MiG 21 DCS 2.5

There is nothing I would wish more than the level of quality that the Mig-21 deserves. Go Magnitude!

:thumbup:

So I went ahead and bought the MiG. It's cool, I quite like the aircraft itself. However I find the following to be a bit of a pain and maybe somebody could help me out.

The RADAR seems just about useless, it picks up friendlies but not enemies for some weird reason, not even when I'm right there in full view of them.

The stalling is definitely weird, just takes so long to recover.

The air to air gun pipper just seems to wander around in every which way but when I fire it never coincides with the pipper, so essentially I find the pipper useless.

Its pretty difficult to see enemies, the windscreen needs a thorough clean, you'd fail a flight test for having such a filthy windscreen.

What am I missing about the air to air gun use?

Stalling is usually due to excessive AOA. Drop the AOA and it recovers very quickly. Keep an eye on the AOA meter and the red lights in the cockpit frame.

The radar is pretty useless below about 1500m. Also useless in lookdown. This is probably realistic. It does seem inconsistent in its (in)effectiveness though even when in look up and at altitude.

The pipper is useless. Used the fixed gunsight and practice leading. Realise the bullets go through the X just below the centre of the fixed gunsight.

The windscreen dirt is outright dangerous. We have complained bitterly about it and M3 have said they are working on new cockpit textures with variable levels of weathering. Hurrah!

Welcome to the Mig21 club :)

Edit: also be careful of -ve G. the engines hate that.

Unfortunately mig-21 is still the worst plane when you compare the fps with the other aircrafts modules.

Come on guys years passed over this known issue, please do something.

@Shibbyland : The radar can be quite hard to operate, but as a starting tip try to be 500m below your target to catch it, because the radar can look up quite a bit but not downwards.

The pipper for the gun works best for me if i have a solid radar lock while chasing the bandit, but that's only something i do in singleplayer.

In multiplayer i change the lever from gyro to CC so it stays fixed all the time and with the tdc range/pipper span control ill adjust the pipper to the max range so it drops below the center mark of the net.

For the canopy i would recommend you use this mod: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3300873/ works also in multiplayer till we get an official update on the canopy.

Welcome to the mig21 :)

Don't touch your stick too much for the rocket experience!

Thanks for the info. I had another question about the RADAR. I want to map some of the functions to keyboard or joystick inputs. In particular, the button to filter cloud clutter and the one for deselecting modes (so that I can unlock targets). I can't find them in the control options, can anybody direct me please?

Radar ECM protection panel - Weather and Reset

I have them keyboard mapped as

U I O P

J K L ;

ECM Continuous

ECM Intermittent

Chaff

Weather

Interrogate

Low-speed track

Test

Reset

===

Unrelated and probably already noted but the record need for maximum acceleration goes the opposite way. As you pull more G and the needle swings clockwise the record marker swings counter-clockwise.

Just to chime in briefly about the piper/gun in AA mode...talking with RL pilots about that, even they use the fixed mode for AA gunnery in real AC...

Just to chime in briefly about the piper/gun in AA mode...talking with RL pilots about that, even they use the fixed mode for AA gunnery in real AC...

I can definitely believe that. The MiG carries plenty of rounds to fire off a few tracers to range.

 

The RADAR seems just about useless, it picks up friendlies but not enemies for some weird reason, not even when I'm right there in full view of them.

 

My comment on this: Co-altitude is notoriously hell for monopulse radars (the radar that you're using). So if you can 'see' him and he's at your altitude; your radar is actually looking through every mountain and tree on the horizon before it can get to him. You need to be below him to have any effect on contacting him, even if it's just a few hundred meters. If you're below 10K feet, flip on the low altitude compensation for a terrain filter, and flip it a second time to physically tilt the antenna up a degree and a half.

If you still can't find radar contacts, you need to engage low-speed target acquisition. Basically the radar filters out things it considers to be moving at 'low speed' to reject false positives, but that doesn't help if you are moving at a low relative speed compared to him (IE: you're chasing him), so flipping that on results in more targets being picked up.

Finally, always remember that fixed beam was traditionally used as a gunsight radar. Turn it on, put the sky behind him and him into your pipper, and press the target lock. If there isn't any interference, it should lock him like a very finicky boresight mode. Be sure the thing you're aiming at is an enemy before you do this because you cannot IFF while he's locked!

Radar ECM protection panel - Weather and Reset

 

 

I have them keyboard mapped as

 

U I O P

J K L ;

That's what I'm going to do from here on out, because here I was trying to map it to my HOTAS.

Auditor, the RP-22 does not filter out low speed contacts in scan mode. It's not a Doppler radar. The 'LST' button only affects tracking, not detection.

The keyboard is one of the best flight controllers, especially in price to performance ratio. Unfortunately in DCS it's often not well-utilized. Important controls are given simple keys but often without regard to if they tend to be clicked or put on a joystick button.

If I press a certain button often on the dashboard I usually make it a simple keyboard key that's easy to remember and makes sense. E.g. Z X C are my autopilot cancel, command, and automatic approach buttons. It's low-left on the panel so it's low-left on the keyboard.