When I finally don’t fly the MiG-21, I go in the opposite direction of the logical progress.
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@Franze and myself prepare for another CAP as the RAF.
Running south to Falaise.
I got too close to an I-16, the prop wash dipped my left wing into his rudder and it snapped off just outboard of the cannon. A heavy hand on the stick to the right and a tad of rudder and I skidded this bird home along the runway, bounced, and slid off the tarmac upside down. @Franze watched in amazement as I flew home spouting flames.
@Franze fought hard and put a bit too much strain on the poor merlin and it gave out, but the Spitfire at least gave him a somewhat dignified field landing.
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Only got a couple pics of @Wes streaking by like a comet as he aimed for a rocket ship landing that he somehow survived! Had my hands full flying the aircraft so only got a couple of shots as he went under me.
After our final sortie, for some reason Wes’ bombs were still visible on my end but he had used them to hit some tanks. Final tally: I lost one life and aircraft to a head-on (Fw-190A pulled up into me after I blasted his engine), one aircraft lost due to either hostile fire or overheated engine, Wes one aircraft written off. Total hostile aircraft brought down: 7 for Wes, 30 for me.
Our final engagement had us facing off with two waves of Bf-109Ks, first wave near St. Andre where I had attempted to intercept them and ended up in a 2v1, making slashing attacks with 303s to no avail (I made a lot of deflection hits) before they gained an energy advantage. Wes joined the fight and managed to clip one 109 as he pulled up, reversing the odds, but the last one was proving difficult. We both scored some hits until I finally got a radiator hit on him and seized his engine. Heading south to Falaise, Wes bombed some tanks while I flew top cover, whereupon I spied some Finnish I-16s heading north to attack our ground forces. I chewed one up with 303s and finished the other with cannon fire, coming back around to find another wave of 109s attacking some P-51s. Wes and I initially got behind the same 109, after which I broke off and went for the other 109, having difficulty catching him but finally getting close enough to drill him with 20mm fire, seizing his engine. Wes got some decent hits on his target, but eventually ran out of ammo. I came around and finished it with a quick burst of 20mm, and from there we went north.
Wes then spotted I-16s flying behind us, and despite being out of 303 ammunition I decided to chance what little 20mm was left. One went down from a single burst of 20mm, while the other took my last hit and had an engine failure as a result. We both quickly high tailed it back to base at which point we did our usual sloppy landings but otherwise made it back intact.
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Not many screenshots from my end either, as my replay decided I actually nosed over and slammed into the ground a few minutes after take-off. But I secretly invaded @wes’ and @franze’s mission and flew the P-51 around for a bit.
Getting ready to go all alone, in the comms I can hear franze and wes already having fights.
The base anti-aircraft artillery is already very angry when I am still taxiing, the fight is probably not that very far away.
Up and away! just minutes after take-off I can already see specks in the distance in the direction the base AAA was firing at.
I take the time to get above them and dive on some contacts. When closing in, they usually turned out to be friendly, though.
Unfortunately this is where the replay crapped out 
I cannot confirm nor deny that I crashed two mustangs during this session. 
In one case I held the tailwheel locked for a few seconds to long on take-off, resulting in a whacky take-off with immediate left-wing drop. I was gonna save it if it wasn’t for that building on the left of the runway. The other time I got hit by something (FlaK?) near someplace (Falaise?) that damaged my governor and resultated in a runaway prop. While nursing my wounded bird back home I forgot to drop the landing gear resulting in a belly landing, then flames, and then explosions.
So far the mission is very fun! although there’s a true heatwave going on (25C early in the morning) which made the low altitude engine management a challenge (above 10k ft, things were okay). In VR, the frames got a little choppy at times, though.
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Few shots from my recent flight in a Viper (Cold and Dark quick mission):
Since I had some training bombs hanging, I opted for some joint A/G excercise with L-39s that were engaging mock up targets at the range.
Further west I noticed red contrails - as it turned out it was Yak-52 doing aerobatics! I couldn’t pass the oportunity to join the fun.
That last pass was bit to close, to avoid any possible pants brownage at the Yak aviators part I opted for quick break and looked for something at higher level.
Chasing C-17, unfortunately he’s not reflecting in my visor. Another feature for my personal wishlist…
Damn, it’s still the model from Lock On times …
Another big boy encountered on my return leg. This one looks mighty fine though.
Lining up with the Vaziani runway centerline.
Touch down and aerobraking. Keeping this bird straight after touchdown is a lot of work. Might be cross winds (or me looking for excuses).
Either way we’re back safe on the ground.
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I find the AI not that fun to fight in DCS in the warbirds, or rather any of the 1 vs 1 instant missions seem like the enemy can do some amazing things velocity wise. How did you manage to shoot down 30 of them, is the mission balanced so they full fuel or something?
He used I-16s for red CAS. Some 190 A-8s as well, and they can be a challenge to catch. Then there are the CAP 109’s which when on the dedicated server don’t always go vertical and instead started a side to side weaving pattern that makes it easy to land hits in their engine if you can time a bit of rudder into your gun bursts.
We have also learned for both the Mustang and Spitfire to set the radiator’s cooling doors to manual full-open, allowing us to run the engine much harder without cooking it to death. It’s like the auto-mode is too aggressive at keeping the doors closed.
Edit: Spitfire cruise is about 2700rpm with 7lbs to stay cool. Open the doors and she’s happy with 12lbs at 3000rpm, sometimes more.
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Ah, I’ve not tried the I-16’s and now keen to give it a go. Hopefully a visit to HPN today for me later. Will you leave the mission up? 
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It’s on Offensive Posture at the moment at the request of @Sryan, but later on I can swap it back. 
We could use some more VR performance metrics for sure, with how finicky DCS WWII is.
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I left it an hour ago to start dinner, but there were quite a few folks flying offensive posture today (yay!). My flying time is gone for the weekend, but there’s still some peeps in there flying.
i was on with my friend using it for training flights. but i havent got normandy sadly
Bounced pretty hard on landing and the subsequent wing stall & dip caused some damage that lead to needing to brakes now which put it up on the nose. Still, the Anton’s fairly smooth nose meant nothing dug in and flipped…so there’s that.
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The AI operates on a different set of rules, so they can hang on the prop at speeds we’d either stall out or burn the engine out with, to say nothing of the fact that two of the three Axis planes are technically late war and the three Allied planes are mid, late-ish, and very early/30s. Adjusting their fuel loads, ordnance, or that sort of thing has no effect on them and they can always run at maximum power. I’ve tried to balance AI skill but that doesn’t have much of an effect either, so at present time half a side’s aircraft are dedicated to the CAS mission and set to ignore air-air, while one flight is set to CAS but will engage in air-air (this seems to happen more reliably in single player), and one flight is dedicated to CAP. The high kill count racks up because the CAS aircraft remain straight and level and ignore any enemy aerial threats to focus exclusively on air-ground. I’m trying to find a good way to get a balance for this but I think there’s some other issues I’ll need to tackle at the same time in regards to how DCS handles AI groups (things like warping and whatnot).
The other half of it is filling your windscreen with aircraft and shooting, maximizing your weapon’s muzzle velocity for the most damage. I may make a separate post detailing the techniques I’ve used for WWII gunnery so as not to drift the thread too off-track here.
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I really like desert camo patterns on the mirage.
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Since I was having a few FPS struggles in the new WW2 mission that was made by @Franze and hosted by @Wes I decided to give it a go in 2D using the good old trackIR and the even older and gooder P-51D.
Take-off was a little hairy. I miss the periphial vision from VR that I usually use to orient myself. Luckily I did not come to a near flip-over like last time, and I dodged the tiny wooden building that became my doom in my last flight!
I climbed for a little bit and then went cruising around looking for trouble. The tip to manually and fully open the coolers during this warm Normandy day was invaluable.
Setting my heading for Falaise and looking for bandits. All I really encounter are friendly CAP planes.
Making it nearly to falaise, I decided to head back as I still hadn’t found anybody and was starting to get within AAA range. I wasn’t looking forward to having my governor popped off by a nearby FlaK explosion again.
Somewhat North of Bretteville I got wind of some Jerries performing strike missions, I went looking for them in the hope I could dive on one of them.
This bird has spotted a prey and is going in.
It’s an FW190 of some sorts, strafing friendly vehicles that are returning the favor. I won’t be able to get to him before he is in position to hurt friendlies but I should be able to avenge any damage this fellow might be able to do.
High quality
Lower quality
.50 cal mayhem. I also want to reiterate I really appreciate the gyro that got my shots so close right from the get-go although it was a tricky situation to use it with such a high rate of closure. Unfortunately that stutter threw off my aim (I get this in VR as well, but a lot more and at a constant rate the moment I pop up behind someone). and after that the old training kicked in and I was walking my tracers back on target.
He just barely got out, chute dangling over the treeline as the wrecked bird refurnitures a couple of houses.
Still glee with my kill, I wasn’t checking my six properly (it also feels weird in TIR when coming back from VR!). I had absolutely no idea this guy had CAP friends, two of them even. They wrecked my plane and popped a wing off in a single burst.
Spending some dangling above Normandy. Luckily, the war economy is on our side and hopefully I’ll get another 'stang when I get back to base.
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The lighting never ceases to amaze me in this game.
Not sure if it’s new or not, but I just saw this stunning Ghost Gray skin in one of the new trailers and had to take it out!
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Indeed - and something about the textures of the water in the Persian Gulf theater are really nice…
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Thanks for the new desktop!
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