F-14A-GR-135 Early

[Monkman911]

Any thoughts on why the keybinds for A2A refueling are not working?

[Schmidtfire]

1 hour ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Yes, we used to have for example a “aim-7m_heatblur” and a “aim-7m_ED that could perform vastly differently, even though it was technically the same weapon. There were all sorts of issues with it, so ED had to come up with a solution and decided to take care of all weapons themselves. It also makes them trust the source material more, as they themselves did the research.

It's probably good that ED handles the weapons, but it has to be coordinated properly with 3rd party developers.

I'm tired of hearing "it's somebody else responsibility" while we wait month after month for implementations... 

Edited Thursday at 05:43 PM by Schmidtfire

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

42 minutes ago, Monkman911 said:

Any thoughts on why the keybinds for A2A refueling are not working?

Those should be the same for all variants? I can have a look tomorrow, but up until right before the latest patch everything was just dandy

[Monkman911]

Up until today the HB modules did not have the ability to bind those 2 commands. Based on the changelog they were added today. Maybe a hot patch inbound....

[Southernbear]

Just wanted to add these screenshots for extra context behind the F-14A Early. At no point if I recall correctly did they state until now that they were completely re engineering the F-14s to work with Anvil...so I suppose that now explains why it took so long for so little apparent changes. 

Probably would've been better if they stated this as soon as they decided to do this. 

[Monkman911]

Follow up, I did a long repair and now it works. Go figure 

[Japo32]

I am sorry that ED deal with all the weapons, because that makes not realistic ones. If I am right he made that decision because there were many complains about the Jeff weapons in PvP.

Man.. how I hate PvP guys... if at least ED would allow his or 3rd parties weapons selection, so server could choose, then that way we could have the eary true weapons plus other 3rd parties ones not done. Because ED is full at work and the list is long to deal with everything is needed about custom weapons...

[WarthogOsl]

5 hours ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Those should be the same for all variants? I can have a look tomorrow, but up until right before the latest patch everything was just dandy

I only tested it in the Refuel-Fight F-14A mission, but it was working for me there.

[Joch1955]

So spent some time playing with the early A, always nice to get a « new » Tomcat to play with. Would be nice if it included some missions, but easy enough modifying existing missions.

Flight performance is basically the same as the « late » A as you would expect, but dogfighting with older weapons and an antique RWR is more challenging and fun. I also like the retro look it gives to the cockpit.

Hard to argue and nitpick when you get a free plane.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

Heatblur goed above and beyond as usual. I wish ED would give us earlier variants of their planes too: F-16A Bl 15 and F/A-18A. Oh that would be something

[draconus]

10 hours ago, Monkman911 said:

Follow up, I did a long repair and now it works. Go figure 

It might have been a matter of having the radio set correctly to the tanker.

11 hours ago, Southernbear said:

Just wanted to add these screenshots for extra context behind the F-14A Early. At no point if I recall correctly did they state until now that they were completely re engineering the F-14s to work with Anvil...so I suppose that now explains why it took so long for so little apparent changes. 

Probably would've been better if they stated this as soon as they decided to do this. 

Thank you very much for this as this answers many questions. And as always HB didn't care to take 10 seconds to just paste it into our forum.

10 hours ago, Japo32 said:

ED deal with all the weapons

This is a good thing. Weapons are and should be a core feature of DCS. Having it in hands of 3rd parties was a mess.

22 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

Right now its only the RWR and the accompanying in-cockpit changes for it.

Found a bit more than that:

• old style instrument arrangement on the right panel, from up to down: G-meter, radio indicator, clock, oxygen
• TACAN CMD white cube button on the left console

[Northstar98]

16 minutes ago, draconus said:

Found a bit more than that:

• old style instrument arrangement on the right panel, from up to down: G-meter, radio indicator, clock, oxygen
• TACAN CMD white cube button on the left console

Indeed.

[RustBelt]

23 hours ago, Southernbear said:

Just wanted to add these screenshots for extra context behind the F-14A Early. At no point if I recall correctly did they state until now that they were completely re engineering the F-14s to work with Anvil...so I suppose that now explains why it took so long for so little apparent changes. 

Probably would've been better if they stated this as soon as they decided to do this. 

What is "Anvil" again? 

[Joch1955]

1 hour ago, RustBelt said:

What is "Anvil" again? 

Good explanation here. ANVIL is code Heatblur used to program the F-4 some of which may eventually be retrofitted into the F-14.

Edited Friday at 11:22 PM by Joch1955

[MAXsenna]

What is "Anvil" again? 

Like Joch wrote. HB's framework to build modules.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[gmangnall]

On 10/23/2025 at 12:51 PM, Czar said:

ED takes over after 3rd party develops it.

HB did the Phoenixes, same goes for the old F-4 weapons and handed over to ED. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Functionalities I mean, not just art.

Yup - that's been my understanding of how it works.

 

[Zabuzard]

The underlying technology used in the F4. Its an umbrella term for things like the component system and all the benefits that this brings like automatic multicrew sync, more detailed simulation, compatibjlity and reusuability across several aircraft and sims, persistence compatibility and so on.

That doesnt mean that the Tomcat now "uses" it though, the existing "old code" is still there and at the moment there is no plan to "rewrite the entire aircraft from scratch", but the RWR in the new Tomcat makes use of that system (as it shares its base with the F4 RWR).
And it also was a prerequisite for us to be able to port some of the F4 goodies over to the Tomcat (and Viggen eventually as well).

[Blooddawn1942]

The  135 GR Early does not seem to have a proper kneeboardfolder where to put in custom sheets.

Has anyone found out how ,to name the folder? I´ve tried F-14A-135-GR (Early), but this does not work.

[fjacobsen]

F-14A-135-GR-Early

[Blooddawn1942]

That did it! Thank You! 

[76.IAP-Black]

I have to ask, how can i remove the TCS under the nose of the early A version?
I cant find it in the "..." menue in the editor.

[Mig Fulcrum]

26 minuti fa, 76.IAP-Black ha scritto:

I have to ask, how can i remove the TCS under the nose of the early A version?
I cant find it in the "..." menue in the editor.

It is possible via .lua files but officailly it's currently not possible. We have to wait for the 95GR or an update of the Early F-14

Edited 13 hours ago by Mig Fulcrum

[Swordsman422]

16 minutes ago, 76.IAP-Black said:

I have to ask, how can i remove the TCS under the nose of the early A version?
I cant find it in the "..." menue in the editor.

In the description.lua for each skin between the skin name and countries list:

custom_args = {
    --[115] = 1.000,         -- Remove Entire TCS Chinpod --
    --[116] = 1.000,         -- Add ALQ-100-only Chinpod --
    [701] = 1.000,         -- Spine GPS Dome Visibility --
    };

Edited 13 hours ago by Swordsman422

[RustBelt]

As I understand it these got out “early” and aren’t technically implemented yet. They work, but ofcourse nothing we currently have has a GPS, so that’s probably a B(U) argument. The others are the mock -95 stuff that’s being worked on in the “Early A” rig. Because even early -135s had TCS. 

[76.IAP-Black]

OK thats bad, i thought it can be done like on the mirage F-1 and its radar display cover, directly in the mission editor.