DCS F-15C Combat guide for beginners by Sryan [very IMG heavy!]

Flight Sims
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Gang - I need to give y’all a heads up, full of great news.

This morning, over the course of about 2 hours or more, Sryan and I spoke over a join.me and worked together, building a custom .lua for the F-15C and 1.5.3. WE DID IT ALL. We looked at sensors. We looked at countermeasures. We played with deadspots. We worked on throttles. We figured out where chaff and flares might be best positioned. We looked at toggles and hats and zooms and radar modes and weapons layouts and all of it.

AND THEN, and ONLY THEN… did we fly. On an empty mission, way out in the ocean. And we just practiced. Practiced dropping fuel tanks. Practiced switching fuel tanks. Practiced turning the radar on and off and switching modes. All of that, until I finally had to call it a day to go back to work.

Let me tell you, he’s ON TOP OF HIS GAME. We scheduled another appointment, this time in the forum, so we can attempt some formation flying and basic flight maneuvers. He also gave me some homework assignments, and showed me how to save and send tracks, and also do tracking with my nVidia card, so he can record my voice while I verbalize my lessons.

It’s everything I wanted in flight instruction, given the current game dimensions.

Did I pay him? Absolutely. And I intend to continue paying him as I practice and improve. I’ll never be at the level of some of you women and men, but I’m finally getting my dream to ‘fly’ the F-15 in mock combat, and I’m having an absolute blast.

So first, THANK YOU, to Sryan for sharing this knowledge, both on this site and via VOIP. Second, if anyone else wants some ‘coaching’ and instruction, make arrangements with Sryan. He’s calm, he’s smart, he speaks three or four languages, and he’s mature. Third - @BeachAV8R - with your permission, I’d like to maybe start a blog about this adventure. Me, a TOTAL NEWBIE, who probably has emptied the US Treasury with all the F-15C’s I’ve crashed on taxiways in the Black Sea, working with a SOLID DCS FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR, to figure stuff out, step by step, and then practice under tutelage and supervision.

I guess I’d need help with screenshots and editing, but yeah - I haven’t been this excited about anything since I strapped myself in to a Schweizer S-33 at the Bermuda High Soaring School in 1992.

This is something we’ve needed since forever; I’ve had LoMac, FC2, a couple of IL-2’s and more, and the scant videos out there on YouTube just haven’t done it for me. BelGeode and Bunyap have been fun to watch, but there are SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS TO THINK ABOUT that it’s hard to actually engage without wondering how the hell you’re going to actually learn this thing. It’s not arcade - it’s Flight Sim.

And I can’t wait to get home tonight!

** Edited to include an @ to Chris, thanks to a hat tip from @fearlessfrog!

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Glad you are having fun and found a good instructor. You could, of course, open a thread in the AAR forum for your extended adventure sort of like I did for my EPOCH Air Alaska flying… (which I need to get back to)…

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Well, aren’t I Mr Tips today :slight_smile:. You can always put a hash mark in-front of any category here to make a clickable link, like this Screens & AARs.

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I’m ready for the plugin that writes whatever I’m thinking about…

Err…on second thought…

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oh whareagle you’re making me blush :flushed: I enjoyed it just as much as you did!

I added some new paragraphs in the bottom. Surely looking for some feedback to make sure I got it all right!

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Seriously ? This is exciting news Sryan, where do I sign and what is your time zone?

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You can PM me for some details. While the timezone I live in currently observes Central European Summertime (CEST, GMT+2) I used to work in 24/7 healthcare and since I am still in that “mode” I can accomodate pretty much everyone around the world.

I’ll be happy to provide some training, for what you think it’s worth and only if you’re content with the service, so far I’ve been going over some basics and some combats. We started out with his stick as we both own the X-55. I solved a problem with his airbrake (his silder was giving infinite commands to deploy and retract the airbrake, so that could cause some controls to lock up) and I advised him to put the antenna angle and MFD range on a rotary. Things like that. We did that all through some sort of meeting software called join.me
It was fine for setting up the controls but hard to look at his flight because the software provides about 1 FPS. So we’ll have to look into twitch or youtube live for our next session. I’ve not been flying with him, just looking over his shoulder in the cockpit. So I can see what’s actually going on and provide instructions or corrections, but I’ll gladly fly alongside anyone. He’s also been sending me private youtube video’s. I’ve been making my video replies, replicating his fights and overlaying them with graphics where I try to explain and visualise what the problems are.

YT01.png850×477 432 KB

Explaining why HI was probably not the mode of choice for the last fight.

YT02.png849×451 297 KB

Explaining why it was not that hard to acquire the bandit at range…

YT03.png843×472 274 KB

…But why it was then hard to reacquire the target after he lost it.

Ofcourse I voice these video’s too, just using the graphics to make sure the point gets across. Since he even wants non-combat training I’ve been preparing some other classes, ranging from getting around the airport ( without looking at the F-10 map like a cheater)

https://forums.mudspike.comhttps://uploads.mudspike.com/original/2X/1/1decedb8dca483bdcac3c09ab35b875a83ee7f8f.png

To training some more commonly known things like ILS landings, but also slightly less commonly known things like proper aerobraking.

That’s the things I’ve been helping with so far. The only thing I want to warn about is that I’m not some sort of multiplayer god. I can’t make you go on the 104th and rek the place. I’ll ocasionally undergo tumbleweed myself during training.

PM me if you’re still interested!

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Great guide, thanks!

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Had a great 5 hour session with @Decibel_dB #exhausted :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll try to make some sort of GIF tonight or tomorrow in wich I try to explain how ECM works. I found it very hard to explain with just words. I think I got the mechanics across pretty well. But explaining the physics at work properly appeared to have eluded me. I tried creating images during our break, but that still didn’t get the point across that during HOJ the target aircraft is the source of radiation that the missle locks on to, and that there is no need for the agressor aircraft or the missile to send radarpulses themselves as they can just listen to the noise and therefor HOJ guided weapons do not reveal themselves on the RWR.

MgsmdHW.png883×280 24.2 KB

I have some ideas how it should look. hopefully I can implement it in the guide as well.

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I’m pretty sure you’ve put more effort into explaining ECM than ED put into their ECM implementation. Right now all of it’s a very, very simplistic (like korean war) noise jammer. AFAIK the missile is just flying at the largest (brightest) source of noise until it’s close enough to something to fuse. Furthermore as it works currently, with the exception of very high, very fast engagement against a very high, very fast head on target or maybe getting your hands on an AIM-54, there is no situation in DCS where your missile will have the energy to hit a target outside of burn through. I haven’t seen a HOJ shot since FC 1.12 at least.

EDIT: I’m a little salty as I spent my Monday getting a rudimentary crash course in how deceptive jamming works, and now it’s something I want in DCS.

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Ya hoj in dcs is pretty much useless. Except for the high fast engagement or at the very edges of your wez, there are very few situations where you will not achieve burn thru before you are in a wez. Burn thru almost always happens right at 35-40 miles. If you are shooting at that range you are essentially wasting missiles, especially against players

I honestly use jamming or hoj indications in dcs as a range/ threat indicator. If I see hoj strobes on the radar, I may turn towards it but I’m not concerned at all until I see an actual contact on the radar. The strobe itself is simply telling me he is outside forty miles. No threat.

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Before 1.5 I would also use hoj to try and get a tally on jammers so I could geolocate them, lock them up and point at the target container. Used to be able to see them at max zoom( if not then their overdone smoke trails prior to 1.5) You can then tell if they are above or below you, and with a little estimation ( especially if they are below you) you now know roughly how far away they are and can use that to figure out if they are an immediate threat or not

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Just a quick update. Guys and Gals, Sryan is THE MAN. We’ve been through two sessions together, each about 3 hours, and we’ve got another session scheduled for tomorrow. Here’s the gist of it - I’m TRYING to build a long AAR and blog post about our interaction, but I’m weighed down by work commitments, so bear with me.

  • Sryan is incredibly proficient, patient, and thorough. He explains things well, and his knowledge of the binding process is incredible.

  • I am hunting! I’ve learned about how to use TWS for one target at a time, and that first target tends to get hit quickly. The second target is a work-in-progress; it usually takes more missiles and I usually finish up with a Sidewinder.

  • I am having a DICKENS of a time with the nose gear steering via the rudder pedals. I keep screwing up the landings. I’m going to keep trying them BAREFOOT, because I just keep careening around on the runway. Jeeeebus it never used to be that hard.

  • I’m going to learn how to fire off missiles at two targets tomorrow. This should be interesting.

  • Binding is a real B**ch. Just now, I realized that I can’t open or close the Canopy. It is ALWAYS something. We also have to merge pr0 and .lua programs for different functions. Eagle Dynamics should be working WITH Saitek on this, wouldn’t youthink?

Question; is the X-56 any better INTERNALLY than the '55? I’m willing to make the investment IF and ONLY IF the guts are better-made.

I may pull off an all-nighter on this thing so that I’ve got 5 or 6 hours under my belt before I meet with Sryan at 0730 my time.

THANK YOU BRYAN!!!

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@Sryan I created an account here just to say how impressed I was with this article. I’m a pilot that works with a big PD radar every day and flies sims on occasion for the hell of it. You’ve done a fantastic job of explaining some core principles here and I’ll be using some of your material (particularly the colour shift examples) to teach folks about PD radar principles in future. Great work.

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Thank you @PapaSmoke!

I wrote another update today! I now consider the guide complete. Partly because I think I got pretty much everything covered now, partly because I am probably the first person on Mudspike to hit the 64000 character limit!

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Sryan, seeing as you have the X55, any chance you could share your profile for the F15? I sure wish we had a clickable cockpit on this aircraft.

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Clickable pit yes please! Let’s see if what RAZBAM does with that F-15E. Didn’t BST try to make a full fidelity eagle?

I didn’t program many things in the HUD software. I did most of my bindings ingame.

Saitek Pro Flight X-55 Rhino Stick {02839B90-2389-11e6-8001-444553540000}.diff.zip (1.0 KB)
Saitek Pro Flight X-55 Rhino Throttle {D41D71D0-2389-11e6-8002-444553540000}.diff.zip (1.2 KB)

These go into…

C:\Users[your_name]\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Config\Input\F-15C\joystick

Make sure to backup what you have there right now.

These keybinds also work in the stable and alpha version. Technically it’s considered undesirable to ‘port’ controls by Eagle Dynamics as it can cause issues. If you are running into bugs, try to remove these keybinds and see if the problem persists BEFORE reporting any bugs to Eagle Dynamics. These bindings where created in the beta version so they should never be the cause of issues there.

My X-55 profile currently only contains a single macro to use the slider on the throttle as a speedbrake.

F-15.zip (1.4 KB)

You can click each button ingame to see what everything does. The top rotary is for zoom, the bottom rotary is for the antenna angle. Rotary 4 sets the MFD range and the other one sets the base/distance axis (Currently does not seem modeled in great detail)

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It’s just my opinion but I believe the next module from BST, after the F-5, will be a full quality F-15C.

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Thanks Sryan! Much appreciated. :sunglasses:

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Am I wrong for wishing it’d be a fully clickable Su-33? We need something to balance out the F/A-18 amiright?

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