Dagor
New Enthusiast
Hey there gentlemen and ladies. I am making a return to the flight platform after many years away. I say flight platform because my previous experience was well before the realism and detail that DCS (and other sims like MSFS) provide and was more in the vein of the Afterburner series or F-117A type games from roughly 20 years ago. The realism and detail of the games has come a long way since those days, as has the capability and realism of the peripherals that we use. I grew up on MacDill AFB where my step-dad was an officer as a civil engineer. This has lead to a lifelong love of the F-16, so when I decided to jump back into flight sim games, I decided to purchase the F-16C module for DCS and take that up as my primary flight platform. In my personal life, I am a middle school math teacher, so that means I am home usually by 7pm ET most nights and have all weekends free. I do coach varsity football and baseball at the high school level, so I end up getting home a little later in the spring and the fall, and some evenings I have games. With spring coming up, that will mean that I am usually home by around 8:30 ET during the week, maybe a little later on days with games.
I am quite rusty, but much of that is getting used to and adjusting the sensitivity and layout of the various controls, and rigors of the sim itself. At this point, I would consider myself a noob who needs some B training before I would be able to jump into coordinated missions. I have started to work through some of the in-game trainings and am pretty confident with the cold start procedures at this point for the F-16, but have not done much actual flying in game yet as I want to learn from the ground up. I have only started back into the game roughly a week ago, so I don't have a ton of hours logged yet.
I am someone who typically goes pretty hard into hobbies, so although I have fewer than 20 hours into the game so far, I have a very good set up and rig. I have been a PC gamer for a very long time, and as such I have a pretty high end PC set up. I did a lot of research on gear for DCS and went with the Winwing suite of products, so I've got the Orion 2 throttle with the F-15EX grips, the Orion 2 F-16EX stick, ICP panel and two MFDs, and I recently ordered their new rudder pedals as that has been my biggest struggle thus far. I currently have the Thrustmaster T-flight rudder pedals and they simply do not work for me, they slide around too much, and I have had a hard time configuring them to work right for me without simply pitching my aircraft to the ground while taxiing or attempting take-off. The pedals seem too close together for my liking, and the rail system is not as smooth as I would like. I have tried to work through the issues with adjusting sliders and dead-zones, but haven't had much success.
It looks like the 303rd is the type of organization that can help me grow as a DCS pilot and I believe that I can be a productive member of the group once I have completed the training.
I am quite rusty, but much of that is getting used to and adjusting the sensitivity and layout of the various controls, and rigors of the sim itself. At this point, I would consider myself a noob who needs some B training before I would be able to jump into coordinated missions. I have started to work through some of the in-game trainings and am pretty confident with the cold start procedures at this point for the F-16, but have not done much actual flying in game yet as I want to learn from the ground up. I have only started back into the game roughly a week ago, so I don't have a ton of hours logged yet.
I am someone who typically goes pretty hard into hobbies, so although I have fewer than 20 hours into the game so far, I have a very good set up and rig. I have been a PC gamer for a very long time, and as such I have a pretty high end PC set up. I did a lot of research on gear for DCS and went with the Winwing suite of products, so I've got the Orion 2 throttle with the F-15EX grips, the Orion 2 F-16EX stick, ICP panel and two MFDs, and I recently ordered their new rudder pedals as that has been my biggest struggle thus far. I currently have the Thrustmaster T-flight rudder pedals and they simply do not work for me, they slide around too much, and I have had a hard time configuring them to work right for me without simply pitching my aircraft to the ground while taxiing or attempting take-off. The pedals seem too close together for my liking, and the rail system is not as smooth as I would like. I have tried to work through the issues with adjusting sliders and dead-zones, but haven't had much success.
It looks like the 303rd is the type of organization that can help me grow as a DCS pilot and I believe that I can be a productive member of the group once I have completed the training.
