“I need ammuntion, not a ride.” - Volodymyr Zelenskyy
With the recent announcement that Ukraine will be receiving F-16s and requisite training, I thought it would be interesting to take a fictionalized path to learning the F-16 as well. I’ve owned the DCS F-16 for a few years, but have never flown it. Let’s see how it goes…
I recently read on Reddit a thread asking what DCS module that people felt they regretted purchasing the most. As always, opinions were wide ranging…from theaters to aircraft to helicopters to utilities. I’ve always suffered from an optimistic tilt, so have found enjoyment from pretty much all of the sim products I’ve purchased over the years. In that Reddit discussion the Yak-52 came up…and I was a bit fuzzy on it, but remembered it as being a fairly high quality module, but sadly lacking much content.
(Since I’m flying in VR - screens will be taken through the lens…)
Our path to the F-16 will start with the Yak-52…livery by Strikesabre98
I did apply the English cockpit mod by Iceman2011 to give some western placards and instrumentation…so purists close your eyes…
Having been out of sims for over a year…and out of VR as well…I’m still amazed at VR technology (I’m using a Reverb G2). The Yak-52 cockpit looks amazing and the sound effects are fantastic. The Yak-52 comes with three training missions that we will be doing. The missions are pretty good with nice voice-overs and cockpit prompts.
The cold start mission goes along nicely and soon the Yak-52 is up and running. Like many pieces of Eastern European equipment…the Yak-52 is heavy on switches with many individual systems routed through them…providing a lot of things to flip, press, and rotate during normal operations…
After the cold start mission is the taxi and takeoff mission…
Again…amazed at VR. Not only is it amazing, but revisiting old modules in VR is really nice with the VR performance improvements in addition to just the overall improvement in DCS World environment quality (lighting, clouds, etc…). So take it from me - take a look at some of your older purchases and enjoy them…you may be surprised!
The Yak-52 uses compressed air for the braking, which I mapped to my HOTAS pinky lever. Each burst of air slightly depletes the air reservoir (I don’t think it is an accumulator?). Flap and gear selections also use air, so keep an eye on the pneumatic gauge.
Ready for our first takeoff. I do feel the basic tutorials (there are only three of them) are a bit light on the details of the prop control and things like the cowl flaps and oil cooler flaps…
The Yak-52 has a right turning tendency on takeoff…a bit different than the left turning tendencies of most of the prop planes I’ve flown in the past. The sound effects and vibrations of the Yak-52 are spectacular in VR and the module still looks great to this day…
Flight instruction is given in KPH and meters…so if you are using the English cockpit mod you will have to do some mental math. The Eastern attitude indicator is something I struggle with massively…no matter how much time I spend with it my lizard brain can’t understand the blue bottom / brown top…I just can’t…
Gear up and climbing out at the recommended power setting…
The tutorial doesn’t really go into detail about the need to neutralize the gear and flap levers to prevent leaking of pneumatic air. Even some western aircraft used to be equipped with middle “deactivated” positions (I think some early Boeings?)…but the tutorial doesn’t really address this…
The takeoff and climb tutorial technically ends on climbout…but what goes up SHOULD come down in my opinion so I bring it around for the landing…
Success…
The third and final training mission is the landing tutorial…with a nice “fly through the squares” approach to flying the pattern. The pattern feels a bit wide to me, but I try to remember this is a complex aircraft (retractable gear, variable pitch propeller, etc…) so the typical tight pattern I was taught in piston singles (where you were encouraged to remain close enough to make the field at any point in case of engine failure) felt a bit wide. That said, the instructions throughout each point of the lesson are very well done…
Turning the final approach…gear down and flaps go in on short final…
That ends the official training mission regime - not very much and I’m surprised that the developers that worked so hard on the Yak-52 didn’t take more time to flesh out a really good training campaign for it covering navigation, more in depth systems, emergencies…etc… Baffling to me.
I did try a severe crosswind landing mission from a user…the plane does well with a bit of wing down and opposite rudder. Using no flaps helps in a stiff crosswind…
Our final mission in the Yak-52 is a nice and simple IFR training mission from Mineralnye Vody airbase to Mozdok. I was a bit nervous about this mission since I had no idea how to use the ADF or radios in the Yak-52. I never could get the VHF radio to work…I thought I was going to be smart and get vectors from ATC, but that didn’t work.
Taking off into a foggy morning…
Trying to figure out the ADF…
Some scarce mission briefing notes…
Not a fan of clouds poking through the fog…
So I finally figured out to put Channel 3 on the ADF and then twist the bearing reference line to the extended runway at Mozdok. I flew an offset course that I knew should drop the bearing pointer into the reference line. After centering up…there is no real easy way to determine position and distance (unless you could find some cross bearing NDBs) so it was just a matter of centering the needle…making small adjustments, and waiting for it to flip at station passage…
Station passage…and not sure of what exactly to do so I just made a standard-ish rate turn at a predetermined airspeed to do slightly more than a 180 to put the beacon on the tail. The F-10 map did not work in this mission…so it was really cool to not really know where I was (guess I could have mounted the NS-430?)…
At the completion of the turn I saw some funny dots moving around in the murk and realized they were vehicles throwing signal flares into the air to guide me to the runway…!
On the ground safely… Pretty fun little navigation mission. I was starting to worry about my fuel situation as they were working their way down to the bottom of the gauges…
So that will probably be it for the Yak-52. Stay tuned for where we go from here…
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