Magician

First, is there a way to designate a ground target other than padlocking it for "Engage My Target"? I discovered that Padlocking it works, but it makes the plane hard to fly while padlocked. If you are over the target and try engage ground targets, they always seem to go off and attack the nearest air defense, why have the engage air defenses command if they are just gonna do that anyway. Second, is there any way of designating the weapon you want them to use like the Engage With command in A-10C? Given a choice, they always seem to go with bombs without that command.

Okay I jumped in and did some maneuvers at that altitude, and at both 500 kts true (~310 kts indicated) and indicated (When I could reach 500 kts indicated, wouldn't do it with drop tanks). And with varying loads from empty, to 8 Slammers, to 3 tanks and heaviest load of missiles out of the stock load outs. All I can think is that you are trying to bank and yank with a full load of missiles and 3 drop tanks, or maybe just 3 drop tanks. Because I could pull a lot of G's at that altitude and airspeed all day without them, even with 8 Slammers, but if I tried a bank and yank with the drop tanks it pretty much maxed out the AOA right away, causing the rolling back and forth. Ease up on the back pressure and it recovers pretty quick. You aren't supposed to do that with drop tanks in any case, and that is why. You can still do gentler maneuvers without any problem though (2-3 G's).

You may wanna rethink your phrasing. I haven't flown it since the update, but I have a really hard time believing ya can't fly straight and level at FL 300 and 500 kts.

To be more basic and explicit, you want to find a taxiway heading the opposite direction and go that opposite direction to get to the departure end of the runway.

Yeah, you pretty much have to think ahead to look around the side of the seat behind you (like at the fuselage tank fuel gauge), and shift to the side before you turn your head. Otherwise it is majorly confusing. And it only gives a very limited side to side range when looking to the rear for some reason.

I was recently flying the A-10A and happened to notice the set course window on that plane is completely borked. It seems to bear no relation at all with the course to fly. Now that one is either a bug, or not implemented at all. On a side note, the director bar on that plane also wants to line up the nose with the bearing to the WP, rather than the flight path. At least it has the SPI/WP box in the HUD that you can line up the VVI with, and an EAS yaw channel that doesn't center the VVI.

No immediate plans for the F-15C to do that. The first modern American fast mover that's coming out in High Fidelity is going to be the Hornet. Possibly (with emphasis on possibly), this year.

Only that perhaps the coding should go ahead and round up and snap the 10's column up one when the course ends with a 9.7 or so or greater. Other than that it would take a major coding change to either make the 1's column round and snap, or make the 10's and 100's columns roll. But in that second case it would just make it even harder to read in situations like this (Found that out when I was doing it with the A-10C, trying to read the course when all the numbers are "in between" is a genuine PITA) ETA: Overall I think they made a decent compromise between realism and making it legible the way they did it. It's not a bug, just what they decided to do it to minimize confusion... how often does the course actually end with 9.7 or greater?... ok, so twice in that flight plan LOL.. but that seems to be a fluke (or intentional). Seriously even with the proposed rounding up, that'll just make some people confused about whether it was between 209 and 210, or between 219 and 220 (the answer is in where the needle points). Personally, I only find that window useful for making a precise setting of the course when doing it by hand, which makes it irrelevant to me in FC3 aircraft. I "fly the needles", and they are accurate, right down to some fraction of a degree.

On the A-10C, the 10's and 100's columns both roll along with the 1's column as the 1's column rolls between 9 and 0.

As for the course needle and bearing pointer lining up vertically when the CDI is centered and the plane is on course with no wind, I dare anyone to show otherwise. Turns out the director bar will cause an overshoot back and forth if you don't stay on it diligently enough, or don't switch waypoints soon enough. But eventually it will get you on course on the course line. Unfortunately it seems to want to put your nose on course rather than your flight path in a crosswind situation. A problem both ameliorated and exacerbated by the CAS Yaw channel bug. If you use the CAS Yaw channel, the nose is aligned with the flight path, but you will be slipping pretty seriously in a crosswind.

Okay, I see the issue now. It has nothing at all to do with the bearing pointer, or the course needle, it's that the 10's column of the set course window doesn't roll, it snaps to the next number after the 1's column fully reaches "0". So it looks like it says 200 on WP 2, but if you look closely, the bottom of the 9 is still showing, and the 10's column just hasn't snapped to 1 yet. Another clue is if you look at the course needle, it is pointing at 210 (ETA: btw, the CDI in the picture for that wypoint ain't centered). The exact same thing with WP 3 looking like 160, but the 9 is still showing at the top. And the course needle is showing 170. But there is no problem at all with WP 4, it looks like 40 and it is 40.

I just had a look at and flew your mission; No and/or about it, that flight plan has both. That being said, when I got the CDI centered on each leg, the course and bearing agreed.

Just for further edification, the "Set Course" is something that is done manually on most real mechanical HSI's (and on the DCS: A-10C). In the case of the FC3 American aircraft, it is done automatically according to the flight plan, on a WP to WP basis (or runway heading in ILSN mode). If you were able to manually adjust it, it would agree with (or be 180 degrees off) the bearing when the CDI is centered.

I do recall the A-10A training video on navigation goes into some detail about the HSI functions, anticipating turns etc... Don't know about the F-15 video though. But the HSI works the same in both.

Source is general knowledge about aircraft Navigation instruments, gained from many sources. The manual doesn't spell it out the way I did buit it does say this: If the CDI is off by one dot, the bearing should be different than the course by 5 degrees. (according to the manual, YMMV) It takes time and distance to turn a plane, if you wait till you overfly the waypoint to start your turn to the next one, you can expect it to be off the course line when you finish the turn. Especially so if the turn is particularly sharp and/or the distance to the next WP is particularly short. ETA: Unfortunately the director bar doesn't anticipate the next WP to direct a smooth transition, unless you time a manual WP switch in advance of reaching it.