carbolicus

If you’re not pedalling away like you’re riding a bike, you’re not doing it right. Especially with high-powered tail-dragger props, on take-off and landing. Never flown a war-bird, but the F4U responses to control inputs are very believable to me. However, the lack of feedback through control feel, I think makes flying a PC sim more difficult than flying the real thing - I certainly find that to be so. By that I mean that the way the sim responds to control input seems realistic, but your only cues as to what is happening is what you see on your monitor or through your VR headset. In real flying, besides what you see out the window, you feel what’s happening through your hands, feet and backside (and the sound of the slipstream), which means you can respond more intuitively to all the yawing around you get when making frequent power adjustments as you endeavour to maintain the correct speed and rate of descent on approach. And this is all the more pronounced the slower you are flying. Carrier landings are effectively short-field ones. Whether force-feedback helps I can’t comment, I’ve never tried it.

Absolutely agree with the above post. Rudder trim should be used judiciously; much better to get used to using your feet a lot when you fly a high-powered prop aircraft. When flying a relatively high-powered single in a bush-flying environment, I never used rudder trim at all. The central position was about right for cruising and it was no labour to apply a bit of foot pressure on climbs and descents, although admittedly we never flew higher than 10,000 feet. We’d also quite often be using short-ish airstrips which were sometimes wet/soft, so you’d need to approach at a slower than normal speed, which meant you were on the back side of the drag curve and hence speed-unstable. This in turn meant that you’d frequently be making large power adjustments to keep both the speed right and on the glide path - and that meant rapid and significant rudder inputs, especially in hot and gusty conditions. So it was important that the rudder trim was central. It’s also easy to get way out of whack with trim when you also have aileron trim - there was a case in WW2 of a Halifax bomber declared ‘rogue’ by its inexperienced pilot because it wouldn’t fly straight. The station commander was suspicious, saw that the pilot had full rudder trim one way and full aileron the other, wound them both back to neutral and found the aeroplane flew perfectly.

Make sure the tail wheel is unlocked for taxiing, otherwise you’ll get nowhere! It’s always locked when you start a mission on the runway. I’ve had no issues with taxiing (not to say it doesn’t need some tweaking perhaps).

Yes, it certainly will bounce given enough provocation - just needs a bit more tendency to do so perhaps for full realism! I was just comparing tracks of my landings with WW2 footage of carrier landings. But maybe that’s not the best news to hear for a warbird that’s already quite tricky to fly!

Very interesting and helpful reading people’s comments on curves etc to improve the feel of the F4U. Here’s what works for me with my 20 cm stick extension: I notice some people dial in some saturation on the Y axis - I prefer not to do this as you lose the ability for full control deflection - but you need full back stick initially on take-off and nearly so for a three point landing. You’ll also need full rudder for spin recovery. I’ve just gone for a 25% positive curve for pitch, no saturation. For the rudder I’ve been experimenting with some X saturation so I have less pedal travel when I need full rudder, but with a very flat 35% curve so it’s not too twitchy when adjusting balance finely for power changes - you have to do a lot of pedalling in this aircraft (or any piston single when approaching slowly on the back-side of the drag curve for a short-field/carrier landing, when power changes have to be frequent and significant). So far so good for me - others may not get along with this. For roll I’ve actually tried X saturation of 70% or 80%, with a negative curve of minus 10 or 15 - this is because I don’t like fiddling with aileron trim and it means that I can adjust for a wing low with only a slight movement - makes it easier on a landing approach. Early days yet, but working for me so far.

Really enjoying the F4U, great module! My only criticism is that when landing it seems to stick firmly to the deck/ground however you land it, whereas I’d expect more animation as regards bouncing etc. Footage of WW2 carrier landings, where the aircraft are normally dropped in just above the stall and touch down quite firmly, show a tendency to bounce around a bit despite shock absorbers etc. If the touchdown is at a higher speed than ideal, then as the tail drops when the mains hit, there’s still enough speed for an aerodynamic bounce - but we don’t seem to get this either. Never flown a warbird IRL but have flown relatively high-powered singles, including taildraggers, in a bush-flying environment where short field landings - what a carrier landing is of course - were more often necessary than not. The F4U just needs a bit of tweaking re landing behaviours perhaps. But nevertheless, a truly great module!

Only problem with it now is that since the FC4 update flaps, gear and speed brakes don’t work properly - there may be a work-around though. I now use it more for set-dressing!

The VSN Mirage is a pretty good mod - I’ve made some acceptable single-seat 1967 - 1973 skins for it. It might not fly accurately and has the F15 cockpit, but looks good. The MiG 21 has some excellent mid-east skins too, and the H6-J makes an acceptable Tu 16 which I’ve bodged up with some Egyptian skins.

Just seen this post - and please do it! It’s now a great terrain, and ideal for 1967 - 1973 scenarios. Would it not be relatively easy to do? It needs simplifying in a sense - towns and cities are smaller etc. We’re getting a MiG 17 soon - just made to go with ‘60’s and ‘70’s missions!

To any British here who have ever watched Phantoms in the 70's and 80's flying low-level in the Lake District, the CWG map provides a passable substitute!

Many thanks again for this!

Thanks both!

The ILS frequencies for both runway directions at Hahn are 112.00 and higher. They hence don’t work - the A10C ILS frequency range cannot be set above 111.95, and although you can set 112.00 in the F4E it won’t pick it up. Having said that, must just say that the CWG map is excellent; looks fantastic and performs very well indeed in VR!

This looks great and I’ll be downloading as soon as I get some downtime for a DCS session - many thanks!

I really recommend this map. Performance for me with a 3080ti is better than on any other map I have, it looks excellent, and the potential for missions and campaigns which can use much of the aircraft and kit we have in DCS is enormous. Hopefully Ugra will do what some other map-makers don’t, which is keep on top of it and update it frequently. I like Sinai a lot too, but updates are far too few and far between.