The ‘Stay at Home Sale’ continues for DCS World with the DCS: JF-17 being the latest to appear in the list for free trial. That means you can sign in to DCS World, download the JF-17 and try it for free. Here are some impressions on the jet as well as links to tutorials and other materials that you might want to see before downloading.

Flash? Thunder!

The JF-17 has become much better known in the DCS World community since just before it’s release but for those of you who may not know too much about the jet, here’s a brief description of what it is and how it fits into the mix.

The JF-17 was developed jointly by China and Pakistan as a low cost alternative to aircraft like the F-16. While the JF-17 lacks some of the F-16’s performance, it makes up for it by being far cheaper than modern F-16 variants and coming with a substantial list of tricks of its own.

The DCS World version never feels quite as powerful as the F-16 but it still flies great with excellent agility and it can haul some very interesting munitions too. It has all the usual short and medium range missiles (the SD-10 is a match for the AMRAAM), it has rockets, bombs, laser guided GBU’s, a targeting pod, an ECM pod, and an anti-radiation missile. It does it all. It also has some unique capabilities such as laser guided rockets, and GPS and TV guided cruise missiles and anti-ship weapons.

The JF-17 I also found to be fairly intuitive. Minus a few quirks, you can typically get up and running with this jet in no time. I’ve written more about the JF-17 in my first impressions on the module.

Guides and tutorials

There are plenty of guides and tutorials out there to get you started with Deka Ironwork’s DCS: JF-17 Thunder. Here are just some that you may want to have a look at. There are of course many more online!

Want to go more in-depth? Check out Chuck Owl’s Guide on the JF-17.