Bozon

In combat reports the navigator is often referred to as the “observer”. I suppose it somewhat depended on the squadron because for intruders, bombers, and recon he was actually navigating, but in night fighters there was not much navigation to do and was the “AI operator”, and in fighter-bomber squadrons or coastal command (if not the lead navigator) they were doing mostly spotting ground targets or ships, (plus radio operating, etc) so “observer” sounds fitting.

Dag namit, now I have to buy Nevada for the two Phantom campaigns. I avoided it so far.

@Reflected which map/terrain will Red Flag 81 use? Is that Navada?

Beautiful! Also, the Thunderbolt & Thunderbolt II formation flyby was cute.

In a pressurized system if the hole is small enough, the pressure will drop to the point where the hottest water will start steaming. At that point the pressure will stabilize and the rate of steaming will equal the rate of volume vented out of the system - a quasi steady state. However, the temporary stabilization of pressure only keeps the venting rate high, so this is not a great blessing… If the hole is big enough that the system will not reach a quasi steady state it means that the venting rate is so high that all the water boiling everywhere can’t even equalize it and you loose all the coolant in seconds.

Why not sling-loading the cargo with the Huey?

I really needed something like this for the Mosquito in multiplayer servers. Till now I had to write down my planned NOE route on paper and then try to visualize it on F10 or use the ruler to mark the next leg during navigation. Really clumsy and annoying, especially while trying to fly 30 feet above the ground by speed-clock-compass, and occasional visual id on landmarks. There are mosquito parts scattered all over Normandy, destroyed during clumsy navigation.

It was changed for the benefit of women pilots. “Undercarriage” sounds too much like some kind of abortion.

I used to think that the Mosquito cockpit layout was an afterthought. Now I am convinced it was carefully designed to maximize the number of accidents. If all the switches were “on” down, then the pilot will get used to it - so, just most of the switches are “on”-down to build a false sense of confidence in the pilot and then trip him with the few switches that are reversed. Frankly, I am surprised they didn’t include a few left-right switches to fail the dyslexics. I mean how else can you explain fuel tank selectors that are behind and under the seat that you have to “feel for”, and 3 identical levers for the bay, undercarriage, and flaps, in a position that forces the pilot to switch hands on the stick to operate them. God knows how many pilots opened their bomb bays instead of lowering the undercarriage, before someone forced DH to end to their prank and add different latches on these levers to prevent such mistakes.

You release the drop tank before firing the rockets. What can possibly go wrong?

I can confirm that the bounce situation has significantly improved. I did some testing with rough touchdowns. They did bounce, as should be, but it was very moderate and manageable. A soft landing with little or no bounce is pretty easy now. No tail wheels were broken. I only did 3 points landings.

It should take 1–2 seconds for the trimmer to move to the clicked trim position. This way a human can click and react to the trim change, and gradually reach a centered stick. This is how it works in a fixed wing aircraft - you trim the elevator and with every small adjustment you respond with a small stick movement to keep the nose steady. I find the 4 directional trimmers in the OH-6 work best for me because they react like in fixed wing planes.

A sneaky ninja update? ED, why not putting this into the update notes and score some positive PR points? I will test this tonight for sure.

Aren’t the pitch up/down key bindings reversed? Pressing the key assigned to trim pitch down moves the diamond symbol in the controls graph overlay down, which results in the helicopter nose pitching up. And the opposite for the key bound as trim pitch up, which makes the nose pitch down.

In the sim you feel 1G in front of your screen no matter how hard you pull on the stick. You can pull 7G in game while drinking your beer. In real life, if you can’t hold the beer to your mouth and start spilling the beer then you are pulling too hard.

Heatblur + Phantom + Reflected campaign = Hell yes!

“Birth Control”

The angle of attack is increasing both for the main wing and the tail. Since the airspeed is more than sufficient to hold the tail up, the plane will want to return itself to it's "trimmed" (could also be stick held) AoA, i.e. respond in a pitch down with a phase delay. There is a time-scale to this process of increase-decrease in AoA - if this time is of the same order or sorter than the compress time of the main gear strut, the aerodynamic bounce will be small. A stiff strust creates a short travel has a short compression time, which increases the bounce.

X saturation means that you reduce the effective travel range of the physical (stick/rudder) axis. Beyond a certain deflection the value it transmits is pegged at max/min value. This makes the response MORE “twitchy”. Y saturation limits the effective range of the simulated (cyclic, anti-torque pedals, collective) axis. It means that you cannot reach the max deflection on that axis. In turn this means that the full range of the stick on your desktop is now mapped into a smaller range of in game cyclic. Thus you have a finer control at the cost of limited max response. When your heli is so responsive that you will never use full response, it is a good idea to introduce Y saturation. For example, the Mosquito stalls at much less than a full elevator deflection - therefore, with no saturation I will never pull the desktop stick all the way - it is a wasted range of travel. Therefore I introduce a healthy Y saturation and now utilize the full range of my stick’s axis.

Thanks for posting it, great video. Best phrase there: “Turn on a dime and get 9 cents back”

@Willoughby888 There are numerous limitations on the various modules participating in the scenarios on both sides. On the allied side this is expressed as limiting the variants (P-47 for example are mostly limited to D-30 early), limiting the availability of ordnance - both in types (HVARs for example) and in locations (some available only at England airfields), and limiting the locations of aircrafts (Mosquitoes are only available in England which means 20-25 minute flight just to cross the channel and get to the mainland allied bases). So if you bought the P-47 module and expect flying the D-40 and fire HVARs, well… too bad. If you are a Mosquito fanboy like me, prepare a lot of spare time for cross channel flights with no auto pilot. BTW, Mosquitoes that operated in daylight out of allied air cover (rangers / intruders) were equipped by this time with 150 octane fuel, so if you want to cry of “underperforming” here is a good cause.

Normally I just link the boost to the throttle and forget about it. I don’t fly high enough where firewalling the throttle and adjust power with the boost is useful. At altitudes relevant for me (up to 20k) max power is always achieved by firewalling both throttle and boost, without over-boosting. At low altitudes boost is not needed at all and even eats some power - however, this just means that for the same actual power I need a little higher manifold pressure, so I burn a little more fuel. This slightly sub-optimal operation tradeoff is worth the no-hassle of a linked boost, at least for me with a throttle setup that is not the most supportive of 3 separate boost / throttle / RPM axes. YMMV.

In the time since the Mosquito was released the helicopter departed of ED released the Mi-24, the AH-64, and now CH-47. Not to mention that these are much more complex modules than a warbird.

The F-16 at the time (early 80s) had a very powerful lobby that made sure the US government eliminated any competition to it. That included the F-20 and Israeli Lavi.

How did the Houthi drones reach Denmark?