DCS World Mesquite = DCS World KMUD..!

BeachAV8R · November 19, 2016, 1:54pm

Well, maybe not - but I really love the new DCS World airport of Mesquite (67L)…what a nifty little strip. According to AIRNAV - runway 1/19 is 5,121’ x 75’. It would be nice if ED would add some PAPIs (I didn’t see any). Located a convenient 60 nm northeast of Nellis, this little airfield has it all…(well, mostly…)

It would be nice if some of the hangars were open…but it has OK infrastructure…reminds me a bit of an ORBX airport with a bit less detail…

Nice picnic table area for our post mission hand flying debriefs…and I wonder how much it would cost to get ED to make that billboard a Mudspike advertisement?

The facility has a fire truck - convenient for when @EinsteinEP is running one of his formation takeoff workshops…

Quite the quaint little airport…

I found the Hawk, even fully laden, only needs about half of the runway to get airborne…

And check this out…there is a golf course right next to it! (Wolf Creek Golf Club) Now we just need an enterprising individual to model it in The Golf Club and we can have a fly-in and friendly golf tournament! I guess it was modeled in Rory McIlroy PGA Tour 2015: HERE

Landing distance, even at max gross is fine for the Hawk - don’t know why my anti-skid didn’t work though… No idea how the MiG-21 or Su-25T would fare here though - I’ll give it a whirl later. I assume those two are some of the most pavement hungry aircraft in DCS World (?)…

And conveniently located just 8nm northeast of the airport is one of those nice crop rings that would make a fine bombing range for competitions…

Of course - my bombing technique in non-CCIP aircraft is horrible. The Communists are safe with me in the skies!

Any-who - I really enjoyed tooling around Mesquite at 150FPS with all sliders maxed. LOL I believe I’ll be repositioning my Ka-50 there later today… Nice job ED!

BeachAV8R

BeachAV8R · November 19, 2016, 2:15pm

Cool…it already exists in The Golf Club…!

Troll · November 19, 2016, 2:30pm

Mesquite had a RWY in earlier builds as well, but no infrastructure.
How’s VR performance for you…?

BeachAV8R · November 19, 2016, 3:15pm

I haven’t tried it yet this morning - I read @fearlessfrog’s post - so I’m not expecting good things. I’ll check in a bit.

Ah…I had never wandered up and over that way…good to know!

One drawback to the airport is that it has no published instrument approaches. But I’ll bet it would be a pretty easy thing to build a VOR/DME circle to land approach off Mormon Mesa VOR (is that VOR included in DCS…gonna have to look…). That terrain to 8,000+ east of the field might make it a scary thing though…

BeachAV8R · November 19, 2016, 3:19pm

I wonder if it once had an instrument approach though…because it has the classic keyhole airspace around it coming in from the VOR. It might have once had a VOR approach if I had to guess…

Navynuke99 · November 19, 2016, 3:59pm

Needs a beach volleyball court.

And dangit @BeachAV8R, now you’re making me want to buy the Hawk.

BeachAV8R · November 19, 2016, 4:01pm

I really like the Hawk - but would really like for it to reach completion. And from what I understand, they are pretty much totally redoing it…so that could be awhile. It is always getting better with each version…

BeachAV8R · November 19, 2016, 4:09pm

From Ells (re: the Hawk):

One of the things not on the patch notes today is the additional Tacan, VOR and ILS beacons in the updated NTTR map have all been added to the Hawk Nav database.

For those not familiar with Hawk radio navigation I’ll be doing a livestream and video on Monday running through the two of the systems; Tacan and VOR.

This will greatly add to your experience of navigating the new map update.

BeachAV8R · November 19, 2016, 4:10pm

And additionally from Ells (posted during his August update):

She is definitely a labour of my love and we’ve had a rocky history over the past several years.
Most of you know the problems we have had with coding, textures, DCS updates causing issues and all of those things.

I feel we have learnt a hell of a lot from our first module release and she still teaches us how to do things today given the advancement of the sim.

These are lessons learnt which has given us a better direction going forward with our upcoming modules.
But, I hear you say, what about Hawk and all of those lessons…

Well, Hawk will be getting a major overhaul from a complete re-write of the ASM code to an updated cockpit to a realistic weapons suite and many more features.

We are bringing on new talented staff and utilising the excellent skills of our current staff to give her an upgrade.

I’m not going to go into details just yet about what that upgrade will include as I want it to be more of a surprise to you when it gets patched in the future but I think you’ll like what I have planned

For now, the team are still concentrating on fixing the bugs that still exist, patching up the holes if you will, which will help with the upgrade later.

BeachAV8R · November 19, 2016, 4:11pm

I wrote to the airport manager to ask about this - we’ll see what he says…

wxbot · November 19, 2016, 4:40pm

@EinsteinEP METAR is confused. Error was: Station Lookup Error: METAR not found for K67L (1).

Troll · November 19, 2016, 4:59pm

I found it flying the L-39C intercept instant action mission… “That a RWY down there…? Sure is! Let’s land!”

Looks like your typical cloud break VFR airport…

EinsteinEP · November 19, 2016, 5:33pm

@BeachAV8R is a bad influence - I always let him talk me into too many things. Here I am in my Egyptian MiG-21bis getting ready to take on his challenge to see if a MiG-21bis can operate out of Mesquite. The numbers look good for a safe takeoff (what does “V1” mean again?), but I’m definitely going to need to burn some fuel before I can land.

Takeoff was a breeze, now to go burn some fuel! Might as well do some sightseeing in the local Mesquite area!

Looks pretty from up here! Wonder what it looks like up close?

“I’m at third and Main.”

There’s something you don’t see every day! A Nevada house with a green lawn! Amazing! Better take a picture.

Buzzing the local girls in the pool near the freeway and tracks at Mach 1 is always a good thrill.

I roll out on a final a ways off of centerline, but there’s plenty of time to correct and no tower controller to nag me about it.

Short final looks good, but the runway looks shorter and shorter the closer I get.

I fumble the controls after touchdown and don’t deploy the drag chute until pretty far into my roll-out. I probably should have gone around, but now I’ve committed to the landing. Let’s see what happens!

Whew! I roll to a stop with a few dozen meters to spare! Had I been a little quicker with the drag chute deploy, this would have been even easier.

See? Did it. Now to call on UNICOM to see if they can have my Turkish coffee hot and waiting for me when I stroll into the lounge.

Troll · November 19, 2016, 6:10pm

Absolutely nothing, zilch, nada, in a single engine aircraft…

Nice pics though.

Fridge · November 19, 2016, 8:31pm

Nice! I need to try this challenge!

BeachAV8R · November 19, 2016, 9:09pm

Awesome @EinsteinEP - I just wagged that the MiG-21 might have the hardest numbers for takeoff and landing - the Su-25T at max landing weight (whatever that is) might also be a challenge. If we take over the airport, we might need to install arresting cables and EMAS extensions…

RedBravo65 · November 19, 2016, 11:09pm

I was noticing your screenshot of the cockpit. It looked really good from what I remember. Definite improvement.

EinsteinEP · November 20, 2016, 5:09pm

I just confirmed you can takeoff from KMUD Mesquite in an fully loaded Su-25T, but it’s much more difficult than the MiG-21bis. Landing is very challenging and requires really good airspeed control and fast application of brakes and chute with very little margin for error.

I thought about cheating and “holding” on the taxiway to burn through some fuel weight, but that would defeat the purpose of the challenge, so I taxied as quickly as I could to the threshold. Lacking any performance tables, my improvised short-field takeoff procedure for the Frogfoot is to set full flaps, hold brakes, jam throttle to full, release brakes at 80% RPM, and rotate at 250 KPH.

Whew! Made it, right?

Not quite yet. A liftoff is not the end of the takeoff - there’s a hill off the end of RWY 01 that requires a sure and steady climb. I raise the gear ASAP but leave the flaps full down and fly by AoA until I’ve crested the hill. Even afterwads, I drop the flaps a notch, and the frog loses its ability to even maintain altitude and I begin to sink back towards the desert. Luckily, I’m able to pick up enough airspeed to climb again and then I wait a good long time before fully raising the flaps.

Looking back over my shoulder at Mesquite. The Nevada terrain looks gorgeous!

Of course I have to do some flybys.

Rather than try to burn all that fuel like I did in the MiG, I use the Frogfoot’s fuel dump to quickly get down to 2500 L of fuel, and then set up my approach.

Establishing a long final will help me stabilize power, airspeed, and descent rate so I will only need to make small gentle corrections to get to touchdown. The speedbrakes are out in case I need to go around - closing the brakes will increase my net thrust faster than jamming forward on the throttle.

Short final! I’m a bit lower than the HUD indication, but this looks right to me. I’m aiming for a 280 KPH touchdown. Also note I’ve got 2350L of fuel in the tanks - I have no idea what the max landing weight is of the Su25T but this has got to be pushing it.

Main gear touches down just past the numbers, right on airspeed. I push the nose down and jam on the brakes. I have to wait until 230 KPH to pop the chutes or they’ll get ripped off, increasing the chances I’ll end up as a memorial on the end of the runway. Even with a touchdown of 280 KPH, I don’t slow below 230 until almost midfield and, just like the MiG-21 approach, I have to quickly consider the option of going around but elect to commit to the landing.

The chutes take a few seconds to fully deploy, but when they do it’s like dropping an anchor. The Frogfoot shudders to crawl with plenty of runway to go. You can see in the pic above, I’ve got 250m or so left in the runway, and I’m already below 90 KPH.

Troll · November 20, 2016, 7:32pm

Now that you know it will take off…
Use less flap, and hold it on the runway as far as possible before rotating.
Less flap means less drag, and better climb gradient. But, it means later rotation and delayed climb.

Oh! BTW, don’t lose an engine…

EinsteinEP · November 20, 2016, 8:51pm

Actually, I tried half flaps first and ran off of the runway! Rotation even with full flaps is pretty far on this runway.

I’d love to get some real performance tables to make some real TOLDs, but the iterative approach will have to do for now.