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Hydraulic pressure will drop without the respective engine spinning. So if your combined pressure remains at 3000psi with left engine RPM at zero you will know the transfer pump is working. These are different power modes for the backup pump. High mode will eventually overheat the pump and cause it to fail, therefore it should only be used for a brief amount of time. HIGH mode increases the rate at which you stabilizers will move compared to LOW mode, which is very important for inflight refueling and landing. You would use HIGH mode for these situations and LOW for any other part of the flight (i.e. cruise, descend).

Thats for controlling fuel transfer from the wings and external tanks, nothing to do with wingsweep

Does anyone have any reference for weight and balance calculation? I know it's not of that much use in DCS but makes flight planning a little more realistic :book:

From what I understand in the manual (the real one), it is sufficient to select INS before powering off the WCS. This should automatically store the current alignment as the reference alignment for a subsequent stored heading alignment. The natops is a little scarce on that however (Chapter 20.3.2 in F14AAA-1). I don't know if this is modeled in DCS though.

Wow the VV is pretty useless. Was that generally the case or did they not bother to fine align in this video, if that makes any difference at all?

A few notes: -Combined hydraulic pressure does not mean Left+Right hydraulic, it means the pressure of the -combined (i.e. the LEFT) hydraulic system, so jester´s callouts make sense there. - The "navigation radio" is the ARA-63 CILS reciever, used to tune the carrier ILS channel. - You completely omitted the cockpit preparation step before applying power to the aircraft. This rendered your ARA-63 BIT test later on useless as you did not have ILS selected for the HUD and VDI modes (it is in ACL by default, which means localizer and glideslope information from ACLS will be used instead of CILS) and therefore did not see the needles appear on the HUD and VDI - You have a little misconception about the wing-sweep system. Putting wingsweep in manual does not mean using the handle, it means using the wingsweep position rocker to set wingsweep. Using the handle means using th emergency mode, which is not supposed to be used during wingsweep/control surface testing. Also, putting wingsweep in AUTO at the end of these checks does not mean sweeping the wings forward with the handle. You keep the handle oversweep and simply move the wingsweep rocker on the throttle to the auto position. Wings are then extended on the CAT (or before the hold short for shore based procedures) by moving the handle out of oversweep all the way forward and stowing the handle, thereby exiting emergency mode and reverting control to the CADC. A few tiny things that are missing in the startup (not your fault, heatblur omitted them for some reason). - Before turning on avionics, you put the WINGS/EXT TRANS switch to OFF. When extending the refueling probe, check that the WINGS/EXT TRANS switch goes back to AUTO. After that, you put it back to OFF and then back to AUTO before reading the takeoff checklist. - Windshield air is tested after refuel probe extension/retraction by cycling the appropriate switch. In RL, the plane captain would check for airflow somewhere (don't recall exactly where) under the nose of the aircraft which is indicative of windshield air operation. - I am not sure why the handle remained forward when you put it back into the stowed position. Theoretically, it should have moved back to 68° (the manual commanded position at this point as indicated by the captains bars next to the wingsweep tape on the indicator) at this point, since when the system was not in emergency mode anymore (i.e. handle stowed) and the handle moves in parallel with the wing position when in normal mode. Maybe there is some mechanism to prevent this when the position commanded by the switch and the handle position are disagreeing by a large margin.

Maneuver are normal flaps/slats without the auxiliary flaps (i.e. the inner ones), limited to 10°/7° deflection. Far away from full flaps and therefore higher max speed.

A little observation: The spoiler override switches will not make the spoilers deploy but will return power to a spoiler set previously deactivated by the symmetric spoiler failure logic.

maybe the missile battery will run out too soon, dont know if this is modeled though

The pre-taxi wingsweep and control surface checks are not performed on deck , there is just not enough space on deck to perform these checks. The wings/flaps/spoilers are checked once you are on the cat by cycling controls. The wingsweep BIT performed in OVSP and does not move the wings. Im not sure if it is modelled since I dont have the F-14 (yet), but you can check by having wings in OVSP and selecting wingsweep bit the master test switch. Observe the following during BIT: Wingsweep limit pointer shows (the little arrow left of the wingsweep tape on the indicator) 40°; Illumination of: Wingsweep advisory (not caution!) light, flap caution light and reduce speed warning light. After 25 seconds, the lights will go out and the pointer will go back to 20°, indicating a successful test. The startup and preflight checklists do not mention performing this test, maybe someone with RL expirience can comment of when this BIT was actually performed.

You mean when you sweep forward for the flaps/spoilers check or for take-off? The former is not performed on the deck. Maybe that confuses jester.

sniped

The F-14s AP cannot fly towards waypoints or tacan stations. Only heading hold and ground track are available for LNAV

Fantastic landing. I've flown the AS F-14 in FSX a lot when it came out and remember how increadibly difficult case I approaches where compared to VRS's rhino (also FSX of course). Looking forward to trying it out myself. Just a one question: You activated DLC before finishing the downwind turn. I always thought you use DLC after the downwind turn, or is there no specific rule for that? And some nitpicking :p RA showed about 900ft Initial altitude, while the baro altimeter showed 800ft. Otherwise, perfect video!

I have virpil WarBRD base +10cm stick extension which gives me as much stick travel as my arm can handle. But even with that configuration, a few cm of deflection in pitch will result in significant pitch rates. It's quite managable though but I imagine having to fly with a short stick like the X52 will give you a lot of trouble controlling the plane. This however is due to unrealistic hardware and not an unrealistic flight model. You might want to introduce some axis curves to have less sensitivity around the center. The trim speed is a little too fast indeed but IIRC this is necessary as the autopilot uses only the trim and needs those high trim speeds to function properly

Thats exactly the point. Radar detection and tracking capability depends on a myriad of factors and some ambigous internet sources saying this radar has that range is just not enough information to realistically model the differences between the various modifcations of the N019 radar. Let´s assume the OP is right and the N019M has a 20km greater detection range in "the best conditions on a fighter HOT" (whatever EXACTLY that means) as compated to the N019. How about not ideal conditions? What about a tail chase or beaming situation? Does the N019M outperform the stock version there too? If so, by how much? What about look down situations? The N019M has a better processor, so it should have less problems with ground clutter right? But again, by how much. I'm not even starting with ECM... There are a LOT of questions to be answered to realistically model the differences between a N019 and a N019M. A few publicly available forum posts and internet articles aren´t going to answer that. And while increasing the detection range of the N019M in a head on high altitude situation to 80km might seem more realistically in that particular situation, it might make the radar overperform in other situations. Buttom line, if you want realism, things are not as simple as changing a few values. And this brings me to my original point, that such a thorough simulation would call for a substantially higher price, which I do hope to see one day. But in the scope of a FC3 plane, I don't think we will see that level of sophistication, although I hope to be proven wrong on this.

I´m not saying you are not allowed to complain or point out if something is incorrect. All I'm saying is that considered how many resources have been spent on developing the mig-29, which can be somewhat measured by its price, it is out of scope to model particular differences in radar performance between a 9-12A, a 9-13 and a 9-13s. I really don´t understand why the concept of price vs. expected quality went by unnoticed...

Maybe changing the radar parameters in the sim is simple but getting data on what exactly the difference in radar performance is is certainly not. They could decrease the detection range for the non S variant by 10% or so, but would that be more or less realistic than what we have now? You need detailed information on the radar and a more advanced radar model to answer that and thats where the price tag comes in. It´s not as simple as changing fuel quantities, or weapon loadouts. These things are clearly documented in the publicly available manuals but the radar is not.

I would love to see any variant of the Mig-29 (even the shitty 9-12B) modelled with full fidelity and proper GCI. But thats not going to happen anytime soon. My point is that you can´t expect that much from a module that costs merely 15$. I appreciate your attention to detail and you are probably right about the radar differences between 9-13 and 9-13S, but a flaming cliffs module for that price just isn't going to deliver that level of detail you are asking for.

A whole 15$, which gave you a state of the art FM and visual model. Criticising the developers for a (presumably) slightly incorrect radar peformance at that price tag is inappropriate IMO

According to the russian manual avialable on avsim.su the mig-29 did not have a top-down view on the MFD. However, the MFD was not a simple 1:1 repeater of the HUD but had some additional data. For example, the right vertical bar and radar elevation should only be displayed on the MFD, as well as the current scan bar which is completely absent in DCS.

It´s a hold (at least for the Mig-29, dont know about Su-27). The limit override does not work at supersonic speeds though, but I wouldn´t recommend using it at all, except for a hard break to force your opponent to overshoot. Make sure to slow down below M1 during the merge, otherwise you wont get the turn rate you need. If you are coming in fast (M>1), pull vertical to trade speed for altitude. Otherwise, aim for aninitial speed of 800-900 kph before merging. Make sure to stay at around 600-650kph (IAS, NOT TAS!), this will give you enough turn rate to outturn pretty much any other aircraft. Do not engange in slow flat scissors against f-18, they seem to have an edge there. Also keep an eye on your trim. If you trimmed nose down before the merge (for example if you were flying around M=1),you won´t have full pitch-up authority, so make sure to rececnter or trim nose up once merged. Try to stay in the horizontal plane, dont go vertical if you dont have to, especially against f-16. And finally, keep an eye on fuel. The Mig-29 burns a lot of fuel in full AB at sea level. Thats from my expierience on dogfight servers. Again, all of the aobe is for the Mig-29.

Thanks, I missed that part!

Are the ILS bars on the HSI supposed to work? They dont move when in LDG mode and on final approach despite the flight director working...

The post is not from an ED member but from SL PAK who is credited in the manual for creating the training missions. I suppose he has some more insight than a "normal" forum user. I totally agree on the lack of communication on the english forums for russian planes but then again, this wasn´t really announced on the russian forums either so I had to dig a little to find that post. Belsimtek had always a habit of not communicating much about their projects on this forum, both in the english and russian sections. That apparently didn´t change much with the ED/BST merge. However, I remember regular posting in the Mi-8 News thread by BST members, which was basically a copy of what was posted in the russian version of the same thread, so you have to give them that. I hope they bring back that feature soone then later because it really adds to the immersion of properly flying the hip IMHO.