Returning to the carrier after a moderately succesful early morning strike mission
And I aced the landing! (well, aced… I survived, which in my book rates as an OK pass :P )
I’ll say this for it, it looks amazing.
Oh and as long as taking off, finding and killing a target and landing are game enough for you, it’s hella fun too. Landing on the carrier is well and truly terrifying. It’s hard to do, even harder to do right and extremely difficult to do consistently right. I do not dare do it in conditions of reduced visibility.
As for game, theres a thing called blue flag. It’s a multiplayer server that runs continuous dynamic wars. Players take out defences, use transport helo’s to take territory, reinforce it etc. It is red vs blue PvP in the air, with AI ground thingers (though it is technically possible to man a ZSU-23-4 if you get the combined arms module) It takes some PC masterrace hackery in getting comms setup right and the metagame server accessed. But those AAR’s read like people are playing a hella fun game with their train sim :P
Are there missions in the free to play DCS version? Do I need to download or create some? Listening to all this talk makes me want to give it another shot.
I believe the Su-25T is a free flyable, so you have access to the built-in Su-25T campaigns, plus user-made single missions and campaigns.
You also have access to the TF-51D, but there’s not much to do in an unarmed P-51 besides noodle around.
In the blue flag thing I mentioned the unarmed mustang plays a vital role as a recon plane.
I’ve managed to find a combination of settings that makes my DCS playable, albeit uglier than it was in 1.5 in many ways, and so I spent some time in the Harrier saddle tonight. I’m getting a lot more comfortable with it, and can reliably deploy guided weapons and use the targeting pod. (It helps that they’ve fixed a bunch of bugs with same since I last fired it up.)
Starting at Nellis, I took off and headed for Echo Bay, where I dropped some LGBs (still trying to figure out how best to drop early; the CCRP release point is at the minimum range) and popped a building with some Mavericks. I’m kicking myself for not stopping by the Hoover Dam; I’ll have to do that on a subsequent flight. After I finished with the wanton destruction, I set the TACAN for Groom Lake and made a perfect rolling landing. Good times.
I’m not quite combat-ready—I need to get my checklists squared away and do some more practice—but I’m a lot closer than I was, and the Harrier’s a lot closer to ready for action than it used to be. One of these days, I might try converting the Eagle/Iraq dynamic campaign to the Harrier. Or maybe just fly the Eagle campaign. That seems like a lark.
I wouldn’t want to try that in a Harrier. It is not all that well suited to air-to-air work. Have you tried the through-the-inferno thing I linked upthread? It is sweet.
The squadron definitions in the campaigns contain a list of mission types, so it’s as simple as changing ‘Eagle’ to ‘Harrier’ and copying a list of ground attack types. I’m a little annoyed you can’t put a Tarawa in Lake Mead, though.
I don’t think I have tried that. I’ll have to give it a whirl.
For endless-variety DCS missions, I’ve been enjoying Through the Inferno in its several iterations over the last few nights. Since I’ve mostly been flying the Harrier lately, I’ve mostly been using the Georgian Coast version, which has carrier ops for the Hornet and Harrier, and if you squint might look a bit like Yugoslavia.
It’s nice to have some direction in practicing, missions which proceed at my pace but aren’t necessarily cakewalks. I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable manipulating the Harrier’s systems thanks to this sort of thing.
They did a bit of an update a couple days ago that among other things allows you to zoom into things in the mission editor and see the models of things you are placing. This allows you to quickly build sweet-ass setups, such as a CV full of parked tomcats.
You can also make templates out of them and save those. (perhaps you always could?) You build a SAM site once, or a deployed motor rifle platoon and then plonk, plonk, plonk those bastards all over your map. Sweet.
It’s about time. The mission editor has been loading the 3D world at least since 2.5 released.
Since the John C. Stennis is so nicely modeled thanks to the Hornet, I thought I’d give the Harrier a try on the big flattop. The Marines tested it out on the Midway-class Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1970s, but nothing ever came of it (besides some testing in the late 80s to make sure the Harrier II could still do it.)
A bolter in the Harrier is a much bigger problem than a bolter in the Hornet, I’ll say that much.
Hmmm. The harrier looks kind of cool too…
#solittletime #mortal
oh it is cool. janky little bird. very nimble and actually features guided air to ground munitions. working them is not easy though. neither is the signature harrier VTOL stuff. but then, teaching yourself to do insanely hard aviation stuff is what DCS is all about, innit?
If you only have time for one, do the Hornet. It’s more multirole, and Eagle Dynamics has a better track record with getting its first-party projects working reliably.
On the other hand, I believe RAZBAM (makers of the Harrier) say they want to do an AV-8B+, which features the mechanically-scanned radar originally used on Hornets, and can sling AMRAAMs. You might get that airframe, or a price break on that airframe, if you have the Night Attack Harrier for sale now.
Contra @schurem, I think the Harrier’s precision munitions aren’t all that tricky, especially now that the Harrier’s targeting pod is mostly working; there are just a few steps to follow. Unless he meant that there’s a lot of pilot workload involved, in which case I agree wholeheartedly.
Lastly, the vertical takeoff-landing stuff is indeed a hoot, and worth the price of entry if you think or ever thought that the Harrier is cool.
I havent found my way round the harriers PGMs but thats just because I havent made a concerted effort to. F/A-18 is most definately a fine, fine choice of ride. such a fun and user friendly jet.
Actually the harrier and hornet are pretty similar when it comes to their systems. probably because they both were built by McDonnel Douglas before that was eaten by Boeing. stuff like stores management etc are similar. I hope the hornet teapot will be easier than the harriers tho.
I know how to work the TPOD in the A-10C and that is much easier than in the harrier, or so it seems to me.
The big problem is that the Harrier has some odd design choices and some bugs/unfinished features.
Problem the first: the Harrier TPOD’s HTS mode (control zoom/etc. with the Sensor Select Switch; get to it by double-clicking SSS Down) functions, but doesn’t control the aircraft’s target point, so can’t be used raw for bomb delivery. You have to switch out of HTS mode and to TDC mode, which uses the TPOD to control the aircraft TDC. When leaving HTS mode, the Harrier should go back to TDC mode or non-TDC mode depending on what you had selected prior. Right now it doesn’t, so you have to leave your HOTAS and go click on the MFD pushbutton to go back to TDC mode. (I think. The pocket guide says there’s a way to do it with the HOTAS, but it hasn’t worked for me yet.)
Problem the second: Laser Spot Search isn’t working on the TPOD yet.
There were others I was going to write about, but I had to get up in the middle of this post and forgot what they were. I did really nail a vertical landing on a moving Tarawa earlier, which I was very proud of.
The way the SSS hat functions in the harrier has not started to feel even remotely logical to me. Sometimes it activates the IR maverick camera, often it fails to. It activates the nose cam in the harrier but where that things points does not always make sense, nor is it (to me, so far) logical how to make other things point to where it is pointed.
The TPOD slave-to-aircraft-TDC function doesn’t work yet, so that’s going to cause some trouble.
The thing about the Harrier is that, unlike the Warthog, it isn’t drowning in hat switches, so the SSS has to do literally everything. It can be modal and loadout-dependent to a fault.
Mavericks, however, have been working pretty reliably for me. Select in the STRS page, wait for STBY to go to RDY on the bottom left OSB, uncage (there’s a button on the throttle) to get video/laser Maverick sensor display. For IR Mavericks, SSS forward sets the Maverick as the active sensor, and TDC action forces a lock. They should start out pointing at the current target. I believe laser Mavericks scan automatically when uncaged.
The DMT camera points at the TVV, if there’s no current target, or at the current target if 1) there is a current target and 2) it’s in gimbal limits.
And how do I get them to go from STBY to RDY? Just select them and wait? It seems to never happen for me. Can I do it on the ground, before takeoff?