Su-25: DCS Flaming Cliffs QUESTIONS

[guitarxe]

I noticed most other forums have a similar thread to conglomerate questions into one place, so I hope nobody minds me starting one here. I'm starting to have lots of small quick questions about this module and would feel rather silly creating a new thread for each!

 

So here are some random questions:

 

1. Is it possible to assign the wheel breaks to my rudder pedals? In the axis assign in controls, there's nothing for wheel breaks, and in the area where the wheel breaks are, you can only use a button and it doesn't allow an axis for it.

 

2. What is the recommended cruising speed/rpm?

 

3. What is the maximum speed of the airplane? I notice that at around 900 the airplane starts to shake, and soon after that it can even dramatically pitch down and it's hard to bring it back into control at this point.

 

4. I'm having a hard time dropping speed on landing approach. I have to always deploy my speed breaks to bleed off enough speed before I touch down, but I've always seen other people employ speed breaks only AFTER they touch down. I line up for the strip about 20km out, drop my throttle and begin to descend. But since I'm descending I'm not dropping enough speed. Any advice? Should I just line up even further away? Is there a preferred engine RPM setting for landings?

 

5. Speaking of landings, I'm confused about the instructions I get from the ATC when I request first "inbound" and then "landing". When I use "inbound" over the radio, the tower responds with some numbers that I don't understand and can't find any reference to in the manul. Something like "Heading 335 for 20, QFE 29.8". What do these mean? I've mostly ignored these.

 

Also most of the time when I go in for landing and request landing I get a response of something like "something visual, contact tower" (sorry I'm vague, I'm at work and don't remember exact things they say". What does that mean? Then shortly after it tells me to "orbit for spacing", because apparently there's another aircraft going in for landing in front of me? How can that be? This is a single player mission that I created just to practice take off, navigation and landing, and I have civilian traffic turned off in the options.

((I'll fly the mission again and jot down exactly what they say when I come home)).

 

6. Deploying flaps for landing pitches the plane up dramatically. Of course it does, I understand, but my problem is losing control of my attitude during this time. Is there something I should do to improve on this other than practice? I don't want to pre-emptively pitch down when I lower flaps, but at the same time I guess I'm too slow on my reactions to push the stick forward when the plane pitches up? How is it done in real life? Or at least, how should it be done in this sim?

[BTTW-DratsaB]

4. One of the hardest things in the SU25, I find, is landing and knowing when the stall speed is. I have flown it enough now that I can just kind of "feel" it. Most other planes I would be relying on the Speed indicator on the HUD, but I don't find the Su25's Airspeed indicator to be much use for this. It is surprising just how slowly it can fly without dropping like a stone. I do tend to use the Speed break when I am about 20-10nm out from the runway to bleed off excess speed, but I would never leave it on for the whole landing, I am pretty sure it would stall. The main thing, for me, is to be ready with the power as it takes a few seconds to spool up and get you out of trouble, when you feel it start to "sag" too much in the air. The Angle Of Attack meter is useful to alert you to stalling. Maybe others will have some more, less Yoda like technique :D

 

5. For this one you will hear the Tower say: "Fly Heading: 335 for 20, QFE 29.8". They will also mention the runway number to land at.

The 335 is basically the direction you fly to on the HSI, it is the direction in degrees.

The 20 is is the distance you should fly, in this case 20 nautical miles.

QFE 29.8: this is the barometric air pressure (/altitude) of the airfield you are going to land at. You would change your pressure setting on your barometric altimeter to match this. I'm not sure if our Su25 can do this, the A10c can.

 

If you follow these instructions when you request inbound it will line you up at a nice distance from the end of the runway your want to land at. All you have to do then is turn towards the runway. You can use the Runway number at this point to figure out which way to turn on the HSI. EG runway 22 is 220 degrees on the HSI.

 

Next thing you hear from the tower is "Cleared for visual, contact tower". This just means you are near enough to the airfield that you can begin actually landing. When you contact the tower it will be "Request landing". I too have heard this new message about Orbiting, but it only lasts for a second. Almost immediately afterwards I get the next message which is "Clear to land runway 22" etc. I would just ignore the "orbiting" thing.

 

6. Dunno how its done in real life, but you will just get used to it. As long as your are not going too fast the pitch up shouldn't be too violent and should be fairly predictable. Also, the flaps are in two stages so use the first setting, then once you have leveled out, extend them to their maximum. Also be sure not to deploy the full flaps when your are moving fast, they will break off! (as I recently found out :D)

 

I'm sure there are errors in the above, but some other nice folk on here will fill in the blanks/ grievous errors.

Edited October 4, 2013 by BTTW-DratsaB

[VapoR]

2: I usually set 92% RPM for cruise. If you notice the throttle has some tick marks above it with some Cyrillic words. I don't speak Russian but I think there is a taxi setting and cruise setting. The 92% I mentioned lines up more or less on one of those marks.

[joey45]

1. Is it possible to assign the wheel breaks to my rudder pedals? In the axis assign in controls, there's nothing for wheel breaks, and in the area where the wheel breaks are, you can only use a button and it doesn't allow an axis for it.

 

The Su's don't have toe brakes.. it's a lever on the stick

 

4. I'm having a hard time dropping speed on landing approach. I have to always deploy my speed breaks to bleed off enough speed before I touch down, but I've always seen other people employ speed breaks only AFTER they touch down. I line up for the strip about 20km out, drop my throttle and begin to descend. But since I'm descending I'm not dropping enough speed. Any advice? Should I just line up even further away? Is there a preferred engine RPM setting for landings?

 

before finals you should drop speed... If you find yourself to fast do a run in and break.

 

5. Speaking of landings, I'm confused about the instructions I get from the ATC when I request first "inbound" and then "landing". When I use "inbound" over the radio, the tower responds with some numbers that I don't understand and can't find any reference to in the manul. Something like "Heading 335 for 20, QFE 29.8". What do these mean? I've mostly ignored these.

 

ignore it.

[eurofor]

(...)

 

3. What is the maximum speed of the airplane? I notice that at around 900 the airplane starts to shake, and soon after that it can even dramatically pitch down and it's hard to bring it back into control at this point.

 

(...)

 

The Su-25 is a subsonic design.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_tuck

[Flying Penguin]

3. What is the maximum speed of the airplane? I notice that at around 900 the airplane starts to shake, and soon after that it can even dramatically pitch down and it's hard to bring it back into control at this point.

 

eurofor is absolutely correct about Mach tuck, however the best way to anticipate this is not to look at the normal ASI, but to look at the Mach indicator (labeled "M" in the picture below)

 

 

You are limited to 0.85 Mach and anything above that you risk loosing control. If you do, throttle down, airbrakes open and if desperate try rolling inverted so you tuck away from the ground (not sure how realistic the last one is but it seems to work in game).

 

Cheers,

 

Jamie

[seikdel]

The Su-25 is a subsonic design.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_tuck

 

I saw a documentary with an American pilot (who got a ride or two in a Frog) talking about the aircraft's ability to go supersonic. It is possible in-game, but the Mach tuck necessitates a pretty significant altitude to do it. If you start off at 10,000m, you should be able to break Mach 1 and then decelerate before impacting the ground =)

[guitarxe]

Thanks, guys! These really helped me :) Especially the heading information when going in for a landing, although I'm still not sure how to gauge my distance travelled from an arbitrary point.

 

Another question I had is taking out main battle tanks like the T-90. Is the Kh-25ML the only weapon up to the task? I have tried with both the S-80KOM rockets and the S-13OF rockets, but the S-80KOM don't seem to do enough damage or be accurate enough to score hits, and same for the S-13OF, which also have the problem that there's much less of them to shoot.

 

I'm guessing I should also try bombs, but for that I'd have to overfly the tank, and I've been told that's a very bad thing to do, no?

[Fishbreath]

Cluster bombs aren't a bad option (PTAB submunitions are anti-armor). You can also try S-25L rockets for a guided option.

[Vedexent]

 

5. Speaking of landings, I'm confused about the instructions I get from the ATC when I request first "inbound" and then "landing". When I use "inbound" over the radio, the tower responds with some numbers that I don't understand and can't find any reference to in the manul. Something like "Heading 335 for 20, QFE 29.8". What do these mean? I've mostly ignored these.

 

Also most of the time when I go in for landing and request landing I get a response of something like "something visual, contact tower" (sorry I'm vague, I'm at work and don't remember exact things they say". What does that mean? Then shortly after it tells me to "orbit for spacing", because apparently there's another aircraft going in for landing in front of me? How can that be? This is a single player mission that I created just to practice take off, navigation and landing, and I have civilian traffic turned off in the options.

((I'll fly the mission again and jot down exactly what they say when I come home)).

 

The instructions are your heading - "Heading 335..." - and distance - "...for 20 ..." - to the ATC control space entry way-point. If you look at the diagrams for the airports, you'll see a set that has a rectangular box around the airport, with distinct paths in and out of way-points on the edges of the box. These are the points that flights are expected to enter, and leave, ATC controlled airspace.

 

If you steer to this waypoint, and are more-or-less on the heading of the runway (e.g. 330 for runway 33), you're pretty much lined up for a "low and slow" landing. Your ILS should light up, and you can follow the glide path in.

 

"...QFE 29.8" refers to setting of your barometric altimeter so that your target airport is at zero elevation. If you look at the barometric altimeter on the Su-25, there's an odometer slyle number counter down near the bottom which you can adjust up and down with Rshift+ and Rshift-. You can also use these keys to "zero out" the altimeter needle before takeoff. If you've done this, and you're returning to your home airstrip, you shouldn't need to change this.

 

Most airports near the coastline will have "close enough" QFEs that you mostly don't need to tinker much with this, but if you're flying between Kutaisi and Tbilisi - for example - the zero altitude can change by 70 meters or so. That might just throw off your landing :D

 

As for orbiting, you can ignore this in single player - although it might be good practice to try a couple.

 

As for contacting the tower, pull up the radio menu with the \ key, and it should be option F1. The tower will give you runway clearance. You don't really need to do this in single player, but it's good practice for if/when you get to playing on public servers; if you have tower clearance for a runway, the ATC will not assign the runway to anyone else, and will warn off other inbound planes trying to land there, and will wave you off is someone taxis onto the runway. Of course, that won't protect you from a rude jerk who will just barrel down on the runway and crash into you regardless of what ATC is saying - but most servers frown on "runway jumping" and may even kick repeat offenders.

 

Hope that helped.

Edited October 15, 2013 by Vedexent
typo

[AMVI_Grape]

Could I add a more question?

 

How I change the FOV with Track-IR?

The zoom keys don't works.

 

bye

[Zag]

go to your axis configuration for the su-25 and remove the input for track-ir Z-axis that is assigned to zoom view the zoom key should work then. i can add a screenshot if its not clear.

[AMVI_Grape]

go to your axis configuration for the su-25 and remove the input for track-ir Z-axis that is assigned to zoom view the zoom key should work then. i can add a screenshot if its not clear.

 

Hello,

not, it's clear, very clear. Thank you. :doh:

[docfu]

 

1. Is it possible to assign the wheel breaks to my rudder pedals? In the axis assign in controls, there's nothing for wheel breaks, and in the area where the wheel breaks are, you can only use a button and it doesn't allow an axis for it.

 

You can use a program called joy2key to cause your rudder axis to generate a keypress. I am using it with the Su-25T. Just set the program to the number of joysticks you have (3 if HOTAS + Pedals), find the correct axis, set to W (I think) and then test it in notepad before you launch.

 

http://www.electracode.com/4/joy2key/JoyToKey%20English%20Version.htm

[esb77]

2. What is the recommended cruising speed/rpm?

 

Depending on how fuel efficient you want to be and load and altitude, anywhere from 80 to 100% throttle, though 90-95% is sort of the sweet spot.

 

3. What is the maximum speed of the airplane? I notice that at around 900 the airplane starts to shake, and soon after that it can even dramatically pitch down and it's hard to bring it back into control at this point.

 

What with Mach, TAS, IAS, and ground speed this is a sort of complicated question. In general, about 1200 kmph in a dive (though that's really stupid and likely to cause a crash when you loose pitch control) which is supersonic at high altitude. At sea level you can hit about 1020 to 1050 in level flight with a light low drag load. For maximum performance about 600 to 775 kmph with flaps up. Flaps in maneuvering you can drop to about 475 and still have good response. Below 320 you'll have serious trouble with combat maneuvers, especially if carrying a decent weapons load.

 

4. I'm having a hard time dropping speed on landing approach. I have to always deploy my speed breaks to bleed off enough speed before I touch down, but I've always seen other people employ speed breaks only AFTER they touch down. I line up for the strip about 20km out, drop my throttle and begin to descend. But since I'm descending I'm not dropping enough speed. Any advice? Should I just line up even further away? Is there a preferred engine RPM setting for landings?

 

The 'standard' RTB waypoint in DCS is about 15 km from the end of the runway and about 1000m to 1500m higher altitude than the runway elevation. When you hit the RTB waypoint you should be at the correct altitude (I prefer being a bit on the low side often I'll be at about 750m AGL), and have a speed of maybe 400 kmph. By the time you get to within 10 km of the runway you should be below 350 kmph. It becomes safe to deploy landing gear at about 370 kmph or so, and the gear makes a really excellent air brake, especially when combined with flaps. At 5 km out you should be at a stable airspeed of about 300 kmph +/- 20 kmph.

 

Fly the throttle however you need to, to achieve this.

 

For the last .5 km or so I generally aim for about 70 to 80% throttle assuming things are going well, and I cut to zero throttle when the wheels touch down so that the engines can spool down before I deploy the chute.

 

If I'm coming in to the RTB area way too fast, for example running from hostile fighters or coming down from very high altitude, I fly a flat scissors manever until I've bled speed to below 500 kmph.

[firefox121]

SU 25 CAMPAIGN CONTROLS NOT WORKING

 

I have a great problem, I configure all controls and launch an individual mission, then all works perfect!!!, my key assgined to brakes (b) and joy 8 works perfect, for example . But when I jump into the su25's flaming cliffs campaign none of this buttons neither keys works . Is there any solution or somebody has noticed that?

[esb77]

Keybinds should be global (apply everywhere).

 

Things to check:

 

Make sure you're in the Su-25 tab not the tab for some other aircraft when setting keybinds.

 

After doing the keybinds make sure to name and save that setup as a control configuration profile.

 

Make sure that the profile you saved is loaded before starting or resuming campaign play. Normally it will just load whatever the last profile used was, but I can think of scenarios where it might reset to default and you'd have to manually select your saved control profile.

 

If you've done all of the above correctly there shouldn't be a problem. If the problem persists it's either a bug or some kind of problem with your control configuration files (like the files being in the wrong directory or something).

[firefox121]

I've tryed that solutions but still doesn't work for me, even in 1.2.7 where I can redefine controls "on the fly" it seems not working, not gear (g) not flaps (f), then I takeoff and I can´t raise my gear Up neither change to a2g mode (7) nor Nav mode (1), I have deleted the controls archive in c:\users\"my name"\dcs blah blah blah and nothing happens.

[firefox121]

Finally I Find the problem.... It was not reading the manual, I've forgot to power up the electrics (Rshit+L), then all my systems worked fine ( I can raise up Gear and lower up/down flaps)...