Bozon

The R530 was considered useless. It got exactly 1 kill on an unsuspecting Mig-19 from behind, and the Israeli Mirage 3s hardly ever carried it. In fact the whole radar of the Mirage III was considered as dead weight and the Israelis requested its replacement with a simpler range-finder in the Mirage V (Nesher). Mirage III was considered a better fighter than the F-4E and was responsible for air defense and air superiority during Yom-Kippur. On the other hand the Phantom was hands down far superior striker, no question. Dany Shapira, Israel’s chief test pilot at the time, says in his book he used some personal connections to get a flight in a Phantom before they were even being considered to be sold to Israel. He was impressed, but when the American instructor asked him what he thought he answered tacktlessly “In a dogfight, I’d rather be in a Mirage”.

@Racoon and @Yo-Yo Thanks for posting the above recording, it helped me find the source of the speed difference. There is an issue with the slip/turn indicator. In the recording above, the rudder trim is pointed at the "R" of the "TRIM" label. At that state the slip needle is NOT CENTERED but the mosquito reaches 340 mph - faster than my tests. Rotating the rudder trimmer to the neutral position (white triangle) also centers the slip needle - this is how I flew in my tests. My no-slip trim state should have been faster, however it is the other way around! To confirm, I tested the Mosquito with the un-centered slip needle and indeed was able to obtain 296 kts (340 mph). Then trimmed the rudder to center the slip needle and lost 7-8 mph to get the familiar 332-333 mph result.

Visual ID depends on situation. In the Israeli air force, the CGIs keep a very tight monitoring of all friendly aircraft - this allowed them to authorize BVR “fire at will” in many cases for the Sparrow totting F-4Es in 1973 and the F-15As in 1982. As part of a strike package sparrows are not useful at all. Your job is to strike and GTFO - if you are forced to engage enemy fighters, given 1970s technology, it will be from a range too short for a BVR game. The Israelis had little faith in the Sparrows anyway, maybe that is the reason for this interesting field mod to take heaters in their place. On the other hand in 1973 they still had a lot of faith in the cannon.

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.