Breaking with my usual forum convention, I’m going to post on topic. I’ve dipped my toe into the first 3 missions or so of the Viggen Red Flag campaign (reminder: free with the Viggen now, if you have the Viggen then you own it) and it’s been a lot of fun so far. Some notes to prevent anyone else falling into the holes I stepped in so far:
-
The initial mission made me laugh a bit, as it’s a transfer one, in which you arrive from Sweden to Nellis AFB in your Viggen flight. It reminded me of the DCS 2022 Predictions? topic, where we speculated on how it would be nice to have the whole world in DCS. I got so bored after 10 minutes of flying over the desert, staring out the window. Not even any go/stop pills to use either.
-
Mission 2 is a tour flight (not doing any spoilers here) and it’s bugged in a funny way. @wagmatt (I think) voices the other pilot showing you the sights over the range, but he hurtles down to 100m mid-flight and then just chats as he narrowly crashes into things he mentions to watch out for - ‘Here on your left is Student Gap, make sure you look out for…
’ . Made me laugh anyway. @bunyap2w1 has a replacement mission here - Temporary Replacement for Mission 2 - AJS-37 Viggen 16-2 Red Flag Campaign - ED Forums -
Mission 3 is where it gets going and it’s fantastic! as a larger scale RF op. Two surprising things - no briefing within the wee DCS window, but more a 'go look at the PDFs as the BRIEFING IS SO LARGE. Not ideal in VR, so I had to make notes and put them in the scratchpad app thing. Secondly, they don’t bother with a ‘win / lose’ set of rules, and just say ‘This is really complicated, so if you fly for 10 mins+ then you win - honor rules apply, so move on if you are successful only’. I sort of liked that.
Without bringing the reign fire of copyright infringement, here’s a tiny snippet of the briefing materials - they are so good, and really makes the campaign (found in your C:\Games\DCS World OpenBeta\Mods\aircraft\AJS37\Missions\Campaigns\Viggen RF Campaign\Doc\Viggen-RF-Mission-03 folder, for example). They cover big picture, strategic context, tactical context and your mission - fun to go through:
(hmm, I read here that this mission is available as a free preview - so you can check out some of the PDF docs anyway here - https://forums.eagle.ru/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=159583)
So a couple of things:
-
The ‘S2’ button on the radio is currently bust, so using ‘Group 10’ Button 0 to get to the 124.00 needed for the ops channel.
-
The Viggen is terrible at marshaling high and heavy, it’s almost better just to set off late and time it so you push at the right time. I actually managed to cut the engine with a compression due to my wallowing in a circuit. Eek.
-
Be good at landing on road sized airfields, as the Lincoln County airstrip ain’t much. I am not good at that.
-
Make sure you do the Visual Fix on Mt Irish on ingress, as the nav system will start to drift, although the target of EW55G6 site stands out nicely in that desert plain. There were clouds over the Mt Irish point, so get down low to get a good fix if you have to.
-
You need to chocks in program the bejebus out of the Viggen clockwork computer, as in, put in an ingress speed as briefed (0.84m), absolutely make sure the time on target is very well specified in the computer and follow it religiously, as arriving early or late is game over. Be the Swiss Watch on this one…
-
I had trouble finding a decent clock in the Viggen (!) but you can set the thingy wheel (sorry, expert talk here) to TID / TIME and set the switch to ‘Input’ and it’ll give you a digital time read-out. The small analog clock sort of sucks in VR.
-
The Red Flag game is Russia massing troops for an invasion of Ukraine, so you really have to suspend disbelief for this one, as we’re trying to go help with sharp sticks.
Anyway, if you Viggen at all then this one is recommended. Good job @bunyap2w1!