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Retiring Rookie Introduction


Radial9

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Fantastic stuff, i'll be certainly interested in your progress with the campaign.

 

As you say airtime is the thing, self discipline going hand-in-hand, one thing that drums in to muscle memory for the basics is circuit bashing and sticking to the 'numbers', that is obeying pattern height and trying to grease every landing, maintaining the center-line on climb out etc.

 

Outside of the sim, one note of caution (which you might already be familiar with) is the TrackIR Pro clip is really fragile, all is not lost if it does snap though, someone on this forum makes wireless replacements (I am in no way affiliated with them).

 

So, if it were me; nail the circuit bashing first, then start navigating from one airbase to the next, the great thing about maps like Georgia is that some basic approach plates are available for most of the airports/bases, which detail joining information, so you can try to obey those.

 

How do you like the Warthog?

NATO - BF callsign: BLACKRAIN

2x X5675 hexacore CPUs for 24 cores | 72GB DDR3 ECC RAM 3 channel | GTX 1050Ti | 500GB SSD on PCIe lane | CH Products HOTAS | TrackIR5 | Win 7 64

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Welcome to the flight line Radial 9 :thumbup:

 

Sounds like you have a very nice hardware setup. That will make your life much easier.

 

The best advice I can give in relation to DCS flying is this: learn a DCS aircraft the same way you acquired proficiency on one of your real life aircraft, and expect it to take a similar amount of time. DCS is absolutely a game that rewards patience and the investment of serious amounts of training time.

 

As others have said, please don't be afraid to ask questions here on the forum. The DCS forum is generally populated by friendly people who will be more than happy to help out with any questions you may have. There's also no such thing as a stupid question, even if it's "Where's the power switch" because we've all been there and we're all here to learn about our favourite toys :)

 

Again, welcome to the flight line & happy flying!

System Spec: Cooler Master Cosmos C700P Black Edition case. | AMD 5950X CPU | MSI RTX-3090 GPU | 32GB HyperX Predator PC4000 RAM | | TM Warthog stick & throttle | TrackIR 5 | Samsung 980 Pro NVMe 4 SSD 1TB (boot) | Samsung 870 QVO SSD 4TB (games) | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit.

 

Personal wish list: DCS: Su-27SM & DCS: Avro Vulcan.

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.

 

How do you like the Warthog?

 

Right now I am very much attracted to the challenge of becoming proficient flying it. I have the time, the desire and without sounding too confident I believe I have the skill set potential to become a half decent pilot. Unbelievable the level of immersion.

 

And as the wife puts it. It will keep me off the streets and out of the pool halls.

 

Right now I'm sifting through, organizing and evaluating the absolute overload of A10C training materials. I have to keep reminding myself how a mouse eats an elephant.

 

First up, and what I did not expect, is to learn the mission editor so I can set up a cold dark ramp ac at Batumi for the start of front office training.

 

Second up. Decide to use someone else's startup checklist or use a few out there to make my own. Even if it's a 95% copy of others, setting it down into a spreadsheet item by item would be a good start, for me. I learn faster when I take the time to write something out, piece by piece. It's mine then, I will use it, even if most of it is a copy of other checklists.

 

Thanks again for all the good wishes and comments. They are appreciated. Nice to know there is a friendly community out here to ask for assistance and clarification when RTFM doesn't sink in.

 

Cheers,

 

Radial9


Edited by Radial9

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin

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First up, and what I did not expect, is to learn the mission editor so I can set up a cold dark ramp ac at Batumi for the start of front office training.

 

Second up. Decide to use someone else's startup checklist or use a few out there to make my own. Even if it's a 95% copy of others, setting it down into a spreadsheet item by item would be a good start, for me. I learn faster when I take the time to write something out, piece by piece. It's mine then, I will use it, even if most of it is a copy of other checklists.

 

It'll definitely be worth learning the mission editor. Simple scenario creation (e.g. you plus a wingman v a group of enemy tanks) takes minutes at most to set up, and the scale and complexity of what is possible is limited only by your imagination and the limits of your PC hardware. There's most definitely an active and for the most part helpful & enthusiastic multiplayer community, but it's probably 10% of the installed user base of the game. SP missions that you dream up for yourself, or download from the net, are where the real longevity of the game exists. Maybe the greatest strength of DCS World is that ED give us a great sand box in which we can create whatever we can dream up.

 

Another big +1 to writing your own check lists. Writing them out is a really good way of reinforcing memory, particularly for emergency items that require instant and perfect memory recall.

System Spec: Cooler Master Cosmos C700P Black Edition case. | AMD 5950X CPU | MSI RTX-3090 GPU | 32GB HyperX Predator PC4000 RAM | | TM Warthog stick & throttle | TrackIR 5 | Samsung 980 Pro NVMe 4 SSD 1TB (boot) | Samsung 870 QVO SSD 4TB (games) | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit.

 

Personal wish list: DCS: Su-27SM & DCS: Avro Vulcan.

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Not a bad week.

 

Installed my TH WH, kept my CH Pedals. Set them on two MonsterTech table clamps. Installed DCS 2.5 and reinstalled and activated my A10C. Installed TrackIR and spent some frustrating hours learning and tweeking it. Long way to go but it’s somewhat functioning.

 

Ran through a few of the tutorials. The HOTAS familiarization tutorial was used to just get a “feel” for the A10C. Did some basic 180 and 360 turns to see if I could keep it at altitude.

 

Needs work.

 

Spent a few more hours just getting a feel for the aircraft. I have been flying piston slappers for years, so this is a whole new ballgame.

 

I am having difficulty trimming it to center in level flight at 250kts. I think it’s just going to take some time. I did change the POV hat on the HOTAS for trim. Just need to keep at it. It will come.

 

I then spent a few hours with the Georgian Hammer with CA mission going through Chuck’s startup guide on my second monitor. A few mistakes and hunt/peck for buttons. TrackIR is going to take some serious getting used to. I understand it takes a week or two. It’s going to take this old pilot much longer than that.

 

Was debating whether to recount this, but what the f… Got feeling a bit cocky after getting through the startup a few times, so I think I’ll see if I can taxi out to the runway and get it into the air. I WAS SURE I heard the initial briefing (my wingman I assume) tell me he would follow me out. So out to the runway I go without looking where he was to my right and ran right into him. Big ball of flames…killed him deader than a door nail.

 

Probably the best thing that could happen at this stage. I will from now on ALWAYS pan around and LOOK before and AS I taxi.

 

Thank you again for all the help and suggestions. I think it’s finally day one of training now.

 

Cheers,

Radial9

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin

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Something that really helped me get used to the track IR: move your head as you usually would, but concentrate on keeping your eyes centered on the monitor. Takes a while for it to become instinctive but eventually it'll feel really natural. Once you get used to track IR you'll never want to fly without it.

System Spec: Cooler Master Cosmos C700P Black Edition case. | AMD 5950X CPU | MSI RTX-3090 GPU | 32GB HyperX Predator PC4000 RAM | | TM Warthog stick & throttle | TrackIR 5 | Samsung 980 Pro NVMe 4 SSD 1TB (boot) | Samsung 870 QVO SSD 4TB (games) | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit.

 

Personal wish list: DCS: Su-27SM & DCS: Avro Vulcan.

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