ASAP

There's a couple of issues with what you said. I'll step through them, hopefully it will help. The maverick is a very finicky weapon and the tutorials do an abysmal job of explaining how to use them... First issue. TMS forward short is not "Locking your TGP" onto anything. the TGP does not actually "Lock on" to anything. when you slew the TGP around, its using a lot of internal logic to stabilize and track the scene that it has in its field of view. It's doing that by freezing the scene in place and looking for points of contrast to enable that. The TGP doesn't know or care that there is a tank or a building under the crosshairs, it cares that there is a contrasting image that it can hold stable in its field of view. In point mode it is essentially doing the same thing, it looks for the sharp outline of a vehicle and it slews the crosshairs to keep it in the center of the screen. Also if you are hitting a stationary target, you should stay in area track, because it's a more accurate tracking method than a point track on a stationary target. Unless you are slaved to a SPI (more on that in a sec) the pod will easily wander off on thin wispy clouds, explosions, contrails, etc... anything that interferes with the pods ability to keep stable on that contrasting scene that it's got a track on. When the pod is slaved to a SPI the the pod uses it's INS to point where it believes the coordinates/elevation of the SPI are. the TGP uses it's own INS to do that, but it is getting told where is by the EGI in the jet. When you TMS FORWARD LONG, you are not getting a lock, or in any way capturing any info about the target to pass to other weapons. All you are doing is telling the jet that its new point of interest is at the coordinates and elevation of where the target pod is looking RIGHT NOW. so if you TMS FORWARD LONG on a tank, and then slew your targeting pod off the tank to something else, your jet doesn't know about or care about that tank. Its only looking at the 3d position of where your TGP (thinks) its looking. This is very often confused and I'm sure there will be a ton of comments telling me I'm wrong because the training does a terrible job of conveying this concept. That's fine and a good way to get the weapon looking in the area, nothing wrong there at all. I prefer to fly the reticle in the HUD to the target. From all the real world A-10 pilots I've talked to that's the norm, but that's technique only. One of the big benefits of doing that is that you have matched up where the weapon is pointed with an outside reference as opposed to just slaving all to SPI (What if you screwed up the HOTAS and your SPI isn't where the target is?) It's a more deliberate and safer way to verify you are pointing your weapon at your intended target. (Off my soap box, like I said, that all technique) Force correlate is not the normal mode of operation and under most circumstances it's probably the worst way to use the weapon. Force correlate is only used if you are trying to hit a specific part of a large target (that has to have good contrast kinda like the TGP issue above). If you need to hit a specific span of a bridge, or put a maverick through a specific window, maybe its the way to go, otherwise don't use it. What you should use for any tactical CAS target like a tank, APC, vehicle is leave the boat switch either full forward, or full aft. The Maverick video is always going to be white hot for an IR mav or CCD. If your target is light compared to the background, use the boat switch aft to make the crosshairs white, if the target is dark, use boatswitch forward to make the crosshairs dark to match your target. This is the root cause of your problem. You are using ground stabilize and equating that in your mind with a lock. You are getting the no lock launch inhibit because you are telling it specifically not to lock onto anything and essentially do something similar to an AREA TRACK in the TGP. the missile doesn't look at whats at the center of the crosshairs, it just looks at the entire field of view and tries to stabilize itself on the scene. You have to do something else to actually get the missile to lock onto your intended target. This is where most people get lost actually. Slaving all to SPI got your maverick pretty close to your TGP SPI (and hopefully the intended target) but now you have to actually look at your maverick video, and slew the crosshairs onto your target to get a good lock on the target. The easiest way to do that is to use DMS UP and HOLD to space stabilize the missile so you can slew the missile seeker onto the target. You also should be in narrow field of view to get a good lock. To actually get a lock all you need to do is slew the crosshairs to the target, and release the DMS UP and HOLD. If you get a good lock the crosshairs will "bound" on the target and they will snap in and be stable on the target. This is how you know you have a good lock. The other technique people use in DCS, that probably wouldn't reliably work in real life is to slave all to SPI and then TMS UP SHORT to just tell the maverick to lock onto whatever is in the center of the crosshairs. That MIGHT lock onto the intended target, it might lock onto something else like the targets shadow, or a tactical sized bush. In DCS it usually works ok, but i've seen it fail a lot too. Lastly.... lets look at the photo you posted I just want to point out a couple things. 1) You are in wide field of view, so you wont be able to really see how good a lock you have. In training the AF would call that an unassessable shot. and it might guide, it might also go stupid. 2) I can't tell if you're trying to target the airplane in the center of the crosshairs or the building... and neither can the maverick. The dark crosshairs means the maverick will attempt to lock onto the dark parts of that building though. 3) The maverick isn't bounded on anything. The crosshairs have not moved and are not actually tracking anything, which is why you are getting the launch inhibit. Ok, that's the best maverick academics I can give. I hope that helps. go play around with it and let me know if your results improve. cheers mate.

Sorry, I retract my snarky movie quotes then. I honestly couldn't tell because the last paragraph came across as super sarcastic and I couldn't tell if you were joking. The A-10's instruments are from the original A-10A, which was not actually built with an ILS because they never planned on it flying high enough to be able to use one, and if they really needed it they would just do a PAR approach. In other words, the jet isn't smart enough to know what you want to do. There's a limited number of ILS frequencies available and they are used by lots of different airports so the jet has no way knowing what airport you want to land at and what runway you are trying to fly to. TECHNICALLY, it does not matter what you have spun in on the needle, you will get accurate indications showing you left or right of course no matter what. BUT if the needle is pointing in some random direction and not aligned with the runway it is much more difficult for the pilot to interpret, the procedure is to spin in the inbound course onto the HSI. Generally speaking, you would never turn your TACAN off when you turn the ILS on. Even if you are using the paired DME on the ILS, you'd have the paired tacan channel tuned and you are still using the TACAN DME. In real life you have to fly a published approach which would show you exactly what to use. Just because the TACAN is not on the airfield doesn't mean you can't use it for an approach. There are plenty of approaches where a TACAN is located miles from the base and you still use a crossing radial or DME to identify the FAF. Or there's a paired DME with ILS you could use that. Or you can use GPS substitution for TACAN DME (DME only, not radial information). The real problem with a lot of the DCS instrument approaches is that there are not adequate published approaches to use. Nellis on the other hand can be flown exactly the way it is meant to be flown in real life per the published Hi-ILS 21L. It is simulated perfectly fine.

Trolling right? I'm torn about which movie quote fits best here.... "Amazing, not one word of that was correct." -Luke Skwalker or "Nowhere in your incoherent rambeling mess, did you come even close to a correct answer. I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul." -that guy from Billy Madison If you're not trolling, there's a lot to unpack there. Suffice to say that the instruments work fine, they are correctly simulated, and whatever issue you are having is most likely user error, or a lack of knowledge about instrument procedures. Also, looking back through the rest of this thread and holy cow people like to overcomplicate everything... Read the ILS approach plate and do what it says. stop trying to reinvent the approach. The approach says the inbound course is 209 (which you should spin into the HSI), and the DME is based off the TACAN of 12X. Which you should also read off the HSI...

If there's one feature the A-10 does not lack, its volume knobs. Every system gets its own volume knob and they are so well scattered around the jet.

there should be. menu button on the right, then somewhere in the menu pages there should be a volume I think

It is not

That is not accurate. The EPLRS radio doesn't care that it is on the ground and as soon as it is initialized it will try and time into the network. As long as there is line of sight to another SADL player it should work. If pilots don't see their other flight members on SADL prior to taxiing out of the chocks they call maintenance to come and fix the equipment. Obviously SADL is more complex than the game and there are valid reasons why it might not work until after takeoff, but it is by no means the norm. You should have SADL in chocks while taxiing around.

check the position of the motor switches, if you have a key binding that has it in the motor position the light would stay on. IRL that would be an emergency procedure and you'd have to shut the APU off followed by the engines.

Lets get nukes too!

It very likely isn't modeled making the whole thing academic. I'd suggest going to the extremes if you really want to test it out. Try dropping it at 3,000 feet and 23,000 feet and see if there's a difference. I'm out of town and not able to test it myself. I am curious what the game does though. If I had to guess Id think the difference would be more pronounced at lower altitudes, but that's just my hypothesis.

That was the explanation I got from a pilot. It's very possible DCS doesn't care and doesn't accurately simulate the difference. Out of curiosity what was your altitude and airspeed for each drop? It's possible that the ORP and BAL solution are almost identical depending on parameters.

You're right, I miss ID'd the button. I'm not at my home computer so I couldn't look it up. I believe you're right and it's the SOLN option that should be set to ballistic (which is basically referring to the release point). You are either telling the jet to drop the bomb at a point where even if the bomb never finds the laser it will still impact close to the target (drop the bomb on a BALlistic trajectory, just like when you drop a mark 82 CCRP), or you are telling the jet to release the bomb at the OPTimum spot to grant the highest probability of laser acquisition (OPT) which means it's trying to give the bomb a better look angle when it releases. This means the bomb (Which is already prone to falling short due to excessive energy bleed) is dropping further out. Since it's not dropped ballistically, if it doesn't find your laser for whatever reason, Newton is taking the bomb to the ground somewhere short of your target. when it does find the energy, it has a lot more work to do to make it to the target. In either circumstance, the bomb is still going to fall away from the pylon, the all the lanyards are still going to pull the pins on the CCG and the tail fins, and the bomb is still going to look for the reflected energy of the properly coded laser and it's going to do its bang-bang guidance to maneuver towards it. the SOLN setting doesn't affect what the bomb does after it leaves the jet AT ALL. It only effects where the jet wants to release the weapon. TLDR: OPT gives you an insignificantly better chance for the bomb to acquire the laser at the expense of a MUCH higher risk of missing the target. Lasing the bomb from the time you pickle all the way through impact makes the chance of it not seeing the laser pretty much null.

This tends to get way overcomplicated because people like to use auto-lase and misinterpret a lot of different sources about how long you should actually lase, and they make things harder than it should be. There is no need to delay lase the bomb. That only makes since if you are at 30,000 feet doing .95 mach. The GBU-12 profile (in the profile page, not the M/profile) should be changed to the following: - CCRP - Auto-lase: OFF - Release point: BAL To drop the bomb do the following. 1. select the GBU-12 profile, there are three ways to do it, none of them involve selecting the station in DSMS 2. Have your SPI on the target, doesn't matter how you do that. I prefer strpt or mark, TGP SPI is the easiest to screw up because most DCS players don't understand what TGP SPI actually means 3. Use HUD symbology to fly the jet to your release point 4. Turn the laser on 5. pickle at the release point 6. Keep the TGP on the desired impact point. 6. bomb impacts target 7. turn off your laser. You were most likely getting CCRP invalid because your SPI was something bogus or you had your profile set to something the bomb wasn't going to be able to do based on aircraft parameters and where your SPI was.

That's just because of wind. If it is bad enough that it is impacting your ability to employ weapons then you need to change up your run in heading to be more into or out of the wind. Otherwise for navigation, line up the arrow at the bottom of the hading tape with the captains bar for a wind corrected heading to your next waypoint.

I never noticed that before. Probably only heard from outside the jet. I bet all the pilot is hearing is the chopped tone when he's reefing back on the stick like that.

The TGP gets it's location from the EGI. if the GPS portion fails the TGP will still be usable but will get less accurate as the INS drifts and the delta between where the targeting pod actually is, and where it thinks it is gets worse. If the INS is also out to lunch then the targeting pod will no have reference whatsoever. I doubt you'd even be able to slave the pod to anything, but I'd bet a lot of money that the one place it wont point to and stay stabilized on is the intended target/steerpoint/SPI.

The way I understand it DMS Right short SHOULD cycle between different centering options for that map (center SPI, center strpt, center TN, etc...) and then you'd hold DMS Aft Long to activate that center option. DMS left short should be a way to quickly get back to center own. I think in the real jet from what I've seen it's actually DMS Right Long that switches between center and depressed mode... I've always heard that the TAD is one of the worst simulated parts of the A-10C in its current state, and there's a lot of missing functionality and the HOTAS is not right.

If i had to guess they copied the table from the something they got from the actual aircraft, and then failed to simulate the TAD correctly.

Yes but there's more than that even... There are a couple of functions being shown on this table that are not simulated with the HMCS. TMS FWD SHORT is used in the initial boresight. Everything referencing the "Occl Pt" is referring to a different setting. It's short for occlusion pattern. There are multiple default occlusion patterns (For instance: can't see the monocle just when it's pointed at the HUD, can't see the monocle when it's looking inside the aircraft). You can also build a custom occlusion pattern using the HMCS MFCD page (accessed through the STAT page) and the TMS commands shown there. So basically if I wanted my HMCS to not display when I'm looking at the front panel, but I DO want it to display still when I'm looking through the side panels, down at my crotch, and through the HUD, you could built an occlusion pattern for that. The HMCS come with a TON of options in real life and pilots have a lot of control over what you can/can't see in the monocle and how it displays, to include having some stuff always display even in an occlusion zone. It also comes with multiple profiles that can change in flight. so you can have one set of options for medium altitude stuff, and then when you drop into the low altitude environment you can switch profiles to something more suited for that. there's multiple pages of options accessed through the "Status" page of the MCFD. Like most aspects of the jet, there is an overwhelming level of customize-ability. Also like most things, the entire A-10 community has a set of standards for how they use it. That means that by default all the options are set one way, generally those standards are decided by the weapons officers based on tested/proven techniques and best practices. Pilots can change those options to whatever works better for them, but the standard setup is sort of a one-size-fits-the-99%. So you can think of what we have in DCS as the "standard" setup which works pretty well.

China hat aft short should re-cage the missile to it's boresight. If it's already caged it will step to the next missile (if there is another one available).

Hugely depends on the mission and the AO. but super generic... Front - Strike freq for talking to your JTAC Mid - interflight to talk to your wingman Aft - Air coord freq or "common" with other air players, or for monitoring the AWACS/CRC. Other options... Front - Strike Mid - Air Coord, AWACS/CRC AFT - Interflight Typically you'd use the front radio to talk to ground/tower/departure/approach as well. You'd do the majority of your jumping around between frequencies on the front radio. You'd pretty much leave your inteflight set the whole time, and the aft radio you swap as needed.

I BELIEVE, and can totally be wrong, but I think the MWS window on the CMSC says either INH, MAN, or HOT with a small 's' next to it when the CMSP rotary in in standbye. That way you can hit the button to set it to the one you want it to be when you take it out of standbye (and the 's' goes away).

There aren't any tricks for this because the HUD is just not intended for this kind of target. For something this size and incapable of maneuvering you should just get behind it and use the AMIL to blast it. There's no reason you can't easily be within the 0-1 aspect for an AMIL shot. It's such a big target that it should be fairly simple to shoot it while it's max performing it's turn at 1.3 Gs and 25 degrees of bank. Also, the funnel is meant for a shot from 1-6 AA. In this screenshot here you're more like a 8-8 aspect aspect and you should actually be using the MRGS. Additionally, unless you are flying around over their home base it's unlikely to every see a bomber like that at your altitude in an A-10. The funnel is meant specifically for fighter or helo type aircraft.

Of all the systems on the jet this one has the lowest fidelity of how it's actually modeled. None of the CMSP or CMSC is actually accurately simulated, and there are a ton of differences between the real system and the way it's modeled in DCS.

The ACES II seat is also in the A-10 which has the same sheep skin seat. When you are sitting in a single seat fighter for 8+ hours during a combat sortie it really starts to matter what you are sitting on. I've also heard one of the reasons is because if they had a big cushy foam pad, the foam would compress during the ejection and you'd effectively be getting hit from below by the seat which could cause injuries.