RyanR

Glad I can help. I'm still in the asking lots of questions phase. I'm really having fun with the F-16, though it's taking all my will power to not start playing with the Hornet! -Ryan

Try being in "PRE" mode for Mavericks (not VIS), or not "CCIP" for bombs. For bombs, in CCIP, the FCR is "slaved" for calculating the impact point, so you can't use the FCR then. Change to CCRP, and the GM should come right up. -Ryan

That's really the bottom line. The different types of hand-off do make sense. Even with a good boresight, overlapping targets can be hard to discriminate for IR MAV's. I'm new to DCS and campaigns are teaching me how easy it is to blow up the wrong thing with the auto-hand-off. I wish the AGM-65's had more "zoom". I've been spoiled by other F-16 "sims" in the past. -Ryan

True. A JSOW is still pretty effective against a lot of vehicle types, and has a wide range of destruction. I'm not a "munitions expert", but "bombs" don't do as much collateral damage in DCS as would have thought (again, with my complete lack of real world experience). You need to get a direct hit on most things to really wreck it. "Cluster" munitions, on the other hand, seem more destructive than I'd thought. -Ryan

They won't follow a moving vehicle, and I wouldn't use the FCR to aim them. Rather, use the TGP, and slew the cursors under the vehicle, and lock in "area" mode. A JSOW would be better for light vehicles if parked together. -Ryan

No! I hadn't seen that video! That is the answer! I just had a chance to give it a try, and it works perfectly. Not intuitive. I've been assuming that the cursors were just slewed to the edge of the screen after dialing back the range. Thank you very much for putting that together! I'm so excited to play around with this! I've basically been on top of targets before the FCR gave me enough of a picture to see anything meaningful. Now I'm picking up objects on airfields 40nm out. Point the plane right at it, and the image gets blurry, dial in a little angle off target into the autopilot, and the image gets much better. Thanks guys! -Ryan

Thanks for chiming in. Good to know that I'm not cracking up. It didn't make sense to me how (in the tutorials I linked) you could be 20-40nm out, switch to DBS2, and then get a bigger/better picture by lowering the range to 10nm..... while the cursors are slewed on a point further out than 10nm. Sure enough, it doesn't work that way anymore. Interesting that the "IRL" radar seems to give a better picture (better grayscale) than DCS. DCS seems to use fewer shades of gray. -Ryan

Thanks a bunch for this!! -Ryan

Maybe I'm lucky, since I'm a newbie. The original documentation says TMS right is for the handoff to the maverick seeker. Once the TGP is in point mode, you don't have to hit TMS-up anymore. Point the TGP (soi'd) at whatever you don't like, and then TMS right. Things I've found: if you're waaaaaay out, the TGP just won't do the above. You gotta be like 20 miles out just to begin. Beyond that, the TGP won't "stick" to moving vehicles. Obviously, you have to be under 10nm to even think of getting the MAV to lock up. Also in the manual, only IR mavericks will auto-lock from a TMS-right. TV Mavericks have to be locked up from the WPN page. Thus, you want to TMS *up* from the targeting pod to get to the WPN page to lock those. I've had good luck with both LU-88 and LU-88A's. My only grumple right now is that boresighting mavericks requires an "official" object to lock on to. Static objects don't count. This gives you precious few places to get tuned up in campaigns. -Ryan

Seems anything DCS tutorial that is older than a month is no longer relevant. In both of these videos, they can change the radar range while in DBS2. For the life of me, I can't get this to work. Every time I change the range, it punches me back into "NORM". Has something changed? Thanks. -Ryan

Oh, I agree. You can't run a MAV without the WPN page. -Ryan

Just keep hitting TMS-right from the SOI'd TGP, and IR Mavericks will eventually grab the target. Even in the break-lock condition.... but you're not going to get it to work far out. With auto hand-off, you can get 2-3 shots off in a pass, once you have the target area figured out. And assuming there's no AAA..... -Ryan

I'm learning this! Sounds stupid, but it took me a while to realize what it means that DCS simulates the avionics and not "just the weapon". -Ryan

I'm "still learning" DCS, but the TGP seems to be working fine. -"TMS up" SOI's the WPN screen. -"TMS Right" does the auto handoff to the WPN page. and the TGP remains SOI. IR Mavericks lock up automatically if well boresighted. So, you get both options now. TMS up, SOI's the WPN page so you can either fine tune the Maverick or lock up a CCD missile (which you have to manually lock). 'TMS right' will lock up IR MAV's so you can still ripple off a bunch. I've also had fine luck with the three missile launchers. All 6 are taking a ground boresight OK. -Ryan

I'm having good luck now with 2nm boresights on static ground vehicles. IR Mavericks lock right up when 7nm out. All 6 Mavericks work pretty well. The "bug" reported in the T-Pod thread seems to not be a bug. Reading up and figuring out the nuances of the T-pod is really helping. Unlearning bad habits from other sims is helping, too. -Ryan

I agree this seems more correct. While practicing boresighting the MAVs, I set up a group of (what I thought were stationary) vehicles tightly packed together in the desert. Once the first MAV hit, they all scrambled. The vehicle my second MAV (in flight) was after just happened to hide right behind the smoking pile that was the first target. There was a hit, but not lethal. I agree, rippling MAVs off isn't the greatest way to go in some cases. The TGP stays stabilized on the target area, so a TMS right should put the next MAV in the target area on target. -Ryan

I moved my boresight target out 5nm, or so. I also learned how to add to the excellent tutorial to the kneeboard. Thank you very much! All seems to work fine with stationary targets. FCR puts the TGP right on target, TMS right puts the MAV cross hairs right where they need to be, DMS to the WPN, then a TMS up on the WPN page gets a good lock without any slewing. Now I just need to review and practice the TMS/DMS/CMDS four-ways. You can get so far in before you need to step back and re-read everything to get the remaining niggles out of the workflow. Thanks, All!! -Ryan

Thanks soooo very much, all! It's very much appreciated. I'm really enjoying DCS and the F-16. The community has been so helpful. So parallax *is* a problem. I'll keep at it. So far, I did have pretty good luck with the Maverick boresight at just a couple miles. The trick was just keeping the TGP and WPN pages "locked" afterwards. I'll set my "boresight target" a bit further out, and try again. I'll give this a try! Thanks a bunch! -Ryan

Hi guys, I think I got it. I managed to mix up things from two different videos. I noticed after re-re-watching the Gaffer vid above that he does not "unlock" the vehicle that he boresighted on afterwards. He just goes on. That seems to be the trick. I put a Jeep about 1.3nm downfield. Boresighted on that. Put the plane back in NAV master mode and went off to find some things to blow up. Locking on a vehicle with the targeting pod and then TMS right pointed the MAV right at what I was looking at with the TGP. Then you have to chase the vehicle with the MAV in the WPN page to get it locked. Gotta keep playing around with it, I suppose. Should the MAV "auto lock" after the TGP handoff? I'm well within range (6nm) of the MAV. Thanks all. -Ryan

Not knowing what I don't know is a great point! Thanks for telling me how to save a track, too! -Ryan

So far, I've been doing cold starts exclusively, and using my own little home made practice/learning missions. I've been trying to have a controlled environment so I can see the connection from unit placement to how the avionics picks things up. I dunno if continuously repurposing the mission and/or rearming the plane is causing trouble. From another recent thread, it seems there's trouble with the 3-Maverick pylons. The boresight apparently only "takes" for the "first" missile on each station. For me, a problem is that if I boresight the Mavericks, the seeker cue in the HUD is completely off kilter from the WPN display when I have it in VIS mode. If I don't boresight and don't use the targeting pod, the Mavericks work OK, but their ability to discriminate targets from far off is super limited. Anytime I use the TGP with the Mavericks, everything goes wrong. The targeting pod works flawlessly with the AG radar and every other type of munition. TGP with Mavericks has been nothing but trouble. -Ryan

Thanks for the response! This is one of the videos leading me astray. I thought it would be the cure! No luck. I've tried putting dummy vehicles at several ranges to eliminate parallax. If this is working for everyone else, then there's a problem on my end. I'll give it another go. See if I can figure out where the missteps are. Thanks again! -Ryan

As far as I can tell, every DCS update makes every tutorial obsolete..... and the F-16 manual is basically non-existent. Every time I try to use the TGP to hand off to the AGM-65 (TMS right), I get nothing. The Maverick seeker head is just not aligned with the TGP. I'm guessing that the Maverick boresighting needs to be done. The rub is that all the tutorials I've found to boresight the Mavericks not only don't boresight the Mavericks, they decouple the Maverick seeker head from the HUD symbology. What's the fix? After decades of WWII and Korean sims, I'm finally getting back to scratching the F-16 itch. The original Falcon got me started in 1988, and the Viper in DCS is sooooo much better, and a worthy successor to the original Falcon. The last release of that was pretty iffy. DCS is quite good. I fully expect the learning curve to be huge, but it's just frustrating trying to figure out if I'm simply being an idiot.... or if there's something not right in the sim. For example, I spent hours trying to figure out the HSD datalink issue, to find that it was a bug..... then I found the work around.... but then the last update fixed it. All within a 3 day period. Thanks! -Ryan

Seems the single AGM-65 launcher is a no-go as well. If it works for you, maybe it works for a single Maverick variant. So far, no joy with any variant of the IR Mavericks Really frustrating. I can train the TGP with the FCR on a truck convoy I made in GMT mode with TMS up. The TGP immediately picks up the target. Then any attempt to TMS up or right breaks the TGP lock and switches to the WPN page.... Is this a bug, or am I just wrong here? So far, the only surefire "workaround" is to dump a GBU on the lead vehicle in the convoy. That stops the whole convoy, then you extend.... circle back..... and snag each remaining vehicle with the Mavericks in VIS mode. The plume of smoke from the first vehicle making it easy to snipe the remaining targets with the Maverick seeker. -Ryan

I, too, can confirm this behavior. Good to know that it's not just me. As a newbie to DCS, I've been going bonkers with things like this. The learning curve is steep enough! -Ryan