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IMO PG is the best terrain available in any flightsim (civil or military). And it provides a much more realistic theater of operations for US aircraft than Georgia.

IIRC deck crew won't marshall you around on the deck (i.e. to the parking spot after trapping or to the cat after startup), however you can see the cat crew making hand signals in the promo-video, meaning they should be providing guidance for an AC approaching the cat, probably telling the pilot to go left/right and when to stop. Edit: Just rewatched it and you can clearly see them making hand gestures for cat alignment and unfolding wings.

The F-14s equipment cooling part of the ECS can be run by ground equipment. I don't know whether it was used much (or at all the carrier).

Sweeping wings aft will reduce the frontal area of your wings, at the cost of increasing induced drag (i.e. the drag caused by the wings generating lift), which generally results in a total drag increase. However, if you do not need lift (e.g. in a dive), induced drag will become zero and sweeping the wings back will indeed reduce the amount of total drag as compared to wings fully forward. So in short, sweeping wings aft only makes sense in an unloaded (i.e. zero g) flight situation. But don't forget to put them back in auto.

If you can find empty aircraft CG, MAC length and MAC distance from the nose (or any other point), everything else can be calculated/approximated from that.

I would also like to know the aircraft takeoff CG, even if just for the sake of a more complete preflight calculation. I wish HB would share something on this, as they must have some kind of knowledge. Empty aircraft CG would already help a lot...

Weight and balance data is unique to a specific airframe (although the variations should be very small), thats why its probably not included in the NATOPS, which is valid for all AC of a certain type. The center of gravity is an essential parameter for flight mechanics calculations. There must be some CG value provided for the flight-model even if its static, which would mean that the effects of CG shift are not simulated. I highly doubt that however given the overall fidelity of the module and the time HB spent developing/tweaking the FM. Maybe testing in a less dynamic situation, i.e. level flight, would make the difference in trim required (if any) stand out more.

What's so mysterious about military docs not being avialable online for everyone? I was hoping HB could provide something on that topic because they are ought to know the CG values for the various loadouts from their flightmodel.

Yes. Setting the switch to AFT makes all engines feed from the aft/left tank group, FWD feeds from the fwd/right group.

The fuel feed switch on the left vertical console just right of the stab position indicator does that. It won't transfer fuel from one side to the other though, only make sure that the engine feeds from the selected side only.

In the real AC, you may need to advance throttles to provide enough bleed air pressure to crank the starting engine to an acceptable speed of about 20%. This happens with hot temperatures and/or low ambient pressure, since the running engine's compressor, from which the bleed air is taken, can not provide enough pressure in these conditions. NATOPS mentions up to 80% rpm for the running engine during crossbleed starts. However, the starting engine should crank regardless of the running engine's power setting, it just may not reach the 20% rpm needed for a succesful start. In DCS, things appear more simplified, meaning that the engine won't crank at all unless you add some power to the running engine. Engines also take awfully long to ignite during a crossbleed start in the DCS F-14. I think this has more to do with how DCS handles friction between the ground and the aircraft. IIRC razbam mentioned that they intentionally increase static friction for their Harrier to prevent it from skidding on a pitching carrier deck, which has the negative side effect that you need more thrust for taxiing. Maybe HB did something similar.

How convenient isn't it? Care to share something from the P-51's Pilots Flight Operating Instructions? Because it is full of IAS tables, just like NATOPS, Airbus FCOMs and most of the other manuals. Anyway, I see this has turned into a 'look I'm right' discussion. I provided my arguments of why IAS is more interesting for performance charts than TAS. You can keep throwing archaic diagramms all you want, that doesn't change physics and how things are calculated. If you want to insist, so be it. I only hope that your translation work is more accurate than your research on aeronautical literature.

Good that you mention these parameters, because TAS is either irrelevant for them or they are much more conveniently conveyed with IAS. I have seen a lot of aircraft manuals, both russian and western, military and civilian, including (admittedly small) AC I flew myself. And in almost every performance chart for TO/climb, descend, loiter/cruise and landing, IAS (or CAS) is used. And this is only logical because A: IAS is a major factor in calculating aerodynamical forces and B: it is known by the pilot at any time. If you don't believe me, get yourself any aircraft performance manual and have a look.

These two are closely linked. How will you know your TAS or any speed if don't know thrust and drag? How will you know g-load if you don't know lift? Your initial claim was: That is simply not true. Basic geometry like turn radius equals g load and TAS is not aircraft performance, it's much more complicated as I already outlined. I can assure you that most of the aircraft performance charts (which literally have the word 'performance' in their title) are not what you are describing. Welcome to DCS forums, where arguments and opinions are sometimes the same...

Turn performance depends on a lot more then just TAS. Weight, drag, pressure and a lot of other factors play into the equation to account for all the forces in play. For the aerodynamical forces (i.e. lift and drag), IAS and Mach number are the important values and they are also the values presented to the pilot in the cockpit. They are therefore the ones provided (among other things) in aircraft performance charts. Of course there are exceptions, like cruise performance data where TAS is important for navigational purposes. But mostly, IAS and Mach are used.

But you do jam FC3 aircraft or not?

Good to know, thanks!

Intersing. Out of curiousity, do you know of the handle is spring loaded to up/down or does it move freely between up and down? Because if the former is the case, there really is no point of having it as an axis IMO.

Is that true? The way I understand NATOPS is that the flap/slat gearbox drives the flaps to match the flap handle position, which is definetly an axis and not an up/down switch.

ED did not mention anything about AI guided/controlled spotting (i.e. arranging the aircraft on the deck). So I think the answer to all of this questions is no. However, I believe if the SC sells well they will consider adding features like that in the future.

There are several I think, but I am using this one https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/de/files/3301580/ It has the MD-3 tractor with air start unit among other nice things.

AFAIK electric power comes from below the deck, for air you would still need an air start unit. There are mods for this vehicles so you can at least have them as statics.

Does the CADC still move the spider detent with the handle is pulled? Because in DCS, when you pull the handle from bomb mode and then stow it back at the most forward position, the handle will move back to bomb mode until you go into AUTO, even if you had AUTO selected prior to stowing the handle.

What exactly did you find so offensive in my posts? I'm sorry if calling someone out on his nonsense appears condescending, I'm not here to look down upon anyone. I have to disagree on this. Besides the usual "just talk", I find a lot of intersesting subject matter knowledge from various people (pilots, maintainance guys etc.) on this forum and I am sure I'm not the only one. Now if somebody interested in this topic but with little knowledge about jet engines comes here and reads Scrape's posts, he gets a lot of misinformation. I just want to set things straight. Thats why I always try to provide sources or at least some reasonable line of argument, which IMO I also did here. If you think I'm talking BS, please prove me wrong, I always like to learn something new. I didn't get the impression that we disagreed. Man I give up, this is pointless

+1 Maybe also an option to configure the aircraft for landing (radar, ecm to stby, dispenser off)