It’s not used often online due to lack of synchronization; PvE isn’t quite as big a deal as the AI isn’t affected, but PvP gets to be a big deal when one player has clouds and another doesn’t.
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That makes sense. So static weather then. I want more weather!
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Sadly, static has the same problem – it’s either no clouds or overcast if weather is to be synchronized.
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I went and messed up a Shilka with the gun today - his buddy Shilka didn’t like that, though, and I didn’t jink enough - so he got a lick in.
I disengaged and assessed damage.
Master warning and master caution lights came on, some of the HUD stopped working and ‘oil’, ‘eng exc’ and ‘skid’ lights came on. It looked as though the RWR went silent too.
Engine temperatures seemed normal, though, and the engine responded to throttle so I pointed the nose home and flicked out the 476th vFG checklist.
Eng exc is information only - “Engine overspeed, overtemp, or over g was detected”.
Oil has actions:
- Throttle — MAINTAIN CONSTANT RPM (80 to 85%).
- Minimize g–loading.
- Land as soon as possible using VNSL.
- Use nozzles, speedbrake, flaps, and landing gear to control airspeed.
- Fuel/Stores — JETTISON AS REQUIRED.
- If vertical landing is the only option, use throttle slowly and progressively and be prepared for engine failure.
- Throttle — OFF AS SOON AS PRACTICAL.
I headed home nursing the throttle and landed using VNSL as advised.
My questions are:
-
If a jet engine spits out its oil, wouldn’t it be dead within a very short time? I had to fly a good 10 minutes home.
-
What happened to the top of my HUD? I lost the heading indicator, airspeed and altitude indicators from the top of the HUD but the rest of it was working (velocity vector etc.). The backup steam gauges worked and the moving map heading indicator worked normally. A hit to some of the HUD avionics, I guess?
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Like any engine it would yes, oil starvation as is the technical term will cause bearings to heat up and eventually seize up. oil lubrication in a jet engine is about 90% lubrication for bearings with a dry sump system(meaning that the oil does not gather at the bottom of a sump but is being pumped away by a scavenge pump). This oil is pressurized and then send through small nozzles that are aimed at the bearings. These bearings have to take any and all forces on the rotational part of the jet engine and also transfer the forward motion generated by the fan to the fan frame and then into the aircraft structure.
So, not having any oil would be thoroughly bad. Though the oil level sensor would come on after a short amount of time and not instantly if there would be an oil leak, I would suppose the sensor line got damaged or shorted somewhere ergo you got that message. A engine vibration or overheat due to internal shock or projectile damage is probably more realistic but I don’t have any comparable experience with that.
EDIT: maybe the oil light is a quantity/temperature warning? The oil is usually cooled with a dedicated air-oil and/or fuel-oil cooler.
EDIT2: Checked Chuck’s guide and it’s oil pressure low warning light.
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Sometimes the engines are specified a certain amount of time of running without oil. IIRC the T700s in the AH-64 are supposed to be able to run for up to 30 minutes without oil. I know the gearboxes and transmission are set to that rating.
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Thanks for the thoughts, guys! Interesting.
I was in a climbing break turn away from the site when I got hit so I had my belly towards the Shilka. Graphically the damage appeared to be toward the rear fuselage.
That’s where the rear avionics bay is:
The pocket guide confirms that the RWR electronics boxes sit inside the avionics equipment bay, which would explain that failure.
I haven’t found confirmation of this, but it seems likely that the Air Data Computer is inside that same bay also. A partial / full ADC failure would cause the HUD to fail in the way I experienced:
According to the NATOPS manual, an ADC failure would also result in DEP RES and CIP AUT failure lights, which didn’t come up…but apart from that, the HUD and RWR symptoms and the visual damage add up.
The reasons for oil and engine parameters warnings are a bit harder to pin down fully, but I guess it wasn’t catastrophic, given the Pegasus kept going all the way home.
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What a fun mission you can play over and over again? I’ve been playing the Fire Brigade mission a lot and I’d like something a lot like that.
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How was the VNSL landing? I have never managed to do it. The high RPM setting always makes me fast and climb.
@Clutch In all honesty, it didn’t resemble the correct procedure much (and didn’t have much time to brush up on the details) - I basically just tried to minimise throttle changes until at 50ft.
I had to set the throttle lower than in the manual as I was light and landing at sea level (and possibly not doing the right things). I did a long straight-in approach and landing instead of the overhead break pattern too.
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I think I remember having the same issues when I tried it “by-the-book.” Too light, RPM would send me up instead of taking me down. I never could get it right. It made me question some aspects of the flight modeling.
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Hi team,
Recently I’ve been trying my hand at A2G objectives on MP servers. I wanted to practice the Harrier’s A2G systems with the added element of surprise brought by MP. I guess I got what I asked, in that I’ve been pounced by enemy fighters plenty and have had to defend myself.
The upside has been that I’ve found the Harrier to actually be capable of putting up a decent fight. After a couple of months, I’m now at the stage where a bit of discussion would come in handy to improve the results.
You’ll excuse my unrefined bullet points (perhaps stating only the obvious) followed by some recent experiences / questions.
Warning – rambling thoughts ahead, so anyone looking for coherent / concise discussion, I apologise in advance. The below notes are based on casual public PVP server experiences (Growling Sidewinder primarily) - real life tactics have not been considered.
Situational awareness
Pros
- AWACS / EWR bogey dopes
- Good cockpit for “speck hunting” (visual scan), decent rearward visibility
- Large RWR display with HUD repeater
- Sidewinder seeker head with HUD cues works as a poor man’s IRST – sometimes can pick up targets quite far away
Cons
- No radar
- No advanced SA display
- No datalink
While I haven’t been doing a lot of MP BFM in DCS lately, I semi-regularly watch some of the Youtubers doing cool stuff online (Hellreign82 etc.) and I think some of those guys’ tactics have stuck with me. Some of them have really made an art of using passive detection – i.e. finding the speck in the horizon, contrails and so on - and utilising AWACS / EWR for SA.
I am still terrible at the speck hunting (may need a better screen or more practice, probably both), but the AWACS bogey dope calls make a huge SA difference.
It is often possible to extrapolate the track of an enemy and their intentions from 2-3 AWACS calls, coupled with the RWR info:
- Beaming / cold AWACS call, silent RWR – generally safe.
- If beaming, the second AWACS call will reveal their movement direction in relation to you (left/right) and allows for lead pursuit (if pursuing) or increasing distance (if trying to avoid engagement).
- If the bogey stays HOT for multiple calls and is showing on RWR, they’re likely engaging you and a decision has to be made to engage or run.
The lack of radar, while an obvious disadvantage overall, does have some behavioural benefits to a thinking player (in the artificial environment of DCS PVP MP):
- You’re not constantly broadcasting your position to all the world.
- Your attention is outside and on the RWR, rather than using the radar as an SA crutch and tunnel visioning your focus on the radar cone.
Survivability
Pros
- Small airframe (hard to spot)
- Good subsonic agility and acceleration
- Jammer pod – useful or not? Has the option to only jam when painted – haven’t tested out how this works in practice
- Ability to slow down to hover / land to hide if being hunted – subject to weight and landing location/altitude
Cons
- Transsonic – can hide but can’t run – slower top speed than basically all potential enemies
- Fuel a factor if caught up in an extended chase / fight.
- Only one engine – and a hot one at that.
SA and survivability obviously go hand-in-hand, but the Harrier does have a few tricks up its sleeve in the latter category.
I’ve successfully avoided MiGs over unforgiving terrain (plains) by simply listening to AWACS calls and landing in a village / some trees and letting them fly right over me. Only works if you’re not ‘bomb truck’ heavy and you may need to jettison stores / dump fuel to land / to take off again…but if that makes the difference of going home or not, that’s a small price to pay. You can even re-engage once they’ve flown past if you’re quick – I have had some success with this, although faster fighters are likely to get out of range during the time it takes to get to speed.
One of my questions is about the jammer pod – I need to test this out but someone may know already: if you have the pod on the RCV mode, does this make any difference to detection (given it only emits if you’re already being painted)?
As in, might as well carry a pod and have it on RCV because if it fires up, they already knew you’re there?
If so, that’s quite handy, as reducing the lethal BVR range of the enemy would be great…but nothing is better than staying undetected in the first place, of course, so if it means it turning a fleeting radar contact into a Christmas tree, it may not be worth it.
Harrier BFM
Pros
- Agility and acceleration.
- Nozzle deflection tactics.
- Potential psychological advantage / element of surprise once in the merge: MP air superiority fighter pilots seem to underestimate the Harrier and hesitate once they realise they are merged and have their distance/energy advantage eroded
- Powerful gun with lots of ammo (if carried)
- Good HUD A2A HOTAS quick modes
Cons
- “Bridging the gap” – the difficulty of having to survive through the BVR engagement to get to WVR / merge
- IR missiles with no full off-boresight capability (limited by seeker head) – disadvantage against F/A-18 and Flanker variants
- Limited missile carry capacity, particularly if A/G loadout carried before the engagement (likely 2 x IR missiles only)
- No radar gun sight
- Limited energy especially in the vertical
- Very limited ability to disengage / extend
The reality is, of course, that the highest and best use of the Harrier in an MP mission is A2G – the Harrier will never be able to compete with full a fledged fighter with BVR missiles in a neutral fight (co-alt, engagement starting from BVR distances, both opponents being aware of each other).
In saying that, the DCS casual MP environment (call it Airquake if you want), I’ve found that not many of the players flying air superiority fighters use them in ways that would retain their advantage. This provides the Harrier driver a surprising amount of opportunities to take advantage of. Some of these behaviours are:
- Flying singleton
- Flying low and slow in the terrain rather than using energy and altitude for safety
- Keeping radar on all the time
- Accepting a merge / WVR fight rather than maintain BVR distance
- Rarely extending / repositioning for advantage (always attack head on until merge)
I think there’s a bit of a psychological “underdog’s advantage” to flying the Harrier. Because of the offensive asymmetry (not having BVR / radar missile capability), my head is on a swivel and my mind is constantly running scenarios to counter incoming attacks and to reduce the initial disadvantage (hide / notch / flank / terrain mask / accelerate the merge). That’s basically a fancy way of saying I’m constantly scared s***less of being attacked – and I think this gives me an edge.
Often I see the Red F-14 / Flanker jocks burn hell for leather direct towards me, descending from a higher altitude, obviously thinking about nothing but the radar screen and getting to their launch range (100% offensive mindset with little regard to their own position) – I think this response is partially driven by the fact that they’re not getting a hostile radar in return so they’re a bit complacent.
If I successfully terrain mask at this point and remove the radar missile opportunity, they often descend down at high speed to the last position they saw me at, reducing the distance (and their advantage).
They are giving away their biggest gaming chits (attack distance, altitude, speed) and accepting a low-level merge in the terrain – and they now need to switch their headspace from a BVR offensive mindset to an alley knife fight mindset – and I’m already in the alley (well, valley), setting up for WVR BFM and often able to hide and reposition a bit to add uncertainty / try to gain an angles advantage before the merge.
The biggest issue is still – how to improve odds in that BVR to WVR transition phase?
If you start with a bit of altitude, defeating the first radar missile with a break turn to notch, followed by an inverted pull with chaff, tends to work pretty reliably – but that leaves you defensive and low on energy/altitude, vulnerable for the next radar missile or heater to follow.
Getting nose back on the attacker at the bottom of the pull and firing a heater works some of the time to push the bandit into defensive (assuming they see the launch) – I was climbing up against a diving Tomcat yesterday and that worked a treat, as he broke off his attack and started flaring furiously.
Any tricks / thoughts as to how to reduce the distance to get to the knife fight you want?
Other scattered / semi-related thoughts I haven’t weaved into the above ramblings:
- Combat power for extra thrust – the 2-min limit is not long but usually the fight is all over (one way or another) in less time than that.
- The HUD RWR repeater works as a quasi-radar in a merge with no visual – when the RWR contact starts to swing around to one side, you know they’re on that side from you and about to pass your 3/9 line.
- I now always carry the gun - even if it makes the LITENING use a bit less handy. You never know when you might need it. The one time I didn’t take the gun, I got stuck in a furball with a Tomcat with no missiles and no gun and I was really sad.
Discuss!
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People tend to forget the Harrier is basically one big engine, which gives it a huge advantage in the vertical. It can’t turn super well unless light, but it can hang pretty well to stay on a target in a loop. Now getting there, that’s something else, but if you can draw them in then a good Sidewinder shot to the face can often scare them into a better position. You typically have limited time to get a follow-up gun shot or missile shot to finish them from here. Players also tend to run around at low altitude a lot because everyone is trying to dodge furious Fox 3 fire back and forth, and since there’s hardly ever an integrated air defense outside of airfields, this potentially means they’re entering your territory more often than not.
In multiplayer, one thing you have to keep in the front of your mind is that active radar missiles will always remember your position, so unless you can kinematically defeat them, you’re in a bad place. Against the typical SARH missile, you can defeat them fairly easily with a notch as well as burning up their energy with lots of turns. Russian radars are absolutely terrible at low level, but they make up for it by having decent IR missiles.
You can grab four Sidewinders and run a decent short ranged CAP if so inclined, but at the end of the day you have to accept that the AV-8 is an attack aircraft with secondary air defense capabilities. You’ll do better than an A-10 or an Su-25, but when SPAMRAAM is the norm as well as broken ARH missile guidance, you’re pushing your luck on a typical multiplayer server. If you absolutely cannot find team members to work with you, then I’d load light and plan to ditch whatever A/G weapons you may have to defend yourself. That means gunpod + 4xAIM-9 + jammer, with maybe a couple Mk83s on the inboards. If you get bounced, ditch the bombs, watch for missile launches, and try to close the distance with wide turns, turning away if they show hostile intent. You won’t be able to outrun everything, but 450 knots can still cause some issues for a lot of missiles. Think more like what a helicopter would do if attacked by an aircraft and work that in – get low, force them to make sharp turns.
Per the jammer, I would only use it when someone is actively locking onto you. I’m not sure if the receive function works, but you may as well leave it in that position and then switch to repeat as soon as you get locked up.
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Amazing post! I’m saving it for post lunch coffee break! 
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The FighterPilotPodcast has a great epidode on the AV-8B: https://www.fighterpilotpodcast.com/episodes/056-av-8-harrier/
Some good info on there … but it is also from the perspective of the updated aircraft with radar and AMRAAM capability 
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Me too…unfortunately I don’t know that I’ll be much help on any of that! LOL…
jet aircraft panel submission for the virpil competition is based on the AV-8B UFC
if anyone is interested, have a look & vote for it if you like it.
cheers
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FYI…since the latest update I’ve been getting nothing but CTDs with the Harrier. There is a known issue with waypoints. If you use the up arrow in the WPTS Data page the result is an immediate CTD. The workaround is to program the waypoint first via the ICP before touching the up or down arrows to sequence. That’s easy. But I also get, more often than not, CTD’s when line selecting the EHSI. I think Razbam know about it, but for now if I want VTOL, its pull-for-power only.
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After all this time I finally got some mavericks off the rails. Convoluted sequence compared to A10 but I am sure with use it will become more intuitive. On a side note I also fired my first mavs off the hornet yesterday 
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