Bozon

They were all razorbacks during normandy. The first bubble tops D-25 were just entering service at that time.

Thanks for taking the time to check this @Yo-Yo, but for the life of me I can’t get more than 333 mph out of her. Perhaps I am doing something wrong - maybe some other players can test this too, so I’ll be sure it’s me. It is a combination of added drag and ruining the exhaust thrust. The end result of a significant speed loss is what the original flight tests report.

@Yo-Yo thanks for looking into this, I really do appreciate it. A few comments if I may: No histeria, I was just testing the speeds and according to them our Mosquito barely outruns a Spit IX (if at all, I don't own DCS Spitfire so I cannot compare). I tested again: +18, 3000 rpm, 100 feet, atmosphere at 15 C, standard pressure, weight just under 20,000, no bombs or DT, radiators closed - the speed in F10 is 289 knots, or 333 mph. To make sure I don't under-test by not completing the acceleration I start at a higher speed, stabilize and trim and let the speed bleed down until it stabilizes, then continue for another minute or two to make sure it is stable. The Saxophones were also covered by flame dumpners/shrouds. These must add some drag as they are bigger than the saxophone itself, they have an air intake, and there are 4 of them. In addition, the shrouds may interfere with the exhaust jet - the saxophone did not stick out of the shroud (what would be the point then?), so it ejects and mixes the gases into the slow air inside the wider shroud. I can image this is not good for converting the exahust jet into thrust, to put it mildly.

These are not Fox-3s. Aim-7s of that era will get you into a turn fight - you fire the aim-7 from a fairly short range, fast closure, and have to keep nose roughly in the direction of the enemy to guide it. By the time it hits/misses you don’t have time to turn 180 and increase the range again - you are in WVR fight.

Maybe there should be degrees of Jester verbality. Between “silent” and “jester” there could be “laconic” where jester just conveys the required information without jokes or added comments.

More? We haven’t seen any screenshots of it…

Israeli F-15 did carry AIM-7. They were used in the 1982 Lebanon war with less than stellar success - from rumors I heard that the AIM-7 was very susceptible to even primitive jammers carried by the Syrian Migs. F-16s could not carry AIM-7, except the Egyptian variants, at least as far as I know. The US F-16s were fitted to carry the Aim-120 and skipped the Aim-7. However, the US initially refused to sell the AIM-120 to most foreign countries and so for many years F-16s in foreign air-forces had only heaters.

The “all aspect” title is handed to missiles quite liberally. Getting a tone for a split second from front aspect says very little of the actual kill probability. At least in the Israeli air force the aim-9 and Shafrir of the 80s up to early 90s (L?M? & Shafrir 3) were still considered as reliable only in 90 degrees aspect. The older missile were considered “1840” - 1800 meters and 40 degrees aspect. There was also little faith in the Sparrows. Up to early 90s only the F-15 and Phantom carried then in the IAF (no Aim-120 at all). F-16s were heaters only. As one pilot described them to me, the Aim-7s purpose was to force the opponent to “break 90” at a few miles so you could enter WVR with an advantage. That was the advantage of the F-15 vs. F-16 in mock dogfights, and allowed the Phantoms a little bit of a fighting chance vs. the others. Missiles seekers in DCS are performing a bit on the optimistic side of the spread in the real things. That is not criticism, it is like that when they are modeled on official data. Also remember that when referring to missiles in controlled experiments, those are brand new, polished and carefully prepared, and launched in very controlled conditions, with as little interference in the background as possible - in combat these would be missiles taken out of a long storage, hastily mounted in field conditions, and launched in some erratic conditions with clouds and sun glares in the background.

Sure there is, this is why I gave the climbing example: you fly at the same airspeed and same climb rate = same effective power. The MAP will be different.

By “same power” I mean same power at the prop (BHP at the prop axis, or same torque at given RPM), not same manifold pressure. With the levers linked I may need a higher MP to achieve the same actual power at the prop, hence more fuel consumption for given actual power. But since the max power is the same (both levers firewalled), I have the same range of power levels. Since we do not have “power at the prop” gauge, you can think of this as climb-rate at a given air speed. I can achieve with linked levers any climb rate you will set with split levers - but I will burn more fuel doing it. Edit: You may be correct and achieve a higher effective power in cases of high altitude where I can reach the MP limit at less than firewalled throttle and boost.

I have not found any real vice to linking the boost & throttle. Probably eats a little more fuel. The thing is, for max MP you need to add boost at any altitude, thus by linking the handles I get the same full power range. Now, it may be more efficient to get intermediate power by maximizing throttle and minimizing boost, but it is still the same power - I just burn more fuel. So, unless you really need to extend your range, there is little harm in linking the levers. Every time I don’t, I end up destroying the engine… 3 separate levers are just to many for me…

Aim-7s be damned - we have a cannon!

North Africa is just a cross between Arabia and classic Mediterranean - it is south of the Sahara where things get really crazy.

Ed Heinemann removed from the A-4 design anything not deemed absolutely necessary. This is how they managed to make it so small and cheap. No parking break, no nose steering, no self ground power, and no cup holder. I am surprised they went with two rudder pedals - they could have strapped the pilot’s leg to just the one and he’d push/pull on it.

The Gazelle update looks like it will upgrade the module greatly. This is actually more appealing to me than the KW. Lets see how this works when released - credit card is at the ready

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…

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.

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.