Bushmanni

Yeah, "Lentoupseeri" by Jari Rinne (Finnish language). It's a semi-autobiography and semi-rant about Finnish helicopter procurement. He began his career as a fighter pilot but transferred to helicopters due to medical reasons and finished as the commanding officer of the Helicopter squadron. He offers some insight into Finnish strategic, tactical and geographical environment regarding tactical use of helicopters in a battlefield. It's not very detailed but a knowledgeable and exprecienced sim chopper pilot should get something out of it. He also has some cool stories about his flying career.

Hugging ground might not be good against AIM-9X but for older missiles it has been tested to be valid way to defend against heat seekers. FDF helicopter unit conducted some tests on defending against fighters and concluded that it's fairly impossible to get a lock on a chopper that has its exhausts suppressed. Actual tests were made with MD-500 and Mi-8. MD-500 was very hard to get a lock on as the exhaust is under the tail boom although unsuppressed and as such the missile was constantly spoofed by IR emissions from ground. Mi-8 could be locked only from side aspect. Missiles used in the test were something used in Mig-21Bis in the 1980-1990. IRL time of day, weather and type of soil and vegetation would of course have effect on effectiveness. IRL of course ground emissions wouldn't be concern for SAM missiles whose targets a skylined. In DCS Stingers and Strelas at least fly harmlessly past you if you get close to the ground. You can fly and land next to a Strela in a open field if you stay under 10m and the Strela does nothing but if you get higher it starts to turn his missiles towards you until you get low again and it loses interest. In my tests I could sometimes get even higher than that but couldn't figure out why was it. It might have been a mountain range behind me that worked as a backdrop and when I got high enough to be silhouetted against the sky the Strela finally "saw" me. But at that time this didn't occur to me that I could have tested this hypothesis. But maybe tomorrow I could manage that.

Also if you fly under 10m the heat from ground will spoof the IR seeker pretty effectively or the missile might just hit the ground or some object in the way. Flying slow and low makes you easy target for MBT and IFV main guns so you need to choose the proper tactic for the situation.

We should get some option for extra reaction time for AD that hasn't seen action for a while to enable us to use more realistic tactics. I tried pop-up with live AD and got always shot down before even reaching the top of my climb even if I was trying to be more quick and climb lower and release lower than when doing it by the book. 30 seconds of non-certain death above 200 feet is not reality in DCS universe. It's more closer to 5-10 seconds over 30 feet. But as long as there's no option for extra reaction times for surprise attacks the current system is good IMHO. BMP-2 is at least since 1.1.1.1 not super AAA like it used to be but quite what you would expect.

A-10A Flight Manual has complete set of performance charts for everything you need to know. Here's the link for the manual. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17641138/A-10A%20Flight%20Manual.pdf At page A4-8 is a chart for "OPTIMUM CRUISE ALTITUDE FOR SHORT-RANGE MISSIONS Standard Day". You need to know the aircrafts drag index to use the chart. There's a section in the manual for determining the drag index. Clean (no stores on wings) A-10 has drag index 0, Sidewinders + TGP + ECM will make it about 2 and fully loaded is about 8. With drag index 2 and aircraft weight before climbing to cruise altitude 30000lbs your optimum altitude for 50nm flight is 8000 feet. For 75nm it's 14000 and for 100nm 20000. Climb with full throttle and keep speed at optimum climbing speed until at proper altitude. Optimum climbing speed is 200kts minus 1kts for each 1000 feet of your altitude above sea level, ie. at 10000 feet your optimum climbing speed is 190kts. Your optimum cruise speed is determined by the AOA indicator. It has three white marks at the outer rim and each of them mark a value of special interest. The first mark (with lowest numerical value) is maximum range cruise, the second is maximum endurance and last one is optimal AOA for landing. Set your speed so that the AOA indicator is over the maximum range mark. Maximum range speed is usually about 230kts IAS. If enemy doesn't have radar SAM systems you it's usually best to fly high to keep clear of short range IR systems which requires a altitude about 15000-16000 feet when above enemy. If you are going to attack from higher than your cruise altitude would be it's best to climb straight to the attack altitude before cruise so you can save a little bit of fuel. Flying higher is more economical but getting there uses lot's of fuel so you have the chart for finding the happy balance. If you are going to climb higher anyway it's better to do right at the beginning so you can take advantage of the higher cruise altitude and compensate for the extra fuel used in climb.

Are the nose vanes instrumented as they are the only sensors on Ka-50 capable of providing airspeed vector required for calculating wind. Besides, GNSS is limited to ABRIS only but PVI does have doppler radar to make it up.

Beam rider missiles use CLOS (Command Line Of Sight) navigation, ie. they will try to stay on the line that connects the launcher and the target. This requires the missile to maneuver constantly if the target is moving ie. inducing LOS rate. Required maneuvering by the missile is directly proportional to the LOS rate. So the most effective maneuver if outrunning the missile isn't possible is to beam it and then get as much speed as possible as quickly as possible. Any kind of maneuvering other than beaming just makes the missile maneuver less and thus get to you faster. Beaming the CLOS missile makes it bleed energy most effectively but if that isn't enough to keep it from reaching you then you need to do a last second out of plane maneuver to try to dodge the missile and hope it doesn't have enough energy to follow. LOS rate is the angular speed of the launcher to target vector. Beam is 3/9-o'clock plane. Beaming is to maneuver as such that the object of interest will get on to this plane. Beam riding doesn't make missiles clumsy. I assume this idea is had because of Vikhr but it's just a bad example as it's clumsy because of it's steering method.

Eizo test. The Best program I know of for adjusting monitor settings. http://www.prad.de/download/eizo-test.exe

They will sometimes also run if you dive towards them and pull up at the last moment but don't fire. :D

The basic problem is not the beam size in itself but Vikhrs inability to stabilize it's trajectory in the center of it except in optimal conditions, ie. no crosswind and static target and launch platform. With crosswind or decent LOS rate the missile can't stabilize itself to the center of the beam but keeps spiraling slightly all the way to the target. When crosswind or LOS rate gets high enough the spiral gets so wide that the missile flies out of the beam. Missile with 2-axis steering will stabilize itself to the center even with crosswind or LOS rate as long as the disturbance doesn't change but stays static. With 2-axis steering the missile would follow a narrow beam easily as long as the disturbances aren't too rapid regardless of their strength. With Vikhr it's not only the rapidness of the disturbance but also it's strength that's a problem. Technically it should be possible to build a missile with 1-axis steering that can fly almost like a 2-axis missile but it would probably be simpler to use 2-axis in the first place.

Vikhrs problems in the wind aren't caused by its guidance method but by its steering method. It only has one steering axis (up/down) which combined with spiral flight path provides steering to all directions but as a result it's not very responsive and it can turn in only one direction at a time. If it needs to make a sharp correction and the missile isn't in a proper bank it can't turn until it has rolled to proper angle. Swedish Bolide MANPADS uses similar laser beam riding guidance as Vikhr but the missile has two axis steering like normal missiles and has no problems with high winds or fast lateral movement of targets.

Just drop under 10m or 30 feet and the radar will lose lock on you. Piece of cake. :D

Or just add a secondary radio comms system designed to be used with voice recognition software besides the current menu system. Context sensitive menus are great for keyboard but suck when used with voice recognition.

Glad you liked it and thanks for your feedback. I will probably add a note about the Chinook timetable in the briefing if there's need for new update and maybe adjust flight path or triggers for Chinooks. But as it's not a proper bug I won't release another version yet. When people get to the third mission there's good chance people will find bugs to fix.

Just blocking AI LOS through trees would solve most of the problems. Collision detection would be nice bonus but at least I can live without.

Finding targets with TGP or "eyes" is a skill that needs to be practiced to get good at it. Besides using proper technique your image processing circuits in the brain need to be teached what to look for in order to spot quickly the things you want to find. When you scan with TGP be systematic and use some kind of pattern that minimizes looking at the same piece of ground twice. Move the TGP incrementally in small hops instead of constant slow slewing. Create a practice scenario where you know roughly where the enemy units are and use it to find a proper scan speed that's as fast as possible but slow enough that you won't miss anything. Besides smooth zoom TGP has two master zoom levels that can be switched between quickly. Use the wider mode for scanning and when you find something suspicious you can quickly switch to narrow mode to see what it is. You should also recognize and accept that this is going to be slow but when you get good at it it's not as slow as you might think. When you search for enemy closer than about 5-8 miles it's better to use "eyes" ie. use narrow view zoom and start scanning the ground. Your eyes vision is sharpest at the center so use similar scan pattern as with TGP to move the center of your gaze on the ground. Ground units will be only 1-2 pixels wide dots on the ground so in order to spot them you need to put your sharpest part of your field of vision on them to pick them out.

Name: Drug War MP COOP minicampaign Author: Bushmanni Mission type: Multiplayer coop Controllable: A-10C/Ka-50 Quick Summary: 3x missions involving fighting a overgrown drug business. 8xA-10C and 4x Ka-50 availabe for each mission. Can be played with only A-10s or Ka-50s but mixed group provides the best experience. Link/Download: http://files.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/201812/ Full brief/Discussion thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=89618

This thread can be deleted as the missions are under one board now and all the discussion is in the other thread.

1. Yeah, change the take-off time if that's an issue. I suppose the units you couldn't find were the choppers as anything else should be pretty much on a serving plate. They will stop eventually and you will be given their locations as a bullseye call, until then just scan the river they are following with TGP or follow the river at low altitude and scan with NVGs. You could also try the trick described in my previous post. 2. Thats how it's supposed to be as who would task A-10s to air-to-air fight their way in to the target? Or do you mean the Migs on the ground taking off also get easily spanked by Eagles? Anyway, you can actually quite easily kill the airborne Migs yourself if you have some clue of what you are doing as they only have R-60s that are easy to dodge and have less range than AIM-9s you are carrying. I didn't want to make it too hard as my impression is that not too many can handle A-to-A in A-10 that well. 3. I checked the triggers and found one possible bug. The back-up go-signal of buzzing the choppers at close distance can trigger before they start their orbit so if you pass them at close distance in the canyon they will not stop to orbit. In testing phase the choppers had different starting point and as such you didn't fly close to them in the canyon and I missed this possibility. Thanks for reporting. I tweaked the trigger so that they need to be orbiting before the close fly-by can trigger the go-signal. Updated file should be available sometime soon.

Yeah, the pitch black night is a bugger but I liked it and the challenge associated to it so it stayed even if my testers had the same trouble as you. It might be wise to set the take-off time two or three hours later if you are not fond of the extra challenge of not seeing your targets with naked eye. The mission has a timetable assigned in briefing which dictates you should get airborne about 10 minutes after mission start to be on-target on-time. If you follow it the choppers should lift off when you are about half-way there and able to see them with TGP before take-off and consequently follow them with TGP afterwards. A good trick is to have one A-10 to follow them with TGP from farther away and mark them with IR laser making it easy for the rest to engage them without fear of losing them. And don't forget you have SUU-2 illumination flares loaded on A-10s.

There already is a nine-line repeat option, "What is my target" if I remember correctly. What I'd like to see is ability to make him repeat the remarks also as in some missions there's tons of AD around the target and it's hard to develop a mental picture of all those SAM and AAA reports in your head at same speed the JTAC recites them.

Rearm and refuel trucks for ground units would be good and some triggers to influence the warehouse system, ie. add/remove munitions or aircraft to certain base or warehouse. But making the players to manage logistics chains is just nuts as it would take lot of effort to develop such system that few would enjoy playing. But as long as the mission duration is under 6h there's really no point in big picture logistics simulation anyway. Only when we have missions lasting days the logistics start to play a big part and as such logistics simulation is best left for turn based proper strategy games.

This is a set of missions I have been tinkering with since the DCS A-10C came out but only after 1.1.1.0 the mission editor features and infantry movement logic had been improved enough for me to complete these missions. Missions have been designed to be played with about 2-6x A-10C and 1-2x Ka-50. Player slots are available for 8x A-10C and 4x Ka-50 in all of the missions. A mix of Ka-50 and A-10C is the ideal package for these missions as you will need JTAC and to provide close cover for infantry in contact with enemy. You can complete these missions with just A-10 or Ka-50 but it will be harder and take longer. Especially with Ka-50 you might need re-arming or re-fueling. All missions have all the scripted radio traffic with speech created by speech synthesizer. https://acapela-box.com/AcaBox/index.php Mission 1: First Strike Fairly simple night mission where players witness B-52 carpet bombing a enemy base and then mop up remaining enemy units. There's one quite challenging helicopter hunt that will test your ability to find targets with TGP and process bullseye calls quickly if you want to do it fast and clean. They can't really escape the player as they are followed by a UAV all the way to their final destination providing position updates along the way. No randomization. Mission will take about 2-3h to complete with 4 players, more with less players and less with more players. Mission 2: Dawn Strike Early morning strike to airfield to kill enemy Mig's on the ground. The problem is two of them are already in the air that requires a stealthy ingress through mountain valleys at low altitude. F-15 Eagles will swat the Migs at the last moment to prevent the others from getting airborne before A-10s and Ka-50s are shooting Mavericks and Vikhrs at them. After the Mig threat is dealt with it's time to take out the main target which is enemy base with some ammo bunkers and lots of short range AD assets. When the base is cleared transport helicopters will drop infantry to investigate and clear the place. A-10s and Ka-50s will need to provide cover until the base is completely cleared of enemy presence. You will fail this mission if one of the infantry teams gets killed in it's entirety. This mission will require at least one player who has a good understanding of the whole briefing who can then lead the others or this mission will end before it has even properly begun. Enemy positions and composure at the two target sites are random. Mission will take about 2-3h to complete with 4 players, more with less players. Mission 3: Urban Strike Most ambitious of the three. Friendly ground forces conduct a night time raid in Nalchik to capture enemy high value personnel and intelligence. Raid party is 8x Strykers carrying 8x infantry squads. Initial plan is to enter the city covertly and surround the target bloc and then blow in the doors at the target building and go get the target. Air support is supposed to keep the city at a bay while ground forces conduct the raid. After the initial raid the next step is decided by the raid commander according to the intelligence gathered. OH-58 AFAC will provide targeting coordinates and sometimes laser illumination if it has LOS to target. Enemy forces consists almost entirely of infantry with small arms and RPGs scattered randomly around the city and springing in to action according to mission events. If any of the Stryker sections or infantry teams is completely killed the mission is a failure. Enemy positions are random. Friendly units follow a static plan. Mission will take about 2-3h depending how good the players are at finding infantry at night in a city. Infantry in all missions will freeze for about 5 minutes if there's any gunfire or explosions within about 1km of them or enemy units within 600m of them. If friendly infantry won't advance it's because there's enemy infantry hiding nearby. After the enemy is killed the friendly infantry will start going again after a while. Mission 1 is made prior to 1.1.1.0 and might be unstable at current version. Please report if clients suffer from CTDs. Mission 2 and 3 have worked fine in multiplayer tests. All missions have been tested for trigger logic errors but if you find one please report. Link to the mission files: http://files.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/201812/

This is a set of missions I have been tinkering with since the DCS A-10C came out but only after 1.1.1.0 the mission editor features and infantry movement logic had been improved enough for me to complete these missions. Missions have been designed to be played with about 2-6x A-10C and 1-2x Ka-50. Player slots are available for 8x A-10C and 4x Ka-50 in all of the missions. A mix of Ka-50 and A-10C is the ideal package for these missions as you will need JTAC and to provide close cover for infantry in contact with enemy. You can complete these missions with just A-10 or Ka-50 but it will be harder and take longer. Especially with Ka-50 you might need re-arming or re-fueling. All missions have all the scripted radio traffic with speech created by speech synthesizer. https://acapela-box.com/AcaBox/index.php Mission 1: First Strike Fairly simple night mission where players witness B-52 carpet bombing a enemy base and then mop up remaining enemy units. There's one quite challenging helicopter hunt that will test your ability to find targets with TGP and process bullseye calls quickly if you want to do it fast and clean. They can't really escape the player as they are followed by a UAV all the way to their final destination providing position updates along the way. No randomization. Mission will take about 2-3h to complete with 4 players, more with less players and less with more players. Mission 2: Dawn Strike Early morning strike to airfield to kill enemy Mig's on the ground. The problem is two of them are already in the air that requires a stealthy ingress through mountain valleys at low altitude. F-15 Eagles will swat the Migs at the last moment to prevent the others from getting airborne before A-10s and Ka-50s are shooting Mavericks and Vikhrs at them. After the Mig threat is dealt with it's time to take out the main target which is enemy base with some ammo bunkers and lots of short range AD assets. When the base is cleared transport helicopters will drop infantry to investigate and clear the place. A-10s and Ka-50s will need to provide cover until the base is completely cleared of enemy presence. You will fail this mission if one of the infantry teams gets killed in it's entirety. This mission will require at least one player who has a good undertanding of the whole briefing who can then lead the others or this mission will end before it has even properly begun. Enemy positions and composure at the two target sites are random. Mission will take about 2-3h to complete with 4 players, more with less players. Mission 3: Urban Strike Most ambitious of the three. Friendly ground forces conduct a night time raid in Nalchik to capture enemy high value personnel and intelligence. Raid party is 8x Strykers carrying 8x infantry squads. Initial plan is to enter the city covertly and surround the target bloc and then blow in the doors at the target building and go get the target. Air support is supposed to keep the city at a bay while ground forces conduct the raid. After the initial raid the next step is decided by the raid commander according to the intelligence gathered. OH-58 AFAC will provide targeting coordinates and sometimes laser illumination if it has LOS to target. Enemy forces consists almost entirely of infantry with small arms and RPGs scattered randomly around the city and springing in to action according to mission events. If any of the Stryker sections or infantry teams is completely killed the mission is a failure. Enemy positions are random. Friendly units follow a static plan. Mission will take about 2-3h depending how good the players are at finding infantry at night in a city. Infantry in all missions will freeze for about 5 minutes if there's any gunfire or explosions within about 1km of them or enemy units within 600m of them. If friendly infantry won't advance it's because there's enemy infantry hiding nearby. After the enemy is killed the friendly infantry will start going again after a while. Mission 1 is made prior to 1.1.1.0 and might be unstable at current version. Please report if clients suffer from CTDs. Mission 2 and 3 have worked fine in multiplayer tests. All missions have been tested for trigger logic errors but if you find one please report. Link to the mission files: http://files.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/201812/

Cool. :thumbup: