mattag08

About the VF-154 Black Knights VF-154 is the premiere F-14 squadron in the DCS World community. Operating using real world training, tactics, and procedures, VF-154 aims to push the limits of what is possible in DCS and provide a highly immersive experience. VF-154 has dedicated positions for Pilots and Radar Intercept Officers (RIOs) and takes full advantage of the multi-crew capabilities of the F-14 within DCS world. The primary mission of VF-154 is establishing and maintaining air dominance through a variety of air-to-air missions. VF-154 is also tasked with a significant number of air-to-surface missions such as CAS, DAS, aerial reconnaissance, FAC-A, and more. VF-154 takes its role as a carrier-borne air superiority fighter very seriously and is highly trained in carrier air operations. Here's a playlist of some videos our squadron/community has made: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAQfOlVAAqEkisOV9iZWVfmU4pM_P2PqL About CSG-2 CSG-2 was founded in the summer of 2018 as a way to bring together like-minded DCS players into a unit based roughly on the ideas of other highly structured gaming communities. At its core the group was to have a US Navy focus. US Navy rank structure, carrier operations, and other naval aviation concepts were implemented to give members a sense of immersion and operational scope. Early operations were small, numbering just a handful of pilots, but the group quickly grew. By the beginning of 2019 the group was already conducting missions with approximately 20 aircraft. Today, the group regularly fields approximately 30 players each Saturday. These players are members of the two F-18 squadrons, an F-14 squadron, and support personnel (Air Intercept Controllers, Air Traffic Controllers, and LSOs) that make up CSG-2. Is CSG-2 right for me? DCS is the primary pastime and go to entertainment for our members. The expectation is that you will fly DCS a lot because you enjoy it and want to play it. Hopefully that’s why you want to join a group like ours. Reading some training materials will be required. Aviation is a complex subject and military aviation is even moreso. There will be some reading required to meet the standard. If you do not want to learn the details of military aviation, there are many other units that cater to a relaxed, casual playstyle. We cater to those who: are bored with the same old grind of the public servers; want to be part of a complex, multi-level, coordinated, and discplined effort with dozens of other players; and continually seek higher levels of knowledge and skill. Member Requirements Our operations are conducted on Saturdays during the U.S. evening time. We gather at approximately 1800 CT and are in the sim and airborne at approximately 1900 CT after briefings. Missions typically last 2-3 hours. It is expected that members will show up each Saturday (on time) unless they notify their chain of command that they are unable to attend. Due to the heavy time commitment placed on the member, staff, instructors, and HQ personnel we ask that you only apply if you believe you can have 50%+ attendance on Saturdays. Training is conducted at the squadron level. Days and times are set by each squadron. In general, training times are usually during U.S. evening hours. Squadrons generally request that each pilot attend training at least once per week, but offer multiple times to attend. Players outside of North/South America should consider heavily if they can attend U.S. central time zone events, which will be at odd hours of the day, consistently on a weekly basis. Additional membership requirements are detailed on the application. If you are interested, feel free to join our discord for more information or to speak with our recruitment personnel: https://discord.gg/4snDas6 If you'd like to apply, visit our forums and fill out an application: http://www.csg-2.net/forums/index.php?topic=9.0

The spoiler brakes should close if the throttle is advanced, so this is backwards of the correct behavior.

HB, something has to be done with the missiles/radar. We are going on a year and a half without any solid resolution to these issues. The F-14 is a fleet defender/interceptor made to engage in air-to-air combat first and foremost. It's not enough to simply keep pawning off this problem on ED. There clearly needs to be increased dialogue between you and them about your module if ED truly is the only source of a solution. It's not acceptable that the F-14 has been incomplete or bugged in air-to-air for its entire release life. While I've historically been your biggest supporter, I'm going to have to stop recommending people purchase the F-14 until it is in an actually finished state. I've heard "the next patch will fix 'X' or the next patch will add 'Y'" since March of 2019 and it has never turned out to be accurate in a year and a half.

+1

I've flown missions in MP and SP with Jester and human RIOs over the past day/weeks. No issues.

This is a variation on the old ghost track bug in TWS. When the contact notches the radar enters track hold for that track. All is well except the track will pick a random direction and drift towards the edge of the scope at multiple miles per second, which causes TWS-A to then fail horribly. This is reproducible with basically any BVR scenario where you launch and the enemy notches when the missile is detected (AI Su-27s are a good choice). I think the main bug here is in the speed and direction of the track(s). The radar certainly should enter track hold upon a lost track, but my understanding is it should calculate the lost track's movement based on the last known position and velocity so as to provide the best possible guidance to the AIM-54. I wonder if the tracks are having some calculation going to an undefined value (or close to) as the target's closure approaches the F-14's TAS.

Have to have the missiles prep'd, selected, and in A/A mode for quite awhile before you'll get a hot trigger. Also the WCS needs a valid track in TWS or STT to shoot at.

Make sure the MLC filter is on.

Enemy 4-ship is the issue mate.

Set Stored Heading Align in ME. Then it's only about 3 minutes. :)

I'm well aware. The point is if the TID isn't displaying independent contacts in TWS you cannot launch an AIM-54 at each aircraft in the group. The only solution is to STT individual contacts, but this means you will still have untargeted aircraft which means a lost BVR fight. Any situation where the enemy # > friendly # means an instant loss.

Why do separate, distinct targets appear in RWS or on the DDD, but not TWS?

Hmm, I certainly understand that the most important items in resolution are the beam width and the bandwidth of the transmitted pulse. I changed the wording, since resolution is probably not the right word. This has a good explanation: https://www.richardsonrfpd.com/docs/rfpd/Radar_Tutorial_Book1.pdf However, I do not know the beam width of the AWG-9. I would certainly love to know it.

At some point in the last year the modelling of two or more contacts being identified as a single return by the AWG-9 was implemented. This was changed in a patch at one point and has now become quite excessive. Targets will no longer breakout if they are within 100 m or so of each other. In general, the likelihood of properly detecting all aircraft in a 2-4 aircraft flight is near zero. I'm not an expert in the AWG-9 or on military radar, but I have doubts about the accuracy of this model (or perhaps it's a bug) for a few reasons: 1. The AWG-9 is extremely powerful (in transmit strength) eclipsing some 4th gen radars that were built after it. This should offer higher probability of detection. 2. There are situations where the radar sweep can fit between the two contacts yet they are not discriminated as discrete contacts on the TID. There are other situations where the DDD returns are obviously two distinct returns, but the TID does not display them as such. 3. Normal U.S. Navy combat training and tactics on BVR weapons employment are invalid and unusable with the current implementation. 4. The AWG-9 was built to simultaneously launch six AIM-54s at large formations of enemy aircraft due to the danger of the nuclear threat, meaning discrimination of targets in formation and building a trackfile on each to guide AIM-54s would be a high priority. A couple of gameplay reasons for a potential change: 1. The modelling of the radar is something the player (or perhaps even the developer) cannot know is 100% accurate to reality, so it would be good to err on the side of improved gameplay experience. I like the idea of late breakout contacts, but if it only ever happens at very short ranges regardless of contact separation, then tactics cannot be executed properly it is a very annoying experience to constantly end up unable to employ weapons on all aircraft in an enemy flight. 2. Enemies flying in combat spread should be observable as distinct contacts. If an enemy is not attempting to hide himself in a wingman's radar return by flying an extremely tight formation or behind his wingman, the radar should be able to discriminate between them. 3. It is impossible to use Jester to sort targets with another player if the TID does not display them as independent targets, which makes multiplayer BVR frustrating.

I don't think so. We've seen two main bugs regarding this: wingsweep changes and flaps changes, mostly in the direction of wingsweep to 20° and flaps full down. I don't think it's possible to click both simultaneously.

Had this happen to a squadron mate, but I'm unable to reproduce. No idea as to the cause, but the RIO joining was definitely involved.

Keep in mind that what you don't see on the HUD is the missile IR seeker is moving in a figure 8 pattern to try and locate the target which is why it can take a few seconds to get a good tone. It will keep moving in that pattern until the CAGE-SEAM light goes out, so just press the CAGE-SEAM button only about once every 3-5 seconds if you don't get a lock. It should be much quicker if you have a radar lock beforehand.

You don't always get to fly tacform.

AFAIK it's fine. The crosshair doesn't move, but HB has stated that's accurate. But if you press the CAGE-SEAM button the light will illuminate and you will hear a good tone after a few seconds if the enemy is near the crosshair.

Nah, I'm aware of the carrier magnetic field. Just fly away from the carrier and enter a turn of about 30°. The heading error will reach a large deviation rather quickly in my experience. For reference the F10 map is true heading not magnetic heading. You have to subtract/add the magnetic variation to find what DCS is saying your magnetic heading is (which is the actual heading used by pilots and indicated by instruments in the jet).

I'm curious if the INS heading drift is accurate or currently still bugged. Regardless of human RIO or Jester it is common to find the heading error reaches a maximum of approximately 20° within about 60 seconds of any pitch or roll deviation greater than 0°. Perhaps real tomcat crews had to deal with such inaccuracies, but as a commercial pilot who has navigated some inhospitable terrain, I would say that such a navigational error with such a rapid and continuous onset would be untenable as a navigational source. I would rather use my magnetic compass than such a system. Flying in IMC on instruments would be (is) completely unreliable and dangerous with this sort of error. Is there something I'm configuring wrong? I've tried every switch on the compass panel to no avail (I don't believe those are completely implemented yet?) as well. In coming up on 1.5 years of flying the DCS: F-14B I've never found a solution to this constant problem.

So you never fly formation as a wingman. Got it.

The difference is, we don't have the same dexterity as real life. We need a keybind or increased sensitivity to compensate.

The FPM shows true 1-to-1 velocity. The HUD is an abstracted representation of attitude like the VDI or BAI.

this is actually useful for those of us trying to sort in MP