Frederf Posted July 25, 2016 Posted July 25, 2016 (edited) The MiG-21 as modeled has two possible sets of dispenser hardware for physical countermeasure (chaff or flare) release. These fuselage-mount dispensers are an unusual MiG-21 item. Some MiG-21 were modified to carry the ASO-2I dispensers but this not what we see in this variant. The ASO-2I have a distinctive staggered pattern of 32 bays of small and equal size and the last 4 are at an increased spacing. The dispensers in DCS have a 3x3 small diameter 9-bay section and a 2x10 large diameter 20-bay section. The 9-bay section always appears to be angled forward while the 20-bay section has its tubes perpendicular to the aircraft's longitudinal axis. Notably the total number of bays for the set is 58. The items are PPI-26 and PPR-26 for IR and radar decoys respectively. PPI-50 or PPR-50 are 50mm as may fit in the larger diameter bays. There does exist in the world a modification which mounts ASO-2 type equipment to the fuselage. However it can be clearly seen that this equipment is different than the set shown in DCS. The ASO-2 pictured here is of the 32 staggered hole the same as mounted to the bottom of the SPS-141 EW pod. This is clearly not the equipment which is shown on the DCS variant which is apparently of Yugoslavian origin? The SPS-141 pod has on its bottom two ASO-2I.E7R dispensers of the familiar type, 26mm each bay. There are 64 total bays, 26mm, for the set. The bars to which the dispenser bays are attached have a switch to choose 0.3 or 1.0s dispense interval. The SPS-141 pod itself has option to produce 4 or 16 release trains either in single (4/16) or in parallel (8/32). This leaves the following questions: 1. What equipment is shown attached to the fuselage which has 29 holes per side if it is not ASO-2I? 2. What is the typical load for 50mm and 26mm decoys of this mixed size (50mm being ~10x the size of the 26mm) in terms of IR and radar? 3. What is the ratio of effectiveness of 26mm vs. 50mm decoys of each type? 4. How can DCS be configured to deal with 58 or 64 decoy total depending on external stores? 5. In what order are the mixed-size bays fired? 6. How much customization of load is practical? 7. Is it acceptable to adopt the ASO-2I-E7R dispensers for the fuselage-mount such that it matches the SPS-141 set exactly? 8. Is it acceptable to make either the fuselage-mount or SPS-141 a fixed load so the chaff-flare sliders only pertain to the other item? 9. Is it possible to make the 0.3/1.0 second dispense interval switch available to the user? Edited August 1, 2017 by Frederf
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