illegal1984

No disrespect to Disco, but the way he hates on the F-14 he comes off looking like a clown, which is kind of sad to see because he was an excellent Eagle driver. He doesn’t know what he is talking about at all, at least in respect to his comments about the Tomcat. I think any self-respecting F-14 driver would laugh his comments off rather than really debate them. The F-15 is wildly overrated to point of absurdity. Always has been, always will be.

I agree that despite the flashy YouTube videos posted by others, I believe the practice is foolish because it reduces your ability to recover energy during a dogfight, which is a highly disadvantageous situation. In my opinion, the F-14's pitch authority can easily compensate for any perceived gain at speed, and it depends on the style of fighting one prefers. Dogfight servers can be enjoyable, but they are not the best for developing good habits in air combat maneuvers. Relying solely on high angle of attack maneuvers to use guns in combat can lead to certain death in a more realistic fight with heat-seeking missiles. However, if one chooses to engage in Air Quake-style gameplay, then the speed and position of the wings won't matter much, as both players will end up flying at a low altitude and speed.

Flaps are important on a dogfight server below 200 knots. You can use them up to mach 0.4 without breaking them. Still, I sometimes fly completely without them if I want to improve certain areas of my ACM skills. Depends how much you care about "winning" and what you actually use the a dogfight server for. I could go flaps out, exploit the rudder, SAS yaw off, and use differential thrust all day with manual wing sweep. Good to be familiar with all of those. I could "win" a lot more doing that...doesn't really teach me anything. I think it is better to always learn.

Flying high/low yo-yo in trail. Gradually work your way up his five/seven o'clock. Pretty much aways get get a snapshot on him. Secondly, 0.5 mach on the deck in a sustained turn. The AI will loft up like he is trying to pull a high yo-yo but then due to a bug/glitch of some sort in the logic will try to bug out entirely then come back into the fight. Lastly, dash, instantaneous turn, and then dash. Rinse and repeat. Terrible idea for anything other than guns-only. However if you are just all about gunning the F-16 AI then it works... To be honest all this terrible advice for anything but putting guns on the AI...but there you go.

To be honest, I only believe in dogfights with 2 heaters starting out 5 miles from the merge. Anything goes, and if both players don't make any mistakes it will end in a gunzo anyway. Everything else is stupid to me, including trying to gun each other until you run out of gas.

Turn off Rudder SAS

I would second @Callsign JoNay

You know, just a shot in the dark and HeatBlur SMEs have the right to shoot this down if I am just incorrect but I noticed my tracks are better when my yaw, roll, and pitch stability is turned off. In particular I noticed the yaw controls tends to deviate the most. By the way that is not a recommendation to fly that way. Tomcat is a much more complex module than its contemporaries. I have no idea how those controls are modeled but knowing some basics about LUA and ED I don’t think there is realistic way to get the module we want and have it work with the way ED processes replays. The way ED processes replays is also flawed to being with. Do you mod or even redo those controls to get all of that to work properly with a flawed system? Not really.

Quid FTFW.

No worries and no apologies brother, because VF-142 is the best. Haha...now I may have started another debate.

@Wingmate Could be VF-74 https://www.seaforces.org/usnair/VF/Fighter-Squadron-74.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VF-74 "On 11 August 1988 VF-74 became the first squadron to receive the F-14A+ (now F-14B)" Neither is a scholarly source so up for debate. UPDATE: Correction first deployment on a cruise would be VF-142 and VF-143 6th of March 1990. VF-74 was first to receive the F-14 but did not cruise until August 1990.

The only thing I can think of is that your binding for the rudder might be linked to another control somewhere on the F-14 module. I had something similar thing happen in the F/A-18 a long time ago and it turned out that my rudder was bound to a completely different input interface. Otherwise, IronMike is probably correct, the inputs themselves cannot induce a bug in a given module. From a value perspective, they are just input variables that all of modules interpret and then apply to their respective flight models. I know that on the junk petals I have there is also a switch for auto (racing sim) input versus flight sim input. Less likely to be the cause since other modules would probably be affected, but worth the mention.

I was playing with this lately because I got tired of getting swatted by paddling bugs online. @captain_dalan Are you engaging flaps when under 200 kts or staying street-legal? Do you have any curves or limits on stick and rudder input? I have curves on my rudder inputs because my petals are garbage and I noticed that I have the same issue with the curves engaged but do not have the issue if I remove the curves (rudder). If you have curves enabled try removing them and if you don't have curves try doing and inverse curve(<- made up term) to see if it is input related. Stick input wise I have to always do a gradual pull, otherwise I feel my load builds up and I slip away anyway. I have no limits or curves on my stick but I have a the standard gimbal/base that comes with the Thrustmaster. I know that the inputs should be the same numerically, but I think that your individual setup does matter as well in terms of how slowly or nuanced those numbers change. Lastly, if I am below 200 knots I generally break the rules and employ flaps to try to keep my AOA between 25-30 when I feel like getting bored and doing something stupid. That said, apart from causing problems for myself by adding positive curves to the rudder I have not noticed a difference.

30 seconds warm up time in the furball sounds like fair game...I'll wait on further iterations. f-4J perhaps...I can only dream.

Clearly better. Now, if I get dumb and slow the second guy kills me instead of the one I engaged. The way it should be. Kudos HeatBlur!

Agreed. Just for reference though, it would appear that he is getting that turn rate by going from 0.8-0.9 m somewhere and cutting the throttle for a massive deceleration while in the turn. Do that and the jet will respond in much the same manner in the sim as you see in the vid, current FM or not. Wings don’t move because he is probably way past 6.5 Gs. Note, it tapers off in the end because he is basically out of energy. Cool looking at airshows…not the best move in a real fight. Hell of a pilot.

Late to the party on this one. Locking sweep is about the stupidest thing you could do. Limits your options. Energy management is exactly that. Rapidly changing your energy state to your advantage, not staying in the state for STR. These guns only fights are giving people a false sense of what ACM is about. Try starting with a bandit at your 7 o’clock 3 miles out. Something lighter and more maneuverable with heaters. You will quickly see that all of this crap goes right out the window.

*Possible yaw SAS updates Hope something comes out of the investigation into this.

I run MP off my MacBook Pro in BootCamp (a dying art). The replays aren't flawless, but are certainly workable if you want to anything cinematic. For in-cockpit live recordings and streaming OBS.

I sometimes fly a custom mission I cooked up for fights against the MIG-29. If you are doing guns only, Dalan's advice in pretty sound in general. Instead, I do full loads on both jets. 2 x AIM-9, 2 or 3 x AIM-7, 2 xAIM-54 and tanks. For the MIG-29 start out with it at your 3 or 9 o'clock within 3-4 miles. Arm the MIG with 4 or more R-73s but no tanks. Don't do anything until Jester calls the MIG. He will probably be in your 5-6-7 by then. I like it because it requires me to get and have to maintain energy to evade his first one or two shots but then I have to react quickly and slow down to get back behind him. If he doesn't fire immediately at you, play around with distance a bit. The AI has a bad habit of switching between radar lock and then switching back to R-73 if you immediately put him back on 3 or 9 and dive for energy. Probably simulating beaming. If you are feeling really bold, switch the MIG-29 for a Mirage 2000. Way easier to kill with guns, but those Magics are much harder to evade. Even harder than the AIM-9X in my opinion, once they are tracking on you. Guns only, same loadout with the F-14 but try fighting a clean F/A-18 or MIG-29. I don't really believe in Guns only fights, but they are fun nonetheless. You can start up defensive, but in guns only I don't think it matters nearly as much once you dodge the first burst. No where near the same requirements balancing energy management with your tactical position. Honestly, though after a while AI gets predictable. Try different scenarios while starting out in the defensive, that's my advice.

Way too much still classified about APG-71 because of digital processing components. Shared commonality in APG-70 and particularly hand-me-down modules in APG-82 and APG-79, make it a non-starter.

Vadu is correct. This can be done in the F-14B in DCS. It is not realistic, and it is not ideal under any circumstance. Messing around with this, I have never encountered a compressor stall. Realistically, yes I imagine it would. To Vadu’s point, has to be timed well. In DCS you can’t do this with A at all. Not possible. Only time asymmetric thrust has ever been useful to me is for last second jinking on guns only dogfight servers. Hardly, something to try to perfect as a craft.

Lol...this is priceless...I should post more often.

The performance is still subpar. I should be able out rate and radius pretty much anything at low-speed and low level. There is a slight improvement with the new control surface schedule, but this problem is clearly drag related to the flight model. To be honest, flight models are messed up across the board on DCS. There are AOA shots people are getting off that are simply absurd. Granted, guns only 1v1 is just wholely unrealistic to begin with, but if anything the Hornet flight model needs some serious guidance. We can't all come down on HeatBlur when the ED is just 'anything goes' at this point. In the hands of the proper stick, the Tomcat still kills most anything that it comes up against. Dead horse time though, find a middle ground with the flaps. Trying to figure when, at what speed, and what G they would typically break down is hard. I am sure that they were a cardinal sin in the NATOPS syllabus. WHATEVER. Connecting with former Tomcat pilots and speaking candidly, though they were not routinely used...they still were used and they didn't all die at 225 knots. When we are engaging Hornet gnats that regularly abuse their paddle, when we alley cats routinely over-G the airplane in engagements, whatever the point was becomes moot. There is a middle ground. Okie, Hoser, and Snort are not just asshole hotshots with stories to tell...they are (reflections eternal) largely considered, rightfully, the best at their business. Still, I look forward to some dramatic improvements in drag reduction, whenever that happens.