Tomcat Gameplay Live Stream

[Caesar 305]

ALCON,

Earlier today, Heatblur ran a live stream of the F-14 to show off some of the aircraft's capabilities, and current state of development.  The stream is long, at over 2 hours and 9 minutes, so you may want to skip around.  Some highlights include:

1. Aerial refueling with a KC-130 tanker - this takes a long time, both Victory-2 and Diamond-2 have a hell of a time getting contact.

2. Low-altitude strike

3. Air-to-air engagement (not any proper dogfighting, mostly stand-off and against non-maneuvering targets)

4. Inadvertent night-time carrier landings (the mission went on longer than planned, apparently it was supposed to be at sunset.  Hilarity ensues.

Probably the most interesting thing for me was the breakage that happened during the first live stream.  The CAP flight (Victory) lead F-14's INS failed, breaking from the shock of the cat stroke, which prevented Victory-1 from using his AIM-54s in TWS.  I believe he used one in close range against a bomber.  Dash 2 became the shooter at long range.  Then, the strike flight (Diamond) lead's auto wing sweep failed some time before he began his approach to the carrier, so he had to switch to manual.  He seems to lose SA of his altitude or maybe gets spatial-D and puts it in the water.  The other three make it back, with Victory-1 taking three attempts to get the plane down, while Victory-2 gets it on the first attempt.  

It will definitely be interesting to test out, whenever the heck it gets released, especially knowing you may have to fight with some systems broken, or having to try to reset them.  I wonder if any other aircraft in DCS have that fidelity of modelling?  Either way, it was an interesting first look at a full mission in the HB Turkey.