Coole28

Isn’t the Jf-17 cleared to use the PL-10E? Besides, its not like you need a HOBS missile to get functionality out of an HMD. Look at the A-10 for example.

PW-229 (I believe, could be wrong) and AN/APG-70.

Good lord, if this procedure is the accurate to the real plane, somebody needs to have a chat with Lockheed's software engineers about user friendliness.

In SP mode you can actually tell the HARM which radar source to track. First step is to put EW information on the HUD (On the EW page, click the button next to “HUD”). You should see all of your RWR contacts on your HUD now. Then, when you have the HARM selected and in SP mode, one of the ground radar sources on your HUD will have a box around it. That is the radar source your HARM will track when fired. Pressing the “RAID/FLIR FOV” key binding will cycle your target amongst the viable sources (it will only target ground/sea based radar emitters). You don’t need to lock the target like in TOO mode; whatever contact is boxed will be what the HARM tracks. With practice, you can pickle off all your HARMs against different targets in a matter of seconds using SP mode. You might want to watch a video guide if my explanation isn’t sufficient. Look up on youtube “DCS F-18 HARM SP mode”, I believe Grim Reapers has a pretty good tutorial on it.

Yep, flying low and fast is an infallible technique as far as DCS is concerned. You’ll generally be immune to any surprise hidden air defenses on the way (i.e. manpads and other IR SAMs) if you fly low enough at full mil power. Leap up at ~<10 nm from target, lock up with HARM, fire, turn out and dive back down to break any potential locks. At that range, nothing can shoot down your HARM so you are almost guaranteed a kill. If I’m planning on cleaning up the whole site, or if the server I’m on has the IAD script that causes the SAM to shut down after launch, i’ll use the HARMs to take out any SA-19 or SA-15s that may be guarding the site, and my other munitions for the main SAM radar and the other units. If i’m just looking to neutralize the threat and there is no IAD script running, i’ll use the HARMs to engage the main SAM itself. I’m assuming you meant “what harm MODE” in your question, not “MODEL”, as we only have the C model in DCS. In this technique I’ll generally use SP mode for the HARMs, making sure to set the EW page so that RWR contacts show up on the HUD to ensure I’ve got the right target locked. TOO mode works as well, but it takes a bit longer for the HARM to find targets, which is inherently risky for this pop up technique. PB doesn’t work for this technique since you are so close to the target. It’s also worth noting I only use this technique against SA-10s, SA-5s, and Patriot sites. Anything else you can PB with nothing but a tpod and your SA page, don’t even need to know the exact location of the site.

As Digitalvole said earlier, nap of the earth flying is often your best bet against SA-5s and SA-10s (as far as solo player DCS is concerned). SA-5s will shoot you well outside of your HARM launch range regardless of ECM, and SA-10s will just swat your HARMs out of the sky. Both of these sites also tend to have SHORAD defenses that will take out HARMs that have slowed down enough (i.e. long range shots). Below ~150 feet only SHORAD systems like an SA-15 or SA-19 can shoot at you, allowing you to get nice and close. I’ll usual take a mixed loadout of HARMs and IR Mavericks/JSOWs. At close range, HARMs go too fast to be shot down, which I use to my advantage to take out any SA-15/19s defending the site. Then switch to tpod+Maverick or JSOW to find and take out the track radar. If I have difficulty finding the site, I’ll pop up and fly perpendicular to where the RWR is telling me the SAM site is and taunt the site to launch at me. I’ll quickly set the SPI where I see the missile launch from with the JHMCS and dive back below 150 ft to break the lock. I know a lot of people prefer to use JDAM lofting with this technique, but I personally find JDAMs to be too unreliable in DCS world. Their margin of error is suspiciously high in game, and until splash damage is properly modeled there is a good chance your bomb will fail to neutralize the target.

The AV-8Bs (and to my knowledge the entire Harrier family) are NOT fly-by-wire. It has an automatic flight control system, but that is not the same thing as FBW.

I’m unaware of any issues with VR and bringing up the kneeboard, it works perfectly fine for me w/o any mods or DIY workarounds. Hitting your kneeboard binding should bring up the kneeboard as a UI overlay in front of you, roughly in the location were the communication options are when you communicate with ATC or ground crew. I use the Oculus Quest 2. It’s got some issues with DCS, but kneeboards isn’t one of them.

The actual situation posted: Jf-17 in 3G turn, Su-27 in 3G turn. Same relative motion. The calculated gunsight solution: Jf-17 in 3G turn, Su-27 stable in 1G. Different relative motion. This is how the Jf-17 calculates a gun solution. It’s rudimentary, in fact it’s less advanced than even the F-86 radar sight. But you aren’t supposed to be using the cannon in aerial combat except as a last ditch Hail Mary tactic. As such the engineers didn’t waste time on a lead computation system.

It’s been mentioned before elsewhere, but the radar gunsight implemented in the Jf-17 (at least the earlier versions of the plane, like we have in DCS) doesn’t have the fancy all-aspect lead computing gunsight like the F-15/16/18, but rather has the simple distance/drop lead computation similar to older planes like the F-5. What this means for the Jf-17 is that the gun solution provided by the radar does NOT account for the direction and speed the target is moving, but rather only accounts for how far away the target is and where it currently is in relation to you. You must manually account for the direction and speed the target is moving and lead accordingly. As far as I know, this is modeled correctly for the Jf-17 we have. The general procedure for longer range (more than 0.1-0.2nm) gunnery is: 1.) Set gunsight to SSLC (this is important, the other gunsights are for close range only) 2.) Line up the historic hit point line with the plane of motion the target is traveling (i.e. the gun sight line should match the movement of the target) 3.) Place the gun piper in front of the target based on the enemies distance, relative speed, and turn rate. This is essentially a judgement call, and takes practice to get right. 4.) Squeeze trigger, realize you forgot to feed the cannon and eject due to frustration. The gun piper by itself (LCOS sight) is only accurate at extremely close ranges, where the flight time of the shells is short enough that enemy movement doesn’t matter. You really shouldn’t be using the cannon anyway unless you are too close to use your IR missiles, but at those ranges the piper is generally accurate. Making longer range gun shots are a last resort for if you are out of missiles and breaking contact is not an option.

The Steam store page lists December 1st as the release date. Not sure how much faith one should put in that information though.

This is a known bug, DEKA is tracking it and working with ED to get a fix. I believe the 802AK uses the AGM-84D as a basis for its programming, and a recent patch broke the coding for the AGM-84D, which in turn broke the 802AK.

Well I did say that I had no issues turning it on and engaging it in a hot start, so it stands to reason that I am hitting the right autopilot switches. I’m thinking that it has something to do with trim as Japo32 said, but I just can’t figure it out.

Yep, im in level flight. As I said, the parameters at which I engage autopilot are the same for cold starts and hot starts, but it will only engage on a hot start.

I'm having difficulty engaging the autopilot from a cold started F-14. I use the startup procedure that is included via the in-game lesson. I have wing sweep in auto and all three AFC switches set to on. The "A/P ref" light will go on when I set the autopilot switch to engage, however pressing the NWS button won't engage the autopilot. On a hotstart F-14, autopilot works just fine for me, engaging at the same flight parameters (level pitch and moderate speed, stick in neutral position, plane is trimmed properly to fly level without pilot input.) wherein the cold start won't work. I can't find anything in the various guides and tutorials indicating there is some other setting I need to have in order for it to work. I read on another forum that it requires "trim neutral stick position" but have no idea what that means. Anybody have any tips?

I’m on Beta, did it in a single player mission cold start using a stored heading with /10 as my initial alignment. Technically, a /6 alignment is only possible from a hot start, as ED changed the alignment process a couple months ago and /6 is no longer obtainable (unless you have a hot start). I wonder if having a /6 alignment is causing the issue due to it being technically unobtainable at the moment? I suppose it’s possible too that I am the one that is actually experiencing a bug, and losing alignment is what is supposed to happen. I have chronic alignment bugs on several modules that happen off and on, mostly for the F-18, F-16, and AV-8.

I have no idea why it works for me then, tested it yesterday with no problem. I’m guessing there is some INS bug, as ED said that alignment is still a work in progress.

No, I’m saying if, for whatever reason, connecting ground power doesn’t work for you (for some people in this thread that appears to be the case), you would have to do a full 8 min alignment after repairs. Personally, I’ve never had issues with ground power effecting alignment in the F-16 during repairs. This is what I do: Land > connect ground power > shut down engine (leave power switch on) > request repairs > restart engine > disconnect ground power Haven’t run into any issues with this procedure (yet).

Ground power should work fine for maintaining power during repairs. I pretty much solely do ground pounding (since all the other people in the server are too busy trying to pad their aerial K/D to bother with A/G), resulting in a multitude of surprise perforations from those sneaky AAA hiding amongst the enemy armor. I’m something of an expert when it comes to requesting repairs, and ground power is a must. But honestly, if it came to it, I would rather just get a new plane than suffer that 8 minute full alignment. Life’s too short to waste it on alignment.

Ah ok, that makes sense. I always try and get as close as possible when doing SEAD, rarely do my LD-10s go below 1,000 knots at the time of impact.

Wait, are SA-15s supposed to be able to shoot down LD-10s now? I’ve taken down at least a dozen this last week and none of them even attempted a shoot down. Only thing that ever gets engaged by SAMs for me are 802s and LS-6s. SA-19s will engage GB-6s with guns only.

This is a known bug for a long time, ED is working on it. The problem is that it only affects a few people and it’s hard to reproduce if you aren’t one of said people, which is likely why ED hasn’t fixed it yet. It’s related to alignment and affects the Harrier as well. Here is the quick fix that works for me, I have to do it every time I start DCS world: 1.) Start any mission with an F-18 (Or AV-8 if you want to fly that) 2.) Wait for world to load, hop into F-18/AV-8, wait for everything to load/initialize 3.) Once you are at the point when you would normally do the startup procedure, quit the mission and return to main menu. 4.) Continue to play DCS as you normally do. Do NOT quit out of the game or you will have to repeat these steps again. All credit goes to the person who figured this out, I believe he posted this fix somewhere in the thread med-taha linked above. This bug was SUPER frustrating for me before I found this fix, as it severely messed up JDAMs in the Harrier, to the point that they had an accuracy of ~50-200 meters depending on their mood. Hope this helps anyone with this problem who stumbles across this post

We will, should be added in two weeks.

No, unfortunately the 802 AKG can not be used without a datalink pod to manually aim the missile during the terminal phase. I read somewhere that the “fire and forget” functionality was never implemented due to it’s INS/GPS guidance not being precise enough (it’s expensive to have both Datalink Optical guidance and precision GPS guidance, especially in an object that explodes after it is used). The INS/GPS guidance is very simple and only good enough to get it in the general area of the entered coordinates and relies on manual guidance for precision. If you launch the missile w/o having a datalink pod, it will “pop up” during the terminal phase depending on your parameters set before launch, but since it doesn’t receive any further guidance via datalink it will just keep flying upwards. Sometimes it will decide to go in loop de loops which is always fun to watch.

I’ve run into this problem on occasion. What worked for me is, under the stores management page (SMS), select the top left option on the ddi, it should be labelled A/S1 or something similar, and switch it to a different value. Admittedly I have no idea what that button actually does (or is supposed to do), but for whatever reason when I can’t release my weapons when I’m within acceptable launch parameters, hitting that button fixes it 9/10.