Brit_Radar_Dude

I have the radar scan zone left / right and up / down set on hat switch 1 on my X52 stick. I set that hat to be buttons and 4 way. You can see what the Lockon key commands to move the scan zone are by going into the Lockon OPTIONS, INPUT, COMBAT and looking in the ACTION MAP for Scan zone left, Scan zone right etc But anyway they are, Left - Shift + COMMA Right - Shift + SLASH Up - Shift + SEMICOLON Down - Shift + PERIOD

Yay, Merlin !! Did some of the software for its GPS system back in the day....

No nukes in Lockon.

Buccaneer is pretty in the same way as a fat bottomed girl. You just have to adjust the way you look at her and appreciate her.

In Lockon, you have to decide to record before you even start flying the mission which is different to many other flight Sims. Don't press the big FLY button, instead CNTRL/R to Record. When you finished the mission, it will ask you to type in a file name to save the recorded track.

Excellent quality video as ever from Angel. Super flying shots and the beginning shows how the simple addition of sound (car horn, ship sounds, church bell, train, etc) can bring a video to life and set the scene.

Other way round I think mastiff. The daylight Mav (K) has a lock range of about 3nm, the Infrared Mav (D) is about 6nm? Boulund has given you a good technique. Lock the ground near a target. Sometimes it will jump onto the actual target by itself, other times you need to bump it nearer with you hat/mouse/whatever and it will stick to the target. This technique cant be used in towns as it'll lock onto buildings, but it works for a vehicle in the open. A problem that increasingly is hitting folks as PC's become faster and faster is that the speed of movement of the cursor gets faster too, which makes it harder to lock up targets. Really annoying! You find the money to get a faster PC for Lockon and it makes locking targets tougher. Such is life.

But firing one is enough if you are using Lockon v1.02 - I know very few folks are but just wanted to point that out for completeness. In addition I should mention that it is a feature of Lockon:FC that the SAM's will shoot at your Mav first which actually can make you less vulnerable in some situations. In Lockon v1.02, short range SAM's like Strela's cannot shoot down missiles. Indeed most longer range SAM's will not fire at your missiles, instead they will prioritise shooting at you and your wingnuts.

As always the French Lockon Community and especially AdA Mod team rock! Working hard to come up with new things to keep Lockon alive and interesting. Best wishes to you all.

No way. If you finish a mission in a campaign and get a SUCCESS, then it's cool to go onto the next mission by whatever method. I always start missions and campaigns via the mission editor.

After you finish a mission in a campaign, go through the debrief screen to the next mission, quit from that one and you save your progress by clicking (top left) "file" then "save". Don't confuse this type of saving with "save states" (ie the save button on the window you get after pressing ESC to quit). I have never had save states work, most folks haven't - it seems to be borked. But anyway, you are getting frustrated with the whole thing and just want to fly and get further on in the campaign.... There are possible workarounds, so lets get into those. You can declassify a campaign (or a standalone mission) in the Mission Editor and fly the campaign missions in any order you want (plus change skins, weapon loadout, etc). I use this method all the time to cherry-pick the fun missions in a campaign and miss out the dull ones. Go into Mission Editor, upper left of screen click on the open button, bottom right TYPE OF FILE select CAMPAIGN, navigate the folder structure to the campaign you want and select it. Bottom right click on MAP. Now you will see the 1st mission of your campaign. Many standalone missions and campaigns are classified with a password so that they cannot be easily/accidentally changed. The stock standalone missions and campaigns that come with Lockon use the password EAGLE. Top left, click on EDIT, then DECLASSIFY, enter the password EAGLE. Now all the missions in the campaign should appear on the right hand side, so select the mission you want to fly. If you wish, you can select your aircraft, select PAYLOAD and pick different weapons / fuel load / skin. You can add or remove other units, change the weather, time of day etc. If you have downloaded any of the excellent missions/campaigns designed by the Lockon community, then some may be classified. Either the briefing notes or the readme file may tell you the password. Some may not. If not, then you can still get in by overwriting the password with your own. Use keystrokes rather than the pulldown menu to do this. Press "ctrl + left shift + C" then type in a password of your choice e.g. 1234. Now press "ctrl + left shift + D" and enter your password e.g. 1234 NOTE that Lockon does not seem to remember this, so you may have to do it each time you restart Lockon.

Some more about the Mission Editor What is the Diamond? The diamond is your Target Designator. It simulates that some forward observer has pointed a laser at the object to designate it as a target. Imagine we have some forward troops or recon that is on the ground and has spotted our target. They put a laser on it, and then we see the diamond in the HUD because our A-10 carries the Pave Penny laser tracker. That's the idea anyhow. Why is it there in some missions and not others? If the mission designer has set up an ATTACK waypoint and used the TARGET button to mark a particular target(s), then you will see the diamond as soon as you change to air to ground mode (7). If the target is out of the field of view of the HUD it will have an X through it. If you kill the target and there are multiple targets are set up, the diamond moves to the next target, and finally dissapears when you have killed all the marked targets. Some mission designers might only mark some or none of the targets you need to kill to get mission success, other targets may only be mentioned in the mission briefing. If there are multiple targets in a mission, you can swap the diamond between them by pressing ' key (depends on your keyboard - anyway it is the same key that swaps airfields when you are in NAV - RETURN mode). Be aware that if you set up some vehicles or ships in a group then the Mission Editor treats that group as a single item when you use TARGET button. Once you target it and then try to target another item in the group the mission editor will latch to nearest thing (usually a building) leaving you wondering what is going on. I still get caught out by this with ships as a group of them by default are quite spread out and they dont look like a group. I then try to target a second time and it targets a building a 100kms away! When you have a group targeted then if you kill the 1st in the group, the diamond will move to the next in the group etc until all destroyed then moves to next TARGET'ed unit/group. If there are multiple targets in a mission, you can swap the diamond between them by pressing ' key (depends on your keyboard - anyway it is the same key that swaps airfields when you are in nav return mode). But remembering what I said earlier about a group of vehicles being regarded as one target, then if you had two groups designated as targets, it will swap between the 1st in each group. you can't move the diamond along the column of vehicles. Doesn't stop you bombing them, but the diamond will always point to 1st in the group. This can be kinda confusing until you get used to it. Is it necessary to lock on by pressing TAB? All the diamond is doing is showing you where the target is located. You still have to attack it yourself with whatever weapon you choose. If you choose a Maverick then you have to lock it on, but if you use gun / rockets / dumb bombs, then obviously you dont. What is the ATTACK point? It is a type of waypoint, shown on the map as a triangle instead of the usual circle, in the Mission Editor(ME). As you fly your route it does not appear any different to other waypoints to you as a pilot. But used in conjunction with the TARGET button in the ME, it will cause targets to be diamond'ed. If the aircraft is an AI(computer flown) one, then it tells the AI when to begin an attack and what to attack. Do you have to reach a particular waypoint before you can lock on? No, but generally the mission designer will have chosen a particular waypoint (near to the target) as an attack waypoint. Some missions might have several attack waypoints if there are several targets. Before you fly a mission, look at the map, remember which waypoint is the attack waypoint (triangle) so you know where to start looking for the targets you are tasked to destroy. You might find there are enemy SAM/AAA defenses or enemy aircraft you have to kill simply to be able to get through to your actual mission target, keep your eyes and ears open for threats - the RWR (Radar warning receiver) can help. In one of the A-10 training missions there is the diamond to show you where to drop your weapon load but in the other using cannon and rockets there is no diamond. As I said above, sometimes the mission has been designed so there is a diamond, sometimes not. Is there a difference between targets and mission goals? The SUCCESS / FAIL at the end of a mission is caused by having used the Mission editor to set MISSION GOALS with the icon on the left of the screen that looks like a sniper sight. Also not all goals are that some target be DESTROYED, some goals are that a unit, group or target SURVIVES, this enables misson designers to make missions where you have to protect friendly units or defend a base. Having these as seperate actions means that a mission can have SUCCESS/FAIL goals set without necessarily having targets diamond'ed. Two examples - mbot's recent UrbanThunder which has an attack waypoint, but no TARGETs assigned http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=9039 also my Smerch Hunt mission, which has no attack waypoint at all... http://www.lockonfiles.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&cid=61&lid=36&ttitle=A-10_Smerch_Hunt#dldetails More information about Ground Attack. Read these great articles from SimHQ, you can click on the pictures for bigger readable size Bombs http://www.simhq.com/_air/air_101a.html Mavericks,Rockets and Guns http://www.simhq.com/_air/air_098a.html Hope this info helps.....

Here is my standard (cut and paste) ground attack spiel that I've built up over the years......... Aquiring and re-aquiring targets I always advise folks new to ground attack to just stooge around the map for an hour or two, try following a railway or road and attacking a bridge or the stationary wagons at a train station. Develop the skill of finding the target then finding it AGAIN for a 2nd pass. Look for distinguishing landmarks - a TV mast, smoking chimney, road junction, bridge, etc. Use your compass and figure out in your head a rough direction and distance of your target from the landmark (eg. 1km South of the chimney, or maybe the second wheatfield West of the railway bridge, etc). If the defenses permit, before you roll into the first pass, try to take a moment to build a picture in your head of what the target and its surroundings look like. This will help you find the targets for your 2nd pass, remember there are no prizes for doing the mission as fast as you can!! Take note of your compass heading as you attack, helps you figure out which heading you need to get back to the target for the 2nd pass. If you attack from an easy direction 90 degrees, 180 degrees, 270 degrees, etc, then it is easier to do the Math in your head to figure out your course to return to the target. Instead of a horizontal turn, you can try reversing your course vertically - either climb to a safe altitude to be able to do a Split-S back toward the target, or gain enough speed and pull up into an Immelman. Turning vertically can help ensure you don't lose the target by ending up on a course parallel to the original that is a mile or two to the side. Sadly you can't add waypoints "on the fly", but many missions are designed with a waypoint (often made an attack waypoint that shows on the ME (Mission Editor) map as a triangle) a couple of Nm before the target. You can always go back to that waypoint (you would have to remember/write down before you start the mission which number waypoint it is), press 1 to get back to NAV mode. Press the \ key to swap between the waypoints (might be a different key on your country's keyboard). An alternative method is, straight after you complete an attack run, if you have at least one bomb left then point your target pipper at or near the targets and press TAB, that will turn the pipper into a small square and hold that position until you drop another bomb. It even seems to hold it if you execute an attack with anything other than a bomb, or change to air to air mode, Nav mode etc. As long as you then change back to ground attack mode with bombs, the marker will still be there. Another thing to try is to take one pod of LAU-61WP smoke rockets, fire at the target and you will get a plume of white smoke that'll burn for a few minutes that will help you find the target again. In Russian jets use the B-20CM smoke rockets, they give an orange colour smoke. Vehicle fires go out after a short while, so you might bomb a nearby building or bridge (that will burn forever) and that will help you re-find the target. Staying alive A skill you should try to acquire is to recognise AA threats in your Mav TV screen. Look at outlines of threats like Shilka,Strela,Osa in the Encyclopedia. Put them in your own training mission and lock it up with both types of Mav. Learn to recognise the distinguishing features, eg Shilka - radar dish sticks up and is lighter colour, chassis looks lower and "fatter" than other vehicles. Now hide an AA threat in middle of a convoy. Lock a Mav on the front of the convoy, do a quick check down the convoy of each vehicles outline, count down till you find the AA threat (eg. 3rd vehicle) break off (cos' you're probably getting danger close! ) circle and reengage the threat. The other thing that some folks suffer from in Lockon missions is the "full speed ahead and kill 'em all" mentality. Make sure you read your mission briefing and only kill your assigned targets (and any immediate SAM/AAA threats). Often assigned targets are diamonded by the mission designer, but not always. If there are a2a threats, remember you are in an A-10. Act like a real A-10 pilot would - run away and hide. Likely there will be friendly fighters assigned to deal with the a2a threat, so let them. This may involve you applying some thought, deviating from your assigned course and speed, allowing the friendlies to get in there first and sanitize the area so you can then go to work. If you want to shoot down MiG's, choose an F-15 mission! Don't assume that the best way to use the A-10 is to always be flying at 20ft with your butt dragging on the ground. This does limit your exposure to threats but equally limits your ability to see the threats in time to react. Often it is better to be well above the threat of Short range SAM/AAA (10,000+ feet above them) until you have picked them off. Undefended target attack with bombs, then I'll fly a shallow dive attack, start at maybe 3,000ft, 300kts, I'll cut the throttle so I keep a constant speed in my shallow dive (that helps the aiming computer), make the attack, remembering to throttle up again on the egress. If I am attacking a missile vehicle (like an Osa for example) which has roughly the same range as my IR Maverick, I might try and attack from 15,000 feet or even higher. Reason - My Mav is going downhill, the SAM uphill, after I launch, I reverse course and get out of the SAM envelope, sometimes before he can even fire at me, but if he has, its easy to outrun. Shilka's too are no threat when I am high with Mavericks. You wouldn't do it in real life, but for a much bigger adrenalin rush try dive bombing these sorts of targets with dumb bombs from as high as you can fly. Automatic multiple bomb release or "ripple". Why do ground attack aircraft like the A-10 have an automatic system to drop a ripple of bombs, why not just let the pilot press the weapon release several times? To answer this question, you need to think about a real life target attack. A single dumb bomb dropped from an aircraft does not drop perfectly down onto the target every time. It may drift left or right of the track that the aircraft is flying and miss the target. If the bomb is dropped a little early or a little late then it will miss short or long. The likelyhood of missing short or long is more than missing left/right. Imagine an aircraft flying at 500 kts = 6078ft * 500 = 3039000 ft/hr. Divide by 60*60 gives ft/sec = approx 850. If the pilot initiates bomb release 0.5s early or late he will likely miss by over 400ft. So lets make our bomb "longer" by dropping a ripple of (eg) five bombs. If we know the lethal radius of the bomb blast is eg. 50ft, then if we drop them 100 feet apart, we have now a "longer bomb" with a lethal area of 100ft wide by 500ft long. If we aim to land the middle (3rd) bomb of the stick of 5 on the target, then we have 250ft of leeway short and long and still destroy the target. This deals effectively with the short / long problem, but we still might miss left / right. If we are attacking a small point target like a jeep, then nothing we can do, but if our target is of significant dimensions like a bridge, we can increase our hit chances. Suppose our bridge is 500 feet long and 50 feet wide. If we attack along the length of the bridge we might be lucky and all 5 bombs hit, or we might be unlucky and all miss left or right. If we attack at 90 degress to the bridge then our bomb to bomb gap is 100 ft and the bridge 50ft wide, 50/50 chance of a hit. If we attack at an angle of 30 degrees, the bridge "appears" to be 100ft wide and we are certain one bomb will hit provided we can put the ripple on target regarding short/long. Of course a real buzz is attacking a long truck convoy with a ripple of Mk-82's and getting your attack speed and ripple settings just right to get a hit with every bomb. The Mission Editor is your friend I advise folks to use the Mission Editor to make a few of your own "practice missions" and steadily build up your ground attack pilot skills rather than jumping straight into it. Getting constantly killed when a noob gets kinda old and off putting. In real life you would be given an approximate area in which the targets are located of a few square miles, with boundary lines to keep you away from other friendly forces (eg. keep West of the river, North of the railway, etc) so I usually set a waypoint near the general target area, eg about 5nm away and brief (myself) where the targets roughly are located. I suggest starting with labels on, get used to attacking stationary targets (eg. a BTR-70 or two, they'll shoot back and keep you interested). Then try moving targets on a road. Try attacks along the road from behind, from in front, then at 90 degrees to the road. Don't use Mk20 cluster weapons (too easy), get the feel for how much to aim ahead with guns,rockets,Mk82's. For fun, try a jeep going absolute full speed down a twisting road, not as easy as you think! Simulate special forces laser designator assistance. Next try "ground labels off" (press SHIFT-F9) but with a vehicle group designated as a target in the mission so you get the diamond marker on your HUD. Simulate FAC assistance. Next again "labels off", try a stationary vehicle group not set as a target in the mission for your plane. Instead have an AI A-10 with one pod only of LAU-61WP smoke rockets. Give it an attack waypoint with the group as its target, designate the attack as rockets (else it will destroy them itself with its gun). Now it will mark the target for you with smoke, you'll have about 5 mins to find the smoke. This simulates a FAC marking a target for you with WP smoke and calling you in by radio for the attack. The smoke doesn't have to be dead accurate, you could have it aimed at a co-ord rather than the group. If it is eg. 100m North-East of target, then you have more figuring out to do in your head to line up your attack. Next set a few vehicles going cross country (so they throw up some dust). Try and find them by looking for the dust. Next set up a few SAU's firing at some target. Make the group consist of different types of gun(so they fire at differing times) Try to find them by spotting the puffs of smoke as they fire. Experiment with dusk/dawn, they can be a bit easier to see then. You could add in a Smersh or a Grad if you want They make much more smoke but only fire for 40sec / 20sec respectively and have a reload time of 15 mins or so. You'll need to switch weapon labels off as well (SHIFT-F6) or you'll see where the rockets are being fired from. If that isn't hard enough, practise killing that one last truck with guns/rockets after you've taken damage and lost the HUD. Set 100% HUD failure. Try to guess a dive angle that looks about right, range that looks right and give it a go. Repeat all above in poor conditions eg. just before dawn / just after dusk, in a thunderstorm / snowstorm or at night with illumination flares, etc, etc.....

Unless you are flying a lot of anti-ship missions over water and need the water to look good or you want to take some beautiful screenshots, then set Water to LOW. The way Lockon is programmed is that the water runs under all the land. So even if you are flying over land and cannot see any water, if you have water at MEDIUM or HIGH etc then you still pay the FPS price for that water setting. Also set civilian traffic to OFF. It adds very few moving cars and trucks on the road that are in your sight range, yet it hits FPS since those cars and trucks are all over the map. Only real reason anyone has Civilian traffic ON is to see the moving trains - they can be fun to hunt down.

Nice finds mvsgas. Post them anywhere else but here (where we are sensible) and folks will be sure they're proof of aliens using the Earth as a doodle pad. 40.199041,-113.177082 Zoom way in to this - biggest cage fighting arena in the world?

JimMack is right - the American Hangar is brilliant! Worht a trip just for that, but Duxford has loads more too. Keep meaning to go up there again myself, never seem to find the time. It's been a few years.... As for other places - http://www.secretnuclearbunker.com/ This is about a 30-40 min drive south of Duxford. I've been around it, it was a pretty cool place to visit. Another place that is close (30 min drive) is the Centre for Computing history. Never yet been myself and I think you have to book ahead to visit it. http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/ About 40 miles away is Bletchley Park - you could go see an Enigma machine and learn aboutthe history of the WWII code breaking. http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/

Google maps tries to give you a pointer (the Red marker) to something it knows some details about. in the middle of nowhere in nevade, that is likely to be miles away, and in this case always seems to be Tonapah Test Range. The green marker points to the actual co-ords you give it. Yeah, that place is your basic conspiracy theory location - Groom Lake / Area Cinquante et Un / Crop Circle Central........call it what you will.

The one you quoted 37.403983,-116.23827 look like a target range. Might be A-10's, more likely something older, perhaps T-33's or similar. On one of other taxiways are a couple of A-4's? Hard to say, cant quite zoom in far enough. Lots of other interesting and odd looking stuff all around that area. 37.364671,-116.833638 - This seems to be a Soviet style airfield target too.

Pretty sure I recall reading on Forums years ago that vanilla Lockon only supported the 2 axes.

Um, those MiG's are actually Czech I think? from looking at the emblems on the tails. But yeah, LockonFiles is a great place to go for Mods. I guess I'm a little biased as I'm one of the Moderators over there. http://www.lockonfiles.com/ But also try JaboG32 (German site but much in English - has a super Lockon movie section) http://www.virtual-jabog32.de/index.php?section=downloads&lang=en As well as CombatAce http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?automodule=downloads&showcat=1

The big majority of folks flying online are using Flaming Cliffs patches to v1.12b so you may struggle to find v1.02 lockon rooms.

Mine Part 1 2:40 onwards. The bit with the subtitles - absolute comedy gold !! I show that (and Lockon's Bill et John) to my friends when I'm trying to explain machinima to them. They're not into computers, or gaming but they wet themselves laughing. It opens their eyes to the movie making power that todays games can put into the hands of amateurs.

http://www.ladders-direct.com/ Sorry, I couldn't resist........ :megalol:

ROFL. Does she have an unmarried sister (who looks like Annette Benning) for me?

Classic! Well up to the usual DPS comedy standards. Gave me a chuckle after a long day.