That Vulcans vs Sharks mission where the Blue Hueys drop off Stinger teams is pretty fun Huey flying IMO. Even though hardly any Red Clients have stuck their necks out to challenge Blue!

There is the other mission, Bridge At Zugdidi, that started the Huey/Stinger thing.

Both of these missions have the logic to deploy Stingers whenever a Client Huey lands for 20 seconds. The Zugdidi mission had required the pilot to make a radio call, but landing those Slicks is tough enough, time after time, so now all one needs is to land and wait for a bit.

The Stingers will fire immediately

---

I am going to El Paso for a few days to see family and eat and drink.. If you see The Highway back up on HP then raven is back in town -- have fun!

WC

Skoop & Skate,

What mission?


What are the capabilities of these aircraft? What opponents do you have in mind?


Give me some scenario to work with here...


WC

It would probably work in Sharks vs Vulcans, it's great for hunting Helos. The stingers and Vulcans would keep it in check. Maybe try slots for red and blue and see how it goes.

Might be good for the Highway where your low level shooting up truck convoys.

Capabilities are 2 sidewinders, 2 hardpoints for assorted dumb bombs or rocket pods, and a gunpod. No counter measures or RWR.

For it to work in MP, you have to download the preview copy here :

http://www.veaosimulations.co.uk/dcs...1-20.5-RC8.exe

add it to a mission and any one with an active license can fly it. Once the official module is released, it will just overwrite the preview copy.

Fun times the last few nights! Things I (re)learned recently:

1) Hopping into a complex aircraft and going straight into combat is a great way to find out which buttons and switches you've forgotten in the process of making your plane ready to go. Checklists, checklists, checklists!

2) Formation flight is rewarding, but can be very frustrating when your lead isn't into it. Not meant as a slight to those I flew with, I just need to remember that not everyone is as into formation flying as I would like to be.

3) JTAC work is fun, but the limited smoke means that coordinating attacks is important. I wasted dozens of smoke rounds when units weren't ready to attack.

4) Scripted missions are fun if you know the script, but can be confusing as heck if you don't. Sandbox missions (with maybe some limited scripts) are much more flexible, but require someone to hop on as game master/commander to make it move forward. Personally, I think we could use a few more sandbox missions, just for flavor.

5) MiG is fun in air-to-ground, but short on fuel and payload. Much better suited for interdiction missions (i.e., go after THAT target) than CAS or ground support (i.e., hang out around here and blow stuff up). Doesn't mean you can't go do CAS missions, as we've proved, just that you're not going to hang as long or kill nearly as much as your fellow Su-25Ts. dat nuke tho

[edit: wurdzs]

The old and the new. Bast and I flying formation in the SU and the Mig

Nice shot!

BTW, hoping to do some Helicopter Workshop work this week with folks. Ka-50, UH-1H, or Mi-8 - basic helo flight, ground attack, sling loads, troop placement, radio navigation, NOE flight, formation flight, whatever folks want to do. See you on TS3!

I will keep an eye out for this. I am willing to ruin my sleep schedule for this week :-)

I was hoping to join you guys tonight in the Shark. Instead I'm going to Daytona Beach..

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N205CM

Oh well..maybe I can hit the Pinecastle Bombing Range on the way home.. <g>



BeachAV8R

I see that true to your handle, you're hugging the beach instead of cutting across much of the open water.

Have a safe trip!

Looks like a beautiful aircraft beach!

A couple of pics from my journey last week --

Going under the bridge on the way to The Highway --


And there's the four-lane --



A view from my cockpit --



WC

Yeah - when you aren't carrying a raft you have to stay a requisite distance (50 nm) from the shore. So we have to hug the coast a bit... Ready for sleep now.. zzzzz...

BeachAV8R

Get some rest, Beach, and hope to see you virtually flying tonight?

As for last night, whew, what a night!

Rider, Mol, and I headed to Gudauta in Rookie Terrorists, on Rider's server. I decided to take up the P-51D which is not really the greatest ground attack aircraft, but is great fun to fly. I flew three sorties and didn't get shot down once. My third sortie was aborted due to a control issue, but was, by far, the most challenging of the three to survive!

For the first two sorties, I took a full load of HVAR rockets and I'm pretty sure I didn't score a single kill with them. The P-51D doesn't have fancy predicting impact sights, so you have to either always come in at the specific airspeed and dive angle to match the reticle depression, or have enough practice firing rockets to be able to have a feel for where the pipper should go. I didn't do the first and I don't have the latter, so bupkis on rocket kills.

The six 50 cals on the P-51D put out a lot of chatter and wreck aircraft, but they seem to be completely ineffective against tanks. I was able to put down some APCs with the guns, but my last combat run of the night I must have made five or six passes on an enemy tank, landing hits every time, but never could score the kill. Rider was making gun runs on the same tank at the same time in his Flanker and wasn't able to kill it either, so maybe it was just a really tough tank.

The last sortie of the night was by far the most tense.

On my third and final flight for the night, I had picked a heavy loadout of M64 bombs and HVAR rockets, maxing out the aircraft's weight with only 40% fuel. Everything seemed fine up until about 80 mph in to the takeoff roll when my left wing suddenly started creeping down. I kept pulling more and more right stick but the left wing just continued to drop down until it actually touched the runway.

So, here I am, in a directionally unstable condition, racing down the runway at about rotation speed, with a full load of explosives and fuel and my wing is dragging on the friggin' ground. Yay. I was afraid to pull back on the throttle because then I'd have to react to the changing torque/acceleration, and I was also wondering how much runway I had left, so I did a little experiment to see if I could save myself another way: I threw the stick full to the right.

Lo and behold, the left wing slowly picked up and I was able to keep the nose pointed down the runway by doing a dance on the rudder pedals. Before I knew it, I was airborne, wings level - but with FULL RIGHT STICK APPLIED TO STAY LEVEL.

RCTRL+Enter confirmed that the sim thought the stick was centered even though I had it full right. Left trim did nothing to help the condition. I figured I had two options: 1) crash and respawn, 2) try to save it. Being the challenge-seeker I am, I picked 2).

With my stick held full right, just to stay level, I used the rudder to control bank, and began circling back around to the airfield. I was worried about the excessive weight, however, and wanted to get rid of these bombs and rockets to give me a little more power margin and to minimize the distance my chunks would fly if I crashed on landing.

Because I don't fly the Mustang all that much, I didn't (and still don't!) know the procedure to jettison stores. I flipped what I thought were the right switches and only the left bomb came off, still leaving me with a sizable load. At this time I was close to my base turn, though, so I just decided to commit to the landing.

Throttle back, gear down, flaps down, and I'm suddenly in more or less a normal approach. Because I was making left turns in the pattern, I was able to line up without going too crazy with the uncoordinated flight. Nice steady final, solid flare, and the wheels grease onto runway surface! Whew!

Strangely enough, once on the ground, my controls reverted - no hard-over stick! I'm still not really sure what happened and the track is WAY too long to try to play through it all, but it definitely proved that anything can happen in DCS World.

Spent a little bit of time in the Huey last evening -- on the new release v1.2.12.

I was pleased to see there is a pilot's body in the seat now, well done!

But, raven and I both suffered from client disconnects. We couldn't go 15 minutes w/o getting disconnected. Scheesh. Lot's of chatter about multiplayer woes over on DCS Forums, again.

WC

I new update was just pushed out on OpenBeta branch

Some video from last nights flying as Einstein's lost little puppy. Note: I might cough a few times throughout the video ... stupid itch in the back of my throat ... and my audio is a little low because I forgot to adjust the recording settings before I settled into DCS.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:



Comments and suggestions (on the flying, I don't seem to have time for proper video editing) are welcome!

Thanks, Skate,
Can you provide a link, please?

WC

What is the suggested audio level for MP? I always forget to adjust mine and end up with external noise overwhelming the TS volume...

BeachAV8R