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TrueGritLead

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  • Flight Simulators
    DCS World
  • Location
    Germany
  • Interests
    Eurofighter Typhoon
  • Occupation
    TrueGrit Virtual Technologies

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  1. The Eurofighter Typhoon has an automatic Flap/Slat and trim system. Landing AoA is depending on weight of the a/c and configuration restrictions (i.e. ground clearences of stores)
  2. HiAA= Hi Aspect Angle meaning you start the setup „neutral“ in a head on pass with no advantage for either side (at least if both maneuver correctly after the „fight is on“ call). Of course I was also working hard - but I could still smile! :) The liquid suit was called „Libelle“, but it lost out in a second campaign against the „normal“ air pressured system. I was the last that flew with the Libelle until it was shut down and removed from inventory many years ago. I liked it very much, especially for the fact that it produce zero arm pain or hematoma and did not need to pressure the lungs like the standard one. So overall a much „healthier“ system. But in centrifuge trials we had some blackouts by pilots wearing it, so it was deemed to be to dangerous and not reliable enough.
  3. I always wondered how it was possible to use the AIM-120s with only gunsight (maybe it was an operation mainly managed by WSO?). Hi Phant! You are absolutely right. There is no difference that you really could make out. Obviously the RDR was very different since it was the APG-65 then. The HUD indication was in comparison to modern HUD pretty useless. All the RDR work was done as you guessed correctly by the WSO. Weapon employment though was done by the pilot. The F-4F ICE was still a very "manual / raw data" aircraft. All necessary calculations had to be performed in your head. Conequently crew coordination was a big thing. Cheers!
  4. @QuiGon and @MiGCap1: Just for personal pride reasons: that is the wrong Gero right there in the article. That is not me ;-)
  5. Thanks hi41000! DVI is unfortunately not performing like a Siri or Alexa. For the first few years it did not work at all. After that it worked poorly. Today it is working but its benefits are not as prominent as we thought it would be. It will be interesting to see how the community will react to it when we introduce it. I am very convinced that „our“ version will work much more reliable and not as complicated. In other words: like the real DVI should have worked from the beginning. Then we will see how it could and should have been used and how it evolves. Looking forward to this! Cheers! Gero
  6. Hi QuiGon, you are absolutely right of course. With the term Top Gun graduate I tried to „visualize“ a bit our German Luftwaffe Fighter Weapon Instructor Course (FWIC) because I assume this is much less known. Or to be precise nowadays only WIC, because it is more multi role now. The WIC is essentially quite similar to all other WIC versions in the western hemisphere. Today it is performed together/synced with the Tornado course and the final Mission Employment phase is flown in the UK to bolster the Typhoon compatibility across the user nations. Cheers! Gero
  7. Thanks! Happy if you liked it! And no, personally I did not. Others were more lucky on timing. You can not have it all!
  8. Hello Hummingbird and everyone reading this, as you mentioned above it is for me obviously not possible to give you detailed numbers as an answer. But important to know for everyone in the community is of course that we at TrueGrit are putting in all efforts to make the Typhoon for DCS a worthy module that comes as close to reality as legaly possible. So all our experiences and observations are reflected and will give you a representation of the Typhoons flight characteristics that will be very much fun to fly and guarantee success in your future virtual combats. Before I get startet on the answers, let me give you some more global feedback and tips from my perspective as a former instructor pilot and Top Gun graduate: The most critical and decisive factor in A/A combat is the human component! If you put a layman in a modern Formula 1 car and let him drive against Formular 1 champions in historic cars, he will very probably still loose the race. He might even not get of the starting grid because of the very complicated clutch mechanism or at least drive very poor laptimes because he probably does not know about aerodynamics and when his car will provide the best performance at a given time. Here a quick example: I scored once a gun track against an US F-16 in my old and inferior Phantom II, flying at Red Flag as Red Air at that time. The guy was totally overloaded with his systems and maneuvered his jet poorly. There are three things that will decide an A/A combat. All of them are happening way before the actual engagement. All of them are influenced by yourself!: First you need to know perfectly how your own weapon system works. In all details and aspects that can or will influence the engagement. The HOTAS of the Typhoon for example has more then 40 switch/button combinations. Not all of them are necessary at all times. But if you mix them up at the wrong time you will destroy your best situational awareness or employ the wrong (or no) weapon. Second is your proficiency and continuity in training. A/A combat is all about deeply drilled reflexes and experiences. The more the better. You need to be „ahead of the jet“ so that you can anticipate the next moments and actions necessary, not to be surprised by what is happening. You need to be able to direct the fight and not be in a position of being only able to react. This training needs to be monitored and judged by highly experienced people that will make you better. You need to debrief every move otherwise you provide yourself negative training and do not realise it. Third you need to know your opponent. You need to know perfectly the opponents airframe and weapons capabilities and you need to know his training and tactics. You need to know your weapon systems advantages in comparison to that specific opponent to profit from them and you need to know your disadvantages to avoid them. Depending on the scenario you are facing, this could be a lot of different platforms. I know that most flight simmer in this community are very aware of all of that. But some new guys are probably (and hopefully) joining the community constantly. And for all of us it is still true and necessary: train as much and as hard as you can. A dog fight is over in seconds. The training for it takes a life time! So as a first conclusion: it takes a lot of time and dedication to reach that level of proficiency. Do not be frustrated if it does not work out within a day. You will loose initially also against inferior platforms – but that will change as soon as you get well acquainted with your system. And if you did your best according to my three bullet points – as your opponent might as well has - finally the weapon system you are operating will make the difference. And exactly for that time it is a big advantage when you are sitting in a Eurofighter Typhoon! I wrote those lines just to give a „qualifier“ to my experiences I made in my flying carreer. I never had a „real“ engagement with real weapons employed in anger. „Only“ training. But I made sure at all times I was ready for the instance it would be real. And in so far acted and maneuvered like it. Probably like the other guy in his jet too. But training also means that all those engagemants had very different objectives with different training aspects in mind. It could be unfair to judge and to interpret to much in my experiences if I tell you about other weapon systems that I won against without knowing the correct assumptions, parameters and restrictions. Still I think you will get a good impression from the following: The F-16 is a very capable weapon system in all respects! Of course there are „thousands“ of variations flying around. If you are strictly focussing on WVR („Dog Fight“) engagements, some aspects on the more modern variants are not helping. The engines got bigger and bigger, the stuff they put in and on the airframe got more and more, but what remained is a pretty small wing area that has to deliver the lift. It is pretty exactly half of the Typhoon (50 square meter). So even if you jettison most of your stuff in the F-16 prior to going into a WVR fight (which you most probably should do in any case) and consider that against missiles like an IRIS-T there are not many seconds that you can use your afterburner because of your proper IRCM, the F-16 looses out on the aerodynamical aspect. I myself had never a problem of fighting an F-16 but must admit that those fights were physically the hardest for me. The F-18 is equally capable in general as an F-16. But in comparison it has not enough thrust. That still is true for the E/F variants because they are also much heavier. The F-18 is an AoA fighter. It has an outstanding capability to point the nose and get shots off. Quite similar to thrust vectored Flanker variants. That is not possible in a Typhoon. HOB missiles obviously change the fight in this respect for both sides. Comming down to a gun fight the F-18 is really hurting on thrust and is not a big challenge for the Typhoon. Those fights tend to be very slow speed and low g´s. The F-22 guys we met were always a bit surprised what can be done with the Typhoon. The airframes are matched pretty well. Here my little speech from above comes well into play. The training focus of the F-22 fleet tended not to concentrate on WVR for obvious reasons. So if they end up with a Typhoon in a knife fight there is no telling in advance who is going to tell the story at the bar. The Rafale is very similar to the Typhoon in many aspects. Here also the less thrust is an issue. Last but not least to answer question 8: One of my last flights in my military career was a BFM training sortie against a Dutch F-16. My opponent was an approx. 25 year old CR wingman who just completed his training. We met over the Dutch North Sea with a BFM floor of 6000´. After three BFM sets (OFF/DEF/HiAA) he called for a short break because he pulled so many g´s that he was physically completely exhausted. I won all of the sets, even the defensive ones! I was 47 years old by this time, base commander and with a really poor continuity in my last year due to the many staff tasks. At that moment I was extremely proud to sit in a Eurofighter Typhoon! Sorry for so much text, and maybe I did not answer exactly as expected but such is life and A/A combat. Always expect the unexpected! Gero
  9. Hi everyone! I am VERY grateful and happy about your extremely positive reception of the news and the warm welcome! Thank you very much for that! I know that we started a very ambitious endeavor. But: no guts, no glory! We will fight for this to happen and I believe that we have the best odds and requirements one can wish for. Our Team is comprised of absolute professionals with loads of experience and we have also secured an exclusive copyright license contract with “Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH”. This firepower should get us far. Just how far, we will all see together. On that note: in such a short time we have already received many offers from you guys to support us with data sources or help us as coders and 3D designers. Please keep that up and continue to contact our community manager “Dash@TrueGrit” with your questions, suggestions or even applications like you already have. This whole project is very much a team effort. The Eurofighter Typhoon community in real life is very strong and I can already see from your positive replies, that this is the case for DCS as well. In these troubled times that the whole world is in right now, I wish everybody in this forum, your families and friends, courage and stamina (in other words True Grit!) to get through this healthy and well! That is the main priority right now! If our press release yesterday lifted your spirits for a moment, we at TrueGrit are already happy.
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