Jordan4

I agree. At the very least mount a L/70 fast forty and get with the rest of the world. Where talking about a plane that cost over 200 million dollars. You would think that they would have up to date weaponry on the damn thing. A 76mm would be incredible however I think given the size constraints that the MK110 would be more than adequate and you can hold alot of ammo in a cargo plane. Of all the footage I have seen of the AC-130 in action it seems that the gau-12 is practically useless and the 105 as devastating as it is doesn’t seem to really have much of a place other than I guess destroying buildings which the 40mm could do but would take alot more hits. I think that the 57mm would be a great all around gun to do the job of all the currently mounted guns. Thank goodness they didn’t actually end up mounting those two bushmaster 2's. What a horrible downgrade of firepower that would have been. I think a 120mm tank gun would be overkill actually. You cannot expect to get enough precision to get APFSDS rounds on target reliably which would really be the only upside as a 120mm mortar would be able to deliver the same HE firepower ( probably not as accurately though ). They would have to make a breach loaded remote fired version of the 120mm mortar for obvious reasons. Maybe they should just develop a guided 105 round if there isn’t already one. I always thought it was silly to have such an expensive asset without any kind of guided munitions platform. I mean how hard would it be to slap a Litening on and mount some GBU'S. I always envisioned a bottom mounted pop down turret loaded with hellfire’s. From the videos I have seen it seems like they have real issues getting any of the guns on target. I’ve seen clips where their going after one guy on foot for several minutes. In a full scale conflict I just cannot see an AC-130 reliably taking out several targets at once like a convoy or something. Maybe they should work on the fire control/targeting or maybe just the nature of the platform is what makes it so inaccurate. For this reason it seems almost an operational requirement to have some kind of guided munitions. Also a millennium with Ahead or maybe even an L/70 or MK110 with 3P ammo would certainly make the accuracy issue less prominent. The CTA 40 is an awesome weapon system. However its rate of fire compared to the millennium is the only reason I would consider the millennium slightly better suited however they would both work fine. As far as the APFSDS is concerned maybe I am wrong but I just don’t see any gun shooting from an AC-130 being able to achieve a High enough level of accuracy to be able to nail medium or heavy armor with consistent hits that would be required for solid kills. Maybe the videos I have seen were from very high altitudes however it just doesn’t seem like an AC-130 would make a great anti armor asset without some kind of guided munitions. Of course my assessment is based solely on internet videos so perhaps when operating at the right altitude with the right sized target the accuracy is sufficient I don’t know. What about a GAU-13 ( 4 barreled GAU-8 )?

Not exactley sure what you mean by this. Ok now I understand. I thought you were saying that using an apfsds would be sacrificing penetration as aposed to full bore. I do not suspect that the sabot would need to stay on for more than a few micro seconds to be clear of the aircrafts trajectory at which point any losses in velocity would be mitigated by the fact that the aircraft itself propels the projectile with its own speed aswell. I havent engineered exactley how it would work rather than just suggesting that it could be feasible. I have also thought about this. Imagine a milleneum revolver gun in place of the GAU-8. Then imagine using the Ahead ammo for ground suppression role. Absolutley devestating area coverage of tungsten shot with variable altitutude detination. I do wonder however how much better a full bore penetrator of 35mm would be than 30mm. Either way that would be alot of gun for an aircraft. I think the ac-130 should be stripped of its bofors and gau-12 in place of a millenium gun. I have also pondered about taking out the 105 in place of a mk110 naval gun however I am not sure that system could be installed on a c-130. If it could than that would be absolutley devastating against any and all targets. However if you are suggesting a GAU-8 version of the 35x228 I think that would make for too big of a gun. Besides once you step up to a round that big you dont need such a high rate of fire for your intended effect. The 1000 RPM of the Millenium gun is more than adequate. I would be suprised if you would be able to carry more than 400 or 500 35x228 rounds but even that would be plenty as few targets will require more than 1-2 hits to be taken out of action.

Everybody in real life was telling me to get Nvidia and it came down to the ATI 7970 vs the Nvidia GTX 670. All of the stats on the 7970 seemed better. Higher ram, 348 bit mem bus vs GTX's 256. I could not understand why anybody would recomend the Nvidia over the ATI given those specs. What converted me was when the salesperson told me that a CUDA core is like 4 stream proccesors. After doing the math it was determined that the NVIDIA vastly outnumberd the ATI if what he said was true ( still havent heard that from anybody else ) Well the card certainly made an improvment however in heavily produced campaign missions I am averaging an FPS of 10-16 and in one I just played I was getting 0-6 fps for a few minutes until it went up to about 6-10. Very dissapointing. So I truly hope that getting a new motherboard/cpu will allow me the super performance that I am looking for. Any suggestions?

I did look in the flight manual but I just could not understand what it was talking about. Is there a way to input MGRS coordinates into the cdu as a waypoint? If not what are you supposed to do with the MGRS data given in the breifing of some missions?

Great thanks for all the help. Any idea on how to do an inflight cdu/egi alignment?

So I was executing a high AOA manuever with a very heavy payload and all of my systems and engines shut off. I restarted everything however I am unable to get any aiming reticles or navigation marker guides. All I am getting is basic alt and speed stuff along with some other basic info. I am not able to switch to ccip ccrp nav or guns. All I have is the fixed cross gun reticle. This has happend to me before when I was learning how to do a cold start and take off. I remember somebody said it was the egi or something. Can somebody tell me what I need to do to get my h.u.d back to normal? Thankyou. P.S without starting a new thread I figure maybe I can just ask this question separatley. Can somebody point me in the direction of a tutorial where I can learn how to put Lat Lon cooridinates into the CDU. Ive got UTM down however I do not understand how to input lat long in. For instance when given your objectives location in the mission breifing lets say for example it is at 41-55-2N/042-0-25E. Are those two different cooridinates or are they the same? What part of that do I input into the CDU? Thanks for the help!

Is the F-lock key labeled? Or do you have to research to figure out which one it is?

The point where the sabot's trajectory is no longer able to hit the host aircraft. You might want to do more research for yourself on this topic because APFSDS is substantially more effective at armor penetration than a full bore projectile. Which is the exact reason that every modern tank in the world carries apfsds as its primary anti armor round. Im not sure some of you realize just how much more armor an apfsds round is capable of penetrating than a full bore projectile. The sectional density of a small diameter/length ratio dart far exceeds that of a conventional projectile. It sounds like you are trying to say that apfsds is a less capable armor penetrator than the A-10's full bore AP which is completley false.

Fixed the problem! I swapped to an old keyboard from an old P.C and magically all of the F-keys work. I suspect it is because this keyboard doesnt have the stupid media controls set on the F-keys. Stupid computers..... I guess I will go buy a new keyboard cause this old think is big and clunky and I dont like it.

I do not have an F lock key but thank you for your advice. Anybody else? These little issues with this game are killing me. Every single time I figure something out something else pops up to take its place this is getting so frustrating.

Ok I did what you said and delete the default profile. I then remapped the remaining two profiles so that the hotkeys where not set as any of the F keys although the profile labeled " One:One " would not save the changes so I just changed them and left that profile on. This did not resolve my problem. Please anybody who knows what is wrong please help because this issue makes it so that I cannot use Awacs or the F-10 other menu which are critical to completing certain missions. It strikes me odd that these particular keys are not able to be remapped in the game. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place or havent find them I dont know. PLEASE HELP!

Bingo yes I originally mentioned that I am using track IR. The reason I do not think the issue is related to track IR is because My F-8 key does work even though it is mapped in Track IR. Thank you Para Bellum for the advice when you say remap the F keys in all other profiles are you referring to track IR profiles? I was unable to find where the radio commands are located in the in game controls menu so I am not able to change them. I think if I can knock this problem out I will finally be able to start playing this game without any other hiccups.

Hello, when in the radio menu I am unable to select F-7 F-9 F-10 F-11 and F-12. Currentley I am stuck on a mission where I beleive I am supposed to use F-10 to contact a friendley ground unit and tell it to advance because I am unable to access the F-10 radio menu. I do have track I.R and F-7 F-8 F-9 and F-12 are mapped as hotkeys however F-8 works so I am not entirley sure that the track I.R is causing the issue. Another usefull thing to mention is that When playing around with the track I.R I accidentally programed the center hotkey to mouse1. In an attempt to revert it back to F-12 which it was before I pressed F-12 while in the change menu however rather than it being mapped back to F-12 it says that the key assigned to it is ( next track ). My keyboard has dual functions for F-9 through F-12 which are as follows. F-9 is play pause, F-10 is stop, F-11 is back track, and F-12 is next track for media ( I never use them for these purposes ). Now I am just uterley confused and really could use some help because without the F keys not functioning properley in the radio menus I am not able to contact essential units/friendly assets that are required to complete some if not most missions. Thank you for your help!

Similar yet unrelated event: In the standard campaign There was an Su-25 taxiing after landing. Got a proximity hit with a Mav another proximity hit with a GBU-12 ( at which point it was wingless and on fire and pilot ejected ) and it still did not register as a kill. Two gun runs later with multiple hits still resulted in no registered kill. It was only when I got a direct hit with another mav that the game decided that it was a destroyed target. Sorry this didnt help you just a weird occurance I thought.

Well I am in action. Watched a bunch of youtube tutorials and I am using the radio pretty well now. I still have a long way to go as I do not yet know how to intercept an enemy aircraft based on AWACS information nor do I know how to use the tacan to link up with a tanker. With the help of the people on this forum and youtube I am sure I will have the entire plane down in no time and be ready to start learning the P-51 in better detail and then go on and start learning the Ka-50 ( still havent done so since I bought it when it came out....) which I will go ahead and get blackshark 2 to do. Lets say I got a message that said " engaging armor bullseye 142 for 2" is there any way to take that information and input it into the cdu and create a waypoint so you can also engage that area? Thank you. Oh and can somebody decipher this for me: Hawg 1-1, Magic, Bra, 064 for 14 at 8000 flanking ( where is there a reference that tell you how to decipher radio comms like that? )

Yes thankyou. I understand why there are different radio's. I was just confused at why in the game there are different buttons to access the different radios. I was only aware of the " \ " button and had not heard about the mic switches until today. Today I have accomplished alot in the terms of actually being able to use JTAC. One thing that I noticed however at least for the mission Khashuri ( the only mission so far I have played with my newly learned radio skills ) is that Jtac may respond and then mid way through the communication when I am supposed to report back only then Jtac decides not to answer. Is there a certain area/range that I need to be withing to contact JTAC? Also I noticed that sometimes they will send me a datalink message and sometimes not. What is the deal with that? Right now my issue appears to be that I am able for the most part to contact jtac however sometimes Jtac becomes unresponsive in the middle of our back and forth. Usually when it gets to the point where I am supposed to copy remarks is when JTAC decides not to respond. Very weird I hope somebody can clear this up for me and I am really hoping its not just a bug.

YES!!!! JTAC ANSWERED! I am so releived. Turns out I was not using the proper mic switch mainly because I didnt know what the hell a mic switch was. Got alot more work to do. Ill try to figure it out as much as I can on my own but I really appreciate all of your help. Quick question. Does anybody know where I can learn radio terminology? For instance I want to be able to understand a message like " Hawg 2-1, Magic, Pop up group, 279 for 30 at 3,500 Hot". Or for instance when J.T.A.C says something like "make your attack heading 30-270". I understand that they mean they want me to approach from a certian direction however I dont know what 30-270 means and how to make for sure that I am approaching from it. Thanks again!

Thank you all for your help I think im getting closer here. I am certain that I am using the right frequencies as they are listed in the breifing and they are usually like you said 30.000 or 40.000. I also make sure I am on T.R and F.M so I cant think of any other reason why J.T.A.C wouldnt answer. So let me get this straight. You use certain mic switches for certain types of communication? For instance even though they all show which contacts are availible you still have to choose the right mic switch for who you are trying to contact?

I think I hopefully figured out why J.T.A.C wont answer! I was watching a Radio tutorial on youtube and the dude mentions Mic swithces. I dont know what they are but he indicated that they are on the HOTAS and that each one corresponds to the use of a different radio. This could be a breakthrough for me because what I use to get to radio commands is the " \ " key. Is this wrong? If so which button to I press to access the proper VHF radio for contacting JTAC? What keys are the various "Mic" switches assigned to? I think I may have finally figured this thing out please help! Thanks a bunch!

Thank for the advice. My biggest problem with my learning curve is it keeps getting interupted by game errors. For instance on no mission am I able to get JTACS to respond to me. Another issue is there are just some things that I have not been able to find any literature or training on for instance I dont understand radio lingo whatsever. In some training missions minor things have been explained however I have found no refrence that covers radio chatter and lingo entirley. Right now my biggest issue is learning the navigation and cdu. I dont know what a utm coordinate means vs a Lat Long coordinate. I guess the search continue. Oh and my f-7 f-10 f-11 and f-12 buttons dont work!

Wow cant thank you enough for pointing me in the right direction for all of my questions as I was feeling very lost. Hopefully I can figure all of this out.

Yeah I just figure with all the time and effort that ED put into making the game and I put into learning it ( not including the $1,000 plus that I have put into the game including HOTAS warthog, rudder pedals, track IR, and GTX 670, and ofcourse the game itself ) that it would make more sense to play it realistic. I used to play lock on with labels because without them you had no chance but with this game and all of the systems modeld I just want to play it as real as it gets. Thanks for the advice. Do you by anychance know how to install the JTAC patch?

Well I have had very little luck completing the search and destroy type missions. I always end up killing like 8 T-72's a BRDM a bunch of trucks and some self proppeled artillery and aa and than I spend about 45 minutes to an hour slewing the tgp all over the place to find more targets and than either the game crashes ( yet another unresolved issue to add to the already ridiculous list of issues I have with this game ) or I just get lazy and land or exit only to see that the mission is either failed or only partially completed. If I knew how to install that JTAC patch I would try it out however as of now I have no ability to use JTAC for target information. Where are we supposed to learn how to use JTAC and AWACS and all of the radio resources in this game? I found nothing about it in the quick start guide or in the flight manual. Where is the information on how to use every function of the game? I want to read the literature on JTAC on other things and not just have to watch youtube tutorials ( even though they are very helpful ). Where are the people who post the tutorials learning how to use the CDU or the datalink system. Also how do you read the map! I know it sounds silly but some of the terminology used and certian type of navigation data I do not understand. Where is the bible of DCS that I apparently dont have that is teaching people how to do this stuff? Oh and if someone would kindly point me in the direction of an installation guide for the JTAC patch that was recomended earlier that would be swell. P.S what are bullseye calls? Oh and whenever I command my wingman or allied flights to do anything they dont listen. I command my wingman to attack ground targets and then 30 minutes later I will view him and he still has all of his ordanance. I really need to find the guide that goes over how to use all of these functions and then after that I guess wait for a patch to come out so that they actually work. Update: My lazy ass just checked the Flight manual and found the JTAC chapter. Is everything else mentioned aswell? Oh and what does MGRS stand for? I just realized that I am still very much in training in this game as I know nothing about the CDU and its functions and I do not even know how to make a new markpoint ( which would be very usefull ).

Yes I have track IR so I will look into it. Thank you for the advice. How do you install that patch by the way? So I suppose the JTAC response issue is something that is common? Update: I checked to see if my track IR was using any of the F keys. It was not. In fact when viewing all keyboard commands no F keys came up. I am lost.

So I finally learned that J.T.A.C is very important in this game and seems to be the only practical way to find all of the targets that need to be destroyed in order to complete most of the missions in the campaign. Well a few youtube JTAC tutorial videos later I finally launch a a campaign mission and I am getting no response from JTAC. This mission in particular is the one where you support razor and elm to vermont and texas and it appears the only way to complete the mission is to kill every enemy unit as I have failed the mission many times not killing enough enemy. So JTAC must be the key to finding those enemy. Yes I am on the right frequency and on TR. Anybody know whats going on? P.S After reviewing the mission briefing I found that it has a note to " Contact other flights and ground forces using F10 "other" option from main radio menu. I do not exactley understand why it says to do this instead of just using F4 to contact JTAC which is what I was doing before and was not getting a response. Well I pressed F10 and nothing happens as I expected because no F keys beyond F8 work for me "no my keyboard is not broken" Does anybody else suffer from these issues? Why does F9 F10 F11 F12 not work and why is JTAC not responding?