TeamMaximus

Never mind, came back up at 17:10 GMT.

Is the main DCS site down? I'm unable to connect, and when I check on Is It Down Right Now, it also shows the site unreachable.

The glare shields are fiberglass. They delaminate like that due to the sun exposure, and physical abuse they get. The Heatblur F-4E cockpit looks very much like what I remember from my time working on them in the 70's and 80's.

I was stationed at Lowry AFB, in Denver in 1977-78, going to school on the AN/APQ-120 radar for the F-4E, and remember going over to Buckely Field and watching the A-7Ds in the pattern. One time when I went over, there was an A-10 prototype at the field. It was doing testing with the Army at Fort Carson. Talked to the pilot, the nicest guy, for sure. He spent about an hour with me and two of my buddies, telling us all about the A-10 and what it was capable of. I also saw three Bolivian P-51D's parked at Buckley, stopped for gas and lunch on a cross-country mission up from South America. I later saw the Buckley A-7Ds again, when I was assigned to the 33rd TFW, at Eglin AFB, Florida. They came up for the WSEP (Weapon System Evaluation Program) qualifications. They were flying with F-100Ds from the South Dakota, and Michigan Air National Guard! Those were the days, LOL.

It appears that https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/ is down hard. I can't load the page (get a 502 error), and I can't authenticate with DCS. Anybody else?

I was stationed at Eglin AFB in Florida in the late 1970's, and worked WCS (radar) on Pave Spike F-4E's in the 58th Tactical Fighter Squadron. The Pave Spike was only mounted in the left forward Sparrow missile well. I don't remember seeing any of the planes that had a Pave Spike pod carrying an ECM pod at the same time. Just FYI, most of the F-4E's at the time still had Direct View Storage Tube (DVST) scopes in them. We actually had several planes with the Multiple Sensor Display Group (MSDG) scopes from Hazeltine, which were horrible to maintain. We were starting to get planes back from phase overhaul at Ogden, Utah with the Digital Scan Converter Group (DSCG) scopes. Both of the later models had pretty decent TV displays for TV guided weapons, and the Pave Spike camera (as well as TISEO).

This is the "Hunter/Killer" team used in the F-4G Wild Weasel era. Originally, when the F-4G started taking over for the F-105G's, the USAF began pairing an F-4G with an F-4E carrying AGM-45 Shrikes and AGM-78 Standard ARMs in the early days, then AGM-88's later on. The F-4G would seek out the SAM sites, and lure them into tracking the Wild Weasel. They would give the target site to the F-4E, who would prosecute the attack and (hopefully) destroy or damage the radar. When the F-4E Phantoms were retired, the F-16's took over the role of the killer in the team. I worked on F-105G and F-4E and F-4G fire control radar systems at George AFB, California in the 1980's. We were testing the early AGM-88 prototypes on the China Lake Navy ranges in the late 1980's, as well as on Crow Range in the Philippines. Fun times.

Were you able to roll the driver back to the previous version (471.68 on my system)? Did that fix the flickering?

I like the Hind crew standing beside the cockpits, roasting marshmallows. Just like back in camp.

Yes, it would be nice if you included your server's info so we could find it...

Nicely done!

Maybe you can post your suspect mission file here and let some of us try to reproduce the hang.

The most important issue that people still on Windows 7 will face is no more security patches. Any vulnerabilities in the operating system (and we know there are many) will stay unpatched, and will make everyone still on Windows 7 vulnerable to attacks. People should do themselves a favor and upgrade to a supported version.

Thanks for taking the time to compile and post this info, I know the effort wasn't trivial. I'm running the RTX 2070 Super, and plan on trying out your recommendations. I'll make an attempt to post back here after my experiments.

Actually, it's not strange. On the F-4E, the AN/APQ-120 radar tracked (pulse) and illuminated (CW) the target through the same feedhorn on the antenna. The RF from the CW klystron transmitter was sent through a high-power RF circulator that isolated the receiver and the pulse transmitter magnetron from the CW rf. Of course, the F-4 was shooting AIM-7's, not AIM-54's, but the SARH mode is identical (AIM-7's don't have the DL capability, and neither did the APQ-120).