RodBorza

Another occasion not to use PAC is when you have a column of vehicles below and you want/need to steer to get them all. With PAC on, the aircraft stays steady on course and doesn't allow much maneuvering.

No problem. Glad to help. See what BiPod said: Practice, practice, practice. To use MAVs, I do all the steps you have to do as described above. However, in order not to use th Active Pause, I usually start from 10 nm from target area, engage autopilot, zoom my viem in the TGP, find the target, make it my SPI, slave all, change to MAVs. Then, as the plane was moving, after all the steps I'm close to the MAV effective range. It is then a matter of TMS Forward Short, lock on, and send it away. And then, go back to the last waypoint, 10 nm from target area, prepare the ordnance, and do all the process again. Also, a good tatic is to NOT go hot and straight for target area, but 10 degrees off left or right. Example: Your target is at 000 degrees. Before you head its way, put the plane at 350 or 010 degrees before doing all the steps for acquiring target. This way, you'll have some room to maneuver and will not risk overflying the target. Once you acquire target, change course, put the target symbol on the HUD and "rifle".

Nikola is right, trying to lock on targets with the Maverick is very dificult. Use the TGP with its zoom power to get a view of target. Also, even with TGP, sometimes it is difficult to find that target. Listen to JTAC instructions carefully, when he says that the targets are "0 nautical west, 2 nautical northeast, 3 nautical east". It helps a lot to find and detect targets. For MAVs use, I recommend the following links: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3171145/How_to_use_weapons_Picture_gui.html#Post3171145 And a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1IoF2xKBCI

I'm playing the Georgia Hammer Campaign and yes, the Area of Operations is very close to the air base (Batumi). So, once you clear the runway, turn your ECM on and do the same for MAVs and the TGP. Also, as BiPod said, wait for the SEAD to clear the area. There are lots of other flights coming in and out of the AO, so don't go straight and hot for it until the area is clear. How do you know it is clear? When you see the number of spikes on your RWR diminish drastically. Also, if you look outside, you'll see the other flights bombarding the enemy air defenses and artillery. (nice view!) Well, at least this is how it's been working on the campaign so far. I remember first mission was a simple "bomb the bridge" mission, and I got shot down three times. So in the 4th time I waited and after SEAD cleared it up, I went in and sent the bridge sky high. Other missions things got easier, as there should be with a rolling air/ground attack happening 24/7. If you look at the Guard Channel (usually UHF AM) you'll see the F-10 option. Also, keep an ear out for AWACS calls. If they say "group, hot, 20" it is time to call the CAS. The CAS are nice F-18 or F-16 loitering over the lake, and then they'll come to the rescue. Very nice to avoid that pesky Su-25 or MIG-29 from taking you down. After the CAS patrol your area, they'll RTB. But keep listening to the guard channel. From time to time you'll hear that some flight is airborne. (from an aircraft carrier stationed somewhere in the coast...the level of detail in this game is amazing!) Check again in the F-10 to see if a new CAS or SEAD flight is available and use them if the threats are still around. About the ECM. As everybody said, the best one is Semi-Auto. It'll choose the best program for you and you'll have to manually turn the program on/off. (program it on your HOTAS, makes things a lot easier). However, in Beta 4, the ECM pod does not start jamming. Beta 6, hopefully, will have ir corrected.

This game is great man! Glad you are enjoying it. The learning curve is very steep and big, teher's lot of things to learn, but once you get the hang of it, it is losts of fun. After you do training, try to do the first instant action mission. A good place to use the various weapons at your disposal. I did that mission a 50 times, just to learn the various "how to's". Now I'm at my first campaign (Georgia Hammer) and it's been very nice.

In the Controls, under the Flight Controls section, look for Right Throttle Up/Dowm, the same thing for the left one. There will be lots of options there, to throttle up/down, step up/down. All of them involve NUM+, NUM -, Page Up, Page Down. They are the kind of commands that may come in handy when needed.

No fuzz about it people. I do have a very simple joystick with throttle and 10 buttons and it is just a matter of adapting yourself to it. I use the keyboard to help me out too. - 1 to 10 buttons in various functions (drop bombs, nose wheel steering, speedbrakes open/close, CMS on/off); - Joy Hat to look around; - Crtl + Hat to trim; - Shift + Hat to slew; - Alt + Hat to DMS; - Win + Hat to TMS; Confusing? After a while it becomes second nature. And yes, I would love to have a Warthog HOTAS and MFDs with LCDs mounted on them as some guys do. But today's budget constraints don't allow me to. P.S.: And look at that guy GlowingAmramm over there. He does very nice videos about the DCS games on You Tube and you could think that he has the most amazing/expensive rig of all. But wait, he just has a FF2 MS joystick and still is able to enjoy the sim. So, no fear my friend. Get the game, learn it, come up with your own HOTAS config and someday we'll meet on a multiplayer game somewhere.

All you need is a IPad or something similar. Then you can go outside, talk to people and keep refreshing. Once someone gets really boring, you could always say:"Beta 6 is out! gotta go! See ya!" :pilotfly:

All good info on the lights procedure. However, when getting into the area of aperations, it's lights out, minus the formation lights. The formation lights you can dim or bright them as you need. Leaving the nav lights on would be madness when over enemy territory. If you look at the civilian aircrafts you can see them miles away (that's exactly the idea). I don't know if in the sim the enemy AI considers if you are with lights on or off (hmm...a good thing to test...) but i usually turn it off as soon as I get fence in. As a note, there is a campaing that the fence in point is only 5 miles away from the base, so, after I take off all lights are off.

...when you try to scroll up or down a web page using thw slew up/down command on the HOTAS. (really happened to me...)

LOL! :megalol:

Maybe it's a very, very high intensity environment... :D Nice little details I like about this sim: Lights! and more lights! (rolling to the runaway) I really like this because in the old Jane's games the formation and the position lights worked perfectly, although no running lights. In the Falcon: AF they tried to implement the running lights but to no avail (at least the version of the game I had... ;)) However, in this game it is modeled perfectly. I really like to line up on the runaway and being able to see what's ahead of me. Very nice! Look! Better than Xenon headlights!