effte

1) Mode 3 code for emergency is 7700. 2) There's a dial on the UHF labelled MNL/PRESET/GRD. The last setting puts you on guard, 243.00 MHz. Don't know if the unit can be configured to use a different guard frequency, but I would expect so. Not fun to announce that you are going down on one of the most well known and listened to frequencies in the world. Escape and evasion is tricky as it is...

Huh? :blink: <--- Scandinavian ;)

All right, I'll put "Ignore the Scot" in the ROE... :D

SADL, even when working, will not indicate friendly forces on the ground. Only friendly vehicles. Quite a significant difference, at least to those wearing (out) the boots. :)

Also pg. 608, abnormal checklists. "Hung IAM Station". This "it's a bug, not a feature" thing is reaching far and wide it seems! ;)

Well, as much as I'm against unfair fights, I'll go into this one three on one. Me, pg. 291 of the manual and the eternal souls of the crew of the SA-9 in the provided track against Viper. Hmm... that's more than three. Oh well. ;) Follow the procedure and hung JDAMs do reset now. Wouldn't have made any sense otherwise. No chance in hell a weapon with that price tag would be accepted if your thumb slipping off the pickle button at an unfortunate moment would mean a permanently hung store and possibly scratched mission. I also invite everyone to study my new, brilliant egress technique. If you leave your speedbrakes out, you fool the enemy into thinking that you are not egressing at all. Thus they save ammunition for a second go, at which time you flip them the universal sign of peace and understanding and head off for home. (Or: How hotdogging and not sticking to procedures will bite you. Let the mockery commence. :D) JDAMReset.trk

Good initiative. Not quite there yet though. ;) 42 60' 07.8" doesn't fly either. You get to 42 60' 59.9999...", then it switches over to 43 00' 00".

And then cycle power to the pylon from the STAT page.

Have you had a look at pg 495 of the manual? Visual approaches are the norm. All aids on top of that are bonuses. I think you are going about it exactly the right way. Go see what the manual says and then get back and ask questions. It's a subject which can't really be said to be fully covered in three pages... :) Cheers, Fred

Where there's an SA-11, there's bound to be MANPADS aplenty out in the harsh real world. :)

Yes, it would. However, 20.5/60 gives .3417 rather than .3146 as written. Rounding correct, typo in the unrounded figure. That one is wrong as well. E042 61' 07.8" is a bogus coordinate, as there are only 60 arc minutes in a degree. You can never have 61'. Even if it was a valid coordinate, it'd be calculated to E042 61.130 and entered as 04261130. You can't zero pad the minutes. If more figures are required by the CDU, you'd zero pad at the end if anything. You see in the example that it ends up all wrong, with 6' instead of 61' (SIC!). I assume the CDU was reluctant to swallow 61 minutes of arc... :) If we instead assume the valid coordinate E043 01' 07.8", it translates to E043 01.130. Try entering that one. I'll try to check how it works later tonight. Basic formula is valid though: DD MM SS.ssss => DD MM.(SS.sss/60) Edit: jeffyd, that's the one discussed above. You might want to clean up the calcs?

That's what you use CBUs for. Nothing left standing in a 100 m radius! :thumbup: Or... wait... did you mean in the navigation system? ;)

An arc minute is one 60th of a degree. An arc second is one 60th of an arc minute, or one 3600th of a degree. To convert DD MM SS.ssss into decimal degrees you use DD + MM/60 + SS.ssss/3600

The command steering crosspointer bars are not required. In fact, I'd suggest leaving them off until comfortable flying the raw GP/LOC data on the ADI and HSI. Search the forum for command steering and explanations should be found.

While it is not a procedure which would be considered safe to use in civil aviation, you can create a waypoint at the airfield, make it a 3D waypoint and set a fixed angle vertical path to the waypoint. Pg 223 in the manual. Click twice on the LSK when entering the vertical angle to enter a negative angle. Be sure to know the obstacle situation along your intended direction of approach before having a go. Edit: Real A-10 pilots will of course simply let down over the sea and then fly under the weather all the way to landing. As an instructor I once had said, it's still VMC if one part of the aircraft is not in the clouds... and the technicians will love the break in the daily routine when assigned to getting the grass out of the barrels of the GAU-8! ;)

If you do not have target information, you obviously cannot include it as a waypoint. Good to have that clearly stated, in case people were wondering. ;) I think mission designers need to think more mission planning and less flight planning. In fact, I'd like to see the flight plans omitted entirely. Half the job is planning, so to get a preplanned mission ready for execution is really playing in easy mode... as I said, ditch the FP and fly using mission WPs.

The point is that you need to go heads down to the TAD, then to the steer point dial, then back to TGP imagery. Lots of switch flipping and cognitive ability spent - the scarcest resource in any single-pilot jet. Of course. And you should have the best support available from your systems to help you perform the planned egress safely. Without having to go into switch-flicking mode as you change from attack to egress. When your egress is in dark and/or crud weather, among mountain peaks, no-fly zones and enemy SAM zones with unknown, you're going to be very interested in how much off course you drifted as you turned off the target. Having all those fancy systems already configured to tell you would indeed be nice. Again, there are three key points which I would like to reiterate: Pilot workload, pilot workload and finally pilot workload. ;) Cheers, Fred

Known bug, now with a solution/workaround which works for some.

I have not extensively messed with the in-game systems, but I have messed with human factors in aviation. Hence, the following is more philosophical/theoretical in nature. Aaaah, but of course! All weapons which require the pilot to acquire the target area on the ground with the sensors, while flying in over enemy territory where he should be able to keep his head outside of the cockpit looking for threats (can you say "SAM launch"?). Yes, you would definitely want to give the pilot the possibility to have the sensors point directly at the target area when employing those, rather than require him to be messing about with creating mark points from waypoints and going heads down to switch between flight plan points and mark points on the CDU. You really wouldn't want the pilot to have to remember to go from mark point mode back to flight plan mode in order to find the egress route after releasing either. At that point, the focus should again be on the outside world rather than systems management. Brilliant case for keeping the waypoint elevations at target elevation, and the assigned/planned altitudes on the kneepad! ;) Your flight plan is built from separate waypoints in the database, which may or may not be created for the purpose of being used for a flight plan. Considering the nature of the missions, these waypoints would typically be recognizable ground features. That way, you can reduce pilot workload when WX conditions allow for navigation by pilotage, you can verify the performance of the nav system and you will be able to use them even if the navigation telly in the cockpit decides to switch over to a documentary on the effects of 23 mm rounds passing through avionics bays. Such waypoints would obviously have an elevation at ground level, as they will be used for different flight plans with different altitudes. Enable the pilot to do just that by giving him fingertip access to all available intel and full use of his sensor suite without looking away from a hostile outside world to mess with the systems. As we have no automated VNAV, the gain from having flight plan elevation set on all waypoints is small. Besides, chances are you will either be flying altitude blocks and modifying your altitudes yourself as you see fit, or be given new altitudes by your controllers. In both cases, your carefully preselected elevations will be moot, and you'd probably never bother to enter the new data in the CDU. Jot it down on the kneepad, fly it, use the cognitive ability for something more useful. You are single-pilot at 300 KIAS in a warzone - boredom should not be an issue. Besides, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think the waypoint elevations are all GPS altitude. Hence they will usually not match the actual altitudes flown, as they do not correct for pressure and temperature. What it comes down to is that we have two different kinds of waypoints (if not more), with two radically different uses. Flight plan waypoints, which are created with the sole intent of being used in flight plans, and mission waypoints, which contain data pertinent to the mission at hand. One should contain planned altitudes/levels. The other should do the best possible job of getting the pilot's sensors onto the target area. We should choose wisely, always keeping in mind that the penultimate purpose is to reduce pilot workload. In my mind, flight plan elevation may be a nice crutch for cross country flying but not for combat sorties. For the latter, I'd probably ditch the FP altogether and stick with mission waypoints. That way, you can even have two waypoints at the same spot if you desire - one at planned elevation and one at target elevation.

Of course the flight plan waypoints should be set to the appropriate altitudes. For a ground pounder, this obviously means that waypoints designating suspected or confirmed target areas will be at the altitude of the targets. Little use to fly past at FL095... Just my €0.16.

Are you out of your mind?! I have found cell phone recordings of tow bars clanging on Youtube, and they sound nothing like it. There'll be a mod once it goes final, I'm sure. ;)

Looks better and certainly feels smoother, although I can't quite put my finger on how and why. It seems they upped the damage modelling, or I was just lucky... or unlucky, depending on perspective. Got my #1 shot up (along with a lot of avionics) and nursed the bird home to Batumi with staggered throttles to keep the L/H engine temp down and slightly fluctuating oil pressure. Never saw the engine get hot before, without it catching on fire entirely - in DCS or any other sim. Stands to good reason though, with a bunch of holes through the casing. Should be accompanied by a fire warning as well, most likely, but hey - can't get it all. Not until next week, that is. ;) Now to figure out where I screwed up my control configuration, as I couldn't get my ordnance off the rails.

Jeaaaaalooooouuuus! :D

Terrain under the approach, RF emissions... radalt isn't the end-all, be-all.

You get an altimeter setting when the pressure changes, when handed over to a new controller with another pressure and when cleared down from the levels (even if you can apparently waive it in the US by acknowledging ATIS). About GA and levels... I've been cleared destination, "FL70 or below", plodding along in a puny little C172... with an hour and a half to go. Densely populated area with loads of traffic it wasn't. :D