Oui oui, hon hon hon. It looks awesome, I love how she flies and the sounds are yummy too. Also fast, quirky and very French. It has that je ne sais quoi.
The interactive training it comes with is rather.. sparse. No voice overs and only the barest of basics, and AA work is completely lacking.
Now I am sort of winning the instant action dogfights and getting the basic aviation down (startup, takeoff, TACAN nav, landing)
However, I am far from tactical in the thing. I have no idea how to work the radar. Does it even have a radar gunsight? The F-86 has it, so you’d think so does the much later F1, ne c’est pas?
@Freak , feel like schooling me on this for an hour or two?
Oof, the offset stuff breaks my brain, like it did in the -2000 Bullseye calls also give me helmet fires, so I guess I never was real aviator material Still, very cool to work them. It is a very clever way to do nav and can be surprisingly accurate.
I figured out there’s a couple buttons I needed to bind to get the radar to behave like the one in the -86.
TELEMETER/ZONE SCANNING comes in five flavors, as it’s a three position switch. Put it up (TEL) and it behaves exactly like the one in the -86. Just simple distance reading. Put it in the down position (BZ) and it becomes more like a vertical scan bar. But a shitty French one. The middle (neutral) position puts the radar back to whatever you had set it to before.
It is almost like the dogfight switch in the viper, except that to get the guns up, you need to punch a big white button on the other side of the pit. Excellent design, very easy to do when you are wrestling G I reckon.
Those guns are the bees knees however. They fire quite quickly and throw a heavy grenade pretty flatly. Not bad at all. Lots of ammo in 'em too!
I find the Mirage maneouvers not nearly as badly as I feared. I easily outflew the AI MiG-23 and -21. I probably can roast a phantom too then, but anything more maneouverable will probably eat my lunch.
Or dust, because boy does she run!
Alright, murdering bandits is down, now to make crawly lives miserable
It is much easier on my brain to turn 2 dials than having to navigate 3 menus/modes and having to remember when to put a leading + or 0 and when not to
It’s a toggle switch on the throttle, to exit the CM + G mode you need to toggle the switch on the cabin which is right next to it, like if you sit in the actual pit it makes perfect sense. It’s a tight nifty designed thing!
stick to 400kts, easy to do. When you pull keep the AOA meter from going into yellow and you shouldn’t bleed speed. You are not winning a turn fight but you win the energy game, go vertical or make space. You engage and disengage.
The BZ mode and TL modes are fantastic to quickly lock on, the TL is a square, around the HUD roughly, locked to the aircraft’s local coordinate space, so it will lock anything in front of you from 500m to 7km. The BZ is similar but a bit bigger and you can move it left and right in fixed segments(total of three, left - right - center) and is also a fantastic way to quickly get a lock.
The radar scope itself has HA and IC, HA is a high altitude mode that does some extra filtering on the back end. The alida(Vertical bar) is where you aim the scope. If you are in the reduce width mode it will also show a pointer on the HSI to what bearing it is looking btw.
For locking on, keep the lock button depressed for a good second or more to increase the chances of a lock. It also has a conventional TWS mode which will reduce the bars it scans with.
Also, the direction of a sweep and if a signature disppears will also tell you if it’s low or high in the scan zone.
Chucks guide is a bit dated since recent updates so I would highly recommend reading the actual manuals. I’ve been really mostly flying the Mirage because it’s so so much fun.
Also, flare early, and come in fast. It has tiny wings!
Rockets - Matra F1/F4 depression(36) fire at relatively close range, walk in reticle, expect minor drop.
Bombs - Level bombing - depression 178, max mil power, 1000/1500ft above target. level flight.
Dive bombing - depression 115, 550kts, 1000/2000ft 20 degree dive
The rockets is about walking over a column of enemies really, they pack a proper punch!
For bombing, level flight is self explenatory. For dive bombing you kinda wanna hit that 20 degree on the roll in towards the target so to get the sight picture it might require a bit of practice.
You don’t have a lot of flares so I prefer to load up on only flares when I am bombing.
Another quick little tip, if you have a missile selected on the weapons panel the bearing indicator on top of the hud will change to a range indicator, so around 330/0 unless you have a target locked. This threw me for a loop for a while.
Oh and I forgot, the Track While Scan(pre-selection authorization [APS]) works decently well, if you then want to go to a proper lock on STT(continuous pursuit authorization [APC]) all you need to do is a short press of the lock on button. Another might useful feature is the automatic fire, if the radar and computer determine the target is within a proper envelope in APC then it will ripple off a missile.
I have noticed in hard manvouring that the APC might loose lock sometimes so I tend to follow the steering cue quite religiously.
If you enjoy flying online then keep in mind that you are faster then a F-14 on the deck. I’ve succesfully outran a F-14(Which was being hunted by my own team) to then loop around, look them up in BZ and have a missile off before they realized.
I know it looks a little like I am talking into the void here, but if anyone feels like going up in a two, maybe three ship and have some fun together online then that would be great!
Yeah it handles fine, it does not do scissors well but you can do it with skill and finesse. It just doesn’t have that instant turn rate of a 21 but it has a ton of power, lots of fuel(50% seems to be the sweet spot to enter a close fight) and it allows you to engage or disengage much more freely.
Was going after a harrier last night but it dove down and hid between the hills, when I got too close I turned and ran, it was spotted by the EWR so I knew it was coming for me. I could just outrun it back home and engage it on my terms. Lost it for a while and as I wanted to knock out a F100 I got hit my the AIM-9 destined for me from the Harrier!
Lovely, will hit you up, I fly it once or twice a week on the Contention servers. Quite a tricky environment but it helps you learn the limitations. And with that burner you can run run run! Been A-10 hunting tonight after these bastards came after my airbase. Was not succesful in the end because I was the only one defending against helicopters, A-10’s and a smattering of fighters that got lost from the furball and decided to have a go at me.
Alrighty then, after some time in the F1 pit, I feel quite comfortable, especially in the -CE, the one with just TACAN navigation.
The polar nav system is clever and simple and even I can wrap my head around it fairly easily.
The one thing the -EE has that improves on it in a major way is the refuelling probe. @Freak was right, the Mirage is easy to tank with, compared to say the Tomcat
I can probably say I have worked myself up to be somewhat tactical in the jet. I can kill things on the ground and in the air and have fun doing so.
Just now I encountered something strange however. I was flying the final bit of the -CE practice flight over Dubai. I had shot up the targets, blasted the MiG and was burning off my fuel towards Al Dhafra.
Going mach duck at angels 30, the jet started shaking badly and as I started my descent I noticed I had lost all engine power. I tried to relight it, but got a fire warning light. No fire visible though.
I deadsticked the poor thing into Al Dhafra, bending the gear a little but a landing one could walk away from. As I was shutting the thing down, it suddenly exploded. KerBOOM! gone.
Amélie 
Bullseye calls also give me helmet fires, so I guess I never was real aviator material 
