Bozon

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.

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.

Was the AH secretly fixed? I flew Reflected’s V for Victory campaign mission 1 yesterday - again… because in the last two attempts I flew into the fog, vertigo’ed in the white soup and crashed or broke the airplane in a dive - this is because the AH was completely off and was useless. However, yesterday was a new attempt after the recent patch and the AH was showing close to the real horizon during the entire mission - and I was able to fly completely blind, instruments only, incl. a prolonged instruments-only IFR to Manston using the radio DF, until I broke out of the clouds over the English coast. The AH was close enough to true to a few degrees. This allows correcting pitch by zeroing out the RoC indicator, and correcting bank angle by freezing the DI compass, to get the AH “image” that I needed to maintain for level flight. Anyone else noticed a difference since last patch? Or was I just lucky?

This assumes you have an axis to assign the brakes to. Some of us are forced to use a button.

The wings are not Deltas! That is heresy!

There are numerous issues with the Mosquito that are still open. While most of them are quite minor, two stand out to me as the most critical ones: 1. Navigator and pilot AI discussed above. 2. Piloting feedback - the mosquito feels completely bland. There is little to no indication to how much angle of attack we are pulling, how deep into the stall we are, or how many G. Since we are not in the plane we cannot feel this through the seat and stick - we need audio and visual cues that are missing, or just too minor to notice. Sound of wind flutter, vibrations, creaking (high G), etc. I don’t feel this in the Mosquito as much as I do in the other modules.

LoL, the mosquito cockpit design took a lot of thought and effort to make it this nonsensical - I mean, if they just randomly placed things here and there, some items may have ended up in a logical position. On a more serious note - the mosquito cockpit design looks like a hybrid between a fighter and a bomber - don’t forget it started out designed primarily as a bomber. Bombers classically have 2 pilots where the captain sits on the left, co-pilot on the right, and many levers and knobs are placed between the pilots so both could reach them - engine controls, gears, flaps, trims. In the mosquito it looks like they started to arrange it like a classic bomber, then suddenly realized that the guy on the starboard side is not a pilot - so they moved some of the controls to the left wall as typical in fighters. This is how we ended up with the throttle quadrant to the left, but the flaps and undercarriage levers on the right, bomber style. Elevator trim on the left, but ailerons and rudder trim on the right. Rockets were an afterthought, given to some engineer to place where the installation will be easiest, and this is how we ended up with the arming switch installed aft of the throttles (nowhere near the bombs arming panel), the volley select switch on the dashboard, and the firing trigger inside the throttle grip. Put together it is all a very lovely mess.

The two-stage compression Merlins are longer and thus had room for 6 exhausts stubs.

A new vid from the “Operations Room” channel - the 1970 furball of Israeli F-4Es and Mirage IIIs vs. Soviet piloted Mig 21s.

@Elf1606688794, well Nahumi is not exactly the average pilot - he has 14 kills total in F-4E and F-16A including F-16’s first ever kill, and was one of the F-16A formations leader during the attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor. You can hear him tell some of his stories (in English) here (3 part video):

Maps will keep coming out and getting expanded (for a price, see Normandy) because ED needs constant revenue streams: one branch is the modules, another is maps, and another small one is campaigns. Maps are relatively simpler to make than modules and they keep the 3D artists busy during lengthy phases of aircraft modules coding and testing. And it’s not like we are about to run out of pieces of earth to map.

Defending Ofir air base in the Sinai 1973.

I like Why are the letters on the sides of the roundel reveresed? edit: Seems like DCS is correct and the reference drawing is wrong.

I disagree and I like the hump on the back of the Bis - makes it look meaner. It’s a different kind of pretty… I also like the humped back A-4 Skyhawks better than the early version, just personal taste.