VSN New F-104 Mod

PeeJott17 · June 29

On 6/28/2025 at 12:34 AM, AndyJWest said:

I've been trying out the C model. Looks are excellent, but I'm a little unsure about the flight modelling. I can understand it being sensitive in pitch, but it seems to actually be divergent in roll: trimmed hands off, it will fairly rapidly roll off to one side or another, to an extent that I'd have thought unacceptable in a real aircraft. Is stability augmentation working? Turning roll augmentation off via the switch seems to make no difference.

Yes, it does roll slightly to the down-wing-side.

I think(and it is not 100% clear from the manual, at least to me) that the stability-augmentation just countered stronger rolling and dampened it. I don't know whether it could completely counter rolling or just set it to a linear slight rolling.

As far as I know, the 104 did not go straight through turns if you took your hands of the stick, but I'll look into it

On 6/28/2025 at 5:58 AM, zsoltfireman said:

It would be nice to have a G/S model package that can be used without FC in the same way as the C package

Yep, sure thing. But G and S will stay FC-3 dependent...of course, you never know, but it is more looking like "will not happen" than "may-be"...

stockfisch · June 29

I am puzzled. In the video ‚F-104C mod - first flight‘ of cesarferrolho it seems to be a F-104G model with the long rudder and without probe. The cockpit is clickable. Is it some kind of a ‚franken plane‘? Would love to combine the exterior model of the F-104G with the F-104C standalone clickable cockpit features. Is it possible?

Thanks for your answers. Good to know that it is possible to use G-type skins to get the F-104G exterior look for the C-Model.

AndyJWest · June 29

2 hours ago, PeeJott17 said:

Yes, it does roll slightly to the down-wing-side.

I think(and it is not 100% clear from the manual, at least to me) that the stability-augmentation just countered stronger rolling and dampened it. I don't know whether it could completely counter rolling or just set it to a linear slight rolling.

As far as I know, the 104 did not go straight through turns if you took your hands of the stick, but I'll look into it

Yep, sure thing. But G and S will stay FC-3 dependent...of course, you never know, but it is more looking like "will not happen" than "may-be"...

There are flight manuals for various versions of the F-104 about, and some of them include a section on 'Flight Characteristics'. I've not found one for the C version with this, but the basic aerodynamics won't have changed. The section goes into a fair bit of detail regarding why, despite the 10° anhedral (on what is almost an unswept wing), due to the T-tail acting as a fence on the rudder/fin, inducing greater roll in a slip, "the aircraft possesses a normal positive dihedral effect". This to me would suggest that the aircraft should be at least a little more stable in roll.

The same section also has data on the stability augmenters, showing their damping effect diagrammatically. I seem to remember one of the manuals stating that the roll augmenter should be turned off in some circumstances (above a certain speed, with missiles/tanks on the tip stations, I think), but I can't seem to find it. This would imply that even without the roll augmenter, it should still be stable in roll.

PeeJott17 · June 29

3 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

There are flight manuals for various versions of the F-104 about, and some of them include a section on 'Flight Characteristics'. I've not found one for the C version with this, but the basic aerodynamics won't have changed. The section goes into a fair bit of detail regarding why, despite the 10° anhedral (on what is almost an unswept wing), due to the T-tail acting as a fence on the rudder/fin, inducing greater roll in a slip, "the aircraft possesses a normal positive dihedral effect". This to me would suggest that the aircraft should be at least a little more stable in roll.

The same section also has data on the stability augmenters, showing their damping effect diagrammatically. I seem to remember one of the manuals stating that the roll augmenter should be turned off in some circumstances (above a certain speed, with missiles/tanks on the tip stations, I think), but I can't seem to find it. This would imply that even without the roll augmenter, it should still be stable in roll.

I will take a look at it and hope to find an answer to it for the next Version;-)

firefox121 · June 29

Hello, this is a grat mod, indeed I noticed that has no ffb effects, is ther any chance to add ffb effects to this great mod? without using external software, I own an old sidewinder ffb 2

Bremspropeller · June 30

Hey @PeeJott17 thanks for the very nice mod!

Here are some thoughts I had after throwing the jet around (version 2.9.16.099):

- The engine gauge (small dial) seems to read 0.1% percents, while it should read whole percents.

- The engine-response needs to be quicker (see F-4E for reference - about 4s idle to MIL)

- The engine seems to have too much thrust in MIL and in blower relative to the available lift/drag, which also seems slightly high. On the deck I have trouble keeping speeds below 450 (flaps T/O) and maintaining 7g in burner, which suggests too much thrust (and lift!) in blower and flaps T/O. I can even maintain higher g than that. A somewhat similar behaviour with flaps up and in MIL at about 500KIAS: Not enough drag and I'll have to go to just below 5 on the APC gauge to make her slow down at all. With the -7 motor, the jet should be a bit more thrust-limited during those turns. The -19 motor in a late A might be a different story altogether. Config tested was two AIM-9Bs on the tips.

- Roll-response is too sluggish. The jet should roll WAY quicker. Roll damping seems okay to me, though.

- Pitch generally seems alright, even though I believe there's a little too much lift in those wing-stubs and I barely need to use the T/O flaps to make the nose come around when flying clean.

- The rate-shaker is probably hard to implement.

Are you planning to implement the kicker and the APC-cutout function for the kicker in the future? The C seems to not have a paddle-switch for the kicker, though. I personally believe the pitch-up is a bit too high-gain and should have a smoother and somewhat more controllable, yet progressive onset. Modelling might be very hard, though.

Edited June 30 by Bremspropeller

Bremspropeller · July 2

On 6/28/2025 at 12:34 AM, AndyJWest said:

I've been trying out the C model. Looks are excellent, but I'm a little unsure about the flight modelling. I can understand it being sensitive in pitch, but it seems to actually be divergent in roll: trimmed hands off, it will fairly rapidly roll off to one side or another, to an extent that I'd have thought unacceptable in a real aircraft. Is stability augmentation working? Turning roll augmentation off via the switch seems to make no difference.

Did some more testing yesterday and I can second that. Taking off in a crosswind will dip the wing immediately on liftoff and the jet won't keep the wings level when trimmed for hands-off flying.

Generally, the jet should stay where you last pointed it.

Also, how do I get the tanker to talk to me? I tried building a mission to sip some gas, but the tanker won't answer my calls. The radio was hard-tuned to same freq (251) via the ME. I also tried fumbling with the radio (TR and TR+G) but the tanker seemed to not care about my calls anyway, despite calling "on station".

Edited July 2 by Bremspropeller

Dogsbd · July 3

I can also confirm the roll axis instability. If the aircraft is tending to roll left it takes a good bit of right stick deflection to get it back toward neutral but as soon as it reaches a level/neutral roll position that right stick deflection pushes it past level and into a right roll. It's like trying to balance a basketball on your pinky finger.

cesarferrolho · July 4

On 7/2/2025 at 12:07 PM, Bremspropeller said:

Did some more testing yesterday and I can second that. Taking off in a crosswind will dip the wing immediately on liftoff and the jet won't keep the wings level when trimmed for hands-off flying.

Generally, the jet should stay where you last pointed it.

Also, how do I get the tanker to talk to me? I tried building a mission to sip some gas, but the tanker won't answer my calls. The radio was hard-tuned to same freq (251) via the ME. I also tried fumbling with the radio (TR and TR+G) but the tanker seemed to not care about my calls anyway, despite calling "on station".

Did you make sure you are using a Tanker with basket? Like the KC-135 MPRS, for instance

Bremspropeller · July 4

28 minutes ago, cesarferrolho said:

Did you make sure you are using a Tanker with basket? Like the KC-135 MPRS, for instance

I used a KC-130 to LARP a KC-95.

Bremspropeller · July 4

One more observation also feeding into the "too much thrust" bucket:

Approach should be 87-90% RPM with land flaps. I do have to put the boards out to make those numbers work. Without boards, I'll have to go to 80'ish percent, which IRL would cut off BLC bleed air (most likely asymmetrically) and ruin the whole day...

Dogsbd · July 5

7 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

One more observation also feeding into the "too much thrust" bucket:

Approach should be 87-90% RPM with land flaps. I do have to put the boards out to make those numbers work. Without boards, I'll have to go to 80'ish percent, which IRL would cut off BLC bleed air (most likely asymmetrically) and ruin the whole day...

I believe the bleed air for the flaps cuts out below ~82-83%....

PeeJott17 · July 8

On 6/29/2025 at 1:16 PM, AndyJWest said:

There are flight manuals for various versions of the F-104 about, and some of them include a section on 'Flight Characteristics'. I've not found one for the C version with this, but the basic aerodynamics won't have changed. The section goes into a fair bit of detail regarding why, despite the 10° anhedral (on what is almost an unswept wing), due to the T-tail acting as a fence on the rudder/fin, inducing greater roll in a slip, "the aircraft possesses a normal positive dihedral effect". This to me would suggest that the aircraft should be at least a little more stable in roll.

The same section also has data on the stability augmenters, showing their damping effect diagrammatically. I seem to remember one of the manuals stating that the roll augmenter should be turned off in some circumstances (above a certain speed, with missiles/tanks on the tip stations, I think), but I can't seem to find it. This would imply that even without the roll augmenter, it should still be stable in roll.

Alrighty.

I've researched some more in the manuals and characteristcs and found another former F-104 Pilot.

The stability-augmentation-system Was purely to counter unwanted rapid changes in roll (for roll-stability) due to flight-maneuvers. The Pilot I contacted said, the 104 was almost not controllable with the dampening System turned of. And it did not keep the aircraft in it's orientation, but that the Pilot had the job to keep the plane as it should fly in all it's orientations.

Since real-life does not always translate very good into the virtual-skies of DCS, the next Update will feature a "dead-zone" of 15° right and left of wings level, where there will be no induced roll. Exceeding 15° will lead to increasing roll until 90° (one wing straight down) is reached.

I hope that that will feel better for normal PC-Controller Setups ;-)

PeeJott17 · July 8

On 6/30/2025 at 6:45 PM, Bremspropeller said:

Hey @PeeJott17 thanks for the very nice mod!

Hi there. Great that you like it :-)

Quote

- The engine gauge (small dial) seems to read 0.1% percents, while it should read whole percents.

- The engine-response needs to be quicker (see F-4E for reference - about 4s idle to MIL)

- The engine seems to have too much thrust in MIL and in blower relative to the available lift/drag, which also seems slightly high. On the deck I have trouble keeping speeds below 450 (flaps T/O) and maintaining 7g in burner, which suggests too much thrust (and lift!) in blower and flaps T/O. I can even maintain higher g than that. A somewhat similar behaviour with flaps up and in MIL at about 500KIAS: Not enough drag and I'll have to go to just below 5 on the APC gauge to make her slow down at all. With the -7 motor, the jet should be a bit more thrust-limited during those turns. The -19 motor in a late A might be a different story altogether. Config tested was two AIM-9Bs on the tips.

Regarding the small engine-gauge I have tried to look it up in the manual, but did not find anything whether it shows 1/10 or 1/1 %. Just looking at the moving speed of it and comparing it e.g. to the Mirage F-1 I would rather think 0.1 is right so 1/10 to 10/10 of 1% (one complete 360° turn meaning 1%), but I can't say it has to ber one or the other.

Regarding spool-speeds: We have been conducting spol tests with a wider audiance, one of them being a former CF-104 Pilot. The Spool-Speeds that were final were the ones the majority said to represent an early J79 engine best. I will, however, ping our CF-104 Pilot again to recheck it and if I "detuned" it further by accident or wrong info will get it to more consistent spool-times for the next update.

Quote

- Roll-response is too sluggish. The jet should roll WAY quicker. Roll damping seems okay to me, though.

Yep, you are right. It should achieve 720°/s but should be limited in that speed to two full roles due to inertial-coupling. The other F-104 Pilot I pinged said, that the "out of plane" rolling was not pleasent in the second roll and got a lot worse if you tried a third. Of course, roll-rate worsened by the nose going "out of plane". I found that the manual said to keep it to one full quick aileron roll, pause, and do it again to prevent the nose going out of the plane. I will test and get it to that rolling-speeds and will check the "special roll ability" as well for the next update.

Quote

- The rate-shaker is probably hard to implement.

Are you planning to implement the kicker and the APC-cutout function for the kicker in the future? The C seems to not have a paddle-switch for the kicker, though. I personally believe the pitch-up is a bit too high-gain and should have a smoother and somewhat more controllable, yet progressive onset. Modelling might be very hard, though.

A shaker sound is alread implemented, but will set in earlier in the next version. Stick-Kicker is not really doable. Of course I could make the plane give a big "nose-down-punch" when getting to close to the AoA-Limit, but that will feel quite weird, since the stick will be held back, while the plane pitches forward. Sadly I have no better idea to implement it a.t.m....may be I will have an idea and can make it "feel" right...but I think that would need force-feedback-sticks, which are not that common nowadays.

Ah, and I forgot:
Yes, lift is to high and drag is to low right now. Have been tweaking and tuning it a lot lately and getting better results. Everything in the next Version ;-)

On 7/4/2025 at 10:14 PM, Bremspropeller said:

One more observation also feeding into the "too much thrust" bucket:

Approach should be 87-90% RPM with land flaps. I do have to put the boards out to make those numbers work. Without boards, I'll have to go to 80'ish percent, which IRL would cut off BLC bleed air (most likely asymmetrically) and ruin the whole day...

Yep. It had a lot too much lift in the slow-speed-regime. Will be corrected in the next version. That will lead to a more natural AoA on approach...it will be a bit more challenging to fly a good overhead-break as well, though ;-)

Ah, and you'll need to use "PTT Radio 1" to talk to anything in the air ;-)

Bremspropeller · July 8

Thanks for your comprehensive reply! I know you guys will make this little rocket even better in the future

Check the gauge at about 02:30 - you can see both the spool up time and the little gauge being in 1/1

PeeJott17 · July 9

Thanks for pointing to that Video.

Yep, I see 1/1 as well and it looks a bit stupid...but if it is 1/1... I guess it is 1/1.

Spool-times feel quick, but the throttle hand is a bit behind the Pilot.

But you are right, even if there is some spooling-lag it is less then we have now.

Both things will be corrected in the next Version

Dogsbd · July 10

The way I have always understood the small engine RPM dial to work (and how it works in the Heatblur F-4) is that each complete revolution of the small dial is 10%. It simply makes setting a specific RPM easier as the marks on the main dial between 80-90 or 90-100 are in 2% increments, whereas with the small dial you can select a speed accurate to a 1/2 of a percent. If there was ever a need....

Bremspropeller · July 10

4 hours ago, Dogsbd said:

The way I have always understood the small engine RPM dial to work (and how it works in the Heatblur F-4) is that each complete revolution of the small dial is 10%. It simply makes setting a specific RPM easier as the marks on the main dial between 80-90 or 90-100 are in 2% increments, whereas with the small dial you can select a speed accurate to a 1/2 of a percent. If there was ever a need....

That's how it works. Same in the F-5.

utplayer01 · Saturday at 08:39 AM

I have the problem that i can choose it in the editor but if i want to fly DCS says You cant fly it. Somebody has a idea how to fix ?

Wangila · Saturday at 03:04 PM

6 hours ago, utplayer01 said:

I have the problem that i can choose it in the editor but if i want to fly DCS says You cant fly it. Somebody has a idea how to fix ?

I too I have the same issue

Rudel_chw · Saturday at 07:50 PM

11 hours ago, utplayer01 said:

I have the problem that i can choose it in the editor but if i want to fly DCS says You cant fly it. Somebody has a idea how to fix ?

check the install path, seems like you installed it on the DCS program folder, instead it should be at /Saved Games/DCS/mods/aircraft

Wangila · Sunday at 02:39 PM

18 hours ago, Rudel_chw said:

check the install path, seems like you installed it on the DCS program folder, instead it should be at /Saved Games/DCS/mods/aircraft

For me I did the same and I cant find it

Rudel_chw · Sunday at 04:08 PM

1 hour ago, Wangila said:

For me I did the same and I cant find it

This is how I have mine:

Install path at /Saved Games/ and version number of the Mod:

The aircraft shows up on the Mission Editor :

and then this is how it looks on the Sim:

Check that you don't have other Mods conflicting, check the dcs.log to see if there are error messages about the F-104

Edited Sunday at 04:09 PM by Rudel_chw

MAXsenna · Sunday at 06:28 PM

For me I did the same and I cant find it

Make sure it is ONLY in Saved Games. Sometimes people by fault add it in the core first, and then forget they did. Make sure it is in Saved Games, then perform a full repair.

Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

Wangila · Sunday at 08:20 PM

1 hour ago, MAXsenna said:

Make sure it is ONLY in Saved Games. Sometimes people by fault add it in the core first, and then forget they did. Make sure it is in Saved Games, then perform a full repair.

Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

I did put it in saved games, i think maybe some mods are conflicting with it but i don't know which one

4 hours ago, Rudel_chw said:

This is how I have mine:

Install path at /Saved Games/ and version number of the Mod:

The aircraft shows up on the Mission Editor :

and then this is how it looks on the Sim:

Check that you don't have other Mods conflicting, check the dcs.log to see if there are error messages about the F-104

Thank you for your explanation

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