Sunjammer

Bah, it does, but not really. I was reading about the PVI itself; That section implies you can edit waypoints. The PrPNK preparation section later in the book is clearer on the subject. Thank you :-)

The general assumption appears to be that people don't read the manual ;) Don't worry, it's with me on my kindle pretty much everywhere I go. It's my understanding that the Abris is like a cool computer they put in the cockpit but only wired up certain bits of it. There's parity of data between the PVI and the Abris but one doesn't influence the other. The PVI can store target points that you can transmit via datalink. However these points can not be defined via Abris, only via Shkval or fly-over through the PVI itself. You can't even input coordinates for a target point directly into the PVI. I hope I misunderstood something here because that's nuts. PVI (TP) -> DL DL -> Abris Abris -> DL So please correct me: 1) You can arbitrarily create points on the Abris or PVI via coordinates, but you can't transmit them anywhere; In the case of the PVI you can create waypoints but not TP's. 2) The only(!) way to create a coordinate you can transmit to other members of the flight is either via mission editor pre-flight or via Shkval. When I've flown with A-10s they've given me coordinates that I've searched the Abris for, rather than simply input. And every member of my flight has had to do the same, because I can't easily create a coordinate to transmit without first being in view of the target area. Sometimes you don't want to be in view of the target area.

So I jumped right into multiplayer, and haven't touched the single player campaign yet. I've been having a ton of fun, but I'm just really, really terrible at the game :-) Practice practice! Some thoughts so far: No RWR is a pain. How do you guys cope with Shilkas, Strelas and other radar-guided stuff? I understand that I'm typically low enough that radar guidance is of limited usefulness against me, but that doesn't make up for the lack of situational awareness. I can hover at 8-10km and spy for targets but if they're in a city or other area where there's lots of cover, I feel really boned... I have countermeasures, but no idea when i'd use them; Practically nothing other than tanks seem to be lasing me. The datalink/abris/pvi triangle is real weird. Not being able to use Abris ERBL to plot target points I can send via datalink makes so little sense to me. HMS is amazing! Doing a gun run by slaving the cannon to the HMS while flying low and fast is probably a real dumb idea, but a ton of fun! If the A-10 had one... Eek. Coupled with auto turn to target, it kinda feels like magic. Locking on to targets with the Shkval feels kind of fussy; My approach right now is to expand the gate to obviously be larger than the target, hit the lock button, then decrease the gate until it locks. This works what feels like maybe 7 times out of 10. What am I doing wrong? Keeping the controls indicator up has made trim MUCH easier to deal with. I dunno why more tutorials on the trimmer don't suggest using that for visual reference. Why does auto turn to target always turn a liiiiittle bit to the right of my actual target? If I'm trying to put a Shkval on a target with ATT turned on, I always have to put in a little rudder to actually line up the sights... Flight Director is king. Autopilot is nice during transit but when I'm actually in a combat situation I leave auto hover and turn to target on, and disengage the FD every time I've maneuvering into a manual hover and use the HMS to put the nose on whatever I want to shoot at. How do you guys feel about the FD during combat? Anyway, this is a lot of fun and I have a loong way to go before I'll be particularly useful. Thank you Eagle for an awesome sim where Ka-50s can spot targets for A-10s <3 It's so damn cool!

Kinect doesn't hold a candle to TIR. Sorry to smash any illusions here, but you're unlikely to find hardware more temperamental than the Kinect, or fundamentally misaligned with any concept of precision or efficiency. I own one, and it can barely track my hand properly in optimal conditions. Doesn't help that it's calibrated for distances pretty much incompatible with a desk/monitor setup. TIR, with trackclip pro, is superior simply because it's reliable and smooth, whereas Kinect is slow and unreliable by necessity of having to interpolate reliable periodic sets of data, rather than a reliable constant set of data. Also, who the hell isn't using headphones when playing anyway? Headtracking is one thing; How do you expect to use hand gestures with no tactile feedback and no fine finger tracking (yes I know what they've said and demonstrated, No it doesn't work the way you think it does or would like it to) at half a second's latency in the context of a cluttered cockpit? Oh dear, I was going to adjust the radio frequency but instead i turned off all my SAS channels, turned off the EAC and tested my warning lights in the process. Whoopee. But I'm sure some poor soul will create a hacky implementation for us to sigh at before too long.

Hey all I've been flying the A-10 for a while and enjoying that a whole lot; Picked up the TM Warthog set and a trackir5, and have been playing some multiplayer flights. I really dug in deep in DCS A-10. But I bought Black Shark when that was released, but that game was a brick wall to me. Now, being used to DCS A-10 and having more hardware to assist me, I decided to buy the BS2 upgrade and see if I didn't have better luck. Upsides: I have a much better understanding of what "standard" gauges in a cockpit mean now, and also have a better understanding of startup procedures and dependencies, so getting around the startup, which was a long arduous learning process in the A-10, has been very smooth now with that prior knowledge. But holy crap if flying this thing isn't unpleasant. So, naturally, I know that a) I'm bad at it, and b) I'm bad at it. I really want to improve, and especially after learning how to use the Shkval and HMS together (Man, if the A-10 had an HMS...). The issues I have are simple, I think; I feel like I always fight the autopilot, and I never have a good sense of the trimmer. Having to re-center the stick every time I trim exacerbates this issue; I keep wishing i had a way to trim the cyclic with a hat... So, some questions regarding the trimmer/AP :-) 1. What is the best procedure for applying the rudder from an auto-hover if I wish to laterally align with a target? Right now i'm finding it is actually easier to use the Shkval and turn-to-target than to perform this manually.. The AP always wants to return to the same angle "stored" when AH was engaged, so the procedure as I understand it is to hold the trim, rudder to the desired angle, and release the trim. This gives moderately good results, but tends to throw the trim off in some way. It feels "dirty". 3. On the topic of the rudder; Is it normal for the helicopter to want to turn laterally even with no rudder applied? I feel like the #1 reason to trim for me right now is to keep the chopper from turning to the right during level flight. Actually: I'm not CRAZY to want to use the rudder a lot, am I? 2. Is it normal to constantly feel like the nose wants to go up or down way more than I intend it to? I'm using really small cyclic movements but still I get into situations where I'm trimmed into a corner and I have to reset it or slam into a mountain, and ALWAYS when I reset the trim in such a situation, I better have the cyclic hard forward, or the chopper is going to invert backwards. If I were to sum up all my issues, it's that it feels like everything I want to do is attenuated, and everything I don't want to do is accentuated: Nose goes too far, bank doesn't go far enough. I feel like I'm in a constant argument with the helo. As a result I can't really manage anything resembling truly controlled flight. It's maddening. Any pointers on good ways to practice arguing with the AP, since that's apparently a big part of flying this thing?

Thanks for excellent advice guys! I have to admit the manual is sort of dense to dig through for certain particulars, and the way I've been reading it (as a PDF on my phone or kindle) has not made it a particularly great experience for reference. Then again that's all on me, so no excuses ;-) Understanding the offset page on the CDU has helped so much it's kind of ridiculous. Building an idea of where AAA is located with mark points has made missions much safer to fly, obviously. So thanks for that. As for agility, the difference when flying an unarmed plane is really something else. I've had a lot of fun simply practising strafing runs, and the wing-over is indeed a smarter move. As for #5, I suppose my problem was gauging the correct bank angle and distance versus the area I'm trying to circle; I've been banking with ALT ap since the start, but I can never seem to nail that perfect orbit. Guess it's time to break out the pen and paper and remember some of my trig lessons ;-) Anyway, thanks again for all the advice! Really helpful <3

Hey everyone, I've been playing, and by 'playing' I mean 'learning', DCS A-10C for most of the time since its release. I bought a TrackIR5, the HOTAS Warthog stick/throttle set, and a new graphics board++, and every time I make an upgrade, the game feels better to play, and thus more rewarding to learn. At this point, I've got a fair handle on the essential avionics and sensors, and I can use most ordnance with relative success. I'm still very inefficient, and spotting targets or dealing with information overload tends to bring me down. But hey, still having lots of fun learning :-) I figured I'd just put down the stuff I'm unsure of here, and hopefully you guys can tell me how wrong I am, or if it's normal behavior or not. 1. Every mission in the first campaign (only campaign I've seen) starts me off with nosewheel steering sharply to the left, or veering off to some direction until I hit the wheel brakes or adjust the nosewheel. Since all missions always seem to start me off with throttles at 100% on the runway, this means every mission becomes a dash to readjust. Kind of annoying. Is this a known issue? 2. How normal is it to rely *heavily* on wingman or JTAC spotting for you? I have an ugly tendency to feel like I should be pulling more spotting weight myself, and end up searching for way too long. 3. When pulling into a turn, an alert goes off, first rapid beeping, then a solid tone the tighter the turn gets. I understand this means I'm bleeding speed/energy, but is this "bad" in all cases? When I'm landing I use this to slow down before my approach.. 4. What's the extent of the A-10's maneuverability really? I'm sort of battling the plane trying to do things like split S'es, and I don't know if that's just me being a bit shit or if the plane isn't supposed to be doing them. 5. Are there any tricks to setting up a steady orbit of an area to keep it in constant view of the TGP when I'm trying to do some sort of FAC? I can never seem to get this right... 6. I'm very TAD dependent for situational awareness, and during JTAC I pretty much require the digital to know where to go. But I still don't know exactly what positions called out to me actually mean. So for instance when I hear "bulls 080 for 100", what does that actually *mean*? haha. Or 'Magic, BRA, 279 for 110, 7000, hot'. This stuff confuses the bejebus out of me. Anyway that's all I can think of right now. I hope some day I'll feel competent enough that I can join some multiplayer flights :-) Cheers

Yeah it's definitely more pronounced with the TGP or MAV slew. I've done like you, recently, setting SPI through TAD and slaving to it to make things a little easier.. Sigh. Wish it was smoother ;-) It's so frustrating to have a clear idea of what you're trying to do, being an inch away from doing it, and then having a stumble you can't really explain. I only went into the calibration to check the slew hat in case there was something hardware related... Otherwise the WH has been working perfectly <3<3

Hi guys, new member, and recent newbie to DCS :-) So far, having finally gone and purchased a proper stick and throttle (though i still need pedals and am waiting for my trackIR to arrive) I'm having the time of my life. The only real frustration so far that I can't source to my own ineptitude is some response issues with the hotas slew stick. In calibration, the stick looks to perform exactly as expected. However in the game, when slewing anything, occasionally it's as though the game isn't picking up its input anymore, making slewing an exercise as i often have to "re-start" my slew from the center of the stick while moving the TAD cursor for instance. Originally i thought maybe DCS had a very high dead zone for the slew stick and thus sometimes "lost" it, but at this point I just don't know anymore. Is the slew response issues an artifact of how I'm slewing, as in an artifact of the simulation? Or is it actually an issue with the game itself.. Again, from testing the slew in calibration over and over again it's never given me anything that didn't look correct. Thanks for any enlightenment :-)