DCS F-14 Tomcat Launch Impressions MEGATHREAD

Vegetarian Baja Street Tacos… LOL

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They look awesome!

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Speechless, what a machine and module. My kid is waking up in 5 hours but I couldn’t stop having fun. the roll speed, rudder rolls, the sounds, the slats, the walkman, everything :grin: did some touch and go’s but couldn’t nail the break yet with wing sweep auto gear down flaps down, dlc on and trim, it’s a hand full​:grin: should fiddle a little with the hud horizon too, dials were much more dependable but maybe I’m doing something wrong. Ah a new day tomorrow, will be fun.

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Ok this is the first module I’ve tried to learn in vr. I can cold start it pretty much (bit confused about ram air and hydraulics. Still cant figure out the landing gear. And the key bindings are all over the place.
I’ve given up and gone to bed tonight after a few spins around the circuit at nellis. It finds its trim very easy. Hates anything high alpha and is probably the most fun I’ve ever had in my whole time sat in computer generated plane.

The work heatblur have done is simply outstanding. The noises. The rattles. The ROAR she makes coming on burner.

Well done guys. Thanks.

But rushed tonight but I will mess around with settings and get my head in the manual to clear up the things I don’t understand.

She is beautiful

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Man I can’t wait to fire this thing up. I’m busy converting my training missions to accept the Cat at the moment.

It happened the exact same thing for me assigning toe brakes. I managed to do it once and everything calmed down afterwards…

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Got a late start, flew around for about 45 mins in the Instant Action Take Off mish mostly setting up controls. Landed and taxied to the ramp, but not a peep out of mr. smarty pants, for better or worse. It’s hard not to be impressed with both the aircraft and HeatBlur’s effort.

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Yeah, a lot of them are exactly opposite of the Hornet. I.E. CTRL-G and SHFT-G in one are SHFT-G and CTRL-G in the other. Some commonality would be nice. Anyway, minor complaint. Going to remap the HOTAS top to bottom regardless.

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Sat backseat while @Franze did the pilot thing. Sort of worked the radar, in that we killed things, but I feel it’s going to take some time to get all the things sorted out.

Great fun. Some refueling shots from the backseat as @Wes on our left practiced (in VR, hence you can see the controller in some of them so not great images, but at the time it looked fantastic for me).

Plus a bad video, but still - an amazing module so far, looking forward to learning how to work it properly…

https://imgur.com/MOiByDA

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I got tired of waiting last night. I woke up at 4 am and had a go. You just cant understand how ground breaking this is. I got a “Nice Landing” from the RIO. Went up against the J-11?.. The handling is not as bad as I thought it would be. I got guns on him. Hope I can get more time in her today. What a rocketship!

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Ha, I know the feeling. I woke up at Oh-Dark-Thirty to see if the update had finished downloading. I just not got around to binding all my HOTAS controls and…it looks like I need more 4-way hats.

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After getting my time in the front seat with @fearlessfrog in the back seat, here’s what I can say:

Jester is OK, but there’s really no substitute for someone you can interact with and speak to back and forth. Being able to get confirmation and information in real time made a huge difference and while Jester might have the scripted “knowledge” of the systems, it doesn’t top having a real person back there.

A F/A-18 the Turkey is not! Any kind of real mission load puts serious limitations on what you can do with the aircraft and it’s quite a handful if you try to get into a dogfight unprepared and overloaded. Some Fencers and F-4s had quite the time with me on Hollo Pointe in @WreckingCrew’s Red Sky mission and @NEVO was closing in for the kill before I got clipped by an F-4 I think. It’s a heavy aircraft and it shows. That being said, at lighter weights, I was able to stick with an AI Fulcrum, but one has to watch the AoA and be quick to correct with rudder. Further, acceleration is not quick at low speed. Pitch is sensitive to rapid changes, so doing it slow and steady like the Viggen is the way to go. I’m also not sure how to spin the aircraft out because I was being really crazy with the controls and all I could really do was a roll oscillation at high AoA, no departed flight. The real concern I had was more for uncontrolled snap rolls rather than spins.

I haven’t tried any air-ground with it yet, though I’m sure I will soon. Having said that, it doesn’t seem well suited to it and I haven’t had the chance to bring someone along in the back seat for LGB fun, mostly sticking to the CAP/intercept mission at this point. I’m not sure if we have the 20,000ft or 40,000ft pod, so it puts some of the strike mission in rather contested territory. I can see it as a pretty decent AFAC, but once again that will take a human RIO.

I’m sure I’ve done quite a few things wrong with flying it so far, but handling around the boat is good. If you’re adjusted to the Bug, you will be disappointed, but if you’re acclimatized to using all indicators and not just the HUD, you’ll be fine. I didn’t have a ton of trouble tanking, mostly in just trying to make the initial connection. Watching the vortex effect seems to be the key, and you can avoid that by coming up to the side or from the bottom.

As always, there are bugs. Once Frog hopped out of my seat, Jester didn’t come back. No comms, no nothing; broken. @Wes hopped in the back and couldn’t do anything either, to include ejecting, so it was broken in a pretty big way. I think it might be because Frog disconnected rather than going to spectators, but I don’t know that for sure. Wes and I tried a fresh aircraft and so as long as he joined spectators, I got Jester back. That was the major one thus far and in the front seat I haven’t seen more yet.

All said and done, it’s a new and very expansive addition to DCS. It does have a lot of demands and is definitely not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it has the potential to breathe new life into the game.

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I had to really REALLY go out of my way to set up the spin.

10k ft 250kts 60 degree nose high. Push over nose to horizon full left rudder as pitch speed up. Half right roll engines idle as roll starts.

It snap rolls back to the left and the spin starts. I couldn’t save it last night although the spin did slow so much I thought I had it at one point but I ran out of sky.

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As I saw you ’ Dancing with the Phantoms ’ ( sounds like some song name :slight_smile: ) I wanted to close in and fly a formation with you not spoiling any Cat fun by killing someone… but the Phantoms did exercise you :slight_smile:

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BUG!!!
Visor knob is up while the visor is down!
I KNEW Heatblur would mess this up!
In fact, I’m GLAD I’m working, or else I would be wasting my time on this obviously broken piece of untested software.

No, not really…

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Nah, it’s just double visor.

giphy

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Flew two sorties today, in one with the Bear (this time it had two MIG-23 as escorts) I got my butt kicked. I did waited with engagement till the merge though. Since I was carrying 4 Phoenixes and couldn’t get Jester to drop the fuel tanks I was too heavy for a dogfight (that’s my excuse).

On the second sortie (Protecting the fleet) I engaged the bombers with Phoenixes from distance and went into furball with MIGs a bit lighter than before. The flight characteristics of the F-14 are definately different from what I was accustomed to. You really need to work that rudder to roll where you want while pulling on that stick. I downed two MIG-23s (Jester said they were Su-22?) one with Sidewinder and the second one with GUN! My wingman didn’t fired a single missile and ended up burning all fuel before the mission was over. But that might be my fault as I was probably talking to him on wrong frequency …

I find landing the Tomcat pretty easy compared to the Bug. The DLC system really helps - it’s like a magic slew up/down function. Brilliant!

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Please sir what is DLC I thought it was payware add ons :confounded:

After getting used to how she handles, I had to “recreate” a certain scene:

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Dynamic Lift Control. Or is it Direct?

Anyway, spoilers on top of the wing that make you drop like a ton of bricks.

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