Basic BFM question

[Bucic]

@Noctrach Ah, got it bookmarked of course

[MAXsenna]

@Noctrach Ah, got it bookmarked of course

Me too!

Thanks for this thread. I have mastered AAR, helis are easy, but I haven't wrapped my head around BFM yet!

Cheers!

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[=475FG= Dawger]

I wouldn’t waste time flying from takeoff into butterfly merges. 
 

The most efficient method is to make a mission with air starts with the aircraft pointed at each other about 10 miles apart.

You can get much more meat out of your training time. 

[Noctrach]

Some recommendations if you start learning BFM with another player:

• Despite my butterfly set comment: start with a couple offensive/defensive sets. Don't jump immediately into high aspect. Learn how to do a turn circle entry. Learn how to execute a break turn.
• Focus first on identifying cues: Is this a rate or radius fight? Who's winning? What are your relative energy states? etc.
• Carry rear aspect missiles. It'll prevent bad habits; will teach you about jamming weapons engagement and escape windows, and you'll never actually fly a clean jet anyway.
• Start at 15,000 feet altitude minimum. It'll teach you much more about available G/AoA and aircraft handling and allows room for maneuvering in the vertical. You're gonna be trading altitude for position very rapidly...
• Knock it off and reset once you reach the deck. You're allowed 1 or 2 full circles down there but there's not much to learn beyond that. You'll have plenty mistakes to review before you even reach that point...

Do a search for "F-16C ROKAF employment manual", the BFM chapter there is an absolute gold mine for hands-on, practical training material.

1 minute ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

I wouldn’t waste time flying from takeoff into butterfly merges. 
 

The most efficient method is to make a mission with air starts with the aircraft pointed at each other about 10 miles apart.

You can get much more meat out of your training time.

Air-start, sure. But I'd recommend doing so in either perch or butterfly positions as it will do wonders for spotting, energy management, initiating lead turns etc. There's a reason "fight's on" is called at the turn-in... not at the merge.

Air-start in a 10 miles head to head just gives a lot of room for "competitive" habits like entering the merge at mach stupid and pulling it into the stratosphere. It can be a lot of fun but serves no training purpose other than "Speedy thing go higher".

[=475FG= Dawger]

2 minutes ago, Noctrach said:

Some recommendations if you start learning BFM with another player:

• Despite my butterfly set comment: start with a couple offensive/defensive sets. Don't jump immediately into high aspect. Learn how to do a turn circle entry. Learn how to execute a break turn.
• Focus first on identifying cues: Is this a rate or radius fight? Who's winning? What are your relative energy states? etc.
• Carry rear aspect missiles. It'll prevent bad habits; will teach you about jamming weapons engagement and escape windows, and you'll never actually fly a clean jet anyway.
• Start at 15,000 feet altitude minimum. It'll teach you much more about available G/AoA and aircraft handling and allows room for maneuvering in the vertical. You're gonna be trading altitude for position very rapidly...
• Knock it off and reset once you reach the deck. You're allowed 1 or 2 full circles down there but there's not much to learn beyond that. You'll have plenty mistakes to review before you even reach that point...

Do a search for "F-16C ROKAF employment manual", the BFM chapter there is an absolute gold mine for hands-on, practical training material.

Air-start, sure. But I'd recommend doing so in either perch or butterfly positions as it will do wonders for spotting, energy management, initiating lead turns etc. There's a reason "fight's on" is called at the turn-in... not at the merge.

Air-start in a 10 miles head to head just gives a lot of room for "competitive" habits like entering the merge at mach stupid and pulling it into the stratosphere. It can be a lot of fun but serves no training purpose other than "Speedy thing go higher".

Doing merges pre-supposes you have already covered the basics of BFM. 

If you read this thread, you will find that I recommend a serious effort on the very basics of formation flying/joins as the learning laboratory for the geometry of BFM. 

To quote myself, if can’t join in formation with someone that wants you to, you will be hopeless against someone actively trying to prevent it. 
 

Basic formation flying is where you learn the rudimentary concepts of the turn circle, pursuit curves and lead turns. 
 

Once a firm grasp of that is achieved, you then move to the application of follow on BFM  as they pertain to offense and defense. 
 

Only after all of the above do I recommend 1 v 1 similar High Aspect events. 
 

And it doesn’t take many merges to learn speed management, especially with the glass wing on the F-5.  
 

The key is a firm foundation in the very basic concepts ingrained by lots of repetition which simulation excels at providing.

The fight in DCS PvP is generally won pre-merge barring gross errors. 
 

90% of PvP DCS Cold War fights can be won by knowing how to do lead turns so you don’t need an extensive tool set to be successful .

The other 10% are where the fun lies because of the greater challenge and varied skillset required.

 

 

[Bucic]

On 9/4/2023 at 2:53 PM, =475FG= Dawger said:

Doing merges pre-supposes you have already covered the basics of BFM. 

If you read this thread, you will find that I recommend a serious effort on the very basics of formation flying/joins as the learning laboratory for the geometry of BFM. 

To quote myself, if can’t join in formation with someone that wants you to, you will be hopeless against someone actively trying to prevent it. 
 

Basic formation flying is where you learn the rudimentary concepts of the turn circle, pursuit curves and lead turns. 
 

Once a firm grasp of that is achieved, you then move to the application of follow on BFM  as they pertain to offense and defense. 
 

Only after all of the above do I recommend 1 v 1 similar High Aspect events. 
 

And it doesn’t take many merges to learn speed management, especially with the glass wing on the F-5.  
 

The key is a firm foundation in the very basic concepts ingrained by lots of repetition which simulation excels at providing.

The fight in DCS PvP is generally won pre-merge barring gross errors. 
 

90% of PvP DCS Cold War fights can be won by knowing how to do lead turns so you don’t need an extensive tool set to be successful .

The other 10% are where the fun lies because of the greater challenge and varied skillset required.

 

 

Are the two (BFM and CFM) F-5E campaigns good at that? Do they even come close to what Tactical Pascale has created?
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/shop/campaigns/filter/aircraft-is-f-5e/apply/

[=475FG= Dawger]

15 minutes ago, Bucic said:

Are the two (BFM and CFM) F-5E campaigns good at that? Do they even come close to what Tactical Pascale has created?
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/shop/campaigns/filter/aircraft-is-f-5e/apply/

I am a PvP, MP guy. I evaluated one F-5 BFM campaign just to see if it was suitable. Lots of required Nav points to get to the airspace block to fight multiple bandits. Not suitable. 

The best thing is an instructor that knows BFM and how to teach it and willingness to practice a lot. 

You can self teach but its much harder and slower. 

 

[Bucic]

39 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

I am a PvP, MP guy. I evaluated one F-5 BFM campaign just to see if it was suitable. Lots of required Nav points to get to the airspace block to fight multiple bandits. Not suitable. 

The best thing is an instructor that knows BFM and how to teach it and willingness to practice a lot. 

You can self teach but its much harder and slower. 

 

Like a table tennis drill. Cut the foreplay, ramp up mindful repetitions. Got it

[Noctrach]

4 hours ago, Bucic said:

Are the two (BFM and CFM) F-5E campaigns good at that? Do they even come close to what Tactical Pascale has created?
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/shop/campaigns/filter/aircraft-is-f-5e/apply/

The BFM/ACM campaigns are pretty bad at teaching anything so for that purpose I recommend you to not waste your time/money on them.

They hail from another era of DCS and are rather sparse on content... It's maybe 20 voice lines all in total and the missions are literally copy paste with different enemies:

• (Fix the awfully unbalanced default configuration by adding a CAP-9M)
• Take off
• Fly the route to the combat zone, same thing every time
• Head on engagement with DCS AI. You get about 4-5 minutes of VUL time to score a kill, so you're honestly best off gunning them on a head-on pass at the earliest opportunity. Half the time they will just run into the virtual hard deck anyway which also ends the engagement
• Fly back a couple minutes to reset
• Repeat previous 2 steps
• Fly back home

There's no training goals, no explanation, no debrief.

Nothing beyond 1v1 engagements that will take you about 15 seconds to set up in the editor by yourself.

[=475FG= Dawger]

3 hours ago, Bucic said:

Like a table tennis drill. Cut the foreplay, ramp up mindful repetitions. Got it

Its what simulators are for. Skipping bits you already know and doing things that are incredibly dangerous in the real thing. 
 

Butterfly sets are a great example. They are a safety driven procedure. You never lose sight of the other guy. In a simulation, you can do beak to beak merges without prior visual acquisition in complete safety and skip the trip to practice area if those skills are already adequately honed.