Bozon

That is inaccurate, the mosquito was considered very durable to combat damage - structurally. The engines are Merlins so they are vulnerable to damage. Fire is not great for a wooden plane, though the engine nacelle is mostly metal. Then again, most planes go down once they catch fire, metal ones too. The mosquito is not “wooden frame covered by fabric” WWI style - far from it. This is what most people imagine and it’s very wrong. It is constructed as a thick shell of layers of wood with crossing fibers directions - somewhat like a modern composite carbon construction. The thick wooden shell itself is then covered by a fabric that is glued on top of it. So, the entire shell shares the load. The wings also have a main beam and struts inside the shell. Punching holes through the shell weakens the structure gradually and there are hardly any critically vulnerable points. During development the initial wing design was even found to be stiffer than needed so DH reduced the number of struts inside it to save weight and clear more room.

I am not surprised, with all respect to A-6, the F-4 is expected to be one of the most selling modules in DCS. Probably several times the projected sales of A-6.

Above is from the 17.5 patch. This could be it? The server runs Normandy and I have 2.0 version. If that texture took time to load it may have happened while I already opened the F10.

In the spirit of Mosquito ergonomics I suppose these lights were installed under the seat. I’d love to have that. Cool addition that will happen right after we get the Very pistol implemented…

That is exactly the problem - they are shared with other players. I don't want to see other players random route marks. The purpose of these circles is to mark targets that you spotted. I need map markings to indicate my planned waypoints and landmarks that I want to spot on the way for navigation (bridge, crossroads, particular bend in the river, etc.). I want to write things on them such as the expected RDF angle to the radio beacon. This is just clutter for other players.

Project Overlord server, in Mosquito. On the ground, enter F10 map, move it around and measure distances - then when clicking F1 to return to cockpit view the game hangs and I have to kill the process. Sometimes the transition works, but eventually gets stuck in every sortie attempt (4 in a row). I only experienced this in MP.

Just reiterating, I flew on Project Overlord server, no plane icons on F10 full self navigation, love it. Fog and rain conditions - perfect for an NOE run deep into enemy territory under the noses of enemy fighters. I pre-planned a route, calculated stopwatch times and radio DF directions (had to part memorize part write it down because we can’t bloody mark a route or waypoints on F10), then executed 18 minutes of DR flight across the channel, two more legs on compass & DF between land marks - missed the last one so I had to bury my head in F10 map to find a landmark to fix myself. The plane lost 50 feet of altitude and I banged my #1 prop on a tree. Wasted 35 precious minutes (incl. ground time) of my very limited online time. Not enough time for another attempt. All the functionality I need from an AI pilot is to receive a plane almost perfectly trimmed, and maintain heading & altitude, while I do navigators s#!t. All I need for my navigator is to be able to mark stuff on F10 for my self navigation needs only - not shared with other players, and not affecting the knee board.

That is cool! Nice. I love the use of correct gloves. Does this apply to V for Victory?

Forget about the P-8. You have the Remote Indicating (RI) compass (rotating needle) and the Gyro compass (the horizontal one). The gyro works at all angles but may drift over time. You use this one while you are banked in a turn. The RI you have to remember to turn on (switches on the left). It only works correctly when you are about level, so this is the one you use while maintaining course and it is very reliable. The needle is high above the dial so your “reading” changes awkwardly depending on your viewing angle. The correct way to use it is to set the broad arrow to the direction you want to keep, and then just keep the needle parallel to the arrow. While maintaining course, check occasionally that your gyro did not drift relative to RI - it usually holds pretty well for a very long time.

The clipboard “mark” is a kind of a “cheat” but I consider it a practical one. Unlike a real pilot that will carefully prepare a mission and familiarize himself with visual navigation points in the mission area, we jump between different maps, different planes with different Nav aids, and different sides of the conflict, in a hop-on multiplayer sortie. Some of us have too little time to study the geography, especially in MP. A Kneeboard mark will not allow a very precise navigation - especially if the maps pages do not happen to zoom on where you want, but at least you can use the large-scale map pages to not get totally lost. The Mosquito offers something unique that no other warbird currently has - ADF (radio) navigation. The mission designer must place beacons though for you to home on. Some MP servers do that. The ADF can be used for more that just flying to/away from the beacon. When I fly Dead Reckoning I often set it up (the ADF ring) to alert me when to turn, so I do not have to maintain a very accurate speed over long distances - Compass & Radio, instead of Compass & Stopwatch. Requires some preflight planning (or a damn AI pilot so I can delve into F10 to calculate in-flight), but most rewarding when it works.

FB.VI entered service in May 1943. Initially with Merlin 23, but with Merlin 25 after the first few hundred produced (out of over 4000). The Merlin 25 was at the time the best Sea-level version, and was considered a big boost to performance. In comparative tests it was faster than any Spitfire version including the low-altitude hotrod Griffon powered Spit XII. Until mid/late 1944 FB.VI intruders felt comfortable that they can out-run the contemporary 109 and 190 variants. This of course may suffer from survivors bias, as those that were able to out run the enemy came back to report it. Around may/june 1944 they requested the use of 150 octane fuel and +25 boost for day operations, since they felt they no longer had the speed advantage. This is the time of the 109G14 and 190A8 I suppose. Our mosquito is limited to +18 boost. In addition, there is some ambiguity regarding what was the sea-level speed of “our” version of the FB.VI. Within that range, our FB.VI is at the slowest end. It matches the performance tests of HJ796 which was shown to be underperforming. There is no official test of FB.VI in our exact configuration that is not HJ796, so some extrapolation is required from other tests (e.g. HX809). These give a sea-level speed estimate that is 15 mph faster than the DCS FB.VI, which is quite significant, though not entirely game breaking. Real planes did have variance between individual air frames - we got a lemon one…

It was not restricted to 3G. That silly statement gets repeated because there is a British evaluation report of the mosquito as a day fighter that complains about stick forces and that the balancing weight (whose purpose is to increase stick forces under G and dumpen oscillations) restricts it to 3 G. Mosquitoes could pull enough G to rip their wings off - and it’s not that the wings were weak, quite the opposite. The statement of whoever wrote that specific report is a complaint - not a technical statement. He was probably used to the very light elevators of the Spitfires or Hurricanes and compared to that, more than 3G (at high speeds) likely required a very stern pull or the use of 2 hands. Other reports state that the stick forces are quite light at slow speeds and that the stick stiffens as speeds increase in the roll axis as well. The test pilot of rebuilt KA114 said in an interview that he uses 2 hands on the stick for the aerobatics. The P-47 in comparison is much more nimble in the roll axis. At high speeds the P-47 had good stick forces, so it should be much easier for the pilot to throw it around. In terms of turning circles, the Mosquito should actually have a small advantage over the P-47 with lower wing loading and power loading.

That does not cut it. It does not work in MP, it kills immersion, and it messes up my dead-reckoning navigation. Long time ago, a navigator AI was mentioned by ED. It has been so long since anything was added to the Mosquito (or the rest of WWII modules) that I don’t think it will ever happen. I have no idea what the ED WWII team are doing. I really hope that if not finishing up the Mosquito that they are working hard on that F6F Hellcat that they announced.

3rd party devs are staking their claims. Announcements are cheap - the actual releases rate is still glacial. Understandable, given the work that goes into a module, but still. I am pretty sure that by the end of the decade some of the announced modules would still be in EA status or less.

Did you forget to close the window?

I don’t think the aim-9 were meant for dueling - more like mutual protection, so you can shoot a Mig off your wingman’s tail, while you both are trying to disengage. I’d be surprised if they ever carried more than 2 Sidewinders on operations.

And who is flying the plane?

This one’s pretty cool. The wing diagonal is even painted on the drop tanks, so now they have a right & left distinct tanks and if they switch them it will ruin the pretty lines

Regarding the Gazelle, 590 hp is for the SA-341. SA-342 variants had more powerful engines (may differ between sub-variants, there are many and I am in no way an expert on helicopters), wikipedia mentions 870 hp, which is crazy power loading for a 1 ton helicopter, compared to the others in the list (numbers as above, I didn’t confirm their stats). To get some intuition into the power loading, we can convert it to climb rate units: 75*hp/mass_kg = rate_m/s This is if somehow miraculously 100% of the power was used to pull the helicopter up (not real of course). Ordered increasing: For the OH-58 numbers: 29 m/s (5685 ft/m) Huey by the above numbers: 36 m/s (7056 feet per min). Mi-24 from wikipedia, empty 8500 kg, power 2x2200 hp: 39 m/s (7637 ft/m) Mi-8MT from wikipedia, empty 7100 kg 2x1950 hp: 41 m/s (8104 ft/m) BO-105, above numbers: 48 m/s (9533 ft/m) For the SA-341, above numbers: 49 m/s (9672 ft/m). SA-342 assuming ~1000 kg and 870 hp: 65 m/s (12,836 ft/m) So the SA-342 really stands out in terms of its power loading and the OH-58 is at the opposite end. In helicopters the power loading is expressed differently than in fixed wing aircraft, so it is not a simple indication of speed, or lift capacity. I think that the most clear expression would be how abruptly you can rip the helicopter off the ground, which explains DCS Gazelle’s leaping so easily into the air.

Ooohh I want Jester with Arnold Schwartzenegger’s voice, or even better Darth Vedar’s voice! “I find your lack of flares, disturbing…”

From the footage it looks like the pod uses a 2-axes gimbal with yaw & pitch only, so there is no stabilization in the (camera’s) roll axis - if the plane changes attitude the image will rotate by a few degrees depending on where the pod is pointed relative to the airframe.

Unlike the other variants, Mosquito FB.VI is optimized for very low altitudes - its relative performance degrades quickly with altitude. It was faster than any Luftwaffe fighter at sea level when it was introduced - in mid 1943. The 190D9 and 109K are the final variants of these fighters which entered service around the beginning of 1945, and were faster than FB.VI even at sea level. The 190A8 was about as fast as the FB.VI at sea level, when the latter was limited to +18 boost (130 octane fuel). To compete with the later 1944/5 fighters FB.VI needed 150 octane fuel that allowed +25 boost. All day ranger/intruder by that time were done with 150 octane - I don’t know how many other FB.VI mosquitoes used this. Now, having said that, the DCS FB.VI is indeed slow - it is graphically modeled with no exhaust shrouds and the short stub exhausts (for day operations), but has the performance as if it is equipped with the saxophone exhausts + flame shrouds (for night operations), which is about 15 mph slower. This is a repeated issue with FB.VI modelings that rely on a Boscombe Down test of a certain under-performing airframe. I posted about this issue here: and ED marked it as “investigating” but we have not heard anything since.

Here’s even more realism - I am not operating the virtual cockpit with a virtual five finger hand. In the real plane, lifting the cover and pressing the button under it is 1 (one) action. This is not just coil & boost, also fire extinguisher, drop tanks release, undercarriage latch and flaps latch. They are all 1 action, not 2. Moving the flaps handle is one operation by the pilot, regardless of how he needs to grab the lever in order to flick the latch open with his finger at the same time.

I don’t think ED consider this as a bug, but an intended feature.

Of course Corrected.