can't upload it here because it's 23 MB.

+1!

Ah great! :thumbup:

Ah good point! It didn't occur to me that the campaign updates are downloaded only with DCS version updates (which is obvious now that I think about it). So then if the flight paths were adjusted only a couple weeks ago, I wouldn't have gotten that adjustment yet.

Great! Since I'm still on 2.5.6.52437 (the current stable release), is it possible I didn't get that update yet, or that the update fixed things in the open beta but broke things in the stable release?

No time acceleration! I actually had to play this mission three times (it was unclear to me the first two times that I was supposed to engage the Fulcrums, and I ended up getting shot down trying to avoid them :(), and the Flankers crashed immediately the same way each of those three playthroughs. (Also, while we're talking about Mission 11, another minor issue is some of the subtitles fade away too quickly, before the voiceovers have finished. Unfortunately I didn't make a note of which, exactly, but I think some were during takeoff.)

No need to find the -1 for this - this information is reproduced in the DCS F-15 manual: Also in the DCS F-15 manual (which is also the same as what's given in the -1): I recommend skimming through the DCS F-15 manual in general - some useful tidbits in there!

In Mission 11, the Flankers crash immediately after spawning - see this screenshot: I have a track file, but it's 13 MB, which is too big to attach here, so let me know if you'd like me to share it another way. Also, a (presumably) unrelated minor bug in the same mission: the radio discussions about the Fulcrums still come up even if you destroy them right away. I'm running 2.5.6.52437.

Thank you! :) I printed the 3D printed parts myself. The autopilot buttons are about 25 mm (1") square and the two larger knobs are about 40 mm (1.5") in diameter at the base, to give you an idea of the scale.

Thank you! I added a dead zone of 3 to pitch, roll, and yaw, and it seemed to help in level flight. However, in a bank (e.g. if I want to hold altitude while orbiting) I have basically the same problem, where my descent rate increases until it hits 2000 ft/min and the altitude hold disengages. (My bank angle is within the limit of 60º.) Is altitude hold working for you in a bank?

Thanks for the suggestion! But yes, I am (see the video). If attitude hold is not engaged first, then altitude hold will not engage at all. Here, though, altitude hold engages (the switch flips and the respective light illuminates in the caution lights panel), and it does have some effect (as I mentioned, it reduces the climb/descent rate when first engaged), but it does not hold altitude. (Or were you talking to spacefox?)

When I engage altitude hold, it first reduces the climb rate (sometimes all the way 0, sometimes only partially), but then the climb rate drifts, until it reaches the limit of ±2000 fpm when the altitude hold disengages. Here's a video demonstration - watch the autopilot switches on the left console or the lights on the caution lights panel to see when the autopilot is engaged, and watch the VVI to see the diverging decent rate: I feel like this used to work in the recent past, but I might be misremembering. Hope this can be fixed soon, though, because it's quite annoying to be always adjusting pitch to maintain altitude on longer flight segments. Also, when the altitude hold disengages upon reaching the 2000 fpm limit (e.g. at in the above video), there's a significant attitude upset, even though attitude hold is still engaged. I imagine that's not supposed to happen? A track file is attached. I'm running 2.5.6.52437. F-15C altitude hold bug.trk

In 2.5.6.49798, I had what sounds like the same problem—not in this specific mission, but I repeatably ran into it in certain (but not all) other F-15C (and also A-10A) missions—but it thankfully appears to have been resolved in the current version, 2.5.6.52437. Was it resolved for y'all too?

Thanks! :) It took a lot of trial and error, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!