EmerlistDavjack

I ended up buying the Yak-52 and it is a lot of fun to just fly around. I saw a video online of a guy on multiplayer with Combined Arms shooting IGLAs with a MANPAD. Looked...interesting. Maybe next sale.

Spent the whole weekend with the family, but that timeslot works better for me than any other, moving on. We almost got our two-seaters!

And they take .177 pellets only moderately well, all things considered (once we got older). That was more of a plastic green army men thing, though.

I only joined JG1 last fall, so I didn't know that FiF ends for the summer. I'll miss it. Good flying, everybody!

The best part about Lego creations was always destroying them. My brother and I would build forts and bombers and stuff and just hurl them at each other until the forts fell apart...and then we could do it again next weekend.

I'm sort of interested in playing DCS like a very high-fidelity RTS game. If anybody here played Wargame: Red Dragon, they know what I mean, but more in real time and much better graphics.

Yeah, PG is the map that echoes real world operations these days. I think I'm going to wait for the F-16 or maybe if the F-14 goes on sale in the fall/winter I'll pick that up. Though, the F-16 wouldn't let me do Carrier ops. Goddammit DCS why are you so expensive and yet so good? Does anybody here have Combined Arms?

I keep wanting to get into DCS but man, it's like you need to spend the same amount of time and commitment as a military pilot to learn some of these things. I just don't have that type of time, at least with a WWI or WWII bird I can hop in and do it. I'd have to pick one modern plane and learn it. I can't decide if that is the F-14 or the eventual F-16. I'm a fighter pilot at heart, so do I want the best long range AA missile or the best thrust-weight ratio (and sexiest airframe)? Buying the Persian Gulf map on sale, though. I'll tool around Abu Dhabi in a Huey for kicks.

This is the plane that makes me really regret that they do not have individual key-bindings in this game. P-38 gonna be worse.

Literally jaw dropping. Wow.

I'm gonna have to make time for this Thursday. I keep reading about these large JG1 flights.

At least IL2 seems to have a better grasp on how Windows IDs units. I haven't had a single issue with IL2. ROF is indeed a mess.

That's the smart way to do it. The idiot's (my) way is to save new profiles each time called something like JOY-1 THROT-0 PED-2 ect etc. It's not ideal. Thanks for the post!

Sweet. I'm going to take a break this week and not attend tomorrow, but I'll see you all on the 11th!

I counter with a bunch of Finns doing...Finn things. A guy plays the spoons, and another guy plays an anvil.

Heatblur commissioned a soundtrack for the DCS F-14 release, it's pretty rad.

People take these games too seriously sometimes. Takes us away from the real reason we are all playing them. Those guys are douchebags, Talbot. I thought your video was funny. Overall, I agree with Luft, except for one point: if you bail from a burning plane in a chute, you have a better chance of living. If you bail from an engine out...that's stupid in DiD. Try to ditch instead. One of the reasons that I joined this squadron was an emphasis on DiD.

Aww, I'll miss your melodious voice and stalwart leadership, Luft.

Beat us rather handily too, but a lotta fun was had. Thanks for joining in, everybody!

Heh, I am definitely overthinking it, I like to. And yes, the whole point of me spending time learning intricacies so that I can feel confident I know what I am doing without Technochat. Any time I've looked, it seems like IAS in the cockpit and from the Bombardier are identical. The other aspect is that one way I learn to do things is to do the extremes. Like, learning how to goose an He-111 off a wet field in summer, as loaded as can be. Not easy, not even ever necessary (6 hour endurance full fuel...yeah), but it was a challenge and forced me to absolutely nail the roll out and draw my flaps in very slowly and methodically. I know that the Nearest Field thing gives *almost* AGL because these maps are mostly so flat, and there isn't really much in the Kuban hills to attack. Within normal operating procedures, that's a good bet, but it also should be somewhat near to the Bombardier's value anyway, since the maps are so flat and low anyway (Moscow is at 250m MSL IRL). However, as your get higher in altitude, it seems to matter more. So from my above example, flying at 5000m over Stalingrad in winter, the Nearest Field value gave me 300m of elevation higher than the corrected MSL value from the Bombardier. However, since Stalingrad is at ~50m MSL, the Bombardiers value is closer to AGL. By observing the Technochat AGL, I was able to determine that this is important at 5000m! So right now, TAW is playing a map with 8 degrees celsius and I would be paying attention to the difference between the Cockpit/Bomb values and deciding which I think is closer to AGL. If the map were at 13-17C, then yes, I would say use the Nearest Airfield all the time. The other aspect of this is that I believe that the Winds Aloft (like a lot of aviation info) is given in MSL. So the Winds Aloft correspond directly to the Bombardier reading, and I've been practicing in strong winds. I'll admit, I don't know how much an altitude setting difference of 300m would matter with a big bomb if I got the Speed/Wind correct, but I am trying to learn precision with the smaller ones. BTW: I found this compendium of Airfields with their Altitudes listed, but only for the original BoS map. If you know the altitude of your target, then the Bombardier Alt - Target Alt = AGL every time as far as I can tell. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3emIgfIMJ_mY2E5WkZrNmhjemc/view

I'm going to keep all my IL2 testing/worrying in one thread so as not to clutter the forum up on my voyage of discovery. If you haven't been able to tell, sometimes something bugs me, and I just must understand how it works. I have been practicing HE-111 5000m bombing, and overall I am starting to understand a bunch of how it works. Not just using the bomb sight, which I do understand, but also how to line up a run for maximum effect on a single pass, how to deal with crosswinds on approach, that sort of thing. All very fun. I was doing a QMB over Stalingrad at 5000m in Winter, and I noticed something that just bothered me: No altitude values matched. Technochat clearly reads AGL at 4870m. Altimeter on STP mode reads 5.43km, ("Friendly Airfield" mode it reads 5.31km, but those should be relatively different values), and the Bomb Sight reads 5km exactly. Kliegmann today told me that the bombsight altimeter just works for accuracy all the time, and that it appears to be MSL. In Autumn (which I've read is STP in QMB), all values match except the Technochat AGL (which should only really match sitting on an airfield). So this has to be due to temperature! The Bombsight is giving absolute MSL, whereas the Altimeter gives the correct pressure altitudes uncorrected for temperature. The reason I needed to understand just how it works is that now I know to ignore the cockpit and just fly to the Altimeter reading for the best winds aloft match, especially in overly cold or hot weather! Aeronautics guys, correct me if I am wrong: I took a rough equation for Density Altitude {Ad=Ap+[120x(OAT-ISA)]} and worked it back to give Outside Air Temp (altitude must be in feet, temp in C). If I use the MSL given by the Bomb sight as a "density altitude," and the STP Altimeter reading as my Pressure Altitude, with a standard ISA temp of -17.5 at 5000m, I get an OAT of -28.75C. I wonder how close that is to what the game thinks. If we then add the standard lapse rate for 16000 ft (2C/1000ft), we get an estimated 4.75C on the ground. Not the coldest day in Russia! Kinda makes me want to learn enough of the editor to peer inside the game's fidelity, but my guess is: pretty great. Now I just need to find a resource for topographic maps or something I can use to gauge AGL. I wonder why TAW doesn't list it with their airfield recon photos.

Oh, I appear to have been promoted from Gfr to Sgt. S!

It's the same key as boost. Really, it's all just terminology. AFAIK WEP is American, Boost is British, and the Germans and Soviets had their own words that we translate into Boost and/or Emergency Power. The Mig-3, for instance, does not use the boost button at all, but full mixture is called Boost none-the-less. Another strange thing I noticed today: Below 3.5km, the Dora is in combat mode at full throttle with no MW-50 Boost enabled. If you climb up over that, the Supercharger kicks to second gear and the technochat calls it "Emergency Power." On the spec sheet, it says "Emergency Power with no MW-50 for 3 mins," but I let her run for 25 min (8x, using in cockpit clock) before I got the technochat message that I had exceeded Emergency time. So who knows. Starting to build confidence in my knowledge of how to use the planes. Now I just need to learn how to identify targets without icons! Yeesh I am terrible at that offline. Maybe I should take up level bombing.

I did some messing about with it tonight with the P-47 and discovered this about it: 1) The damage is truly random after the "Time Exceeded" message. After 5 min in boost, I would get catastrophic engine damage anywhere from 1.5 to 4 minutes after the "boost time exceeded" message. Once, it even gave me an "engine damaged" message at 5:10 worth of boost, but the engine sounded okay and I was at full power (tiny fluctuation in RPM, lost ~5mph) for another 4 minutes for about 9 minutes of boost total. So yeah, that is just random. 2) The recharge (for the P-47) is twice the time spent in a lower engine state. So I can fly 5 minutes of boost, get the time exceeded (TE) message, 5 minutes of continuous, and then another 2.5 minutes of boost before I get the TE message again. If I fly 10 minutes of continuous, I get all 5 min of boost back. Note: Boost time is also Combat time, so it's harder to recharge boost with combat in the P-47, much easier in a K4 with its ungodly 30min combat timer. Simple in Mig-3 since all it has is Boost and Cont. 3) I never noticed this, but if you get the TE message, and then fly at a lower state for the entire time to recharge, the technochat will tell you that boost/combat time has been replenished. If you use boost but not all the way to get the TE message, and then fly at Cont, the technochat will not tell you when you have recharged. 4) It does recharge the timer in small amounts, so yes, if I boost in a climbing turn for 20 seconds to catch up to an enemy, then back to combat for 40 seconds, it has erased the boost time (but consumed water for the injection). At least, with the P-47. That's very important for me to know, because that is how I want to use boost: for short moments when I need that kick to make the turn or complete a loop. 5) Interesting note, during this testing I made sure to run out of Water for the P-47 injection system at the end of a flight, to see what happened. The Water Pressure still showed the same values as working injection, but the Cyl-Head and Oil temps skyrocketed with the boost mode turned on. So I did run out of water, but there was no way to know except for suddenly my temps went wild. I didn't test it, but as far as I read in the Specs for the Dora: if you run out of MW-50 you can still hit the boost button and get 3 minutes at a time of "Emergency mode." In conclusion: I have a strong suspicion that most of the timers work the same. 1 Minute in "Boost/Emergency/WEP" can be mitigated by 2 minutes in either "Combat" or "Continuous" modes. 1 minute in Combat mode can be mitigated by 2 minutes in Continuous mode. The planes I tested were the P-47 extensively, the Dora, and the Mig-3. All of those had 1:2 recharging ratios as explained above. I also tested the K4 and Vonrd's quote of the manual is correct: It will recharge Emergency mode at a 1:1 rate to combat. I didn't test combat vs Cont because frankly...30 minutes.

Thanks for making all of this, Butzzell! I've really loved fighting over Britain for this scenario. We never would have been able otherwise.