rossmum

I'll be away from home until next week, but if you need any pointers with the 21 I'm happy to help. If you see me on the server give me a shout and we can fly together, maybe do some basic orientation/mock combat stuff behind the lines then go on a patrol, like I used to do for when my friends got into Rise of Flight :D

The R-13 turns very well but only after its initial burst of acceleration. It can make some impressive turns, it just won't make R-60-like turns. I haven't had much luck with the R-3S previously, but I might give it another go and see how it is now.

What? Where are you getting 2017 from? The DCS MiG-21 came out before 2017. The last real-life MiG-21Bis rolled off the production line over 30 years earlier. There has been no redesign to make it "closer to the Cold War era". There were corrections to external dimensions and details of the DCS MiG-21Bis, because advances in graphics allow more detail, and the developers have more reference material to correct inconsistencies with the real aircraft. That has nothing to do with era.

Yep. DCS simplifies it (like the amount being auto-set by the ground crew) but for most purposes it's close enough, and fully trusting the fuel gauge in pretty much anything in the real world is a bit dicey at the best of times.

21 radar can be temperamental. If you turn it off and then suddenly need it again, it takes forever to warm back up. I flip it to standby during my early startup and don't turn it back off unless I know I'm RTB with no likelihood of a fight. Ditch the second gun for a countermeasure pod, requires a subtle roll trim (which the Viggen can thankfully perform, lol) and go like that. That way you get the best of both worlds - a gun for dealing with helicopters/finishing people off, and flares to save you from missiles. Two AKANs is overkill and you're right, they're very heavy. I wish they could be mounted on the centreline in place of the X-tank, but it is what it is. As for the missiles not being good... the 24J isn't great but it sure isn't bad. The biggest problem I've noticed on the receiving end is that a lot of people overestimate the turning ability of the Sidewinders and fire them too close or at far too high an aspect. It's a problem I'm now having too as I adjust back from the R-60. Fire from further out or uncage and pull lead, they should give better results.

A 70s Viggen could only carry two AAMs, not six. Despite not having a proper air to air radar, there are ways to cludge a sort-of-functional look-down capability out of it if you know what you're doing - which most don't, at least. MiG-21Bis meanwhile does indeed have a radar... which is not especially useful when everyone is flying below 500m. It's not entirely useless but it definitely isn't very good, and at that altitude mostly exists to catch co-alt/low targets while in steep turns (which I'm not sure about, I think this might be a peculiarity with how the ground clutter is simulated), IFF contacts where they're visible, and deal with the handful of people who fly at higher altitudes. There is also a way to force a very poor boresight mode, which doesn't do much other than make the R-3R usable at lower altitudes than it normally would be, but it's not very reliable (neither the missile nor the technique in question). I have a few suspicions the radar is doing things it shouldn't be or not doing things it should be, but I don't have the documentation to check against, and at the end of the day it doesn't significantly impact gameplay - same as the Viggen look-down trick, it's not common knowledge and doesn't work very well anyway, so not really a problem. To somewhat balance out the 21's ability to lock a target and derive ranging data and fire R-3Rs (where applicable), the Viggen can uncage a missile seeker and pull a leading shot for a better chance of a hit. The 21 cannot, you have to boresight the missile and hold lock for a few seconds. The R-60 hid this flaw quite well, but it can be a problem for close range or high aspect shots with the R-13 (an otherwise reasonably good missile, even if it's a bit slow). With a top speed at low level that surpasses literally every other aircraft in the server, the Viggen is actually Blue's best air-to-air missile platform and has been for a long time. You can catch a MiG easily, blast him, then run away with impunity. The 21 cannot exceed 1300km/h IAS safely and is guaranteed to flame its engine out by 1400km/h, by which point the Viggen is still happily accelerating away with a clean or AAM-only loadout. This seems a bit strange when compared to documentation, but I'll leave that to the experts. Operating visually and with GCI direction I would take a Viggen over an F-5 in every case with unrestricted loadouts like we had previously. It's still very strong now, but needs to keep its speed up and make slashing attacks from behind as it can't sustain a turn well and lacks an internal gun. By comparison, the F-5 can only barely keep up with the MiG at low level, is hopelessly outsped at higher altitudes, but has excellent guns and sustains a turn well. The F-5 behaves like a dogfighter while the Viggen behaves like an interceptor, regardless of the fact it's meant to be a strike variant and lacks a proper airborne intercept radar. I really think people underestimate just how enormously the Viggen's speed benefits it in a WVR missile fight in this setting and how many options it gains as a result. It's been my preferred blue air to air platform for months now. On the plus side, the R-13 is powerful enough to delete a Viggen so hard that it can't keep fighting with one wing like they regularly used to.

Fuel quantity is automatically set when rearming/refuelling (it will happen after rearming is complete). Full internal + ventral will set to about 3800L. When the ventral tank is full, the "SUSPENDED TANK/PODVESN. BAK." light will come on (right of the fuel gauge, top light). You'll see it flicker for a minute or so as the last of the tank empties, when it comes on steady, the tank is drained. There is no need to adjust fuel quantity after the ventral tank drains. If you need to get rid of the ventral tank before it's empty, wind the fuel gauge back to about 2800-2900 (to give yourself some safety margin) before you jettison it. When the 450L light comes on, you want to be relatively close to a friendly airfield. The next light below that signals about 250-300L total remaining. Consider it your "you need to land within the next few minutes" warning. The final light ("SERVICE TANK/RASKHOD. BAK.") top right of the main warning panel, indicates the 80L service tank is being drained. If this light comes on it means you have a dire situation on your hands and have anywhere between 5 seconds and 2 minutes of flying time left depending on your power setting and altitude, before the engine is starved of fuel.

You can only IFF in search mode. The system can't IFF a locked target. OP was not aware that IFF is performed by manually telling the radar to perform an IFF rather than the magic automatic IFF of, say, the FC3 modules. For what it's worth, OP, pretty much every full fidelity module also requires a button press to IFF - even the modern jets. In several cases it will only display for a few seconds and will not 'save' into the radar's memory, just like the MiG. The portrayal of IFF as constant and automatic on FC3 jets is fantasy, not even the Hornet or Viper work like that.

Again, the R-73 on the MiG-21 (if we assume the only necessary work is to fit an APU-73 rail and all hookups are the same for electrical/cooling systems) is not comparable to the R-73 on the MiG-29 or Su-27. You will have no high off-boresight capability. It will still require you to boresight the missile exactly like an R-60 does. Given the R-60 is already quite agile at close range, the only improvement will be a slightly further reach - maybe 6-10km versus about 3-4, which still leaves you outranged by modern blufor jets - and more explosive power. You might also gain a slightly better probability of kill at close range but it will not be comparable to the gen 4 Soviet fighters. If you want a good comparison, use the phi-0 ('longitudinal aim') mode in those jets or the Su-25. Citing the Indian incident is irrelevant on two counts - 1) it hasn't been confirmed by sources outside India, and thus should not be treated as a given fact; 2) even if factual, the MiG in question is a Bison, a heavily upgraded Indian-only variant that has little in common with our Bis. It is essentially a whole new aircraft avionics wise, the only thing MiG-21 about it is the basic airframe. Not even close, but nice try. Then either don't take the MiG-21 onto a server where everyone is using AIM-9X, or do so with the knowledge that your aircraft is outmatched? This mentality that everything has to be able to fight everything else on an even footing is absurd and has no place in a simulator. There are servers that place the MiG-21 with aircraft from its own timeframe, and it performs very well. Even on a modern server, a well-flown MiG, especially with GCI assistance, can get good results. You cannot expect to go toe to toe with Hornets or Vipers over open ground and somehow win, unless you ambush them - in which case even a MiG-15 or Sabre can kill them. You're arguing for adapting the aircraft's systems to a missile that not only was it not designed to carry, but which didn't exist until the MiG-21 was approaching the end of its Soviet service, after production of the type stopped in the USSR. This means extra work on the part of the developer, which means less resources dedicated to features which do belong on the MiG-21 and less resources dedicated to other projects. You can't just shove an R-73 onto an R-60 launch rail and be done with it, there are adaptations that need to be made. The R-73 might look like a fat R-60 but that does not mean it is interchangeable with one. What next? Are you going to be demanding the 9X be added to the Crusader when it comes out? Honestly, I expect you probably will. Either get better at using the aircraft's strengths to play smarter against modern opponents, or accept that a 1972 aircraft cannot be expected to perform on an equal level with a mid-2000s high level upgrade of a 1980s aircraft. This absurd demand for feature creep - especially demanding aircraft come with features that were either used only by a single minor operator of the type, or never actually used in real life at all - needs to stop. It will turn this game into something so absurd that even War Thunder will look realistic by comparison. If you don't like having to deal with the real capabilities of an aircraft, maybe a simulator is not for you - try Ace Combat instead.

Yep, common to all aircraft. It also makes the windscreen and particularly the gunsight extremely hard to see through when the light hits at certain angles.

Really awesome run on Prince of Persia today, lots of wild furballs and good coordination from red. Fujarah took a lot to capture. I did spot some MiGs taking R-60s from Ras Al but hopefully that will no longer be an issue next time (and to be fair, I'm not sure how effective they were anyway, since the one I spotted had a lot of holes in him and missiles still stuck on the rails).

Downgrade your drivers to 442.16 or earlier. I don't know what specifically is causing the issue but it is exclusive to newer drivers. I'm lazy and rarely update mine, so I've never experienced this issue at all.

Switch them to night mode, day mode will bleed out badly in the dark (and to be honest, even in daylight).

For what it's worth btw, as I missed it when I replied - 'pig' is shorthand for warthog, of course. That whole engagement was interesting as first I didn't get tone - I was sure I still had at least one missile left but would have to check again - and then the first A-10 was 'dead' according to both DCS and Tacview. Not dead enough unfortunately as it hit me with a fairly long 9M shot right as I recovered that careless stall. Zweistein fired at the guy I was tangling with but the seeker went for me instead and I only barely outran it. On that note, this is one of the only servers I play where clientside Tacview recording works, and I'm enormously grateful. There have been some amazing things I would've missed otherwise.

The A-10 had 9Ms (same as the Harrier), which was the sticking point, as unlike the Harrier it can carry the 9P5. I would say strikers should be an exception to the new missile restrictions but a) there's no way to do that, and b) we'd end up with people using them purely for air to air, which is exactly what happened to the Harrier. My own flying has been pretty poor all week but I made the mistake of thinking I'd killed one of the two A-10s and thus was safe to deal with the other. Tacview revealed it was another classic case of a missile spawning from the aether - it happens most commonly with F-5s and Viggens, where DCS considers the aircraft to be killed but it remains fully combat capable. GCI also can't see them and thus assumes they're dead. I suspect if the 21 could fire missiles with a dead generator, or if it didn't lose its generator with almost any missile hit, there'd be a lot of complaining there too.

Don't pat yourself on the back too hard, considering it was red players who pointed out that the old 'rear aspect' weapon set left us with the R-60 and its limited all aspect capability. We could go back to the days of MiGs winning every head-on merge if you'd like, but a true rear aspect only setup means I get a chance to play with my food, now. :) Personally I had no issue with the old set, in the 21 - but it made the 19 distinctly disadvantaged and also meant most fights were over extremely quickly, sometimes before one side even got visual.

The Rb 24 being unreliable shouldn't be a surprise, as the GAR-8/R-3S are similarly unreliable. As for the Rb 75 - the thing is like a wake homing torpedo. On The Desert Has Eyes the other day, someone fired one at another Viggen (presumably mistaking it for a 21 somehow) and not only did it track easily and score a direct hit, but it actually even lofted. Sure hope HB get to fixing the Viggen once the 14A is out, because between the unshakeable air to air Mavs and its ability to continue fighting and firing missiles without wings, it's turning into a serious meme machine.

I am expressly bad at the MiG-19, which doesn't help in my case, but the biggest problem with its viability is the fact that you have to approach people from the rear or somehow slip through the merge unseen. With no flares, poor throttle response (even worse than the 21), and no all-aspect capability of your own, it's as one sided as when blue had only the AIM-9P while red had R-60s and could go into head-on merges with impunity. Of course we could all just go fly 21s instead, but those slots are limited in number and it would be nice to see both MiGs seeing more use, rather than 19s only appearing occasionally or when the 21 slots fill. I'm not necessarily saying we need weapon restrictions back across all missions, considering I originally argued to get them removed exactly because I knew how badly it was limiting blue as I won every head-on merge with the R-60. However, a few missions that change things up - particularly Middle Eastern or Warsaw Pact based ones - would be interesting, and force people to rely on more than just who spots the other guy first. Most of those nations either didn't receive R-60s at all, received very limited numbers of them, or received them later. More than a few weeks into a shooting war, a lot of the more minor countries would likely have used up their entire stock and need to fall back on older weapons. As fun as the more modern stuff is, there is also the case of BK90s in particular - the BK90 is absolutely not period-correct, and what's more, if you release it from the right altitude at the right speed, you can get some absolutely obscene range out of it. Red has no counterpart, the closest thing they have to a standoff weapon is the Kh-25 and 29, which require you to get much closer to the target and guide the weapon all the way in. I don't think weapons or airframes should be considered against the time period in question - I think both should be. As for the Ka-50, I expect that will probably go when the Mi-24 arrives, but until then removing it would leave red without a truly anti-tank capable helicopter as we can't strap ATGMs to our Mi-8s.

Can we get rid of the 9M totally while we're at it? I don't think I've seen a single Harrier pulling air to ground duty for weeks, and every time Elbrus comes up in rotation, sure enough, out come the AV-8Bs... it'd be less frustrating if the things would die when hit, but between the questionable damage model being amplified by the R-60's weak explosive power, and the 9M's performance, it's getting a bit frustrating to deal with them. I've also been thinking about loadouts in general lately... I almost wonder if (on perhaps select missions, not all of them) it might be worth removing the 9M, 9P5, RB-74, and both R-60s. This prevents red having the advantage of the base model R-60's limited all-aspect ability, but also means the MiG-19s are a little less punishing. It's a little frustrating getting deleted in the merge because your missiles are paperweights, and you also lack flares. It'd also separate the boys from the men a little more, so to speak, on the 21 side of things... I certainly wouldn't say no for the chance at more gunnery practice :joystick:

Maybe one whitelisted commander slot per team or something?

The models and blocks are a problem, though. A 16C bl. 50 bears very little resemblance in anything but external silhouette to an early 16A, and an 18C lot 20 also has a number of stark differences to an 18A (in fact our 18C even has more powerful engines than most C-model Hornets, nevermind avionics). The Hornet started out with MFDs, but an early 16 would be absolutely unrecognisable to blue players - it doesn't have a single one. The SMS page equivalent is a bunch of vertically stacked one-line LCDs and the radar is an older-fashioned scope between the pilot's legs.

For anyone who hasn't seen this posted in any of the other threads: the interim solution is to roll back video drivers to 442.16 or prior. With 438.something I've never experienced any FPS drop associated with the radar.

Doesn't it rip around 280? Is the clamshell at the back open after you activate it?

29 and Mirage are a bit weird when limited to heaters anyway - and of the two, the Mirage is enormously easier to fly and has a far better radar. The tradeoff is acceleration and two less missiles, but the missiles you do have are a bit punchier than the R-60s. IMO 29 with 2 R-27R/4 R-60 is an acceptable stand-in for the MiG-23, for the time being, and blue having the Mirage with its 530s available would sit fairly well against that. People are going to need to get used to the concept of actually watching their RWRs and watching for missile trails, or I have no idea what they're going to do when the 23/F1 arrive. At the same time, limiting the number of SARH missiles along with the airframes should stop them from dunking on people too hard (although with careful flying, the Mirage in particular is already an absolute death machine even with heaters and guns). Furballs are going to naturally form no matter what you do, the main point IMO is to get people fighting for air superiority where it matters rather than in the middle of nowhere. This depends heavily on player coordination and/or GCI, but a well-coordinated effort can make or break gameplay for the guys in strikers or helicopters - for example on Two Towns yesterday, blue had such a hellcamp going on around our FARP that we could barely get anything done, and by the time we got a decent amount of CAP going they'd managed to kill our EWR and SAMs and basically push us back to our own base. IMO dogfights should not be the focus necessarily, but they are going to happen and they should happen in order to clear the skies for the other guys. I have to admit I'm biased as I'm far better at air to air than anything else, although I've been enjoying messing with helicopters, but I definitely think it needs to be viewed holistically rather than as a separate entity. Plus, they're absolutely sick to watch from below as you try and sneak your Mi-8 past them :D

Doubling the 60s isn't as big of a deal as people make out unless you're in a very tight turning fight, honestly. The real meme (which I've only ever seen someone do once, and which I wasn't even aware was possible) was the Tim Hortons loadout of a double double (4x 60 4x 60M). If I have enough friendly aircraft to not get stuck in a 1v1 for my life, I'll take 2x R-3R and 4x R-60M. If I know I'll be turning a lot, either 2x or 4x R-60M.