Red Star over Korea

The MiG-15 is a zippy little fighter that turns tightly and can generally outmanouevre and out-run most of the USAF jets sent against you, apart from the F-86 Sabre. If you want to tighten your turn some more, thumb up a notch of trim, or maybe drop a degree of flap.

Unfortunately it's not a stable aircraft, and tends to oscillate when you try to return your controls to neutral. This is authentic, but I have toned it down a little.

Also, because of the anhedral wing, if you kick in any rudder, your aircraft rolls in the opposite direction, which takes some getting used to, but again is authentic.

I suggest you switch on the yaw-damping if you intend using rudder during landings.

Takeoff should be made with flaps down one notch, and a little upward trim if preferred.

Landings will require two notches down of flaps, and a definite notch of up-trim to counteract the nose-down tendency. To control your landing roll, pull down full flaps and add the airbrake. Whacking the wheelbrakes on too early could cause an embarassing see-saw effect, possibly culminating in the aircraft sitting on its arse with its nose pointing in the air.

The main problem with the aircraft is its "short legs", and if you fly it around at full throttle in some of these Korean missions, you'll probably have trouble getting home. As a consequence, it's been fitted with a Fuel Stack which can be popped-up by shift + 5 . This contains two digital gauges by Jerry Beckwith which give total fuel readings in gallons and pounds.

By referring to the Fuel Stack, you'll be able to make a better informed decision as to whether to chase after those Imperialist Yankee fighters, or bug out and get back to the airfield before the tank goes dry. If you choose to fly "unlimited fuel", you won't of course suffer this problem.

My advice when setting reality for these missions is to put yourself on unlimited ammunition: The MiG-15's minimalist supply of 160 rounds of machine gun ammo, and 40 cannon shells don't go very far in a dogfight. There are many targets out there, and however good your wingmen are, they are not so good that they can pull off air and ground target kills as efficiently as you can. It will be you who ends up having to despatch the majority of the enemy fighters.

If Microsoft had modelled a retreat factor, where the enemy would bug out when feeling overwhelmed or had run out of ammo, then this wouldn't be a necessity. Nor would this be the case if you actually had communication with your wingmen, so that you could tell them to leave the ground targets alone and return to base, rather than suffer the frustration of watching them circle round and round a difficult triple-A battery, until either the gunner or the ground got them first.

Of course, none of this would be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that Microsoft decided to give all AI aircraft unlimited ammunition anyway. So you having unlimited ammo just levels the playing field.

This MiG-15 was created by Tim "Piglet" Conrad.