Bushmanni

Warthog HOTAS doesn't have radar antenna elevation wheel and the ministick is unsatisfactory hence it fails as an universal HOTAS.

GMTR is the notch filter and it's adjustable in real F-15 and F-16, and most likely in any other modern plane. We don't have it because of low fidelity systems modeling in FC3 planes. To have it properly modeled we would also need a proper modeling of ground clutter like wind moving vegetation, waves, birds, moving clouds, cars, etc. that give false moving target indications. Also smooth ground (like still water surfaces that reflect the wave away from the receiver) or smooth surfaced very dry sand (absorbs the radar wave) gives very little ground clutter making it possible to see notching targets against the ground.

If your sightline is perfectly parallel to a flat surface, the line will never hit it. If it is even slightly depressed it will eventually hit the surface and if it's slightly elevated it continually gets farther from the surface and thus never hits the surface. As a clear distinction between sky and surface clearly exists a visible horizon also exists.

Is there official confirmation somewhere that NTTR is curved or has someone actually tested it? AFAIK the only official word is that DCS 2.0 supports curved maps but I haven't seen any mention if NTTR actually uses this feature. NTTR is so small that curved or not doesn't make any difference though so measuring it might be hard to do. The real ramifications of having curved map would present itself in the internal coordinate system of the game as getting altitude coordinates isn't just a simple extraction of single coordinate in single axis as vertical axis is different in every point of the map. So far I haven't seen any changes in scripting engine to make it work with a curved earth which makes me believe there's no map using curved earth surface atm. in DCS. Can anyone confirm I'm wrong as I'd like to be?

Ionized gas glows with the color of the emission spectrum of its atoms so for example air glows blue because of the emission spectrum of nitrogen and oxygen (like in the flash of lightning). Solid matter on the other hand glows red, yellow or white depending on the temperature according to emission spectrum of black body radiation. So based on color of the flame it is composed of small particles of the shell eroded and heated by friction.

I think it's relatively easy to write a program that gives BRAA to all nearby enemies utilizing export scripts. They don't block just Tacview but the whole system of exporting data from the game to prevent this.

1900z sounds good.

What timezone, what TS server?

I don't think we have much to benefit from many meetings unless we practice together which might be hard to organize during the week as many people probably can't show up. Maybe we could arrange a practice session on Thursday night maybe 1800zulu for everyone who can show up. We would fly the event mission but some of us on the red side and practice tactics utilizing our superior numbers to full effect. The important thing we need to discuss and decide before the event is how we team up, ie. who flies with who and how we schedule the teams, ie. if we all go out simultaneously in big waves or if we keep constant pressure on the reds. I think we can do this about 1 hour before the event when we have a better idea who are actually showing up. We should set up whisper system for global channel (guard) so we can communicate between teams and use raygun call to ID friendlies or strobes. You obviously need to state your callsign when you reply to raygun for this to work ("RedShot, raygun", "Bushmanni, buddyspike").

Most of my dogfight wins in BVR servers happen by me going for aggressive one circle fight and the bandit flies in front of me and gets blasted by gun or missile, depending on how fast he is. It's much easier to force one circle flow instead of two circle flow and with missiles it doesn't matter if the other guy is going gazillion knots with awesome STR as a missile will catch him anyway. Also many modern planes are built to have very good ITR and high alpha capability, presumably for this reason.

I have seen a Finnish study about algorithm for a flight director system that guides you to steer an optimal missile avoidance maneuver updating the calculations in real time. The study didn't consider if it's possible to know the location of the missile (required for the calculations) or have enough calculation power available to do the calculations in real time though. Tracking the incoming missile while maneuvering is hard and it's also hard to make a system that can estimate the missile position using educated quess better than human.

You get the best speed at 40k, you are too high for max speed run. Also you should climb at 1.0M to 45k and then dive at 5 degrees to about 35k and accelerate to around 1.3-1.4M and then climb at 5 degrees to 40k and then accelerate in level flight. This gets you past the transonic drag faster and hence saves fuel for longer acceleration.

Eagle still has the advantage utilizing snapshot opportunities. In Eagle you can score hits from pretty unbelievable situations if you practice snap shots (like scoring with a snap without a HUD, spray and pray). Although a lot of Eagles snap shot prowess also has to do with its gun that has crazy fire rate and ammo count making spray and pray viable method. Snap shot prowess is one of the reasons why Eagle has more than a decent chance of winning guns only BFM against Flanker in DCS currently. (Other being the superior T/W so you can extend and reset the fight if you fail your snapshots to try again.) While M-2000 is good at pointing it's nose quickly and precisely (Flanker fails at this) it's gunsight and gun combo requires you to get a tracking shot opportunity (getting in the targets six) to have a decent chance of hitting a target. I think it's going to suffer similar fate in gunzo BFM as Flanker ie. winning by the numbers but losing in practice. (Unless real Mirage actually has similar style gunsight as all other of its contemporaries and it is added to DCS.)

I would emhasize the point that you can't outrun a missile. Keeping up your energy usually sets you up as target for a missile if the bandit knows what he's doing. In a many vs. many gunzo Eagle is the king though because of the points mentioned in the article. No other plane can touch you unless you let them which gives you the freedom to pick your fights while running down your opponents who try to run.

I'm not sure if my calculation makes more sense if you think carefully about it. I was calculating difference in speed between uphill launch and downhill launch between sea level and 10km altitude, not deltav from the engine. Your calculation was correct for a missile dropped from standstill but it's different when the missile is already going very fast. The difference would be greater if the missile in question had smaller initial speed. It might be very hard to wrap your head around the concept that speed gain is smaller when when you already have some initial speed but that's how it works. Basically gravity has less time to accelerate the missile and/or the velocity components are not parallel to each other due to the path used so they don't add up arithmetically. I actually calculated the speed difference with both of these ideas and got the same result as with using energy principle.

Quick calculation of energies gives a ~140m/s advantage to Mach 4 missile fired downwards from 10km altitude vs upwards the same trajectory based on pure energy alone disregarding drag (end speed 1430 m/s vs. 1286 m/s). Basically the potential energy (gravity assist) from altitude is pretty small compared to the kinetic energy of the missile when speaking of modern BVR missiles that reach speeds in excess of Mach 4. In practice in DCS I have measured about 2 nm range advantage to the guy firing down from 20k feet vs. firing up when both of their their missiles have slowed down to Mach 2. It's still much easier for the low guy to trash the high guys missile vs. vice versa though so the 2nm advantage is even smaller in practice.

Weight and in this case (assuming both aircrafts are clean) fuel weight makes a big impact on turning ability. If you have both planes at 100% the Flanker will lose without a doubt as it has internal fuel tanks that hold extra fuel worth of several external tanks in other planes. Set the fuel amount so that both planes can fly about the same time in afterburner and see what happens then.

The range advantage would still be due to missile taking less draggy flight path instead of having more energy due to flying downhill if I understood correctly? Wouldn't this be possible also in the uphill shot where missile first climbs to higher flightpath before steering for intercept?

I have got a chance to play with a F-18C stick and it definitely felt like a CH stick but better. CH has relatively strong center bump and little progression in the force while the Hornet stick had quite subtle but noticeable center bump but very nice progression in the force but I could still move it around single handedly with ease. Flight control system is completely revamped in Super Hornet so I wouldn't be surprised if the stick also felt different. Super Hornet is pure FBW while legacy Hornet has also a mechanical backup system that the stick has to be able to latch into.

Nice event. Start was slow but once it got going things went smoothly. Pity the west side only got two teams together. jOONAS did a very good job debuting in modern BFM/ACM combat and everyone else in our team also did a very good job, it was a pleasure to fly with you. Thanks also for the opposing team for good fights. 4vs4 was a good idea as this is more "realistic" way to fight as air combat tactics are essentially team tactics and this gives you the opportunity to put them to the test. Flying with more people is also more fun. Here are the server tracks of my server. http://1drv.ms/1Of2Jvg

SF will have one more pilot: SF_jOONAS

Pitting stealth planes against non-stealth planes isn't future of air combat, it's stealth vs. stealth. PAK-FA is supposedly going to have DIRCM which might render IR missiles useless, or at least you need to fire two or more to get a hit. Also radar missiles are most likely going to be useless against it in most situations as the seeker can detect the target likely only just before flying past it. Which means gun fights might not be history after all. The question is how effective missiles (radar and IR) are going to be against stealth planes with DIRCM. The other thing with maneuverability is that besides BFM it is also useful for missile avoidance and getting in shooting position or out of enemy WEZ. At close range the missile easily outmaneuvers any aircraft but at longer range this changes. More maneuverable plane can avoid missiles shot more closer compared to less maneuverable plane. In BVR the required maneuverability is more about making 180 degree turns more or less repeatedly, climbing and acceleration which all get better with better traditional maneuverability. So a better turning plane might be able to get close enough to its target to fire from Rne while target can't do the same as it's Rne is shorter due to better maneuverability of the other plane. Then again it might be that stealth planes rarely find each other in the air so the best option is to just destroy the enemy stealth planes on the ground with stealthy strike planes.

I would say F-35 isn't air superiority plane as it's uncertain how it's going to fare against PAK-FA, J-20 or any other future 5. gen air superiority fighter. US has F-22 but everyone else is stuck with F-35. I think the F-35 is still the best western plane besides F-22 to fight against 5. gen aggressors but is it good enough, especially price ie. numbers wise? Of course the 5. gen threat hasn't emerged yet but you have to consider it when you buy planes that's going to be your inventory for the next 30 years. It's no wonder why Japan is trying to build its own 5. gen air superiority fighter.

R-73 has 75 degree gimbal limit. If you have enough lateral separation you can fire the Archer on a target coming at you so that the missile can keep the target at less than 100 degrees of flight path axis all the time while making a over 180 degree turn and catching the target from behind. In the video below the missile is fired 60 degrees off boresight and it keeps the target always less than 100 degrees off velocity axis during the turn (pulling 35 degrees AOA and 40G's). All of that is within limits of the missile. If DCS missiles lose lock they will still keep turning and make it seem like it is still chasing the target but keep turning past the target (but not smoking anymore so you can see it well only in Tacview). There's also s small chance that the missile is able to re-acquire if the missile seeker stumbles directly on the target again but that is very rare.

I'm in. I have to check with other SF guys if they are also available at the set day.