pstavis

Its me, again... Well mission 4 is really unplayable. Tried it like 30 times and everytime I get a different result. On my first tries, I could kill the first group then head to the massive attack. Here it became unfair, all the friedly AI died. I died too rofl. For the next tries, now I can only kill the 2 migs, the next SU24s go past the AWACS unnoticed. When I finally find them with my radar, the ship gets hit and mission fail. My wingman? Geez... Crash after takeoff, killed by the first migs, killed by SU24s. Not sure whats happening. What I believe is a must here is changing the double fuel tank on wings for more AIM-120. Not sure if it's a realistic loadout but so far is the only alternative for me...

Seems pretty obvious i'm not playing with the radar correctly. I belive i'm still hoping the guy in the back of the F14 will help me here too Just to be sure: I'm always supposed to change the radar elevation or is there any other way to make it "automatic"?

Recently I moved from the F14 to the F18 looking for some fun. Of course theres a lot of differences but when it comes to the radar, I supposed it kinda works the same: You find the bogie on the radar, lock 'em and shoot 'em. I'm having a hard time figuring out why sometimes the radar keeps scanning the target but no STT lock happens. I press the lock (tdc depress) over and over but no luck. I made a video for another discussion regarding a campaign: Around the 7 minutes mark I try a STT lock on two bogies. You can see the radar tries to lock 'em but no luck. Am I missing some step here? Appreciate any inputs you have into this issue (don't mind the rest of the flight, i'm still working on it). Thx!

Near the end of the video, when I turn towards the bandits they instantly appear on my radar. The main issue until that point is that they somehow took off and climbed to 13000ft, got near 30nm from me without the AWACS seeing 'em. I believe its some kind of bug or maybe they spawn mid air right behind me. The radar thing is another topic which i'm having trouble but i'll try to manipulate the radar elevation a little bit more and see if I can lock targets easier. PS: I'll try a separate thread for this question so we don't fill the campaign thread.

Here's a video from the moment they "activate" until we exchange missiles: Around 01:30 into the video I call the AWACS for the first time, clean. 03:45, still clean. Around 05:50 i'm turning to hit the next target I can see 'em on my RWR. 06:03 AWACS says they're only 30nm from me and they pop up on my SA page. Then around 7' mark I try to lock using my radar (TDC depress) but that's another thing I cant figure out yet (why the radar keeps scanning the small portion but it never locks up). Finally around 7nm from him I can lock and wait until my missile says its in range. The end you already know. I'm not sure if its maybe a mission spawn so they will pop up at 13.000ft 30nm from me. Or the AWACS should have picked them far away but isnt working as it is supposed to.

Sorry if my question sounds dumb but I'm having a bit of trouble on mission 2 (excluding the prologue). So I hit all targets on the first island. Then I move to the second one and the F-5 shows up. On my first try, they got me fairly easily. On the second one, I tried shooting him but somehow he just got behind me. Third try, my wingmen got him. Then I continued hitting the ground targets. Out of the nothing another F-5 shot me. I was well aware there were two of 'em. When we downed the first one, the second guy moved away and I kept asking for EWACS reports, it always came back as clean. I might be misunderstanding the F18 (i'm like a average guy on it for now) but I dont see any RWR warning he's behind me nor the EWACS tells me theres a guy coming for me. Any advice? Isnt the RWR supposed to warn me i'm being shot at, followed or at least the EWACS is supposed to update me on the bandit position?

I had great success when using <20nm. Thanks! Based on what I read i thought the phoenix missile would be the choice for shooting bogies 50nm+. It seems its no the case. Tbh I did not understand this one. Ok, the contact vanished. However at the beggining there were only 2 targets (at all time), not sure 3 were shown and then one disappeared. Maybe its jester's fault? So far I've learned alot from this post. Unfortunately for me the module seems to be 2 players only and still need some polishing on bugs/features not related to HB development itself but DCS engine and stuff. I'll take a break from the F14 and switch to the F18. Thanks alot guys!!

I did believe I was a good F14 pilot until I started reading your post. TBH i couldnt figure out what exactly was each symbol on the TID. So after a good read and some youtube videos, i'm getting better with this things. Thanks for the inputs! Thanks for the info, i kinda thought it worked that way. I wasnt recording until the target appeared to be the "jamming" thing I mentioned. You can see I already had fired one missile upon him, suddenly the target simply starts flying to the other direction and disappears. The missile simply starts going erratically and never appears to lock anything. That's the feeling I had... I recorded one run with the phoenix: 4 enemies, 4 shots. Hit just one. Not sure what went wrong (despite hitting a buddy :()

Hi all! I'm currently flying the Cage the Bear campaign (again, when i did it the first time there was no SC...). When engaging A2A against the AI sometimes I have a hard time understanding what is really going on, so here's my questions: 1) When i'm scanning with the radar (jester to be more precise), what is shown to my enemy? Do they know they are being tracked? When i fire my missiles in TWS, I assume they will only be warned when the missile locks 'em right? I ask this because sometimes I get picked up by the enemy radar at great ranges (150-180nm) and my RWR is always screaming. Not sure if it happens to them also (or it happens because they lock only my aircraft at that time). 2) Now back to the phoenix... So the optimum distance (based on other topics) would be 50nm for TWS kills. Great, 40nm (just to be sure) I fire a salvo of 4 missiles on 4 targets. One hits the target only. I'm talking about AI players, I believe they're not very smart. Based on the TWS benefits I read, i should hit maybe 2 or 3 right? Is there any tips to better handle TWS engagements? Usually I see 3 targets then suddenly one just starts "accelerating" and disappears. Maybe that's jamming? Thanks for any inputs!

It would be great to get some tips on the last mission... So I takeoff, follow the FP to the RV point. Then 4 fighters come to my direction, I send 4 PH on their way. Then what? I have some problem giving directions to my wingman. If I send him to kill bandits, he usually gets killed either by sam or cant kill a single one. What I did was use my 4 PH on the first targets, then send the CAP and got one of the other threats with my other missiles. Then I sent the SEAD mission and the bombers. But many more fighters took off and killed my strike force. I'm still trying to figure out DCS missions, the previous ones went without any problems, this one however is giving me headaches. Thx for any input!

And everyday I learn something new :smartass: Thanks for the help, i'll practice some more with those dumb targets until I can shoot down real bogeys.

Here's two examples of what I'm talking about: I thought I was firing too far from the bogey, so I tried closer: All shots are with a PAL lock, I never lost the lock altough on the second run the enemy went a little left of my flight path. It's almost like the first missile will always miss.

So I lock the target, fire the missile and keep the lock on. The missile will follow the target but it always misses for a mile or so or even stops tracking. I tried firing at a dumb target but no luck. Also checked tutorials online for a missing step but no luck yet.

I thought there was some manual information requiring running engines. Thanks for the reply m8! Without directly asking it seems you answered my next question of why my aim-7 never hits anything. The missile simply follows the targed for some seconds then misses it. Thanks for all the replies, never thought so many ppl would help!

1) I'm a guy used to flying airliners in P3D. For those, you set up all the systems, align the INS and then start the engines and so on. For the F14 I would like to understand if the INS alignment is only possible AFTER engine start OR you could align the INS then start the engines. For a full INS alignment it feels stupid to run the engines for almost 8 minutes until it's ready. When I was flying the A-10C, which requires some sort of alignment too, I always let it run for a few minutes and when it was almost ready, I would start the engines and do the other steps. Maybe it's the way Jester flow is designed but maybe it could be reworked so we dont have to idle for 8 minutes. 2) Is there a rule of thumb for the use of missiles? I do get the sidewinder is good for dogfights (as it's not capable of hitting anything more than 5 miles or so away). The phoenix is great for long range shots. But what about the sparrow? Where would I use it? Thanks for any help!