ASAP

Realistically there’s no way of assessing this was unsafe based on this video. The JTAC would have to get approval from the ground commander prior to the strike regardless of whether or not its danger close, multiole clearances we’re given, so he didn’t seem that concerned. The video doesn’t include any of the coordination that happens prior between the pilot and the JTAC, but You can see the pilot had the friendlies in a steerpoint and you can see in the HUD it’s more than 30 degrees off of his run in direction and they were some distance away. So he had situational awareness of the target and friendlies. Presumably there was a run in restriction passed along with the 9 line prior to the strike that we didn’t hear. Also the pilots and JTACs both know their strafe/ricochet fan, and risk estimate distances. And we don’t know where the friendlies were and what kind of cover they were taking. A-10 pilots are smart and their tactics are designed around doing stuff like this. I’d give them the benefit of the doubt. also a cardinal directions like “attack south to north” means their nose can be pointed anywhere between 325-045 degrees magnetic. So it’s not that hard to not point at or overfly friendlies. Sounds like the JTAC was giving less restrictive run in directions because he probably trusting the guy he was talking to was competent.

It’s the pod hitting the gimbal limit and unwinding. Does it automatically. That’s a real thing. In the video it never snaps back to being centered in the HUD. Wasn’t the pilot hitting boresight. He was also rolling in to make a mark with the HDC so there isn’t much of a chance he was also also messing with the TGP while doing that. Yup. Dip check. You pull the target and the steer container into the HUD to see where it is (this video predates HMCS). He had the friendly steerpoint selected so he could see where they are in relation to the target he was marking with his HDC.

You cannot in real life load stations 5,6,7 at the same time I’m pretty sure. It’s either 5,7 or 6 for this reason. The jet shouldn’t let you even load it in DSMS I believe. Also to echo Yurgon, no tanks in combat. Those tanks come with some ops limitations and also increase the general explodyness of the aircraft.

You can also press the mfcd buttons at the bottom of the screen. First press of the button under TAD selects the TAD. Second press makes it SOI. Same for the maverick and TGP

All that stuff is done before the pilot gets to the jet. The airplanes are typically refueled immediatley after they land and shutdown so water vapor can't condense in empty tanks. Weapons are loaded sometime prior. The pilot does not come out to the jet until maintenance calls ops and lets them know the jet is ready. Also their is an external battery switch that powers the canopy actuator and a couple of other systems. The ladder drops either way. Crewchiefs can lower it down slowly but its just a telescoping metal pipe. Pilots open it all the time from inside the cockpit if they are cross country and there is no A-10 crew chief to catch the jet. I've seen a pilot do a really awkward move where they left one of their feet hanging to catch the bottom rung of the ladder and raise it himself as he climbed up the jet. It was super awkward looking though, and i'm guessing its not normal. theres an external battery switch that powers the essential electric bus. The crew chief turns it on before the pilot gets to the jet.

Fantastic question, I don't have the slightest idea how the F-16 does it. Any Viper SMEs out there know anything about how it works in that jet? Is the SIM inaccurate or does the jet do some simple image processing to invert the video to black hot?

I’ve heard there’s also a cooling cycle where the gun rotates around and makes a pretty audible clunk every 30 seconds or so for a few minutes after the gun shoots. It would be a cool bit of realism.

The maverick is always showing WHOT. The boat switch and the crosshairs are telling the missile if it’s looking for a hot object in a cold back ground (white crosshairs) or a cold object on a hot background (dark crosshairs)

Its a more accurate way for aircraft to match up their engines power output. ITT is a better comparison of the amount of thrust the engine is producing. No two engines are tuned exactly the same so two engines at 98% RPM could be producing a slightly different amount of thrust. Two aircraft at 750 ITT will be producing a very similar amount of thrust. Generally engine cruise settings are set as a function of fuel flow not ITT. By setting a fuel flow every aircraft is burning gas at the same rate so its easy math for everyone involved and someone isn't bingoing out earlier than everyone else. ITT is used for something like an instrument trail departure where it's critical that aircraft keep consistent distance behind eachother as they are flying instrument procedures. Like Ready said, if everyone climbs at a set airspeed and ITT you cannot possibly catch up to the guy in front of you if you are flying the same ground track you should be a pretty much set distance and altitude behind the guy in front of you. Also "best" cruise airspeed is a bit subjective. If a pilot really wants to gnats ass the cruise setting they'd want to use long range cruise in most cases, unless fuel or time they can stay airborne is an overriding factor. Long range cruise is faster and burns more gas than the max range cruise indicated on your AOA guage. but it gets you to your destination a lot faster for reasonably small increase in fuel consumption. That is calculated with a lot of variables. Weight, altitude, air temperature, etc... and it's something you have to mission plan prior or look up through a spaghetti chart in the dash-1, which means fighter pilots are probably going to resort to a rule of thumb. From everything I've read, at higher altitudes (>20K) the fuel flow setting for long range cruise is pretty close to where max power is, so if the wingman is able to hang on, I'd just fly at max power.

Yeah there is a limit to how much negative G flight the airplane can tolerate even with the fuel pumps My understanding is the radio call is basically for the pilots to confirm that the fuel system is function and feeding properly. Around 7 k pounds is when you should have both tanks dry. If one tank still has gas at that point it indicates you could have trapped fuel or a fuel pump issue that requires the pilots attention. They say it over the radio so the pilots can back each other up and provide mutual support.

In the real jet pac-1 engages as long as you are holding the trigger in the first detent and goes to pac-2 when you pull the trigger. I’ve only ever played DCS with the warthog HOTAS so I’m not sure about your pac question. I’d guess you have to hold it. don’t trim while you are shooting As far as the mechanics of shooting, try this… use the CCIP gun cross if you are at 5k and have hmcs fly at a 45-60 degree angle off of the the target and watch the target in your hmcs monocle. If you fly straight and level and watch the target through your hmcs you should see it start to slowly fall down the hmcs pitch ladders. As soon as the target is approaching 20 degrees nose low push the throttles to max roll to point the top of your head at the target and start a steady tone pull toward the target. As the target enters your HUD roll out and put the gun cross right below the target. As you get closer the cross will slowly move up to the target. When the cross is on the target engage pac-1. If you like your aim point squeeze the trigger and hold it for as long as it takes you to say “die-rat-bastard-die” if you did it right the tank should die. I have more success if I wait til I’m around a mile ish to shoot. Why 20 degrees? I think it’s an easy angle to shoot and more importantly It gives you something to make your guns passes more mechanical and repeatable which is good while you’re learning. You can try and make your gun roll ins look the same if you have some idea of what parameters you want to use. That way after every pass you can think of what you did and how to fix it. And then put yourself in the same position you were last time to try and improve. Also if 20 degrees at 5k has you making a very rushed close in shot then bump up your altitude by 1000k and try again

The left and right fuel systems are isolated from each other. To start the right engine you need the boost pumps running other wise there is simply no gas going to the engine. I know the wings feed first but I don’t know if they have to be on to start. I’d suspect the main tank would suffice, but you’d get a nasty fuel imbalance if you left the right wing tank off. the reason you don’t need the left main boost pump on to start the left engine is because there is a backup DC fuel pump in the left system that is always on and you don’t have a switch for in the cockpit.

Those airplanes aren’t going to be rolling inverted or experiencing high positive/negative g loads, and probably don’t have jet engines. The A-10 engines can run by suction feeding but they are likely to flame out with aggressive maneuvers without positive fuel pressure being continuously provided. the A-10 fuel system is automated to make pilot workload easier. I’m sure the wing tank pumps probably do shutoff on their own when the tanks run dry or fall below a certain level, but the pilot doesn’t do it.

well yes, but... There’s approach speed and then theirs touchdown speed. Most people interpret that wrong from what I’ve seen. The A-10 is not flown by AOA like swept wing fighters. What the AOA indexer is showing you is your touchdown speed. Which is about 10 knots slower than your final approach speed. You don’t get that slow until you start your transition to land. From a the dash one I found on the internet somewhere it says “fly the approach at on speed AOA or calculated landing speed, whichever is higher” unless you are landing immediately after takeoff with a full load of weapons, the AOA will get you slower than you should be. Also if you’re doing that you are probably experiencing an emergency and would fly at single engine approach speeds which are much higher anyway. I had the opportunity to ask an A-10 pilot I know when and how he uses the AOA indexer. His answer was “we don’t”

What are you struggling with with the gun? Send a video maybe you can get some pointers.

If your high the ideal fuel flow is whatever you get at max. Once your up at 20k or above the most you’ll get is like 1500 a side anyway. Down lower in the teens 1800-2000 on each engine works well. Wing and main tanks boost pumps stay on all the time. Unless you have an emergency or a big fuel imbalance. You shouldn’t turn off the wing tanks even when it’s empty. for external tanks: leave them off on the ground. Turn them on at altitude. Shut them off when they are empty. As far as I’m aware the engines take fuel from the internal tanks no matter what. The jet just transfers fuel from the externals into internal tanks every so often to top them off.

From all the reading I’ve done and guys I’ve talked to the speeds an A-10 pilot cares about are: Rotate around: 145 knots. (That’s Single engine rate of climb speed or SERC) best climb: 160 gear and flap limit speed: 200 knots cruise: generally 250 is usually good but at higher altitudes it’s whatever you can get (usually with throttles in max, yes even with a wingman. Fighter pilots are smart and a wingman can figure it out or communicate with lead if they can’t and then he’ll crack the throttles back a bit) Vne: 450 knots or Mach 0.75 (whichever is lower) approach speed: 130 + 2x gas in thousands of pounds (so if I have 3,500 lbs of gas indicated I’d round up to 4 and fly final at 138) final turn airspeed: 145 + 2x gas in thousands of pounds

a picture is worth a thousand words... The simple answer to the original question is that the elevation of your current waypoint (Which is refered to a "Steerpoint") is on the steer info page next to EL (see the red box below). Here it says 33 because Steerpoint 1 is at 33 feet MSL (probably at Batumi). Get to steer info page by pressing Function 0 on the UFC or by rotating the rotary switch to Steer

That wouldn’t impact any of this stuff. Generally though the alignment is completed before the CICU/MFCDs gets turned on and before you do a LOAD ALL from your DTC. The bomb actually starts doing its BITs as soon as the station it’s mounted on powers on

I have a sneaking suspicion the arc-210 training is going to be a video by wags

That’s great. bingo means you have just enough gas to make it home +gas for another 20 minutes of flying. So the dumb AI hadn’t run out of gas either. If he was bingo he should just go home and land.

That is where you’d find it. Or on the TAD page if you hook the steerpoint. Or in DSMS if you have STRPT SPI. But It sounds like your jet thinks everything is at 33. Try re entering the coordinates in the waypoint page. It should force the jet to lookup the the elevation from the DTED database. Or when you use your laser to create a mark point and dump that in a steerpoint it should have an actual elevation. If that doesn’t work there may be a bug… or you are flying somewhere really flat and the elevation is 33 feet MSL.

Interesting. Did your FOM change from D5/B1 at any point while doing that test and did it correlate to the GBUs status change

I know not all the fleet has dual ARC-210. Pretty sure there is no A-10 with four radios (I’m not counting the LARS system). My understanding is it’s either the ARC-210 in the front and the old FM in the aft radio or front and aft are both ARC-210. If you have dual ARC-210s and the old FM radio how does one control all of them?

Is there any plans to program it so we can use RT2 as the aft radio using the same ARC-210 control head (like at least some of the real jets). Is there any plan to add the second ARC-210, RT2 (obviously using the one control head for both of them, to replace the aft radio like the real world jets?