Jump to content

JEFX

Members
  • Posts

    819
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Everything posted by JEFX

  1. I can say that it was veeery long.. but it finished a few minutes ago (took 3 hours), I am loading the new terrain right now!
  2. yes this is the website that I use to test my connexion (and it is around 430 Mbps!)
  3. BIGNEWY, mys speed as requested : I live in Montreal Canada and I am downloading at 300 Kb/s ...I have (usually) a very fast connexion with the new protocol with 400 Mbps...:-( it is taking forever...
  4. More time at home means a lot of readjustments, but it also means more time to play DCS :smilewink: Recently I decided to go back to our beloved Hog... I had never played TEW… Started a few days ago. Another great campaign again from the great BD!! This morning I played TEW mission 4 and I had a blast!!! no real spoilers below... On the last assignment, Axeman, (and there are several!) it got pretty nasty… with the help of my wingman we did hit almost everything asked for by the JTAC (inputting coordinates, looking for smoke markers, S.A.-ing east-west passes…). Suddenly, my wingman is shot down by a chance bullet and, with all the flying around, I missed one of the vehicles coming from the East until it hid in the trees and started shooting at the friendlies… But it was so well hidden in the trees that with only east-west passes because of the mountains it was quite hard to locate... let alone make SPI… At the end (after almost 2 hours airborne), I had no more wingman, no more ammunition (not even gun rounds) except ONE maverick and less than 1000 Lbs of fuel… Still, I was not allowed to leave. I made several passes in order to locate the last APC (watching nervously my Fuel all this time and making quick mental calculations of the return leg)… Finally! In one of my last pass, I saw the hidden APC in my targeting pod and quickly made it SPI, slaved the Maverick to it, locked it and fired in extremis at the minimum range… Boom! Success. RTB on conservative fuel settings (90% core RPM @ Angels 15) and landed with fumes… Wow! What a great satisfying mission!! Thanks BD!!!
  5. Great advice! SA is paramount. Cross checking between what you see outside and what you see on your displays is so important. One of the advices that I saw that helped me the most was (if I recall well) from Gerry Abbott : put your TAD display in EX 1 (zoomed one level) because then it always stays North UP. It is so much easier when trying to check where things are both on the field and in the air, especially while doing orbits and other moves!!! Then, using the TGP, an appropriate orbit pattern around the battlefield, markpoints, smoke, and of course your eyes, you can crosscheck all the info that makes a good SA...
  6. hey Guys­.. give him a break... not nice... This is certainly THE most finished product in DCS with tons of systems to learn and an 600+ pages manual... his question is understandable... @FireManDan there are tons of great tutorials and advice on flying and operating the A-10C out there. First I would start with the specific A-10C MODULE SPECIFIC TUTORALS section in our Forum Here. Besides the (imposing) flight manual from ED, I strongly suggest that you start with Chuck's guide, he makes the best concise and easy to understand yet complete guides for most aircraft in DCS. Here is a link for the A-10C guide (you can scroll down a bit and you get a DOWLOAND PDF HERE box) There are also many great tutorial makers and playlists on Youtube. Start with DCS,s Matt Wagner's chain on the A-10C here. Then I would say Bunyap's tutorials . Also Gerry Abbott's chain here. There is also a bunch of great checklists and other documents sets made by those who know the bird really well. One of them is LOBO,s checklists here. You should also check the 476th fighter group website, they have some of the best material: website I suggest you go throught their website. You will find not only A-10C specific info but lots of other tactical info that is great! Their big documentation maker is Snoopy and everything he wrote is fantastic. But I cannot stress enough how much studying in depth the whole manual is rewarding (take your time, one chapter at a time and try things in the plane)... Make yourself some bookmarks, highliner, notes and study again... then when you read more or look at a tutorial, you remember that part in the manual... etc... It is one of the closest thing to studying a real aircraft you can get in DCS... much more rewarding than those great aircraft that came out recently but that are not finished and for which you get changes every week... Oh and by the way, we just got a fantastic upgrade to the cockpit for Xmas... so it looks great and as you know, there is a A-10C -2 in the making!!!!! Happy studying! JEFX out
  7. Hey guys, there is a new podcast out there just started yesterday called The Afterburn Podcast (by former F-16 pilot John 'RAIN' Waters) hosted on Warbird Radio.com and the first episode is an AMAZING A-10 story (2017). Here is a link to listen to it and the story really starts at around 25'00. It is really a harrowing and epic story. Wow!
  8. Even if the Hog is a 'RTFM' kind of module ???? relearning (or learning) it with Chuck's guide is so easy and fun! I really suggest to complete that with LOBO's fantastic checklist! Here: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/fr/files/172905/
  9. Wow Lobo, 8 years after the original launch and your Checlists are still the best and absolute most useful there is out there!!!!! I had let go of the A-10C for many years and more recently, because I was getting sick of having new uncompleted systems on the Hornet every 2 weeks and also because of that unexpected Christmas gift of this beautiful new cockpit for our good old Hog, I went back to it with great pleasure. The thing is: 10 years ago, despite being an experienced sim user since the days of Falcon 4.0, I was not used to real pilots procedures and 'way of thinking'... Since then I took my PPL and bought myself a nice Cessna and suddenly I see the needs of a certain type of checklist quite differently. Yours is perfect in that regard!!!! Thank you so much!! Sooo useful!!
  10. Exact same here... The A-10C feels so much more like a finished and complete module! It is a joy to relearn it in your new guide: it is awesome!!! Thanks so much!
  11. Can we get a word from Matt about this please? I am glad to see that I am not alone here... I have been begging for this for 10 years! Me too I would really appreciate if Matt or someone from ED could just tell us what is ED's position about this long time missing feature!!!
  12. Hi Radial 9. I felt compelled to share some thoughts with you after reading your initial post. I can see that you are somebody who does things thoroughly and it is great. But as hansangb pointed out, you dont have to 'play' all modules to the same depth... One could study (as you said and you are right about the A-10C manual, it is one of the best) one module in depth and play around with another for some time... I personally own about every module in DCS (excluding WWII stuff) and I have been playing it since LOMAC 2003! Even before that, the great manual and training missions that came with Falcon 4.0 was a fantastic source of study and deepening. But now I dont know all modules with the same depth and allow myself to wander from one to the other some time... But it raises a deeper question of how we get to start studying a flight simulator and how we pursue it etc... it is totally different from one person to another but there is something attractive for some of us about the depth and fidelity of details, and that is why one would want to delve deeply in a module like you seem to be wanting. But the criteria for the choice are not so obvious. For my part since I am somewhat of an maniacal person, after so many years of flying with a desk and a monitor I made the jump, took my Private Pilot License, earned my wings and bought myself a Cessna. Now you talk about studying... there is no comparison... so many hundred circuits and landings and multi hundred pages weather books, etc... But lets not forget that DCS is still a game and we should have fun! I want to propose another point of view. We get very excited about new modules and if I go back to LOMAC I could never have dreamed of a fantastic Tomcat, a great Hornet and Viper and a multi-player Hind (coming) one day!!!! But there is one little caveat with these new modules (perhaps with the exception of the Tomcat): most of them come out in either early access or beta stage (look at Star Citizen which is even alpha stage...). That means that, take the Hornet or even worse, the Viper, the modules are not finished, new features get implemented every week, bugs come and go, the manual cannot be finished because the beast is in development, etc... All this is good for people who like to play with it and ride the evolution 'à mesure'... but if you want to sit down and take the whole module for granted as complete and the whole manual as a bible and you want to really study, I feel like it is much more satisfying to go back to modules that are finished! (that have great manuals, great training missions and lots of great campaigns to play!) Recently I have had lots of fun with rediscovering the Mirage 2000 which got quite a lot of good updates (including great cockpit textures). Unfortunately some bugs were introduced in the armament aspects that puts off a lot of people, but yet, it is a great module, with fantastic training missions and campaigns and a great manual (all done by the best: Baltic Dragon). More improvements are coming and BD will issue an updated version of his great manual. I played his campaigns and they are quite immersive and that makes a big difference as opposed to flying aimlessly alone in the sky (unless you go the multiplayer path, which is also great, but I do appreciate a good thought out story with a scenario, a plot and voice overs, etc in a campaign). For the same reasons, I think the A-10C is a much better time investment for you if you want to study one in depth for now because of the same reasons. The manual is certainly the best there is, the missions and campaigns done by Matt Wagner are great and there is even one of the best campaigns there is by Baltic Dragon (Ennemy within 3.0). We got a great cockpit texture uplift as a Christmas present (unexpected!) and once you know it really well and have played all the content, version 2.0 of the Hog will come out, so it is always in a completed state. I have played a lot with the Hornet and it is great (and will be even better when finished) but I got tired of never having a finished product, so I put it aside and will deepen it in a year or two when all the content, manual and campaigns will be done! Same with the Viper. But that is just my own perception of course. But do have fun with other modules as well... Take the Mirage for example, it is great fun! It all comes down to one most capital concept: IMMERSION! Anyways, good luck with your studying!!!
  13. OK did some homework here... opened the mission (M13) in the ME and found that the coordinates given in the briefing for BAD (Rho 9 NM and Theta 037 with a Delta altitude of -761') apply to WP 5 as the IP (and not 9 as briefed). Actually, in the tortuous (and fun) valley NOE flying there are probably missing waypoints because between WP 3 and WP 4 there are several turns, among which 2 of them are really big... Then flew the mission and it worked with the JTAC and the laser designation of the LGB. I got killed right after but that is another story and will try again later...:D
  14. Hi BD I dont understand M13. In the documents (PDF) it says that the target is 'roughly' at WP10 and we should perform our IP attack run (with BAD) from WP 9 but there are only 8 waypoints in the mission editor (I checked), where WP 6 is around the target area...? is there something I am missing? :( (cool NOE flying though...)
  15. This campaign is so well crafted with so many small details that make all the immersion so great! One example that I saw this morning in Mission 12: while prepping my Mirage in the shelter with open doors (nice morning sky ahead), I get the numerous radio message all the while I see FANG (F-117s) taxiing in front of me... a couple minutes later, I see CLAW (Tornadoes) that I am supposed to protect later exit their shelters right in front of me and start taxiing, while in the distance I see both F-117s in their initial climb after takeoff.. That timing and geometry of sight must have taken a lot of trial and error and a lot of thinking to just get it right like that and it changes the whole immersion factor! Fantastic! The whole process from the training missions to the campaign and its progression is so well done that we learn the Mirage really gradually and efficiently! Very pedagogical... and above all a lot of FUN!!!! Thanks Baltic Dragon and Merry Xmas!
  16. Thanks Ramsay (sorry for the late reply, I was working very hard the last couple of weeks)
  17. Hi! I updated today to the latest update because I was so glad the M2000 RWR bug was finally squashed (thanks!) and I was very surprised to see that my progression in the Campaign was erased... I was up to mission 8 lately (and enjoying very much) and today, when I opened it, it said 'INACTIVE' .... This is not a big downer for me, because I did download the missions separately as BD offered us a while back with the updated content (proper radio presets, for example)... I will continue playing it from individual missions... But I thought I was worth mentioning... thanks BD your campaigns are great! JEFX
  18. JEFX

    ILS problem ?

    Very well summarized Sedenion!!!! Yes!
  19. JEFX

    ILS problem ?

    :smilewink:I know Jojo... but it is perhaps not natural to all... as a pilot one gets used to juggling with cardinal directions in one's head... but back to the (off-) topic... you are right that when people speak (radio-TV) they tell the direction from which the wind is blowing (le vent du nord!) but when they do a diagram (windy.tv) the arrows point where it goes... funny. And you are right that this inversion in DCS is a pain in the a...
  20. JEFX

    ILS problem ?

    By the way, I can feel a hint of an explanation: in day-to-day weather websites and newpaper weather... the wind is symbolized often with an arrow pointing IN the direction TO which the wind is blowing... (like in the screenshot of drPhibes). The greatest wind and weather website for everyday use (not good for aviation though) is WINDY.TV. If one puts the wind layer to see, there will be an animation that shows the wind moving from where it comes from To where it goes...(like little arrows) It looks very natural and intuitive, like if we visualize the wind itself... therefore, in a normal person's mind, it is more useful to understand the wind as going IN THIS direction, I agree... It is just not how it is given in aviation because in aviation we really want to know where it is blowing from in order to decide which runway or what direction for a specific manoeuvre, etc... A pilot is always translating wind direction and landing direction as opposite. The best paradox to overcome: (or Situational awareness to build) -the wind comes from the north 360 (therefore blowing TO the south 180) -you want to take off TOWARDS the direction of the north (runway 36) contrary to the wind -you need to taxi in the direction of the south (180) -You end up on the Southern end of the Runway -It is printed 36 on the runway but you are at the southern extremity -the wind is 360 but it blows To the south in your face -you take off TOWARDS the north, therefore 360 the wind is 360, you take off in the opposite direction... 360... HAHA!!
  21. JEFX

    ILS problem ?

    I just did a quick research on aviation websites (including airlinepilotsforum and others) and it seems as if Russian METAR reports are no different than North American or European ones in terms of where the wind is coming from... the big difference is that it gives it in MPS and not in Knots and runway RVR are given in meters... Example, right now (latest report was 15 minutes ago) at 15:30 ZULU in Moscow UUEE, the wind reported in the metar was 24008MPS which means 'wind 240 at 8 meters per second' (around 16 knots). I did put it in a professional decoder (Foreflight) and indeed it is 'wind FROM 240 at 16 :-) I have no idea why in the first place ED started to put the wind reversed in 2004...
  22. JEFX

    ILS problem ?

    By the way, talking about ILS, I just made a quick experiment (Vaziani, ILS 108,75 Mhz) with NO final waypoint and NO wind... I got an ILS guidance on both runway 32 and 14 (and no synthetic Runway, you are right Yoyo, I remember reading this in the manual). then I started again with a 5 m/s (about 10 knots) wind blowing from the north-west to the south-east, which would give us a preferred runway 32 and I still got an ILS signal on both runway directions...
  23. JEFX

    ILS problem ?

    aviation wind direction I dont know, it might be a Russian thing but since the beginning (LOMAC, 2004) the wind in the sim shows the direction IN WHICH it is blowing... We got used to it... but it is contrary to all aviation weather (at least in the US/Canada and in Europe) where METAR and TAF reports as well as TOWER calls ALWAYS give you the direction FROM which the wind is blowing (I am a pilot, you can believe me)... If you are landing runway 06 and the tower tells you 'wind 150 at 15 gusting 20' !!!! ...your eyes dart instantaneously to your right (3 O'clock) to see that wind sock giving you that VERY strong crosswind COMING FROM the right (FROM 150 degrees), and it is not fun...
×
×
  • Create New...