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My First Impressions of the F/A-18


Panzerfan

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As an F/A-18 mechanic for the swiss air force, the Hornet was a day one buy for me. and here are my first impressions of it:

 

 

1. No big Surprise here, it looks amazing the level of detail is fantastic. But there are some imperfections like the missing screw on the front cap of the radome. At work we joke about it being the main bolt holding all of the plain together.

 

 

2. And a more severe mistake: the missing Wing unlock bolts. As soon as you unlock the wings to fold them two red bolts pop out of the wing, one for each. these signal that the wings are un locked an not ready for flight.

 

 

3. Chicken Mode! its offical name is FCS test mode it's accessed by holding the FCS test switch and pressing the FCS reset button, which causes all the control surfaces to move for testing letting the Hornet wiggle around like a chicken.

it's more or les useless for flight operations but a nice detail

 

 

 

4.PLF: Plaining Link Failure (i think). a very real problem that hasn't been solved yet. basically what happens is that the main landing gear wheel, up on touch down, can swivel slightly in board towards its stored position. you can imagine that this isn't an ideal situation for the pilot. Protocol for a situation like this would be, as soon as one of the MLG lights goes off during landing the pilot has to go around and land with the hook to minimize risk

PLF might have happened on my first landing. I was slamming it down pretty hard so the wheel might have just been bent.

this brings me to my final point

 

 

5. The Hornet loves to fly! she almost takes off by herself even from regular tarmac. She climbs like an arrow and turns amazingly

She loves flying so much she would rather die than stopping it...

as soon as you drop the gear and deploy the flaps she alsmost drops like a rock, you viggen pilots out there might not have that much trouble with it but the Hornet behaves much worse than the Viggen on Final.

So this will take some time getting used to it

 

 

Anyways the Hornet is a fantastic module and i'm excited for the weapons and systems to come especially the HARM! Keep making this good stuff ED and Belsimtek!

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5. The Hornet loves to fly! she almost takes off by herself even from regular tarmac. She climbs like an arrow and turns amazingly

She loves flying so much she would rather die than stopping it...

as soon as you drop the gear and deploy the flaps she alsmost drops like a rock, you viggen pilots out there might not have that much trouble with it but the Hornet behaves much worse than the Viggen on Final.

So this will take some time getting used to it

 

Yeah, I pilot a lot of Viggen and oh my god the Hornet is much harder to land. You really do need to use the trim, manually holding back the stick during landing is deceptively challenging and just causes PIO.

 

With the Viggen, it's honestly pretty easy because you just kind of point the plane's vector towards the landing point with the autothrottle on, you just handle the pitch. The Hornet just SINKS and you have to fight it with throttle. It seems going below 130 kt is horrendous, and 140 is way too much. ~130 seems to be the sweet spot for landing from my few runway attempts.

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~130 seems to be the sweet spot for landing from my few runway attempts.
These airspeeds will vary as you consume fuel and whether or not you are carrying payload(s). Just reference the AoA bracket and try to not let the VV go above the middle portion.

HOTAS: Thrustmaster Warthog

PC: it's much better now

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These airspeeds will vary as you consume fuel and whether or not you are carrying payload(s).

 

 

Yeah I figured. It is helping me figure out the landing characteristics however, so once I think I get the 'feel' figured out I can mostly ignore my airspeed and just work off the AOA and the magic E.

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nice points.

 

she def isn't easy to land... wow... very quirky on final. and yeah, between 130-140... going to take lots of practice.

 

Try the carrier landings, they are tough but an absolute blast when you get in the groove and nail them.

Don B

EVGA Z390 Dark MB | i9 9900k CPU @ 5.1 GHz | Gigabyte 4090 OC | 64 GB Corsair Vengeance 3200 MHz CL16 | Corsair H150i Pro Cooler |Virpil CM3 Stick w/ Alpha Prime Grip 200mm ext| Virpil CM3 Throttle | VPC Rotor TCS Base w/ Alpha-L Grip| Point Control V2|Varjo Aero|

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  • ED Team
nice points.

 

she def isn't easy to land... wow... very quirky on final. and yeah, between 130-140... going to take lots of practice.

 

The biggest errors I see most people having:

 

1- Once gear and flaps come down, there is a LOT of drag. If you get behind the power, she will sink like a stone. Start to throttle up at around 145 knots and ease into onspeed AoA.

 

2- Initial AoA with flaps down for landing will only be around 4ish, you need to manually trim to 8.1 of your will be fighting the jet the whole time.

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As an F/A-18 mechanic for the swiss air force, the Hornet was a day one buy for me. and here are my first impressions of it:

 

Man, it's nice to hear input from F-18 crew, I hope ED hears ya and eventually code in those details you mentioned.

HOTAS: Thrustmaster Warthog

PC: it's much better now

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The biggest errors I see most people having:

 

1- Once gear and flaps come down, there is a LOT of drag. If you get behind the power, she will sink like a stone. Start to throttle up at around 145 knots and ease into onspeed AoA.

 

2- Initial AoA with flaps down for landing will only be around 4ish, you need to manually trim to 8.1 of your will be fighting the jet the whole time.

 

Yep this, I learned it the hard way. Stay on top of that speed.

Don B

EVGA Z390 Dark MB | i9 9900k CPU @ 5.1 GHz | Gigabyte 4090 OC | 64 GB Corsair Vengeance 3200 MHz CL16 | Corsair H150i Pro Cooler |Virpil CM3 Stick w/ Alpha Prime Grip 200mm ext| Virpil CM3 Throttle | VPC Rotor TCS Base w/ Alpha-L Grip| Point Control V2|Varjo Aero|

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I knew after around an hour or so this was going to be my favourite and most used module (ultimately) and I had no major expectations being early access. The guns are just so cool (Shoot! Shoot!) but will there be an audio cue for that??

4.8 I7, 1080, TMW&T, SSD, VKB MK.IV.

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Many, many throttle movements is my friend. I've found adding two power increments and one back works well enough for stabilizing descent. Still a ton of work though, much like the real thing compared to RL landing videos with the throttle and stick in view of the camera.

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Very, very early first flying impression: a real joy to fly. High AOA flight ability & nose control seems almost on a par with my beloved Su-27. One thing I did notice, and I may be completely wrong based on my first hour of flying, is that the relevant speed range for smallest turn radius seem to be quite narrow. If that makes sense. It feels like it's a very narrow bell curve, whereas the equivalent bell curve for something like the Flanker feels much wider.

 

This is going to be such a versatile aircraft when we eventually get all the capabilities. I can see this becoming my favourite DCS-level aircraft.

System Spec: Cooler Master Cosmos C700P Black Edition case. | AMD 5950X CPU | MSI RTX-3090 GPU | 32GB HyperX Predator PC4000 RAM | | TM Warthog stick & throttle | TrackIR 5 | Samsung 980 Pro NVMe 4 SSD 1TB (boot) | Samsung 870 QVO SSD 4TB (games) | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit.

 

Personal wish list: DCS: Su-27SM & DCS: Avro Vulcan.

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FCS Test/Exerciser ..... "Chicken mode" is there and looks awesome .... though the banging and crashing you feel in the cockpit when you are doing it is not modeled.

 

 

See attached trk go to external view to watch the FCS beat itself to death :)

FCS_excerciser.trk


Edited by IvanK
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Well done DCS, but the only problem I have is the sound set. Particularly the flyby view. OMG! How am I going to fly this thing when I push F3 every 10 seconds!?!

 

If this is early access, the future features of the FA18 really paint an elite picture of things to come

 

 

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Win 10, AMD FX9590/water cooled, 32GB RAM, 250GB SSD system, 1TB SSD (DCS installed), 2TB HD, Warthog HOTAS, MFG rudders, Track IR 5, LG Ultrawide, Logitech Speakers w/sub, Fans, Case, cell phone, wallet, keys.....printer

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"as soon as you drop the gear and deploy the flaps she alsmost drops like a rock"

 

/QUOTE]

 

That's because she's been trained to land on carriers. We used to joke that you can always tell when a former carrier pilot is flying a commercial airliner,or anything else for that matter. Ten feet off the deck, chop the throttles and plant the landing gear.

When all else fails, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!

 

i-7 8700K Coffee Lake 5 GHz OC CPU, 32GB Corsair 3200 RAM, GTX1080 Ti 11Gb VRAM. Controls - Thrustmaster Warthog H.O.T.A.S., Saitek Pro rudder pedals, TrackIR 5, Oculus Rift S, Rift CV1

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Yep this, I learned it the hard way. Stay on top of that speed.

 

Can the auto throttle be used on CV landing?

 

It's a weak cop out I know.

"You see, IronHand is my thing"

My specs:  W10 Pro, I5/11600K o/c to 4800 @1.32v, 64 GB 3200 XML RAM, ASUS RTX3060ti/8GB.

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My son was a A-10c crew chief and knows so much about it. I showed him the DCS model and he was very surprised at the level of detail.

I'm sure that when you got the F/A-18 you had the same reaction.

 

It's cool to have first hand knowledge with all the details, big and small.

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