Anyone here have the F86 sabre?

[jerdawg]

I'm thinking about maybe picking this plane up during the autumn sale but there are no user reviews on it.
Does anyone have it that can give me some feedback if it's any good or not?
Thanks in advance!

[Baholtzman]

I like it, it is a pretty smooth airplane, and you dont see alot of people flying it; making you unique!

[MonkeyFlung]

It's one of my favorite planes to fly. The DLC campaign for it, Museum Relics, I thinks it's called, is fun after the first couple of missions as well.

[jerdawg]

Thanks for the comments guys!
Is the plane easy to learn?
Is the cockpit clickable with the mouse or does it use keyboard bindings?

[BodyOrgan]

It's clickable, and there is no better 86 on the market.

Early aircraft are fairly basic, so yes, the systems are easy to learn, but they're difficult to master.

[jerdawg]

Originally posted by BodyOrgan:

It's clickable, and there is no better 86 on the market.

Early aircraft are fairly basic, so yes, the systems are easy to learn, but they're difficult to master.

Sounds good!
I really like the way this plane looks.
I have a few days to decide before the sale ends.

Thanks for the feedback. Much apreciated!

[HatefulMother]

It's very easy to learn. The reason there are no reviews on it is because steam won't let you review it for some reason. I don't know why, but it won't let me.

Here's what I'll say about it:
It's an old plane that can't really do much. It has a primitive gun site that tries to adjust for the movement of the plane, but it's worthless, so I just disable it. It's very fast for a plane that has no afterburners. The aircraft is smooth and maintains a lot of it's speed in tight turns. That sounds like a good thing, but I often make tight turns because I want to lose speed, and the speedbrakes just aren't good enough.

I've done quite a few sorties with it, both CAS and CAP. CAS, I find the bombs to be worthless, as it's very hard to hit yout target. Rockets are much better as I find that I am able to accurately hit things. This will require practice. Surprisingly, the guns work SO much better on ground targets than on planes, as lightly armored vehicles instantly explode, while planes take a lot of hits and still survive. And then, just as you think you finally have your enemy ready to be shot down, you're out of ammo.

The IR A/A missiles are almost worthless. I have a rule about them: Don't fire at anything you wouldn't shoot at with a gun. And even then, make sure it's from behind. Think of them as really big, rear aspect bullets. Nothing more. Your enemy has to be completely oblivious to your presense to actually score a hit with them.

But by far the worst thing about the Sabre has to be the fact that your hydrolics have what seems to be a 50% failure rate. If you make aggressive combat maneuvers, or climb to high altitudes, expect your landing gear and speed brakes to fail you. This happens to me every other mission, because I'm fighting and not taking pleasure cruises.

This is the only module I have ever attempted to refund, and they said no... Because it took me more than two hours to realize just how terrible it is.

[jerdawg]

Originally posted by kirtanloorii:

It's very easy to learn. The reason there are no reviews on it is because steam won't let you review it for some reason. I don't know why, but it won't let me.

Here's what I'll say about it:
It's an old plane that can't really do much. It has a primitive gun site that tries to adjust for the movement of the plane, but it's worthless, so I just disable it. It's very fast for a plane that has no afterburners. The aircraft is smooth and maintains a lot of it's speed in tight turns. That sounds like a good thing, but I often make tight turns because I want to lose speed, and the speedbrakes just aren't good enough.

I've done quite a few sorties with it, both CAS and CAP. CAS, I find the bombs to be worthless, as it's very hard to hit yout target. Rockets are much better as I find that I am able to accurately hit things. This will require practice. Surprisingly, the guns work SO much better on ground targets than on planes, as lightly armored vehicles instantly explode, while planes take a lot of hits and still survive. And then, just as you think you finally have your enemy ready to be shot down, you're out of ammo.

The IR A/A missiles are almost worthless. I have a rule about them: Don't fire at anything you wouldn't shoot at with a gun. And even then, make sure it's from behind. Think of them as really big, rear aspect bullets. Nothing more. Your enemy has to be completely oblivious to your presense to actually score a hit with them.

But by far the worst thing about the Sabre has to be the fact that your hydrolics have what seems to be a 50% failure rate. If you make aggressive combat maneuvers, or climb to high altitudes, expect your landing gear and speed brakes to fail you. This happens to me every other mission, because I'm fighting and not taking pleasure cruises.

This is the only module I have ever attempted to refund, and they said no... Because it took me more than two hours to realize just how terrible it is.

This is very informative in that it might just make my decision not to buy it.
I guess if I bought it would be used as an historical military plane to wow the tourist's
on the Las Vegas strip by doing low fly by's
over the Luxor hotel.
Any other recommendations are much appreciated.
I want to get atleast one plane during this sale as I have nothing but SU-25T and P51.

[HatefulMother]

Originally posted by jerdawg:

This is very informative in that it might just make my decision not to buy it.
I guess if I bought it would be used as an historical military plane to wow the tourist's
On the Vegas strip by doing low fly by's
Over the Luxor hotel.
Any other recommendations are much appreciated.
I want to get atleast one plane doing this sale as I have nothing but SU-25T and P51.

If you are looking for a high speed CAP-only plane, then I recommend the F-15C. It's just a lot of fun to fly, and combining your AIM-120Cs with TWS radar tracking means you can take out 2-3 enemy planes in a single pass. Not clickable though, which is why it's so cheap.

I'm personally not a big fan of the AV/8B Harrier, but it is capable and fun to fly. It is the ideal aircraft to use while practicing destroying SAM sites. And, it's the only VTOL capable plane in DCS. VTOL isn't entirely necessary, but it is a fun skill to learn. It has decent speed (500+ knots) with AIM-9s that hit their targets. I find that even though it has less gun ammo than the A-10C, it has better shot grouping and tracer rounds, meaning it's cannon gets more bang for it's buck.

The F/A-18C is kind of expensive, but in my opinion, it's worth it. It has an excellent radar, but it's still in beta. It can fire AIM-7, 9 and 120s. It has afterburners, a variety of bombs and rockets, and recently, mavericks were added. It is the most smooth plane to fly in all of DCS, in my opinion. And soon, anti-radar and anti-ship missiles will be added, making it truly an excellent multi-role plane. It's a good investment if you want EVERYTHING in a single plane.

The A-10C is a god of destruction. I regularly destroy 16+ ground vehicles per sortie, and if you stumble on an enemy ship that is out of SAM missiles, the A-10C can sink that too. This is mostly for ground attack, though.

I would recommend the Viggen if it wasn't so buggy. If you want a chopper, get the Blackshark, as it is very dangerous and has a good auto-pilot system. Which is important for long missions and you don't want to spend all day twitching the flight stick. WW2 era planes are "cool," but mostly historical with no real use in DCS. But they are fun to collect, I guess.

[jerdawg]

Originally posted by kirtanloorii:

Originally posted by jerdawg:

This is very informative in that it might just make my decision not to buy it.
I guess if I bought it would be used as an historical military plane to wow the tourist's
On the Vegas strip by doing low fly by's
Over the Luxor hotel.
Any other recommendations are much appreciated.
I want to get atleast one plane doing this sale as I have nothing but SU-25T and P51.

If you are looking for a high speed CAP-only plane, then I recommend the F-15C. It's just a lot of fun to fly, and combining your AIM-120Cs with TWS radar tracking means you can take out 2-3 enemy planes in a single pass. Not clickable though, which is why it's so cheap.

I'm personally not a big fan of the AV/8B Harrier, but it is capable and fun to fly. It is the ideal aircraft to use while practicing destroying SAM sites. And, it's the only VTOL capable plane in DCS. VTOL isn't entirely necessary, but it is a fun skill to learn. It has decent speed (500+ knots) with AIM-9s that hit their targets. I find that even though it has less gun ammo than the A-10C, it has better shot grouping and tracer rounds, meaning it's cannon gets more bang for it's buck.

The F/A-18C is kind of expensive, but in my opinion, it's worth it. It has an excellent radar, but it's still in beta. It can fire AIM-7, 9 and 120s. It has afterburners, a variety of bombs and rockets, and recently, mavericks were added. It is the most smooth plane to fly in all of DCS, in my opinion. And soon, anti-radar and anti-ship missiles will be added, making it truly an excellent multi-role plane. It's a good investment if you want EVERYTHING in a single plane.

The A-10C is a god of destruction. I regularly destroy 16+ ground vehicles per sortie, and if you stumble on an enemy ship that is out of SAM missiles, the A-10C can sink that too. This is mostly for ground attack, though.

I would recommend the Viggen if it wasn't so buggy. If you want a chopper, get the Blackshark, as it is very dangerous and has a good auto-pilot system. Which is important for long missions and you don't want to spend all day twitching the flight stick. WW2 era planes are "cool," but mostly historical with no real use in DCS. But they are fun to collect, I guess.

Thank you very much for all this information!
The A10-C is another plane I have thinking about getting as it has always been one of my favorite military planes in Real life.
I downloaded the manual and Oh My God....I am horrified that I might have to take a night class in military aviation.
But man....how sweet it would be to be able to fly it.
I will check out the F15 . That sounds good too!
As for helicopters, I would love it....but the learning curve looks tremendous.
Not that I dont want to learn, just not sure I have the time to.
I'm pretty new to DCS so my skills are green.
Again, thanks for taking the time to state your comments and perhaps helping make a decision here.

[BodyOrgan]

Oh, I thought you had an understanding of the timeline from which this plane derives. It's a product of the 1950's, and was the primary US aircraft used in the Korean conflict.

Its direct competitor of the era would be the Mig-15. Outside of these two aircraft in DCS, and a campaign or two there isn't a lot of content for this era.

There is a multiplayer server run by SeaQuark where you can use the aircraft against its period correct opponent. It doesn't get populated terribly often, but when it does you can enjoy some nice fights. Of course there's always ground pounding to do no matter how populated it is.

I personally find the gun sight accurate. It uses radar ranging to automatically adjust the reticles distance. You only need to set the correct wingspan to ensure your bullets goto the pipper. You can also forgo the radar ranging, and do it all manually too or you can just lock the gyro sight altogether to simulate an iron sight.

Bombing much like any WW2 bird is an art form. You'll need to learn at which angle vs distance vs speed etc to drop a bomb successfully. It doesn't have some sophisticated computer calculating an impact point for you. Rockets are a lot easier, but will take practice to understand their general flight path.

As far as system failures, I've only ever stalled my engine which required a mid-air restart. System failures are part of the fun though. That's when you get to do emergency procedures. In most aircraft there are manual ways to do things such as dropping the landing gear in the event of power loss for example.

All that said this aircraft is only really effective in combat against its contemporaries (Mig-15). If you're looking for more advanced clickable aircraft which have an air-to-air (A2A) component then that'll be the Mirage-2000, F/A-18C, and F-14. Still clickable, but a generation older would be the F-5 and Mig-21. If you want something like the Su-25T with A2A then get Flaming Cliffs 3 (A-10A, F-15, J-11, Su-25A, Su-27, Su-33, and Mig-29).

[HatefulMother]

Originally posted by jerdawg:

Thank you very much for all this information!
The A10-C is another plane I have thinking about getting as it has always been one of my favorite military planes in Real life.
I downloaded the manual and Oh My God....I am horrified that I might have to take a night class in military aviation.
But man....how sweet it would be to be able to fly it.
I will check out the F15 . That sounds good too!
As for helicopters, I would love it....but the learning curve looks tremendous.
Not that I dont want to learn, just not sure I have the time to.
I'm pretty new to DCS so my skills are green.
Again, thanks for taking the time to state your comments and perhaps helping make a decision here.

I confess I've never touched a manual for even a single plane. The A-10C and the Blackshark, for example, have tutorial missions included. They walk you through the steps. How to start it, how to taxi and take off, how to navigate, how to use each type of weapon. It's actually very easy, don't be intimidated. For everything else, I highly recommend you watch some youtube videos. That's where I learned to use these planes. As for tactics, only experience can help you there. So don't feel bad about getting shot down. lol And good luck.

[jerdawg]

Originally posted by BodyOrgan:

Oh, I thought you had an understanding of the timeline from which this plane derives. It's a product of the 1950's, and was the primary US aircraft used in the Korean conflict.

Its direct competitor of the era would be the Mig-15. Outside of these two aircraft in DCS, and a campaign or two there isn't a lot of content for this era.

There is a multiplayer server run by SeaQuark where you can use the aircraft against its period correct opponent. It doesn't get populated terribly often, but when it does you can enjoy some nice fights. Of course there's always ground pounding to do no matter how populated it is.

I personally find the gun sight accurate. It uses radar ranging to automatically adjust the reticles distance. You only need to set the correct wingspan to ensure your bullets goto the pipper. You can also forgo the radar ranging, and do it all manually too or you can just lock the gyro sight altogether to simulate an iron sight.

Bombing much like any WW2 bird is an art form. You'll need to learn at which angle vs distance vs speed etc to drop a bomb successfully. It doesn't have some sophisticated computer calculating an impact point for you. Rockets are a lot easier, but will take practice to understand their general flight path.

As far as system failures, I've only ever stalled my engine which required a mid-air restart. System failures are part of the fun though. That's when you get to do emergency procedures. In most aircraft there are manual ways to do things such as dropping the landing gear in the event of power loss for example.

All that said this aircraft is only really effective in combat against its contemporaries (Mig-15). If you're looking for more advanced clickable aircraft which have an air-to-air (A2A) component then that'll be the Mirage-2000, F/A-18C, and F-14. Still clickable, but a generation older would be the F-5 and Mig-21. If you want something like the Su-25T with A2A then get Flaming Cliffs 3 (A-10A, F-15, J-11, Su-25A, Su-27, Su-33, and Mig-29).

Lol, looks like I'm just going to have to settle with purchasing all these modules eventually as they all sound good.
I just need to prioritize my list and I only have a few days to do it. HA HA!!
Thanks for your help!

[jerdawg]

Originally posted by kirtanloorii:

Originally posted by jerdawg:

Thank you very much for all this information!
The A10-C is another plane I have thinking about getting as it has always been one of my favorite military planes in Real life.
I downloaded the manual and Oh My God....I am horrified that I might have to take a night class in military aviation.
But man....how sweet it would be to be able to fly it.
I will check out the F15 . That sounds good too!
As for helicopters, I would love it....but the learning curve looks tremendous.
Not that I dont want to learn, just not sure I have the time to.
I'm pretty new to DCS so my skills are green.
Again, thanks for taking the time to state your comments and perhaps helping make a decision here.

I confess I've never touched a manual for even a single plane. The A-10C and the Blackshark, for example, have tutorial missions included. They walk you through the steps. How to start it, how to taxi and take off, how to navigate, how to use each type of weapon. It's actually very easy, don't be intimidated. For everything else, I highly recommend you watch some youtube videos. That's where I learned to use these planes. As for tactics, only experience can help you there. So don't feel bad about getting shot down. lol And good luck.

Trust me, I have you tube set on my TV like I have a phone number on speed dial.
I have done most of the tutorials on the SU-25T. I've learned to fly it, but need to learn alot yet on the weapon systems.
Can't destroy those Sam sites after several attempts....lol.
I actually like reading manuals , but 604 pages or whatever is quite alot.

[BodyOrgan]

Here's the thread about the multiplayer server for the Mig-15/F-86F I spoke about. It's got a nice trailer in it.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=194192

[jerdawg]

Originally posted by BodyOrgan:

Here's the thread about the multiplayer server for the Mig-15/F-86F I spoke about. It's got a nice trailer in it.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=194192

That was a sweet trailer.
Thanks for sharing!
Is that played on the default map or?