Not sure if its the F-86 or the MiG-15....

OK no problem guys, I was just trying to allow a little honest understanding and not making any accusations. This thread is about the damage modelling getting "Fixed" correct? There must have been a problem then. I just needed to get that out of my system ;)

Did any of you watch the youtube link?

Yes barrel wrap is always an issue...but was it real problem for the Sabre? In the you tube video you will see that one of the Sabers guns jammed. But this could have come from a number of causes. Negative g being a big one. You all know about the gravity carburetor problem on the early Spits no?

And I have to agree about the bias, X/Y/Z and copout points. I suspect that bad tactics given the well documented strengths and weaknesses of each aircraft is usually to blame.

No the devs are not "Incapable" (quite good in fact) but they are not "Infallible" either. I have seen the kill ratio as high as 14 to 1 but would love to see the low number and references to the lowest. The barrel warp people complain about may be from "spray and pray" types. Good gunnery skills use short bursts. So I'm done with the 'bias' nonsense and just want to know when the fix will be out.

Did anyone remember the quote "Put it in a 6g turn and keep it there"? That was a specific aerodynamic and gunnery tactic that was supposed to be developed by Sabre pilots to keep the Sabre speed up, and g loading as well, so the MiG-15 would have to pull a greater amount of g in order to pull lead, which the airframe/foil and cannons were not really capable of at that extreme, and the pilots may not have been able to do because of the lack or limitation of g suits. I am asking here, trying to figure out where that idea came from. It seems like brilliant, studied, air to air tactics and not ham-fisted SH loud-mouth fanboy bragging. The MiG-15 was a great crate, and the Sabre was too. But like many US fighters from WWII, it was a speed and energy fighter, boom and zoom, not a turning climbing monkey like the 109, Zero, and MiG-15.

So I'll discard all of that out of my head and focus on asking when the fix will be out? ;)

The barrel warp issue is certainly not raised by "spray and pray" types. Fly the plane, trim for level flight and see for yourself. After about five 1 - 1.5 second bursts (with a couple of secs between each) shotgun spread begins, after another five you might as well be throwing gravel with your bare hands, that's how they work. They also don't seem to be cooling down. The topic has been beaten to death in this forum numerous times throughout the years, but, traditionally, without response from the BST devs. That's the part people are unhappy with, some not caring anymore and giving up on this module. Can't blame them.

Gunsight not being aligned properly for radar-ranged gunnery doesn't help either (another long-standing and ignored issue).

OK thanks Art. I am obviously late to the party. I had an impression DCS was still cutting edge for flight sims. But then again fligth sims may be falling by the wayside in interest. I have an xbox one and played a lot of Forza. I am a huge car guy racing fan and was taking a break from my cars this month. I bought the memory and the dls so i will try to enjoy it.

Do we need the MiG-15 dl for mission building offline? I didn't see it in the menus for instant action and others. As an AI ship I mean.

Had some good flights tonight. Finally finished the gunnery practice completely after losing sight of the target several times. I never saw any flares but hadn't gotten my views keys or padlock keys set up yet.

Then I flew some instant action and edited the formations. I wanted to practice air to air. Got to a 2 on one with the MiG-15s at equal altitude, low even, and was able to stay alive until my fuel ran out. I will tool around on invulnerable settings until I get used to how my old Hotas Cougar works. It's not so bad now that I have the Win10 64 bit drivers installed. Blacked out a couple times and got hammered with canon a few times but I am getting the feel for it. The graphics, instrumentation and simulation sure are nice. I just need to get my merge and knife fight head on timing better. I can't get to a stable bead by the time we pass each other again. Probably too slow and wallowing around too much. need more separation. Cuban 8s work pretty well with the roll and dive characteristics.

@ArtJ

Oh, I wasn't saying they weren't glitched, and if they're not cooling that's definitely not right. I also would expect even with the M3 .50s they would fire longish bursts before barrel heating became significant.

@Squiffy

It's not about whether it's cutting edge or not, it's not perfect and has glitches, just like every other game. If you dig very deep, you turn up weird behavior in every game. Add in all the complexities of DCS, you'll not have to look very hard to find things that aren't quite right. Hopefully they get fixed in a timely fashion, sometimes they don't, though. Many modules, many kettles, limited fires unfortunately.

Oh I hear you! I was a developer for the CFS3 community for many years. Staying up to till 2AM tweaking flight models, painting, building missions... You know, one of the Spitfire models, not sure if it was stock or aftermarket, was very good but the tail wheel physics were way off. You could lock or unlock it for taxiing but on landing the thing was just way too fragile to be realistic. When I opened the flight model and contact point file, I saw that the damage force for the tail wheel was way too light by some 50 to 100 pounds or something. It was a real immersion killer, especially in the BOB missions to come back after all that hard dog fighting to land in a great modded grass field, only to snap your tail wheel! :)

And by surviving 2 against one, MiG v Sabre till my fuel ran out I knew it had to be pretty good. Like in Rise of Flight, LOMAC, and Pacific Fighters, I need to practice my energy fighting. Like, what is the best corner speed in the Sabre? :) Looking that up now, and of course it varies by altitude. The envelope in other words.

Did some "pump and dump" over the weekend. It will cause an overshoot but leave you dead in the air with no E. Also tried game fight models. That was interesting. A little too snappy roll wise and then one landing I floated like a kite. That was funny in fact. I came in too hot, jammed my flaps on the go around and then figured I would try to "3 wire" it since I had crash recover on too. ;) I side slipped the silly thing about half way down the runway, held the crab angle and plopped down at about 50kts, no flaps! Bounced a few times and came to rest off the end in the grass. That was pretty funny.

I did score a descent kill finally but still with game settings. I was able to hang with the MiG in the vertical, but stupid slow and stalling. Then I got wise and reset my merge altitudes in my 1v1 mission to over 20,000 feet. Now with room to dive and keeping the speed over 300kts I knife fighted for a while and then was able get behind him in a dive and tag his left wing. Streamed fluid or fuel, shut down the engine and ejected.

MiG-15 is difficult but not unbeatable. Don't go too fast at the merge or he will end up inside your turncircle before you're out of the first turn. If you can force him into a rolling scissors, you have good chances. Keep the fight at altitude seems good. Only go vertical with him if you have the speed, can see that you can get pipper on within two or three loops, and have the altitude to get out of it, should you fail. But don't get me wrong, it's not easy.

Thanks Svend. I finished No Guts No Glory last night too. Tried a 2v2 last night. worked pretty well. I was able to sandwich the MiGs behind me for the most part and have my Wingman do the shooting. The last time around I was pretty sure I had a Honcho (AI only). Even on Average he was very good at climbing away after each overshoot, down to 1v1. Did not stay at altitude very long and even on a zoom attempt, the MiG just powers up and closes. Was the RR knock off that much better power wise or was it the weight of the Sabre. I think the latter is true. But then again, the axial flow design may have been a bit light on "torque or compression" (spool up) compared to the centrifugal design. It's all in the numbers. Also the wear on my stock gimbals makes it a little clunky so finessing the pipper has been difficult. I am also way too happy with the rudder.

Good news. I practiced a few days with my 2v2 mission in trail, bounce from 6 o'clock low. First against MiG-21 to have a turning advantage. It worked well and I was able to score kills reliably against average AI, even in looping fights. The AI seems to like this, taking advantage of the thrust to weight advantages of many aircraft. I then switched to MiG-15s and was able to stay with them barely, through looping fights. The problem here is low speed instability but the pump and dump nature of the Sabre's stabilator authority did allow me to stay with them through looping stalls.

A side note here... didnt' the E and later type Sabres have an all moving stab? That was another advantage the Sabre has at high mach number. The model is not rendered this way and still uses an elevator surface.

I edited the fight to include many different aircraft including:

Su-17

MiG-25, both versions

MiG_31

MiG-23

MiG-27

and believe it or not...

MiG-29 and yes I was able to down both with out the Fulcrum really getting a shot off at all, guns only, average level. That was amazing. It was also a thrill to hear the afterburners of the later types kicking in at the bottom of the loops after they overshot to begin the climb again and I followed behind them, release some of the pressure/g, let them climb in the windscreen above the mirror and pull in behind them as I picked up speed. Repeat... It took about 3 good hits to do damage. 4 would make them eject. Zoomed in on external view you can see the shotgun like pinholes of the 50 cals. This is pretty accurate although the holes and damage could have been a tad bit more generous. I even read that some pilots liked the shotgun effect since it meant you could score more hits "off target" so to speak. Like duck hunting. That's how missiles work too ;)

A side note here... didnt' the E and later type Sabres have an all moving stab? That was another advantage the Sabre has at high mach number. The model is not rendered this way and still uses an elevator surface.

if you pay close attention the f-86's entire slab can be seen to tilt with elevator inputs.

irl:

Nice pic probad. Is that a photo or a screen shot from the sim? The grass looks very realistic if it's a screenshot. Don't remember seeing all those wires and towers either in sim.

I have looked closely at the sim and I'm not sure I see any stabilator action. The "elevator" flaps around just fine. But if it was still a surface, did it move more slightly as say the elevator trim tab? I am not sure how all that worked but I figured if the later jet models had clear stabilators why the Sabre-F did not?

Good diagrams:

http://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/stabilator/

Aha!

"The horizontal stabilizer was pivoted at its rear spar so that the leading edge was moved eight degrees up or down by the normal action of the controls. The elevator was mechanically linked to the stabilizer and moved in a specific relation to the stabilizer movement, with elevator travel being slightly greater than stabilizer travel."

http://www.caiella.org/BasePages/Aviation/149192/VaAng%20Pages/Resources/AHF86E1.html

I'll look in sim again. I suspect if there is stabilator travel in sim, the scale of "linkage" is just hard to see and the travel of the "elevator" surface appears exaggerated.

Thanks.

OK probad. I got some screenshots of the stabilator movement. I guess I must not have been looking closely enough and got distracted by the reflections or play of light. I would have expected to see more given what's seen on newer aircraft. To be honest, after I just fired up the sim now to check, it looks better than last week. ;)

Incidentally, I am an Air Force veteran and not just some Jalopnik Google hack. The VA Air Guard page I quoted above says the elevator moved "slightly greater" than the stabilator. I was honestly asking about it because what I saw was more elevator flop and not stabilator movement. I have flight time on board the following aircraft:

Cessna 152 Aerobat

172\T-41

Aronca Champ

KitFox

Piper Cherokee

New Standard D-25 Biplane

T-37

KC-135

KC-10

C-141

C-5

I can confirm the stabilator movement in my screenies to follow. Thanks for the tip. It looks a lot better now that I am looking closely. I also just installed the DCS update ;)

Screenies

if you can find definite numbers on the correct relationship between stabilizer and elevator deflections feel free to submit a report for corrections.

"slight" is far too vague a word to be basing any corrections off of. relative to the large elevator deflections seen on contemporaneous aircraft the f-86's deflections can certainly be considered "slight". ultimately, what you or i think slight should mean is immaterial.

Right probad, no problem. I just flew some more practice sets of 3v2. Now that you called my attention to it, and I have had time to study it, it looks pretty good. Seriously though, it looks a lot better than I originally thought. I must have just been focusing on the max deflections, when the elevator surface was kicking out enough more to catch the light and stand out. It may also be my stick since it's old, worn out and pretty spiky-causing some ham fisted pump and dump ;) I was watching a lot of tracks to see how my hits were doing and saw a lot of MiG elevator too. You were right to point it out to me and I feel a little silly for not looking more carefully. Honestly, once I downloaded the world update earlier this weekend, I could swear that it was improved. But it was just my imagination, right? ;) AI seems to be better at Average level too, but that may be more a factor of 3v2. I have seen less vertical and more yo-yo turns. To my eye now it looks like the elevator is deflecting maybe 30' to the stabilators 16'. And that is pretty darn good if you consider it in proportions. No more than "2x again as much." Slight is a vague term and now that I see the stabilator is actually working, It may not be worth the trouble. We can probably find it in some workshop manuals or that kind of thing. Thanks for clearing it up. This is a great sim really and I have only started to push my graphics settings.