Community A-4E-C v2.3 (May 2025)

[RealA4EPilot]

3 hours ago, Gianky said:

 

You Betch'em Red Ryder that be it, and I can confirm that apartheid reached out to all 4,000+ sailors and officers and smacked us right across the chops. When we reached the Cape of Good Hope we didn't stop for a week long visit. The restrictions they placed on our black sailors nixed our port call.

Edited February 28, 2022 by RealA4EPilot
duplication reduction

[Gianky]

So many questions I'd like to ask....

Let's start with something I couldn't find a clear answer on the Internet: were all missions from Dixie Station basically close air support for troops on the ground, or did you conduct other types of missions as well, like strikes, SEAD, etc?

Also, if you feel like sharing some more sea stories from your deployments, I think we all be very eager to hear them.

[USSInchon]

I'm beginning to think we need a separate thread for these A-4 sea stories, where we (mostly grown adults) can sit cross-legged on the floor and listen to these very intriguing stories from the plane we love.

[Calabrone]

40 minutes ago, USSInchon said:

I'm beginning to think we need a separate thread for these A-4 sea stories, where we (mostly grown adults) can sit cross-legged on the floor and listen to these very intriguing stories from the plane we love.

You are so right !

[Captain Orso]

A-4 should have it's own subforum.

In fact, I think every mod with an install base of like 500, or whatever arbitrary number, should have their own subforum.

[Gianky]

2 hours ago, Captain Orso said:

A-4 should have it's own subforum.

In fact, I think every mod with an install base of like 500, or whatever arbitrary number, should have their own subforum.

I was thinking the same thing, then I realized: they have their own discord. So I subscribed to their server, link is in the first post of this thread.

[Calabrone]

2 hours ago, Captain Orso said:

A-4 should have it's own subforum.

In fact, I think every mod with an install base of like 500, or whatever arbitrary number, should have their own subforum.

Oh Yeah.

[Captain Orso]

2 hours ago, Gianky said:

I was thinking the same thing, then I realized: they have their own discord. So I subscribed to their server, link is in the first post of this thread.

Discord is where information goes to die and be buried. 

[buckeyedutch]

was someone able to create a default.lua  line for the SHRIKE button cw/ccw in the control config?

thx

 

 

[RealA4EPilot]

On 2/27/2022 at 4:26 PM, Gianky said:

 https://www.navysite.de/cruisebooks/cv62-65/index.html

Thanks to Gianky for posting this link to the 1965 Crew's Book of the USS Independence. My copy of the cruisebook must be packed away somewhere beyond my field of view. At the University of Missouri School of Journalism I majored in photojournalism in the style of National Geographic or Life Magazine. As such I put great stock in power of good journalistic images to tell a story. The quality of the images varies widely, but the book as shown online tells a more cohesive story than I remember. While I contributed heavily to a USS Oriskany Crew's Book when I was a member of ship's company, none of the photos in the Indy book are mine.

Even though the official U.S. Navy photographs that fill the Indy's book range from poorly composed snapshots to photos worthy of the label as a work of art, I recommend to all hands to thumb digitally through the digital cruisebook. The picture of CTF77 about halfway through the book is a story in itself. We were in the middle of one of the many bombing halts during the Vietnam War. when the call went out to assemble the task force to take some pictures. It was breathtaking to be on the flight deck with all those ships gathered so close together. To be in a diamond formation of four aircraft carriers was remarkable and awe inspiring. One of the ships launched and recovered fixed wing aircraft during the evolution, and my heart goes out to the F-4B driver that boltered and then got waved off as all of the other 400 carrier pilots in the United States 7th Fleet watched in giggling glee thankful they weren't the embarrassed flying goat. You can be sure that no one in his squadron let a day go by without twanging his strings. In a Navy Carrier squadron only the skipper or squadron CO gets to pick his handle. Everyone else's is picked by his squadron mates, and I absolutely will not tell you what mine was. I suspect that that poor F-4 driver's call was changed to GOAT that very day.

Edited March 1, 2022 by RealA4EPilot

[RealA4EPilot]

17 hours ago, Gianky said:

So many questions I'd like to ask....

Let's start with something I couldn't find a clear answer on the Internet: were all missions from Dixie Station basically close air support for troops on the ground, or did you conduct other types of missions as well, like strikes, SEAD, etc?

Also, if you feel like sharing some more sea stories from your deployments, I think we all be very eager to hear them.

Okay the honest, correct, and truthful one word answer to your question is a staunchly firm, "probably."

As evasive as that is, it fits because how one would answer the question would depend what time frame you were talking about. Here's what I mean. In 1965, Dixie Station was roughly 100 miles east of Quảng Ngãi, South Vietnam, and Yankee Station was roughly 100 miles west of the DMZ that separated North and South Vietnam. The first day in the combat zone of our second Vietnam Cruise, I walked into the VA-72 ready room, plopped down in a ready room chair, turned my eye to the PLAT TV and could not believe my eyes. The island plat camera was showing the coastal mountains of North Vietnam in the background, and a medium sized fishing junk a couple hundred yards from the carrier. Convinced that what I was seeing was a ruse of some kind, I sprinted to the flight deck to see what was going on. I'll leave it to you make my reaction earthier using appropriate anglo-saxon words where they are needed. As I looked toward North Vietnam I thought "Holy <fecal material>, our captain has <gonads> the size of grape fruit!!!"

Sailing this close to the North Vietnamese coast was a visceral announcement to everyone on the ship and those watching from the shoreline that the United States was taking a much more aggressive stance in regards to protecting the growth of democracy in South Vietnam and ensuring freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and the Gulf of Tonkin.

Although just a shade over six months before we were flying combat missions off of the Independence, Dixie station had all but disappeared, and two carriers were deep in the Gulf of Tonkin. One operating from noon to midnight, and the other operating from midnight to noon. So as I said above the correct answer to your question depended on what period of history you are asking about. In July 1965 the answer is yes. if you were assigned to Dixie Station you primarily flew air support missions in South Vietnam.

Edited March 1, 2022 by RealA4EPilot
word choice and spelling

[Reccelow]

I managed somehow to get the model converted to edm format, it shows in DCS modelviewer but I have no idea how to go from here.  Looking for tutorials....

 

I'm including the .edm in case someone that knows what they're doing can get it in the game....

KA3B.zip

[RealA4EPilot]

7 hours ago, Reccelow said:

I have no idea how to go from here. 

KA3B.zip 1.14 MB · 0 downloads

Well you might start by cleaning the windows. It's a kinda hard to fly that beastie aboard ship with them thar winders painted over.

Edited March 1, 2022 by RealA4EPilot
spelling

[RealA4EPilot]

The secret to successful scooter driving   ROFLMAO!!!

Edited March 2, 2022 by RealA4EPilot

[Alpenwolf]

Hi, everyone!

I've recently started toying around with this mod and it really is enjoyable. Also, I just finished designing a mission featuring the A-4 and I'm a bit unsure of some of the A-4's options in the mission editor. Should I just leave everything as it is?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Calabrone]

26 minutes ago, Alpenwolf said:

Hi, everyone!

I've recently started toying around with this mod and it really is enjoyable. Also, I just finished designing a mission featuring the A-4 and I'm a bit unsure of some of the A-4's options in the mission editor. Should I just leave everything as it is?

 

Thanks in advance!

At first glance if you want more realism disable Automatic Catapult Power Mode, the others I think are personal taste. Regarding the ECM panel I would keep it because, all in all, it is useful. Theoretically it should disturb the emissions of search radars and I tried it in a mission that I had done and it seemed to work pretty well and also depends on the ability of the SAM stations that are set by the mission creator.

[Alpenwolf]

43 minutes ago, Calabrone said:

At first glance if you want more realism disable Automatic Catapult Power Mode, the others I think are personal taste. Regarding the ECM panel I would keep it because, all in all, it is useful. Theoretically it should disturb the emissions of search radars and I tried it in a mission that I had done and it seemed to work pretty well and also depends on the ability of the SAM stations that are set by the mission creator.

Understood.

Thank you very much!

[Gianky]

Hey Alpenwolf!

First of all, thank you for including the A-4E in your Cold War server... I don't understand why there aren't more people doing it! Can't wait for the Arab-Israeli war this weekend and I hope you'll include Scooter in more mission... I'm itching to use it more and more!

As for the options, beside what Calabrone told you, keep in mind, if you don't already know, that the ones about CBUs and CMS can be modified by the pilot on the ground, before starting the engine, so you don't have to worry too much about them. I'd suggest you keep the ECM, too.

[Gianky]

On 3/1/2022 at 5:09 AM, RealA4EPilot said:

Okay the honest, correct, and truthful one word answer to your question is a staunchly firm, "probably."

As evasive as that is, it fits because how one would answer the question would depend what time frame you were talking about. Here's what I mean. In 1965, Dixie Station was roughly 100 miles east of Quảng Ngãi, South Vietnam, and Yankee Station was roughly 100 miles west of the DMZ that separated North and South Vietnam. The first day in the combat zone of our second Vietnam Cruise, I walked into the VA-72 ready room, plopped down in a ready room chair, turned my eye to the PLAT TV and could not believe my eyes. The island plat camera was showing the coastal mountains of North Vietnam in the background, and a medium sized fishing junk a couple hundred yards from the carrier. Convinced that what I was seeing was a ruse of some kind, I sprinted to the flight deck to see what was going on. I'll leave it to you make my reaction earthier using appropriate anglo-saxon words where they are needed. As I looked toward North Vietnam I thought "Holy <fecal material>, our captain has <gonads> the size of grape fruit!!!"

Sailing this close to the North Vietnamese coast was a visceral announcement to everyone on the ship and those watching from the shoreline that the United States was taking a much more aggressive stance in regards to protecting the growth of democracy in South Vietnam and ensuring freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and the Gulf of Tonkin.

Although just a shade over six months before we were flying combat missions off of the Independence, Dixie station had all but disappeared, and two carriers were deep in the Gulf of Tonkin. One operating from noon to midnight, and the other operating from midnight to noon. So as I said above the correct answer to your question depended on what period of history you are asking about. In July 1965 the answer is yes. if you were assigned to Dixie Station you primarily flew air support missions in South Vietnam.

 

Thanks for sharing, RealA4EPilot!

If you can/want to talk about it, were the support missions in South Vietnam more or less like the modern on call CAS mission? I mean you took off, got to a spot over SV and waited to be called or the end of vul? Were you guided by a FAC or a ground controller, or were you put in direct contact with the troops on the ground? IN the latter case, were you free to choose how to conduct the attacks or under strict control? I'm guessing the answer is going to be again "it depends" but if you could elaborate a bit on it, I'd be grateful.

[RealA4EPilot]

3 hours ago, Gianky said:

Thanks for sharing, RealA4EPilot!

If you can/want to talk about it, were the support missions in South Vietnam more or less like the modern on call CAS mission? I mean you took off, got to a spot over SV and waited to be called or the end of vul? Were you guided by a FAC or a ground controller, or were you put in direct contact with the troops on the ground? IN the latter case, were you free to choose how to conduct the attacks or under strict control? I'm guessing the answer is going to be again "it depends" but if you could elaborate a bit on it, I'd be grateful.

Hi, Gianky,

Yes, it did depend. I can't remember the exact terminology, but there were areas in South Vietnam that were so infested with communist Viet Cong that they were almost free fire zones. The Navy A-4s never were in direct contact with the troops on the ground. The only radio in an A-4E of the time was an AN/ARC-27 which was an AM UHF-VHF radio. I believe troops had a VHF FM radio. The FACs could talk to us and to the troops. I don't recall working with a ground FAC, but I know that the Marines had some FACs with frontline units.

There we two different classes of FACs fast movers in something like an F-100F in the high threat areas of South Vietnam, but most FACs were in slower prop aircraft. I do remember one mission off the Independence where we ended up in a stack over a FAC along with a flight of A-6 Intruders from the Indy. We were loaded with either 250lb or 500lb bombs. The FAC was working a tree line next to a stream and calling us in one at a time.

All of a sudden he announced that he was taking fire from the other side of the stream and wanted to know if anyone was in position to roll in. The A-4s were all out of position but an A-6 called, the FAC fired a rocket with a white phosphorus warhead where he wanted the bomb and cleared the A-6 in Hot. All four A-6s were loaded with five 2,000lb bombs. When the bomb exploded, the FAC went wild . . . "Holy <profanity>! What was that? Do you have any more?" The Intruder driver told him he had 4 more and each of the three remaining A-6s had five of those bombs.

The FAC had each of the A-6s lay down a stik of bombs 50 meters down the tree line from the last bomb impact. A total of 20 tons of bombs tore the trees apart. If the Viet Cong soldier survived, I am confident he was more circumspect about choosing his targets after that. That wasn't the only time on a close air support mission that some Viet Cong soldier had the sky fall on him or her because a FAC was targeted.

 

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by RealA4EPilot

[Alpenwolf]

15 hours ago, Gianky said:

Hey Alpenwolf!

First of all, thank you for including the A-4E in your Cold War server... I don't understand why there aren't more people doing it! Can't wait for the Arab-Israeli war this weekend and I hope you'll include Scooter in more mission... I'm itching to use it more and more!

As for the options, beside what Calabrone told you, keep in mind, if you don't already know, that the ones about CBUs and CMS can be modified by the pilot on the ground, before starting the engine, so you don't have to worry too much about them. I'd suggest you keep the ECM, too.

Hi, Gianky!

Thanks for the information.

I myself refrained from including this legendary Cold War aircraft only because it's a mod. Featuring a mod means you'd have to make sure that everyone has the mod and they all have the latest version of it. In addition, I'd have to keep on updating it myself on the server's machine after every update. And if I'd forget doing that while the server's running with players having the latest update, but not the server itself, I'd end up having endless problems. So, it's not the mod or the A-4 itself that are the problem, but merely the fact that a mod in its nature brings its own workload and problems with it. That's all.

After the latest A-4 update quite a few things changed and it really looks very tempting now. Therefore, I decided to design one mission for the A-4 and have it run occasionally. Who knows, maybe I'll design another one if the community asks for it. We'll see.

[plusnine]

Hello, everyone. This first update since the 2.0.0 release is primarily aimed at fixing bugs, although a few other nice new features have been added as well.

Download: https://github.com/heclak/community-a4e-c/releases/tag/v2.0.1

If you are finding this page later, visit the project page at for the latest download at https://08jne01.github.io/community-a4e-c/

As always, please submit any bugs or issues on the issue tracker here: https://github.com/heclak/community-a4e-c/issues

Without further ado, let's get to the changelog!

Version 2.0.1 - 6 Mar 2022

Added

• Missions:

  • Option to disable the use of Night Vision Goggles equipment (NVG) in the mission editor.

• Liveries:

  • USN VC-10 Challengers, 1988.

• Quality of Life:

  • The A-4E-C can now be operated by many new countries. Liveries have been edited to match, Malaysia to the TUDM livery, for example.

  • Several new single input (momentary) bindings, and continuous inputs for AFCS Heading Select Pull-to-Set Knob.

  • Waypoint names specified in the Mission Editor are displayed on the kneeboard. Included missions have been updated to make use of this.

  • Fuel and aircraft loadout information are displayed in the kneeboard. This page automatically updates if the aircraft is rearmed or refueled.

Fixed

• Features:

  • Ground handling improved for greater control using differential braking (cleaned the oil out of the brake drums).

  • Improved pitch stability and more correct low speed/high aoa handling.

• Systems:

  • Altimeter updated to use more realistic realistic barometric calculations.

  • AN/APG-53A Radar AoA Compensation Switch now properly affects returns from ships. A/G mode uses the same monte carlo sampling for beam shape, taking a weighted average of intensities to determine the range.

  • APC light now turns off once the system engages (thanks pohlinkzei).

  • Fuel system getting no longer gets stuck in flight refuel mode. 3-position fuel system switches default keybinds now cycle between available positions.

  • Fixed IN RANGE lamp no longer flickers when MASTER TEST pressed (thanks nima3333).

• Weapons and Loadouts:

  • CBU-1/A, CBU-2/A and CBU-2B/A Cluster Dispensers now dispense an accurate number of bomblets with a minim amount of performance impact.

• Missions:

  • A-4E-C now properly represented by an A aircraft icon representative of the aircraft's role.

  • Unlimited fuel support in the mission editor works (thanks nima3333)

• Quality of Life:

  • Up/down mouse click behavior for 3-position switches that were inverted so that all such switches behave identically.

  • Hemisphere information on waypoint coordinates on the kneeboard now display properly on Nevada and Normandy maps.

  • Corrected documentation URL files.

Changed

• Systems:

  • AN/ARN-52 TACAN volume provides a better response across available knob position range.

  • CP-741/A steady gunsight position must be established to receive accurate raging information. The computer now accounts for ejection velocity improving accuracy in some regimes.

• Weapons and Loadouts:

  • Changed MK-77 napalm canisters to have a cluster effect which is much closer to actual napalm.

  • More realistic MK12 guns charging and clearance: Guns can be armed and safed a total of 3 times before available charging nitrogen is depleted. The gun arming and safing when these charges are dispensed is audible. The ground crew performing a rearm will replenish nitrogen charges.

  • More realistic MK4 HIPEG Gun Pods charging: Gunpods will now respond to charges only when their station is readied before engaging the gunpod switch to the CHARGE position. Setting this switch to CLEAR clears all gunpods on the aircraft, until the ground crew rearms the aircraft.

  • Fixed wheel brake default keybinds to a more comfortable LCTRL+W
    and LALT+W, to make differential braking easier for keyboard users and to be in accordance with more DCS modules. As a result, the Emergency Stores Release Handle (Jettison) has been reassigned to LCTRL+J.

• Quality of Life:

  • 4k- and VR-friendly asset for the loading screen. (thanks Tuuvas)

  • New mission briefing screen.

  • Kneeboard manual updated. Unified kneeboard font sizing across in-game dynamically generated kneeboard pages.

Edited March 7, 2022 by plusnine

[=Skywarp=]

Wow tks Plusnine!!

Will check it!!

[JokerMan]

Many thanks. This module, already exceeding all expectations, gets improved again. We've been flying the A4-E almost exclusively (i.e. jets) for the past three months now. Whilst we've mostly gotten used to the "old oil in the drums", the changes here will surely be welcomed.  The Wheel brake default binding changes are most welcomed also. S!

[YSIAD_RIP]

Wonderful.... And I just noticed the new Wallpaper!  lol.