Allright, reading all of you having such a whale of a time with this, I decided to get my Huey on and get on this. The intro was phan-tas-tic. Mission 1… I can’t navigate this thing for sheeit. Does HQ have a beacon? Or should I just fly in the general direction. Oh heay a smoke plume, let’s check that out. Oh they got pads, yeah I’ll settle there… * crash!* F me, VRS is a female canine!
I have a 9600k, 32gb of fast ram and a 3080ti and the frames sucked like a Thai pro doing impressions of a vacuum cleaner. Is there anything I could or should do to get it even remotely playable? On the other maps it’s fine, but this was just abysmal. Strangely, at times it was smooth, but when there was abrupt movement (which is a lot with my n00b arse flying the chopper) it just tanked.
For navigation. Aim off to left or right. You will have the coast or a range of hills to refer to. Look for a distinctive feature relative to the waypoint. Even man made can be usefull. To get to company HQ I look for the civilian airport to be on my left and then watch for the aerials and the cranes near the LZ.
Graphics wise, when flying the Huey I’ve about decided it needs it’s own graphics setting for the Marianas. You can turn visibility to medium or low, water to medium, shadows to low, terrain shadows off, and not miss much. I had decent frames except at Andersen, then it was a crawl a lot of times.
I second Scoops’ words on nav. You can definitely FM home to the Co HQ, just make sure you’re tuned to it and set to FM TR/Home.
The civilian VOR at the airport nearby also has a VOR that works, if you care to use it. The campaign leans a bit heavily on use of the F10 map, for better or worse. There are no own-ship or unit markers on it though, so I found myself pre-planning based on landmarks and FM ADF bearings/VOR radials a bit when I was really struggling.
By the time you’re 4 missions in, you’ll know the island like the back of your hand and feel like you’re right at home flying to the hospital or company HQ.
One more thing that works well is something that I read about in Chickenhawk, and may be what Scoop is alluding to: if you know the wind direction, and you don’t correct for it but rather fly the direct mag heading to your destination, you’ll know whether the wind is blowing you off course left or right, and therefore which side of the ship you should be looking out for landmarks, so you won’t miss it by looking the wrong direction.
Yes. From memory it’s 40.85 but check your briefing card. Set the freq on your Fox Mike and turn the selector to Home. You should hear the station ID in morse, which can be quieted with the volume knob. Most of the FBs have a beacon as well.
The LORPs will come up on FM at times, which had me moving the selector to TR. But I’m not sure that you need to. Home works like an NDB more than a localizer, in that when you point the nose at the transmitter, the needle will center. No need to hunt a radial. There is at least one mission that requires you to locate a LORP by having them do a slow count, because they don’t want Victor Charles to see their smoke.
If you are really lost, you can cheat and use the kneeboard map, but it’s more fun to play the missions in the spirit that they were created.
The F10 map is useful because your copilot will mark the map with LZs occasionally, and that will make them easy to find relative to major landmarks.
I read somewhere to just leave the transmit selector on no 2.
You will have at least one night mission. I found mapping a flashlight (torch) button and toggle for red lens helpful.
I would say that the most important skill to have is consistently maneuvering, hovering, and landing in a confined space while heavy and with a 10 kt wind. I thought that I could fly the Huey pretty well before. Not. What I was good at was flying a moderately loaded UH-1 in light wind. Reflected is a master of getting you out of your comfort zone. Always be aware of wind direction and the best way out of an LZ before committing.
By mission 5 I was feeling much better about flying it at the limit and going in and out of tight places.
Exactly right @WarPig. In the Islander we tended to aim down tide of islands as even at night we could see the vortex in the water. Easy then to turn into it and follow it to the source.
huray, did the first mission finally. impressions, really good mission setup. had fun and it was really tight.
as mentioned, what sucks is the performance. I dont care that I have all LOW and OFF, but the occasional small freezes makes me crazy. hard to handle the choper like this.
can you guys remember the FPS limit thing for DCS? it was some kind of CFG or something. does that still work? because my FPS are good but all over the place.
regarding navigation. I think you did it right @schurem . just fly the general direction using your compass. they will usually pop up the smoke for you when you get close
btw regarding the approaches. Mac recommends high n’ slow or low n’ fast. but as a starter I would recommend low n’ slow so you can have the engine spooled up before hover. the engine is old and slow not like quick reaction piston engines.
and found that maxfps thing. but no help even if I max it at 60. I have occasional drops to 40
Flew mission 07 last night as a gunship AC. I was prepared for the taxi and slow takeoff, but still surprised how much ramp skiing it required. The ingress was beautiful, lulling us into a sense of calm before the storm.
The LZ prep went fine, with the enemy holding their fire. Once the slicks arrived, predictably the LZ became much hotter. We probably made 1 or 3 more passes than we should have, losing our DGs on both sides of the panel and airspeed indicator on the AC side for our effort. I counted 11 holes in the upper and lower plexi on the nose, but thankfully no WIA.
seems good video, will check it before next mission
mission 2 in. finally can read your aar’s now guys
just clearing the tress by a whisker. I thought that I was light enough, but no
happened to me also @chipwich . I mean I cleared the grass by a whisker as I ended up below tree top level, fortunately there was small clearing. I wanted to reverse the turn a ended up slow with the tail wind pushing me down.
they send us on this mission with too much fuel, thats why our chopers were heavy.
and the almost hover brake about LZ and 40kt orbit speed was deadly, more deadlier in this mission than the enemy
as the performance is bad one way or the other, decided to set the settings to high (in fact no dramatic change to the fps) so I can at least njoy the scenery
Agree, but that is due to the small size of the map and Reeflected wanting to recreate the experience of leaving the base heavy, like as mentioned in books like Chickenhawk and Guts n Gunships. Especially the gunship Charlie variant Hueys with the less powerful engine. Wait until you get the gunships. You’ll think that slick is a hotrod
Loved it! Loved island life. Loved having a dozen friends all within 5 miles. Loved the flying, the beach parties, the Lost Pond, the Agana Hash House Harriers, La Tassi Bistro and the husband and wife manta rays I would scuba with solo just off my reef. But all good things must end. Guam is a great place because of it’s bad reputation.
I wish! To my knowledge I have never met a Mudspiker. I left Guam on December ‘07. As a hasher my name was “Judas”. Called such because the claim was that I left my best friend, Amelia Airfart, in the jungle to die. Not true, I was out there with a landowner and a flashlight until 2am when we found him in a ravine in pretty rough shape. Your buddies might have saved him and his XTerra team when they had to get airlifted off the beach in ‘06.
Not gonna lie, I had to google “hashing” because in my head I saw images of hippy-dippy types sitting around a flophouse smoking what I always heard referred to as hash…
I have seen more nudity on the hash then any other point in my life. I have watched girls try to put out the bonfire, err, naturally with varying degrees of unsuccess. I took my not-yet-wife on her first and only hash. During “religion” she took her top off and did a “shoe down down”. I was worshipped for a good five minutes after that. There are Hashers all over the world. Many are family- and pet- friendly. Not so the AH^3. It is a Hash in the truest tradition of the first British Hashers in Malay in the 30’s: lots of running, drinking, injuries and total, judgement-free camaraderie. If you like to run and you like to drink. And you are confused as to how you might prioritize those two passions, the Hash is for you. Google your city, country or island + hash house harriers.
