Meyomyx

Ah. The problems I've been experiencing can be seen here (in the latter stages of the video); ..... and a variety of solutions can be found in the responses!!

I agree with PoorOldSpike. I've done just that. Create a mission with just your aircraft on the ramp. Fly it. Navigate. Land it. Practice. Now add a couple of ground targets. Practice with different weapons - not necessarily all - maybe 3. Get used to it. Get used to the FLIR. Now add a small convoy. Find it and practice with your different weapons. Add the carrier. Practice. Add a couple of SAMs. Practice. Add a tanker. Practice. Add some hostile cargo aircraft. Practice. It's very easy and a great way to learn each bit. I'm in the process of adding some hostile aircraft that can shoot back! ... and I have the one mission I've gradually built that has it all so I can practice or revisit previous tasks. It's not a bad training ground!!

Thanks for all your responses. Testing continues :)

To explain - when I have HAFU on the radar - designate won't select it. It will do so for bricks of course. I sometimes lock the tanker to make the rendezvous for gas, for example. If it's a HAFU, I can't lock it. If it's a brick, I can.

Help me out, experts. My DCS journey is going well. The current learning curve centres around A/A. Many videos watched and digested. I'm still not 100% clear tho - still experimenting! If I have a HAFU, I can't lock it up - presumably because the info is coming from another source (AWACS etc). That would be logical. (As a matter of interest, pressing designate on a HAFU looks to me like it's designating the FLIR designation in snow plough mode even though the FLIR is turned off and not in AG mode? It designates something but certainly not the HAFU!) So, I understand that I need a "brick" in order to lock. I can get the altitude from SA and direct the radar to that point. The question is this - does the HAFU automatically become a "brick" when the target is painted by your own radar? Or to put it another way, whats the process of locking a HAFU? It needs to be "un'HAFU'd" in order to establish the lock as I understand it. :)

It also won't work when the aeroplane is significantly banked - it reverts to barometric until you roll out

Yes - that appears to be the explanation for the caret. Thank you

Track File https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aq78AZDRQiaR6UaGYMcv0PQr4BUX?e=e4uT3L If there's a way to shorten this ... let me know! But here is the track file!

Still getting some TACAN errors - specifically range, when reselected in a mission (possibly an error in display location) and also the disappearance of the station caret. These are two separate instances. Both are fixed by cycling the TACAN receiver

The F18 isn't that fast/powerful. It' sa bit like a Nissan Micra. Does lots of things quite well. At what altitude are you trying? What Mach is indiocated? Stores make a profound difference to speed - they all dangle in the airflow and drag increases as the square of the velocity so you rapidly run out of chuff. Sounds normal to me.

2 sliders in Options - one for speed of transition between views, one to damp that movement. Moving viewpoint with the mouse (or even the keys) isn't damped at all - moving viewpoint if you're recording video just looks horrible. It looks as though some key movement is damped so the coding is there - we just need control of the timing parameter :)

Run of the mill collisions with the basket/hose .... I can cope with BUT what would be a partial win would be to introduce a time delay before the tanker pays out the hoses when refuelling is complete. At the moment, the first indication that you've taken all the gas you can is a face full of basket. Give us a chance to disconnect and get clear before paying out the hoses will ya?! :)

Just in case you missed it - when you ask for refuel after RTB, the fuel slider on the rearm/refuel dialog reflects your current fuel state. If you request rearm/refuel without moving the slider to the required fuel amount, you'll get re-armed but not re-fuelled. Just a thought - I made this error!

Should be fairly easy to fix ... when air refuelling is complete, the hoses instantlyextend to the full length. This means that the first thing you see when disconnecting is the basket moving back through the cockpit. A few seconds delay would enable a clean disconnect without getting the basket in the face!

For me, HUD is better but DDI's still difficult with any sun reflections on them

.... or the pod is looking rearward

If you look back a week or two, you'll find a post from me saying exactly the same thing - I was about to give up. I was amzed at the helpful encouragement so I resolved to stop, take stock, and work out what the hell I was doing wrong. Within a day I'd cracked it - sussed why I couldn't make progress. So here is my encouragement and tips: Get into position from behind and below the tanker until you get "Clear Contact". Without this call, you'll never make the connection. If you approach badly, you'll have to get very close to the tanker to get the call. Make sure your flaps are set to Auto or they will extend automatically! Get perfectly trimmed - use the FPV as a reference. Right. Vital Step. Establish your reference speed - the speed that keeps you precisely at the same speed at the tanker. Now ... YOU MUST DROP BACK a bit. DON'T stay close to the basket. Now. Stay back and get stable. Next give your thrust levers a firm but subtle nudge and get to your reference speed + 2 knots. No more no less. KEEP it at that speed and fly the probe into the basket. (The moment you make connection you need to get back to reference speed. To drop back, use your reference speed - 2 knots - but just connect to start with - holding station you can practice) My mistake (and I suspect many others)? I used to fly up verrry gently towards the probe and get verrry close to it trying to get in the right position before gently nudging forward to make the connection. NO. Drop back. Get aligned and steady. Give yourself the 2 knot closure speed and fly the thing in .... otherwise you just nearly get to the basket, wobbling about until you miss, overcontrol and mess up (I was doing this for weeks). I'm going to do a short video explaining as I think it may help. Now I can connect more or less anywhere - turns too - but more importantly I can connect which means I can practice holding station. Hope this helps. Overnight I went from giving up to connecting. Give it a go! :)

When DCTR is active on the SA page, the target designator icon moves in the opposite sense when slewed. It moves correctly when DCTR is not active

Agreed. This one did the job. However, many merely cause some damage - whereas a while back I was getting a very high success rate with the munitions hitting the target as designated. Not sure what has changed! I'll work it out! :)

The winds in my mission aren't very much .... and I'm not saying that the wind is causing the problem - merely wondering why the munitions are consistently missing the targets by a few meters. As for introducing lead for wind or a moving target, it strikes me as nonsense. That's the whole point of laser guided munitions - they fall to the point designated by the laser, whatever the wind. The other factor that could cause a problem is if there is a mismatch between the spot height of the designated point and the target information. This is certainly an issue with dumb munitions and the Gulf map. If you set a target in the mission editor, the altitude in the aircraft is a couple of hundred feet out. Unless you correct the waypoint heights manually (specifically the TGT waypoint), the munitions miss the target by a proportionate amount. With a target in high terrain (Lar for example), this can be quite significant. For me, everything is consistently missing the aim point by about 20 feet. I'll keep experimenting

I will. So I need to make allowances for wind direction and target movement by anticipating where it will impact??!? I don't see any videos of this happening. Point track. Lase. Munition is guided to TGT point .....

... these are laser guided munitions. The pod tracks the target, the weapon will follow the designation whatever the wind/target movement - that's the whole point! :)

The MPCD is MUCH better - I can use it with the map turned on now. However, in bright sunlight, it' s not easy to see the HUD information - or the MFD information in direct sunlight.

There's a previous thread about this. All my laser guided munitions miss by a similar small amount. Now, as these missions are launched from a carrier, I have a wind component of 20kts at sea level which gives a 43knot wind at 6k. Could this be the explanation? I'm not convinced that it should affect the accuracy to any significant degree .... not consistently causing the same error. I also haven't tried on a different map (or re-creating it from a "fresh" mission map. I can't find a definitive answer but will keep experimenting.

Do some training missions without weapons and get used to the handling, navigation and autopilot operation (focussing on the HSI displays). They're the building blocks of any mission and there's a lot of detail. If you get involved in the weapon systems at the same time, it's easy to get swamped. When you're comfortable, focus on one weapon system at a time. Create a couple of really simple training missions with some targets and learn a different system at a time. A skill you will have to get to grips with is air-air refuelling as the Hornet is not blessed on the range front!