311Gryphon

I would post a track but it didn't get saved and I had some other issues with my machine after this problem. Plus the track would only show part of the issue. My friend and I have twice attempted to share SPI information. He is broadcasting to me. The first time he successfully sent me the new tasking, I had the option of selecting "WILCO" on the LMFCD and did so. The red SPI triangle showed up on the TAD. I slewed my TAD cursor to it, hooked it with TMS forward short, set it as my SPI with TMS forward long. I then did the ol' China Hat forward long to slew all sensors to the SPI. All seemed right with the world until I looked over at my RMFCD and saw it slewing. But when it got to whatever point it was looking at it did not "lock" onto that point. It drifted over the countryside in a way that led me to believe it was drifting with the speed of my plane. Maybe. I'm trying to understand what may have happened. Did my friend's TGP hit the gimbal limits and somehow start a moving SPI? That doesn't seem right at all. It seems like his SPI would have been a set of coordinates that he then broadcast to me. Thus it shouldn't move. The second time we tried to share SPI it seemed to work. However, after hooking it, setting it as my own SPI, then slewing everything to it, I manually slewed my TGP around to find a specific target and then set a new SPI on it. We then had to fly out and get a better angle due to some mountains. When we rolled back in, my TGP (and my MAV) was staring at the side of a mountain. I initially believed that the shoulder of the mountain had gotten in my way due to our angle and that the target would come into view as we approached. I soon learned that all of my sensors were looking at the wrong spot. That's the second time that happened to me but the first time was when I was flying solo. Any ideas? I must be doing something wrong. Another unrelated issue on that same flight was that my stall warning horn came on constantly about halfway to the target area. My IAS was looking good. I even dove for a few thousand feet and it still wouldn't shut up. I did a few aileron rolls and had plenty of energy for that, contemplated flying into the side of a mountain to shut it up, and finally found the stall warning volume and turned it down all the way. I knew it was there just hadn't had to use it before so it took me a bit to find it. I've basically decided that when I'm not messing something up my plane just decides that someone has to do it so I still can't get a good run at a mission!

I think you are partly correct but movies don't make money unless people go watch them and directors who make failures don't direct much. I know people won't stop watching movies just because they are wildly unrealistic but it would be nice if people would use more common sense and be more educated about a wide array of subjects and then go on to expect common sense and some realism to come through in movies. But you are right, it's great when movie makers get it right. I'm not as annoyed at sounds in some cases as I am with mechanics. That is one reason I liked the movie Shooter and don't really care for the movie Sniper. There is a distinct difference in long range ballistics, optics, and shooting form in those 2 movies.

You speak much truth. Most of the time Hollywood either isn't concerned with realism or if they are concerned they only wish to capture what the majority of their audiences THINK is realism. Like the fact that any time a car goes around a corner they throw in screeching tires and smoke. People expect it so Hollywood delivers, I guess.

I don't know the "proper" way to fix the issue but you could lean forward a bit from your natural sitting position and recenter, then lean back to your natural position. If you lean forward the correct amount before re-centering your TIR will then think you're leaning back from center thus "zooming out" so to speak. I usually just use the zoom function to fix mine. It does a very similar thing and I have zoom mapped to the friction wheel on the HOTAS throttle quadrant so it's easy to access. There is probably a better way to actually fix it though.

I've been playing for almost 2 months and I have actually never really finished any of the Instant Action missions to my satisfaction and have only completed a single Campaign Mission. This isn't to say you cannot advance faster than that but I don't get much time to play during the week and I've spent most of my time just flying in very small and fast missions that I've created myself to learn the plane. I've flown a couple of long missions with a friend but have had limited success in that. The point I'm trying to make is that you can advance rather rapidly and finish the campaign but there is a learning curve so that's not going to happen in a week like with most games due to the fact that this is a study simulation of the highest fidelity. Even if you do complete the campaign in record time there are a lot of other things you can do. Multiplayer is an option. Downloading other user created missions from the DCS website is an option. Creating your own missions is an option. There is a lot to do and if you stick with it (for the learning part) you'll actually get more mileage out of the money you spend on this than you will most games.

I think it is in the mission briefing. I've not done refueling yet but I've been studying up on it and I think it can change each time. Check the briefing to see the frequency and then just make sure you're using the correct radio. Also make sure that radio is in the right mode. I found that I was turning the radio knob to the wrong position and couldn't get ATC to respond. I think I was doing that because in the tutorial it was a little slow to respond at that stage and I turned the knob one spot too far about the time the tutorial advanced so there I was thinking it had to be in that position. When I finally zoomed in to check it, I was in "TR". Good luck.

I've flown at dusk and it was interesting. To be more precise, I was starting up the 'Hog with the sun still up and waiting on my flight leader to get started up I watched the sun go down and some planes fly into the base we were at. We where wheels up about official dusk and by the time we got to the target area it was mostly night with some light still coming over the western horizon. I don't know if it looked more real or not. The flight leader had tags on and that just kills the immersion for me. It looked nice. It was fun and a good departure from daytime flying. I will say that with tags off I'd have had a little trouble finding targets but that's nothing new. I have trouble in daytime. So now that you bring it up, I'll have to fly some more dawn and dusk missions and see how it is.

This is my exact setup so I'll attempt to help (not very well though I assure you) because..... ....I'm nothing like a pro pilot! I'm about as far as it gets from a pro even in this game. I'm assuming you mean the zoom in and out by leaning with the TIR. Mine doesn't really zoom much but that may be because I never messed with the curves of TIR. I use the in game zoom. Sometimes it is jittery probably because it conflicts a little with the TIR view control but I'm not sure. You are absolutely correct, it is a bit of a waste. I personally use the friction wheel on the WH throttle quadrant for my zoom. I just set the axis to zoom and that was it. The middle is no zoom, back is zoom out, forward is zoom in. That axis isn't used at all so it was easy to set up. Here I have no advice because all of my stuff was almost plug and play for the most part. All I did was set the friction wheel as stated before, set Mic Switch Up to my Ventrillo PTT button, change the trim tab on the stick to what it was intended to be (trim), then changed my hot keys in TIR to use the Insert, Delete, Home, and End keys since I no longer need them in game (that I know of). You're welcome from another A-10C pilot wannabe. But in closing you might try other advice first because while my stuff seems to work pretty well without much work other people here have a lot of experience getting things to work RIGHT. Good luck.

I have to agree with cichlidfan on that, although admittedly I've never played any games on multiple monitors. I always wanted to build a multi-monitor flight sim but that is largely because I did not know there was a head tracking option. Anyway, from my limited experience TrackIR gives you all the utility you need and makes flying very enjoyable even if you aren't blowing things up. Cockpit interaction is easy. Flying around landmarks is awesome (and doing an airport approach is much better as well). Looking for missiles, enemies, targets, your wingman, etc is much easier too. All in all it's a great option and I literally plugged mine in and haven't changed a thing other than shortcut keys for centering the view. Now I'd love to set up 3 monitors AND TrackIR.........:joystick:

Yeah, the AI is somewhat lacking throughout DCS. I'm somewhat okay with that due to the fact that the real emphasis is on flight models and realism in the module subjects. It would just be nice to get some solid AI updates at some point and I think it could be one of the many things feasible that would launch the DCS universe into more Personal Computers around the globe. But as far as the AI wingmen go I can't seem to get them to do anything except get shot down.

I don't have any experience with this but I think you are right on. I've seen someone (in game not in real life) drop 4 JDAMs a few seconds apart as they flew over a target area and hit four different targets almost simultaneously. I suspect it is due to exactly what you're stating about the slant range from bomb to target at weapon release. The first bomb has a longer distance to travel. But there are a lot of variables involved as well.

Yes. Worst case scenario if you do something wrong with having them hook up ground power you'll just have to do a cold start and fire up your APU. But it works.

+1 on this. With your HUD as SOI it's pretty easy because once you set up all your mark points you just DMS forward short until you're on the first one. Then it's a matter of lining up and pickling JDAMs when you're in range, DMS forward short, pickle, DMS forward short, pickle, repeat until satisfied or out of JDAMs. The youtube tutorials are better to watch to get the idea though.

I think this is sound advice. I don't think the manual is a total waste of time but it can be. For me, I just had the manual on a thumb drive and I pulled it up on my lunch break at work when I couldn't be doing much else anyway and I'd scroll to the pages I wanted to learn about. It's great for "filling in the blanks" in some ways although it can cause you to spend a lot of time with no immediate gain. But watching YouTube videos is great advice and just taking your time to learn what you need to learn is the way to go.

No, one of the complex but amazingly beautiful things about DCS is that each module has it's own control settings. So select which module you want to customize the controls for in the drop down menu in the control settings and change those babies however you want. When you enter the A-10C game itself the controls will still be whatever you've set them to in the A-10C control menus. Although, if you're referring to some profiles that are managed outside the game my answer may not apply.

I definitely like your attitude. Kill stuff! But yeah I think it's best at times like that to jettison it all, limp back if possible, eject if not, grab another plane and go get vengeance.

+1 on this.

I skipped it for the same reason. I am finding now that I want to know more about it to be more effective, but at first I had no desire to learn about it. You can employ weapons and fly just fine without it and I think you'll come to a natural point where you feel confident in what you've learned and you'll be both able and willing to learn about the CDU. I'm finding that this game is quite natural like that. When you are ready to learn the next intricately modeled thing you'll also be at the point where you WANT to learn it. It's beautiful!

Interrogative: is this supposed to be TMS up short? I just ask because I'm easily confused and want to make sure I'm doing it right. TMS up short works for me but if there is a better way to do it I want to know about it. Thanks.

Yeah I would either set a SPI with the TGP on your target and then slew all to the SPI or set a markpoint on the target and slew all to it. Either way you can use that method to get your Maverick seeker to look directly at the target. Now, I'm not the best at weapons employment but I've only had one AGM-65 miss the target and only had 2 that never got a lock out of about 20 or 30 launches (I'm not keeping track so that's a wide ranged guess). When the seeker is looking at the target I have the white cross hair lines that are broken in the middle. Like I said, a couple of times it hasn't "locked" but it usually does, and it always stays put where I've slewed it unless I manually slew it and then it is hard to get where I want it.

I noticed that when I was downloading it. Thanks for pointing that out. Now I have to go check my tutorial and make sure I have the right one!

Yeah. There may be a better way to do it. I wish the in game bort number would change more than just the last 2 numbers. It would be cool if you could change the entire bort number and maybe have a few templates for size and location that you could select in game. Good luck. For what it's worth, if you just use the nose and tail bort number locations it's only 3 of the 12 textures that you have to change.

Mine have actually shut off before and I had to turn them back on. Which confused me because I asked my friend about it and he said his gets the warning but won't actually shut off. My MAV screen went black (looked exactly the same as when you switch to MAV after a cold start and haven't turned the EO on). I hit OSB-6 to turn them on and waited the three minutes and it came back on. I'm not sure if something else was going on but from everything I could see the EO had timed out.

NO DOUBT!!!!!

No problem, glad I could help. Just remember that the EO will time out after a bit (something like 12 minutes) so if you aren't going to be firing any Mavericks for a while you can turn it off then turn it back on when you're about 3 minutes from using them. Good luck with the rest of it!