rossmum

It really depends on how closely you want to mirror real procedure with regards to things like lights, etc - and flaps are an 'as needed' thing depending on your approach. Ideally, you'll have an approach where full flap is used, but if you're already coming in low, putting out full flap will just make your odds of a safe landing that much less and you're better sticking with T/O. I honestly think a lot of people in DCS, especially those coming from FC3/FBW modules, are trying to run before they can walk by mirroring the official procedure used by pilots with existing training behind them. It might be easier to work the other way - learn to land the plane without breaking it consistently, then work on getting your procedure perfect. I'm a very seat-of-my-pants kinda guy and a PvP cowboy, so I only rarely have any external lights on, my approaches are usually messy, I'm frequently overweight, and I only use flap as needed. Despite this it's extremely rare for me to damage the plane, though of course if DCS simulated actual airframe fatigue over time my maintainers would be chasing me with a pitchfork for knocking hundreds of hours off the airframe by flying it so hard :lol:

Is red's main AWACS (21) going offline about halfway through Battle Over Sukhumi intentional? I thought it might have been done to offset the 29's better radar when red unlocks them, but it seems to happen even when blue have their Mirages instead. It looks like he just decides to go land and then is never replaced, and as 15 doesn't communicate, it leaves red with no AWACS function while blue seem to have both.

It's being looked at.

I've tried to explain this where he's posted this elsewhere, it was like talking to a brick wall. He's utterly convinced.

Yes, that's relatively easy to do in DCS as well (more so now because of the FM issues this patch). I'm a habitual turnfighter so most of my combat flying in the DCS MiG-21 is done in the red zone on the UUA. You just have to try and keep awareness of where the needle is while also watching your target, and it's when you lose awareness and get too greedy with the stick that you stall. The current FM does not let you stall at all even with the UUA pegged against the stop and F2 camera telemetry (showing true AoA) indicating 25+ degrees. Remember though, the UUA-1 doesn't read true AoA, because the airflow is already disturbed as it passes over the sensor vane on the left side of the nose - 30ish on there corresponds to around 20-22 degrees actual AoA.

I'm really, really confused by this. Are we flying the same version? How does something with no stall behaviour, which can be flown as though it has modern fly-by-wire, feel 'less on rails' than the previous FM which exhibited all the expected stall behaviour of the MiG-21 in line with pilot reports and the aircraft's design itself?

Shmal's posts describe not just that the previous behaviour was more correct, but also some of the persistent issues with it that are even worse now with regards to things like control authority at high AoA. I suggest you read them more closely.

The faster you are, the more likely a tyre will pop, or you'll overshoot the runway, or you'll end up with just enough ground effect (even with those stubby wings) to have to go around. As long as you're close to 300 you're fine, but past 350 is needlessly adding braking distance. As with most things to do with this module, people drastically overstate how difficult the aircraft is to fly. Its low speed handling is excellent, you just need to keep enough power on (80%) to keep the blown flaps running.

Unless the MiG-21 somehow operates from a different set of aerodynamic principles than anything I've flown, the fact it (a mechanically controlled aircraft with no assistance beyond a control damper and rudimentary autopilot, and with a TWR under 1:1 unless in emergency burner at low level) cannot be stalled by anything short of crossed controls held for several seconds at flight idle would suggest it is very much neither more correct nor real. It behaves like a FBW jet now, which it should not. The FM is even more basic than it was when I got into DCS a year ago. Hard doesn't equal realistic, but it was never hard in the first place - just that most DCS players can't fly anything without FBW handholding.

Looked a bit fast, I try and avoid touching down above 320ish. 350-380 for approach, flare over threshold, airbrake if necessary, and down at 280 is my usual routine. At some airports (Gelendzhik particularly) you really can't afford any extra speed.

Currently my SRS has decided to blast literal noise jamming across the net, less than a week after I finally got it working again :(

I don't know what MiG you guys are flying, but since the patch mine no longer exhibits stall behaviour at all, let alone the recently-added tip stalls... at any speed I can hold the stick pinned into my lap with zero danger of a departure and the aircraft sitting stably at 25 degrees true AoA (which is like 40something indicated, the gauge is against the stop). It now feels like it has fly-by-wire - nothing like it has at any point in the past 18 months. "Easier to control" does not mean the FM is better, especially for a non-FBW tailed delta, my dudes.

I've been having SRS problems on and off for months now, and I know a few of the guys who usually GCI for me have had issues too. Some days it works fine, some days I can only hear people and can't transmit, some days I can do neither. I usually encourage anyone doing GCI for me to split between it and whatever I'm using but it seems half the time there's either nobody on there, or nobody on the right frequency. Usually on Battle for Sukhumi I ask them to prioritise anything that looks like it's heading for the ships, I don't know how many people were on SRS yesterday as I was yet again having problems with it and didn't want to risk hot-miking feedback over it, but that might've been why there wasn't a lot of cover at first. A few times now we've had blue kettled up in their own base so badly that they could barely get off the ground just because we had a few MiGs under GCI and they had no answer.

It happens at basically the exact same point it used to, most likely you weren't noticing it before because the aircraft would stop moving forwards and move down instead. The number of times I watched people stall all the way into the ground because they had no idea what was going on and kept trying to 'fix' their sudden descent by pulling the stick was painful. The only real difference is that now the departures are a bit more spirited, so it's more noticeable and takes a second or two to recover from compared to previously.

You're not going high enough. If you never leave the deck, you won't see if move, because you're mostly flying transonic or only very slightly supersonic.

Blue got pretty upsetti about the 29s today. I think it's kind of lost on them that without R-27s or 73s, their only real advantages are the radar and excellent acceleration - coming at them one at a time isn't going to work well. To their credit, some of the F-5s really put in a solid effort and did score some kills. It might be confirmation bias, but R-60s off the 29s seem a lot worse than the ones off 21s, both in tracking ability and damage dealt... maybe glancing hits due to higher launch speeds? I have no idea. At one point Mithril tanked three of them before finally losing his engines, he put up a really solid fight. Gonna go ahead and recommend to blue that if you guys don't want to fight 29s on the Sukhumi mission, you need to send more than one Viggen at a time to try hit the boats. All it takes is an effective GCI and one or two 21s on dedicated interceptor duty and it's a foregone conclusion that one or both are going to get to Sochi safely, as they have each time I've been on for the mission. I don't know how much coordination's been happening on blue but it's clearly not as much as has been happening on red.

Turn off the PO-750 #1 switch while in flight and you'll hear them. Compressor stalls are exceptionally rare and generally only appear when you've taken damage, or make an extremely violent manoeuvre well beyond what you'd ever want to do.

To be fair, DCS doesn't simulate it getting dirty during the flight, so having a canopy that's a little grotty is as close as we're likely to get. No matter how clean it is when you take off, it won't stay that way. Getting bug guts off perspex sucks, they're like concrete :lol:

Every other canopy in DCS is unrealistically spotless. While the MiG's might be a touch too dirty, people really underestimate both how much bug guts ends up on the perspex in flight, and how hard it is to clean off properly. Usually the windscreen gets the worst of it. With that said, the gunsight glass should be pretty close to spotless.

It won't if you pay attention. Don't exceed 33 indicated AoA, don't subject the engine to overspeeds or neg/0 G, watch your rudder coordination. T/O flap and emerg burner let you get away with a lot.

It does move, but the logic that drives the cone is based on air pressure IIRC so you won't see as much movement if you never leave the deck.

AI use their own separate flight models for all aircraft, not just the MiG. What works against actual players won't against AI and vice versa. That said, people chronically underestimate the 21's capabilities in close and especially at low speed, and Hornets are the most satisfying victims :)

I had no oscillation with it today, but did notice it was putting me into a slight climb rather than its previous behaviour before the FM change (dropping the nose for speed, overcompensating once or twice to level out, then sitting dead level).

VNE is 1300 or 1350, you're up around your max dynamic pressure for the airframe there and in DCS your engine will quit somewhere in that range. It can hit 1400 without flaming out sometimes, but I wouldn't count on it - I always try stay right on 1300 and go no higher. 1200 is fine. If you're losing your engine while you still have >200l of fuel in the tanks, one of four things is happening: a) you're overspeeding it - stay below 1300km/h IAS. b) you've somehow compressor stalled badly enough to flame out. This is exceptionally hard to do without first doing something else that would rip the airframe, if overstress was more fleshed out (e.g. ARU override to 'long arm' and then reefing on the stick at >800km/h). It's probably not this, you'd hear the banging from the compressor anyway. c) you've applied 0 or negative G, or flown inverted, long enough for the 80 litre header tank to drain, thus starving the engine of fuel. d) you've overridden and meddled with the nose cone position, or failed to turn the automatic nose cone control on (main right side vertical breaker panel, top row of horizontal switches, it's the switch nearest the front of the aircraft out of those three). It's most likely c) or d) given your speed is below 1300. For the first, pretend you're flying a Spitfire - roll inverted and pull rather than nosing over. Negative G sucks for you as a human being and sucks for the airframe, so avoid it as much as possible - both your body and the aircraft tolerate far higher positive G loads than negative. Don't fly inverted, if you have to be inverted then apply gentle back stick to apply some positive G to the aircraft (so the fuel drains properly rather than floating to the top of the tanks). For the second, don't. You shouldn't be touching that unless you have good reason (and if you have good reason to be touching that, you should be looking to land, because something is very wrong). Make sure the main breaker switch for the cone is on and don't touch the override on the left panel.

I think it's only on that specific one - at least, that's the only one I've noticed it on. Might be worth checking the description.lua file and making sure there's nothing missing/typo'd in there maybe? If I remember I'll poke around myself and post any fixes I find.