Stretch

In real life I use the following procedure: Starting engine: Beacon on Beginning taxi: Nav on, taxi light on (night) -- Crossing or entering any runways: Strobes on Exiting any runways: Strobes off At hold short line: taxi light off (night), landing light on Taking active runway: Strobes on -- Climb complete: Landing light off --- Beginning descent: Landing light on --- Clearing runway: Strobes off, landing light off, taxi on (night) Aircraft parked: Nav off, taxi off (night) Engine shutdown: Beacon off Strobes off in foggy weather or when operating nearby other aircraft. All lights on when I overhear ATC trying to get someone else to notice me.

In real life you would approach a military airport by use of a let-down plate, which tells you exactly what headings and speeds to fly in reference to TACANs or other waypoints. You'd fly the plate in coordination with approach and tower to get on the ground in a sequenced manner. But really, what you do is kind of up to you since so much of the structure of real-life launch and recovery ops is unimplemented in DCS.

Nothing, as in the real A-10, I believe.

Hey I'm eager to learn Scabbers ... lay it on me!

As you may know, TACAN, like VOR/DME, consists of two components: the bearing component (called "REC" [receive-only] in the A-10) and the distance component (called "TR" [transmit-receive] in the A-10). The reason bearing information is available in receive-only mode is because a TACAN station continually transmits bearing information. An airplane does not need to send a radio signal to calculate its bearing from a TACAN station; it merely needs to listen to the signal and perform some analysis on it. In order to receive distance information, however, a TACAN station must be able to listen to incoming interrogations as well as transmit replies. The A-10 sends out a series of radio pulses which the station retransmits; the Doppler shift then can be used to calculate the distance. As everyone knows, you can't transmit and receive simultaneously on the same frequency; thus, two frequencies are needed in order for a TACAN to provide both range and bearing information. Rather than make pilots memorize two frequencies for each TACAN station, the engineers just decided to make both frequencies a set distance apart. When you tune in one, the jet will automatically tune in the other for you. In MIL-STD-291C they establish that distance as 63 MHz. One channel corresponds to 1 MHz in TACAN, hence, 63 channels apart. When you tune in, say, 126Y on your TACAN, your airplane's DME transceiver is automatically tuned to channel 189. So, how does this work A-10 to A-10? Well imagine you're designing the A-10's radio navigation system. To do TACAN ranging, you've installed in the jet the capability to transmit a series of pulses, then listen for a reply, subtract out the Doppler shift, and calculate a distance. You're a bona fide DME receiver. Now what do you need to be a DME transmitter? Well, what does the station do? When it hears a series of pulses, it retransmits them. Your jet can do this too, easily. So it's almost zero additional effort to turn your jet from a DME receiver to a source of DME information for other jets -- and no additional hardware. So how come you only get distance, no bearing, when using this air-to-air mode? Well, let's look at how TACAN range is calculated. A TACAN station, like a VOR station, transmits two radio pulses. One is a very narrow beam, less than 1 degree wide, pointed away from the station, that rotates through the compass rose once each second. There's a second omnidirectional pulse that's transmitted every time the first pulse sweeps through magnetic north. So, to calculate your bearing from the station, you just subtract the time between when you receive the two pulses. Let's say you're 90 degrees bearing from the station. You'll get both pulses once per second, but the narrow pulse will come one-quarter second after the omnidirectional pulse, because that's how long it takes the narrow beam to sweep from magnetic north to 90 degrees east (when it's pointed directly at you). So if we wanted to add this functionality to an A-10, we'd need to be able to make an omnidirectional radio pulse (which the A-10 can do), as well as a sweeping narrow-beam pulse (which would require additional hardware). Additional hardware, additional weight, no-go. They install this equipment onto tankers, fine, but not attack jets.

Buffalo, Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo (pr.n.) - a city in New York buffalo (n., pl.) - heavy wild oxen buffalo (v.) - overawe or intimidate Replacing the sentence with synonyms (New York, oxen, intimidate): Oxen, [that] New York oxen intimidate, intimidate New York oxen.

Nope, I look like crap when I fly:

Yeah, I think native speakers subconsciously figure it out by listening to the way speakers pronounce other words with "t"s in them, and then using that to determine whether or not "can't" will be pronounce "can't" or "can'<stop>".

Some English accents or dialects drop the "t" at the end of a word. This can make "can" and "can't" sound the same. There are subtle pronunciation differences though. When a trailing "t" in "can't" is dropped, it is usually replaced with a glottal stop. Whereas the "n" sound in "can" is allowed to trail longer and is terminated by removing the tongue from the roof of the mouth, with "can't" it is stopped abruptly with the glottis. EDIT: You can also distinguish the two sounds because an instance of "can" will end with the "n" sound blending into the next word ("can go" sounds like "cannngo"), whereas with "can't" there will be a very brief moment of silence between the two ("can't go" sounds like "can <tiny pause> go").

Just to confirm Ricardo ... the switch below the navigation panel ... it's labeled "I-251V - OVERFLY" and not "INU - UPDATE", right? The "INU-UPDATE" label is an error in the Dragon SharkPit and I hope it stays in that pit only, and doesn't spread to other pits. :)

As I and others have suggested, try the DCS airfield diagrams, created by Shu, linked earlier in this thread.

There are airfield manuals available; someone compiled a bunch of really useful airport diagrams that I think every pilot should print and have. Find them on the forums ... somewhere.

Actually kingpinda, it's also worth mentioning that recently the FAA has been REQUIRING air traffic controllers to give complete taxi instructions to aircraft. Apparently they're making this big crackdown on runway incursions and ground accidents. So in the past, if you asked for a taxi to runway 27R, they'd say, "King Air 210, taxi 27R," and that would clear you to taxi all the way up to (but not onto) 27R, and would INCLUDE clearances to cross any runways between you and 27R. They did NOT specify a route to take; it was up to you to take the most direct route there. (It's usually obvious which route is the direct one.) Of course, now it's all different. Now ground will say "King Air 210, taxi delta charlie 27R". They'll give you the exact taxiways they want you to take and will explicitly clear you to cross any runways they want you to cross. No idea if this FAA change is also taking place in the world of military ATC. Anyone else "in the biz" care to chime in?

I'm not a military pilot but in my years of civilian flying I have never seen ground deconflict two aircraft by giving them two different taxi routes. In general they use the same taxiways to get planes to the runways, and you'll hear things like "Give way to the company Airbus" to keep people from hitting each other. On rare occasion when two airplanes are going opposite directions on the same taxiway, they'll sometimes ask you to maintain left or right of the centerline. The only time I've seen them do weird routes is when taxiways are closed or there's some other special situation.

Use the plates. It's the easiest solution, the most realistic solution, and the best solution. EDIT: I don't think adding support asking for progressive taxi instructions would be a "realistic" solution. If you were ACTUALLY an A-10 pilot stationed at, say, Batumi Airfield, you'd probably get some good laughs from the guys in the tower if you requested progressive taxi. When you arrive at a new base you study the plates. Then you know where to go.

I have to disagree with you Kuky. Man, I'm so jealous of Chinese grammar. No conjugation to memorize. No weird plural rules. No weird crap like "more curious" vs. "curiouser." ("Curiouser" is correct, bet you didn't know that.) No special preposition rules (you meet someone AT a street, not ON a street, but you live ON a street, not AT a street). Chinese has a grammar, and it's better than ours.

Speaking as someone who is a programmer ... if you're not a programmer, I don't think your strategy should be "I'm going to say that this is the case" and then later say "but prove me if I'm wrong, because I don't really know what I'm talking about." Probably better to just start with the question rather than make a baseless claim: "Hey, can a software developer tell me why a DC is so hard?" Imagine if non-pilots did the same thing about aviation facts ... like if the news media said, "FLYING IS UNSAFE!" and then later said, "but we didn't really research it, so we don't know, but if there are any aviation safety experts out there, feel free to tell us if we're wrong."

Blargh, mine broke. Rotary 1 ("antenna elevation" in the F-16) is having axis issues. Namely, when I rotate the knob down (towards me) even a little bit, the axis value marches down to 0. It behaves normally when I rotate the knob back up (away from me) past the detent. This makes 1/2 of the axis unusable. Anyone else get this?

That's 100% correct. Try hitting numpad enter instead of mapping TIR Z-axis to zoom, as others have suggested. Numpad enter will reset the FOV to its default and make the HUD more readable. There's a bug in the game where after entering the cockpit, your FOV zooms out to some ridiculously large amount.

But the HUD *is* working properly with TIR Z set to head movement, NOT zooming. See http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1111286&postcount=53

My biggest, fattest, giantest fear right now ... is I guess the next big earthquake to hit SF. But number 2 is definitely my fear that Eagle will change the way the HUD is rendered in-game, making it "painted onto the glass" rather than focused at infinity, so as to stem the confusion caused by the more realistic behavior.

Position lights on, collision lights off. Keep your eyes outside the cockpit and see for yourself!

FTFY.

Yeah, FSX has always done this and I would love to see DCS have a way to put Betty, RWR, comms, and warning tones through the headset.