SpaceMonkey037

Yeah, because a lot of people seem interested in this I have already started work on the guide. It will definitely take some time, but it wouldn't be DCS without some waiting. Thanks for all the support so far.

Very interesting. I am planning on releasing the guide in iterations. First iteration will most likely be going over normal procedures and giving a checklist as a supplement. Going in depth into the why's and how's of preforming the tests, and not just giving them straight like the dcs manual or chucks guide do. Goal is to really teach people how the aircraft works, making people understand the procedures, not memorizing them.

I do not have real F-16 flight time, but I do have a couple hundred if not thousand hours in F-16 flight manuals. The guide will definitely be a lot more in-depth than other guides/manuals aimed at the more "casual" market, so to say. Think of the guide as a stepping stone into the world of realistic simming. Going from chucks guide to the real flight manuals is a BIG jump if you don't have any real aviation experience. The manuals are designed for people who've already completed a lot of pilot training. The goal of the guide is to explain the most important subjects of the aircraft in an easy to understand way, so that people with very limited aviation knowledge will be able to eventually fly the thing at a very high level of realism. In short: Giving people of next to no experience the knowledge required to operate the aircraft at a high level, while not using thousands of hours of studying.

Correct. I will be taking the most important information necessary to fly the F-16 vey realistically, at least compared to what other manuals/guides currently offer. The guide will be made easy understand for almost anyone while also teaching you how to fly the thing. My goal with the guide is to teach people of all skills the ins and outs of the F-16, so that you can operate it as close to real life as practically possible and doing it efficiently so that minimal time investment and effort is needed. Pretty much spoon feeding you F-16 knowledge.

As for the DCS manual: The DCS F-16 Manual super simplifies systems, contains some faulty stuff like the checklists. Lastly it's not a guide, it will never be easy for an FC3 skill level person to know what to learn and why etc. and how to employ the things into a mission. Same goes for chucks guide really, although he sacrifices a lot of the realism for simplicity. The guide that I will be making would be a guide that gives you a very high level of realism when flying, while also being easy to understand. Neither the DCS manual nor chucks guide gives you any kind of high realism, so I think a guide that teaches you how to fly the F-16 realistically would fill a gap in the learning experience for people.

It will.

As I primarily will be going over the non-combat stuff, most of everything mentioned in the guide should be relevant to what is modelled in dcs. I know failures don't happen in dcs, but doing the tests adds a lot to realism and immersion.

BMS manuals contain so much misinforamtion it's not even fun. Neither does the BMS manual explain things as well as I would like. It tells you the functions, but not the why's and how's. It's a manual, not a guide. This will not be another BMS manual.

[PROJECT HALTED]Planning on creating a guide that aims to contain more realistic procedures and better system descriptions than already existing F-16 guides/manuals. This would be a guide for people who are interested in learning the F-16 deeper than other guides/manuals currently do. An advanced operation guide you could say. It's not supposed to be a true to life super detailed manual as those type of manuals already exists. The guide I would be making will contain advanced startup, takeoff, navigation, landing and shutdown procedures, while also having detailed system and switch description. The guide will also be aimed towards new ish players. People who know the FC3 stuff should be able to use this guide so that knowing the contents of the DCS:F-16 manual is not a requirement for this guide. The guide will most likely not contain advanced weapon systems or weapon delivery procedures, as that would require way more time investment from me than i am willing to do right now, but perhaps as time goes on I will add those stuff as well. The guide will most likely at first only contain information on how to operate the aircraft realistically in a non-combat environment. However the guide should be completely relevant for anyone interested in combat as well, just that the guide itself won't be covering those areas. What i am trying to achieve with this post is to see how much interest there currently is in a guide like this. If anyone’s interested make sure to let me know and it would also be great to get some recommendations about content that should be included. TLDR: I am making a more advanced/realistic guide for F-16. The guide is going to be aimed at people who at least know the basic FC3 stuff and who are interested in learning the F-16 to a more realistic level of detail than what other guides/manuals offers. If there is interest in such a guide, please give recommendations about what contents to include in the guide. Have safe flights everyone!

It is mostly irrelevant what happens over 800 knots as this is the maximum speed the F-16 can fly at either way. Over that bad things will beign to happen like engine over rpm etc.

also known as a completly different plane that requires a complete re-write of the current F-16 code and a ton of docs that aren't currently available from what i know.

The F-16CM that is modelled in dcs does not have a drogue nor is designed to contain one. That is why we will never see a drogue chute added to the DCS F-16.

F-16: TACAN is primarily used for ranging, not direction finding (in VFR). Used in formations and for tanker rendezvous. Very few airplanes have tacan statinos, only DME, meaning most of the time you won't get directions.

You need to give more information as to what ground weight you have, what drag index, if it's a standard day or not, altitude for the test etc. you have way to little information for it to be possilbe to confirm that the flight model is incorrect.

IFF isn't perfect. IRL you have set rules for targeting. For example you may be required to complete 3 IFF mode 4 scans before engaging.

True, IRL you need to re-entre the coordinates or else the alignment will be flagged as degraded, but in dcs the INS isn't modelled correctly at all so that is why I said " you need to at least confirm your coordinates"

As you seem to be able to use it when starting in the air I won't assume you're doing anything wrong when enabling auto pilot. Most obvious thing is, are you aligning your INS correctly? If you're doing a normal alignment with the INS knob to NORM you need to at least confirm your coordinates and system altitude by pressing enter on lat, lon and SALT. If you've done this correctly and wait for the INS to align you should face no problems with the autopilot. Second this is, do you have the steerpoint. In dcs your steerpoints are missing until you've entered in the coordinates, meaning that it is essential to have selected a steerpoint with coordinates assigned to it. If you've done all these things correctly and it still doesn't work then you will just have to assume that it's a bug. Make a track file of a flight where you're showing the bug, and then post it in the bugs section. Have a safe flight!

When using hand controllers in dcs you can press things with your "virtual finger" simply by touching switches. This is a major problem I have as the only place i can place my hand controllers are just above some cockpit switches, meaning that every time i place my controller down i hit some switches and this destroys my flying experience. I know you can enable a setting where the touch controllers only are active when holding down grip, but with this enabled you get that annoying blue cross in your face. The only way to disable that cross is to disable the cursor, but then you can't click things with the hand controllers either. Meaning that you will have to press a button to be able to press buttons, and that button cannot be mapped to the hand controllers as they do not show up in the control menu like other devices. This is extremely annoying. A simple "Disable hand controller switch touching" where you would disable the stupid hand controller interaction with switches in the cockpit would be extremely helpful. At least disable the feature where you can interact with switches without the grip on the controllers being held. I hope this is possible to implement without too much effort. Thanks.

My bad, the Selective jettison master mode can be accessed through any SMS page except BIT and TEST. However i think this is modelled incorrectly in DCS currently.

Uhm... why are you turning on the EPU?

Selective jettison is a seperate master mode like A-G and A-A, therefor it can only be selected if you have the dogfight switch in the centre position.

The F-16s roll trim has very agressive input and therfor it's hard to get correct trim when using the switch, this is why a lot of the pilots use the wheels instead. Pitch trim inputs via the switch is much slower, and therefor a lot easier to get the correct trim. I have no idea why the F-16s roll trim works like this, and it seems silly to have a system like this, but that is what general dynamics went with and we have to deal with it.

Not correct. The trim panel is considered as finer triming option over the switch, as precice trim is very difficult to do with the switch as the trim input is very large. Therfor the trim panel is often used for more precise trimming. Additionally yaw trim is only available through the manual trim panel. It is true what you say about the trim/ap disc switch, however the panel isn't considered a backup panel.

Aerobrake however you want, but just know that there is nothing incorrect about letting the nose fall down on it's own. It doesn't decrease the amonut of control in any way what so ever. You honestly can't mess up aerobraking, i'd need to be doing something very wrong in that case.

Upon testing of the trim system i have noticed and reported the issue. DCS has the trim switch modelled with "clicks" meaning that you either miss your perfect trim by half a click in one direction or the other. It's impossible to hit the perfect trim as with the TGP the perfect trim is in-between two clicks. With "perfect" trim I mean a pretty good trim. Nothing is perfect here. The way the trim switch out work IRL is that you would hold down the trim switch for x amount of time and get the exact trim you held the switch for. As it's almost impossible to hold a switch down for the perfect amount of time the "perfect" trim shouldn't be possible to reach, neither should it be possible to get the exact same trim twice in a row as the chances for this happening are very low. So, IRL it is a smooth trim effect, while in-game it's in clicks which is totally unrealistic. I asked Bignewy about this and he quoted an SME saying "stick trim is course, fine trim is on the left panel". What I think has happened is that they have misunderstood how the stick trim works. Stick trim is equally fine as the trim wheels on the manual trim panel, however it's hard to be very precise with the switch due to the high trim speed, especially in the roll axis. The trim switch should be any less fine than the trim wheels. Hoping that this will get fixed in the future as it is super annoying.