rossmum

I had a lot of trouble at first, I just had to adjust to not having the 21's insane instantaneous turn/low speed handling, and be more patient with trying to get shots. You can't force them very well in the 19.

The real question is why would you want to do a mil power takeoff? :D The tyres are definitely clipping the ground/deflating - you can usually hear the rim scrape when the suspension bottoms out. Even clean, it's fairly easy to scrape in a turn, but with a moderately loaded aircraft it's even worse. Of course, as soon as this happens you lose almost all steering effort, so it's an easy way to end up in the grass and unless you keep your momentum up, it can be very hard to get back out of. Would be nice if ED would share whatever magic attribute it is that allows the Hornet to offroad, since the 21 should be able to take off and land from a (somewhat prepared) grass or dirt surface, let alone taxi on it.

At low alt and holding rates it is pretty much untouchable to F-5s, unless they're very smart. At medium to high altitude the difference is even more marked. The MiG-19 really likes being up high, and it climbs like a thing possessed, but usually F-5 players are aware of their issues with altitude and won't come up to play. Vertical is safe to use, especially if you run your opponent out of missiles. The 19 excels at it, just watch your airspeed on the way back down and don't pull the stick too hard over the top.

No, the Mirage and F-16 both suffer from it frequently as well. The F-5 doesn't seem to model any overstress damage at all (boy, things would be interesting if it did) and so it can happily tolerate spikes past 15G.

Tomcats getting close isn't the blessing it might sound like. A few days ago, three of us in MiGs smacked a pair of Tomcats that failed to disengage when their Sparrows missed... unless flown by exceptional pilots, the 14s are liable to get eaten alive by 15s, 16s, and 18s in close combat, especially due to the clunky radar and the fact that they were largely separated out from everyone else. The problem with the Phoenix is that if you shoot it in STT, it's easy to defeat as soon as it leaves the rail. If you shoot it in TWS, you need to hope the other guy doesn't see the launch, because they'll just notch the contrail. The 54 is insanely easy to get away from with early response but almost impossible if you leave it until too late. Ideally, you want your 29s and 14s separated just enough from the action that they don't get overwhelmed and end up with zero SA and surrounded by a mix of friendlies and enemies. Unfortunately this didn't happen due to various factors (including the Patriots - the entire Sea of Galilee was under blue's umbrella, so we had to stay relatively low or risk eating one of those things while engaged with the fighters). The HARMs also had a huge impact, as without manual control or an IADS script, their targets never went radar silent and they were able to launch from an area where we couldn't effectively intercept them. I almost wonder if having someone in a tac commander slot to micro the radars wouldn't be a good idea.

DCS wake turbulence is badly exaggerated, and is capable of over-Ging aircraft so badly that they suffer structural failure. If it had been implemented realistically I would agree, but what we have right now isn't very realistic. With that said, it's not as much of an issue here as it is on some other servers IMO - I've had it cause a few dangerous moments for me, but not rip my aircraft. It's absolutely lethal to Mirages, I know that much.

Some observations from red (before we ran out of planes and I ran out of patience with DCS freezing on me) - with 20+ players all on comms, we really need multiple GCIs on separate channels to avoid comms overload. It was hard picking out my own calls and no doubt difficult for GCI to keep track of everyone as well as respond to requests. One GCI on imperial units to look after F-5s and F-14s and another on metric would probably be ideal. The conversions aren't hard in cruising flight, but under pressure or near the front, it becomes hard to do even fairly basic arithmetic. The MiG-29s weren't being used very effectively... some weren't on comms (understandable as they aren't English speakers, but complicates things regardless) and we mostly ended up in the same furballs as the 21s. IMO the 29 is actually worse off in this environment as you're trying to operate the more complex systems, fly, and avoid locking friendlies. Close combat modes were effectively 'jammed' by the airspace being so busy that the radar had a 50/50 chance of grabbing a friendly 5km off the nose, not the jet 2km away and pressing. Keeping 29s high and fast, and 21s on the deck, is a better use of both - blue's strategy of mostly hugging the ground should be suicide against lookdown-capable aircraft, but it just didn't eventuate that way. Blue SEAD was super effective, while we didn't really have much - so they could sit under their SAM umbrella, which then also affected our ability to use the 29s properly. The mission was certainly a big departure from the usual format, and did a good job of showing that what works for the normal missions doesn't work in a more complex environment or against a technologically superior enemy. Hopefully next run my DCS decides not to freeze every time I get merged, I was really looking forwards to this but the game's performance (not due to the mission, I think, just DCS idiosyncracy) marred it a bit for me.

I had the same problem for a long time. Don't pull like you would in a 21. Try and hold as close to 800km/h as possible, at that speed it becomes an absolute rate monster and is almost untouchable to F-5s. It's also currently affected too much by higher AoA (acknowledged and hopefully remedied soon), so its performance should only improve in the future, but this should mostly help with the little bit extra you need to get a guns solution (which is still hard even if you fly it right). Bear in mind when a real pilot calls something a good dogfighter, it doesn't necessarily mean it turns in a small radius. They could be referring to climb or dive performance, roll rate, or sustained turn. The 21 has a bit of all of these, while the 19 really emphasises sustained turn rate over anything else in DCS. It's like a 1950s F-16.

The problem with weapon restriction scripts is that they're enforced by blowing people up, and a lot of people don't read briefings OR the ingame messages and wonder why they're blowing up, then leave. With a core group of players like BF or DDCS have, it's easier to do, but even though we do have a core group here there are also a lot of transient players who would probably not understand why they keep exploding. If only the script could actually stop people from loading the weapons to begin with, it'd be a lot easier to bring in, I think.

How long does the mission typically last? I might be between 30-60 mins late since my ArmA group are running an event just before, but hopefully there'll still be stuff left to do :joystick:

The nosewheel shimmy on landing rollout can be pretty brutal too, especially with the chute still attached.

Warehousing seems fine on Battle for Sukhumi, at least - glad I came back on, I got to fight some F-14s. Earlier was frustrating, but you shouldn't have to clean up ED's mess every patch :|

It is a Mach 2 jet, at high altitude. No piloted aircraft I know of will do Mach 2 on the deck, the air is too dense and the aircraft either lacks the excess thrust or lacks the structural integrity, usually the latter. Your maximum speed is 1,300km/h IAS. At high altitude, this allows you to reach about Mach 2.05, or 2.1 if you feel like pushing your luck. Here's how to avoid flameouts in the 21: - Don't exceed 1,300km/h IAS at any altitude. - Don't make rapid throttle movements at high altitude, especially cutting to idle. - Don't force the nose down for more than a second or two. Zero or negative G stops the main fuel tanks feeding into the service tank properly and the engine will suck it dry in a matter of seconds. - Don't mess with the nose cone, the automated system is there for a reason. Tailslides can cause some issues too, I think, but that might be another manifestation of the negative/zero G fuel flow problems.

Just as a heads-up, Alpen, the FARPs on When The Mountains Cry still have 9Ms warehoused. Shout out to the Harrier who flew direct to a FARP to arm up with all-aspect CAP goodness, only for Hiro to strafe him as he loaded his first missile. He wasn't very happy :megalol:

Might actually be available for this one! Every other time I've been away from home, or worn out from a long haul the day before. Pretty eager to try this out, there are only a few servers where I can get my late Cold War fix and most of them are always empty.

Huge improvement, and I actually think my game is running a little better, too. Slick work.

Couldn't fly this one (neck still sore from yesterday's circus over Beslan, lol) but I was watching it on a friend's stream. Looks like a solid mission, can't wait to try it out!

Having to ferry missiles would be interesting, if possible - maybe only R-3S/GAR-8/Rb 24 available at airfields by default, with supply runs from the rear area (say a factory or depot) bringing out small batches of the more advanced weapons and heavier A/G ordnance. Using actual slinging for this would make it challenging but rewarding. Really I'd love to see road and rail logistics to resupply airfields, but the former is bugged (invisible, un-interdictable convoys to repair/resupply) and the latter doesn't really seem possible at the moment (DCS treats trains as traffic clutter AFAIK, they don't actually do anything and spawn in at random).

They're very closely matched. A well-flown F-5 is very hard to get a shot on if he gets into a slow, 1-circle kind of fight, but the longer the fight lasts, the higher the MiG's odds of winning become. The reverse is true if the F-5 flies more technically 'perfect' BFM and just focuses on rating the MiG, in my experience - but not many F-5 pilots are disciplined enough to do this. I have a deep suspicion this is what Soviet test pilots were talking about when describing the F-5 as routinely beating the MiG-21 and even 23 within 4-6 minutes - the kinds of crazy, edge-of-the-stall flying a lot of us do in DCS would be very opposed to continuing to be alive in real life. The MiG theoretically dominates the vertical in DCS, but that also depends on what speeds the two aircraft enter the maneouvre at - the F-5 is light enough and slick enough to carry some speed up if it doesn't get too greedy, but he can't sustain it through multiple loops. You can run them out of energy by abusing your thrust and then fall on them as they extend away to regain it.

I like the sounds of this new mission! Just came off a wild run on Phone Booth, probably the best session I've had since the start of the year. Fantastic teamwork and an absolutely wild defence of Beslan.

MiG gang :wub: There have been some bumps along the ride here and there, but the 21 is still my favourite thing to fly, by a long margin. She has real character, and rewards those who take the time to learn her limits and hidden talents. I've yet to master the fight with a human opponent in a gen 4 1v1, but I've managed to ambush a few of them in PvP servers and get some dirty kills, including a pair of Hornets with the gun. Crucially they dumped all their speed, and then not even their high AoA capability could help them - because the 21 can do that little trick, too.

The R-60 does not have a frontal aspect capability unless there is now a bug, because it should have been patched out nearly a week ago now. This was referenced (though not explicitly as a loss of all-aspect capability IIRC) in patch notes and confirmed by devs, one of whom you quoted in your post. If there is a bug, and the R-60 is tracking targets from frontal aspects, then please go ahead and demonstrate it - like we found performance graphs for the 24J. Replays, Tacviews, whatever - show us. The R-60M is limited all-aspect, as it always has been, and crucially has not been available in any mission in this server for something like six months, nor is it now. The R-60 and R-60M are two separate missiles, they do not have the same engagement capability. AIM-9P agility is fine. Learn to respect your weapon's launch envelope and you will almost never miss with it. The uncage function even allows you to effectively destroy one target while beginning a turn to engage a second - something the MiGs cannot even dream of doing, and something I capitalised on hugely last night in the F-5. It also has about twice the reach of an R-60, perhaps a little more depending on aspect and whether the target makes much effort to evade or not. There is no argument to be had here, you're conflating two separate variants of a missile as being the same thing while also downplaying a critical close combat feature (don't even start me on the F-5's radar at low altitude - you know, the radar most people call 'useless' and don't turn on). Either you aren't aware of the full capabilities of the aircraft in question and their weapons, or you do know and you're trying to move the goalposts to get what you want, which is an all-aspect missile for the F-5 while red have only the R-3R, which can't be effectively used at low altitude. The decision's already been made, it's all academic at this point. I don't think there are any "dramatic slippery slope fallacies" being made when people repeatedly argue in bad faith, but maybe that's just me. In the meantime, I certainly had a whale of a time swatting MiGs left, right, and centre last night with the oh-so-terrible 9P, and was only shot down by SAMs - not once by any of said MiGs, from any aspect. 8 of my 9 AIM-9 shots hit :)

I don't remember if it was 30km/h or 30kts. I often taxi the 21 at speeds politely described as highly irresponsible, so I'm usually above both.

I was sitting on its tail well within range, and he'd stopped flaring. It flew straight off the rail like a rocket. I'll have to do some testing to see if it's consistent or if I just somehow messed something up with the R-13s and then my guns killed his engine so there wasn't enough heat or something.

A very important note to the guys in the 29s: you cannot IFF without your radar. If you subscribe to the "low altitude EO only" meme, and you shouldn't because it's pretty dumb and not what the aircraft is designed to do, at least pulse your radar when you lock someone and check for "A" return in the bottom left of the HUD (for Russian; I don't know what the English HUD displays, maybe "A" as well). "ASV" - looks like "ACB" if you can't read Cyrillic - means friendly. Default radar IFF symbology is the same as the MiG-21, - means unknown/hostile and = means friendly. The width indicates size (e.g. -- is an enemy fighter, ==== is a friendly tanker/AWACS, and a single - is usually a HARM, AGM-84, JSOW, or similar). EO mode will not give you IFF returns and will display all contacts as hostile regardless of actual identity, and its contact sizing is based on heat signature rather than radar return (= approx. contact size). The best bet to avoid teamkills is use the radar (like Mikoyan intended), use both sensors in cooperative mode (you need to lock something first to turn on the second system in DCS, it's very annoying but worth it), or as said above, strobe the radar to get IFF. Cooperative mode is king, because the WCS will decide based on its current radar and EO status which sensor is best to track the target. If the EO lock is strong enough it will go essentially radar silent, using it only for limited ranging data and IFF, and the enemy aircraft will not get a lock tone.