tom_19d

Been there, done that haha. You might want to check your pylon switches to make sure you are drawing out of your drop tanks, even in your screenshot above you are well into your internal fuel already, that means you burned far in excess of 450 gallons to reach FL300. Something seems off there.

Gotcha. Even on 1.5 the mission was dark, it is supposed to be basically an instrument intercept, but whatever works for you. Where did all your gas go? You have three 150gal bags on, as I recall I barely got into my internal fuel.

I use a conventional monitor and track IR on 2.5, your screenshot looks just like mine does in mission -- you are heading straight out to sea before dawn, it is going to be dark. It would be much safer in this case to stay on instruments like you are doing anyway, night VFR over water has claimed more than a few digital (and RL pilots) due to the lack of a discernible horizon. This bug is reported, once Belsimtek gets their portion of the F18 done they will start paring down the F5 bugs again. A little throttle manipulation and you can find your way to 27. The 476th has been gracious enough to release their pubs here. You start on the southwest ramp. If you don't want to taxi full length you have plenty of runway remaining at D intersection if you use the default load. The mission creator can lock out these options and override your settings. (F10 own ship and F2 external views). Lots of multiplayer servers (including recently ACG Cold War) do this. Once you figure out your TACAN issues you won't need the F10 map anyway. TACAN is working fine in T/R on this end. In your screenshot something might be set wrong, I would guess the mode switch, as your DME and TO/FROM indicator are flagged on the HSI. Can you hear the Morse identifier? Starting from the beginning, if you don't have things needed to start the engines mapped I would just ask for ground power- once the power cart is plugged in you will have access to all the cockpit lighting to help you find your switches. Once airborne just fly the profile provided in the briefing-- 250 radial outbound at FL300. The briefing depicts this out to the 130 DME but you shouldn't make it that far. Wizard will start to call out the target for you, you get a message advising not to use radar but it won't hurt anything if you do and frankly could be quite difficult without it. You don't need the F10 map to stay inside the "border," just don't cross north of the 280 radial (again as depicted on the briefing chart) and you'll be fine. It has been since probably the first week of early release on the F5 since I last tried this mission but I believe if the Herc makes it much north of that radial you fail anyway, although I might be wrong on that. Once you have taken care of the C130 intercept the 280 inbound and head home, they have this depicted on the brief too- I believe around the 30 DME you move over to the 268 radial and take it until you contact the tower, they will clear you for a visual back to 27. Like Istari said, it is a good mission, well crafted and makes you work on your instrument scan a bit...

Hello all, Link below is to an overlay I made for my Warthog throttle so I can keep my buttons straight when moving between aircraft. https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3209344/ It works well as a companion to my other F5 content, available in the following links. Hopefully someone will find something useful to them, instructions for all products are on the download pages. Tom F5 Normal/Abnorma/Emer Printable Checklist https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/2321351/ TM Cougar MFD Panel Cards https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/2321358/ F5 Navlog/Mission Briefing Cards https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/2321354/

Fantastic news, thanks Alpenwolf and Ciribob!

I hadn't thought of that, right on.

Clearly everyone here is entitled to their opinion, I was just offering valid uses for Target that DCS can't do since the question was posed. If "overkill and frankly unnecessary" were disqualifiers for my personal choices I would probably find some other form of recreation than study type simulators haha. Or maybe I just have a real aversion to touching a mouse while I fly... Cheers

I use Target for everything but the A10. Perfect example in the F5 is the autopilot select switch on the warthog throttle (path, alt/hdg/alt). In the F5 it is my master arm switch. Fencing in, when I move the switch up, it raises the master arm guard and then moves the switch up to arm. Fencing out to land, I move the switch to alt/hdg and the master arm switch goes down, cover goes down. I use the engine fuel flow switches on the warthog for the emergency fuel cuttoffs. When I pull the engine fuel flow switch down into override, the F5 emergency fuel switch guard comes up, then the switch activates. Until DCS is able to map multiple actions like raising a guard and flipping a switch to a single button, that is "why in the world" I would use Target. Is there a way to map multiple actions to a single button or switch in DCS I am not aware of?

Well I hate to say it but that empties my barrel of ideas. I have never had to do it but it sounds to me like you are reaching the point of an installation repair or similar tactic. I think if this were a more systemic problem there would be a boatload of people here trying to chase this problem down, runaway trim is something no one will tolerate-- as your frustration indicates. Sorry I wasn't able to help, good luck. Hopefully someone with more knowledge (or just the specific knowledge you need) shows up and reads this thread and will be able to help.

Threads with this general topic - how to fight various AI aircraft in the F5 and frustration trying to do so - keep coming up. There are numerous threads across all the modules addressing the advantages the AI seem to have (always flying their aircraft at maximum efficiency, lack of PFM for AI, perfect vision, simplified damage model and so on) so I won’t go there here. I would advise anyone lamenting the F5s deficiencies to take it online. The ACG Cold War server is generally excellent and human players are much more enjoyable opponents (not to mention human pilots are much better wingmen....sometimes haha). And on that note, I would be lying if I said I haven’t fallen victim to a MiG 15 on that server a time or two. For all the reasons you explained, a MiG 15 and a competent pilot are a serious issue for the F5 if the mig is allowed into guns range. I realize that probably isn’t the answer you are looking for. I love flying the F5 in weather and in a CAS role single player or in coop, but frankly I would probably have retired it a long time ago if I was trying to fight AI aircraft with it on a regular basis.

I would think you would be able to after you figure this out. First and foremost though I think you need to verify it is for sure the trim that is sticking and I think the gauge is the best way to do this. Since the tail is an all moving surface I don't think external views are sufficient to sort trim movement from elevator movement.

I have never noticed the stick movement before but I started up on the ramp and moved the trim and my stick in fact moves with it. And my trim is working normally, so I believe the stick movement is not relevant. That mouse/keyboard thing is weird...did you try clearing the keyboard binding and setting it to something else? You don't have to do anything to make the trim indicator display, it is a small gauge directly above your ADI. It is the gauge you use to set your elevator trim before takeoff. If this gauge is moving back and forth from stop to stop you indeed have a trim problem, I would submit a track file of this. If this gauge isn't moving, I suspect the issue is actually an elevator axis binding problem masquerading as a trim problem. EDIT: Did some research on the stick movement. USAF TO 1F-5E-1 is very thin on the flight control section, but it describes the horizontal as "an all moveable horizontal tail" and it says the pitch trim indicator "indicates trim position of the horizontal tail." It also says "Artificial "feel" is built into the system, and electrical trim actuators change the relationship of the "feel" springs to the control stick." This is all on page 1-57. The DCS manual says the trim gauge indicates "pitch trim position (control stick position and horizontal tail position accordingly)." That is page 106. This leads me to believe movement of the stick when the trim is moved is a correct feature. Maybe someone with RL F5 time could speak to that though...

The Devs are basically committing all their effort to completing their part of the Hornet to ensure it makes it to early release status. See this thread. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=195293

Sorry man, just to be safe I tested my system again, no issues here. Trim moves up and down through the full range and stops when I let off the HOTAS hat I have it mapped to. I also looked through the bindings under the axis commands just to make sure there isn't the possibility of a "pitch trim" axis, there is not.... This really sounds like a binding problem to me. I don't know what kind of set up you are running and how many controllers you have, but I know sometimes I have to scroll right on the control setup screen to see all my attached controllers. If its not a binding issue it might be time to try a repair on your installation-- I think if this was a problem more people were having this thread would be packed with responses, runaway trim is a RL emergency, people would be howling about it here if it were widespread. EDIT: One last question -- you are confirming this trim movement through the indicator, correct? In your first post you mentioned an external view-- I just want to confirm it is actually the trim moving, not a wandering elevator that you are having to chase with trim.

I've never seen anything remotely like this-- granted I haven't played since Friday night but I don't think any updates have dropped since then. It sounds like a binding problem. Did you clear every other binding on every other device except your desired HOTAS buttons for up and down? What happens if you just map it to a pair of keyboard keys and test that way? What does the pitch trim indicator show?

I almost always take off with 3 tanks (multiplayer, Caucus map) and have never had this issue with 2.5. I had seen it a time or two in 1.5 like a year ago-- when reamring/refueling in multiplayer I always select my loadout, then drag the fuel slider down a bit and then max it out, then press OK. Not sure if the last step actually does anything or not but like I said, it has been over a year since I switched into an empty tank and I have never had an issue with 2.5.

Used 31X Friday night successfully. If going from an air start sometimes it takes a little bit to start tracking radials/DME after the ident comes in but I have never had it not work.

When you ctrl-alt-delete'ed to force quit did you happen to look at your RAM utilization in the task manager? I was having lock ups with 2.5 (something I had basically never encountered in 1.5/2.0) and it seemed to always correlate with my RAM being maxed out. Upgraded to 32 gig and no more problems here...

What manufacturer and model of NVGs are you referring to? I have yet to see or hear of any model that has the ability to autofocus, but of course I would be interested to read about something new. Also, even if they exist now they didn't when the A10C rolled out. Lastly, the video above shows no such thing, you can see them NOT refocusing themselves at the times I pointed out in a post in this thread above.

Sorry Hekktor, this vid just proves Eddie correct. Once the helicopter is in the air there are basically three kinds of shots, shots out the windows showing only the world outside the a/c, tight shots of the left seater, and super tight shots of an EIS type display. You will notice they never pan from one of these shots to the other. This is because like Eddie said, they had to refocus the NVGs between each shot. Further proof, notice at 1:22 when the camera passes the aircraft’s airframe. The world outside is nice and clear, but the A-pillar close to the camera is super blurry. Same thing happens at 1:44, outside of the one instrument the NVGs were focused on everything else is blurry. The MFDs and NVGs play together just fine, but only if the pilot chooses to focus the NVGs on them, which makes the world outside the cockpit a blurry mess. Just like FSKRipper said, the reason pilot NVGs don’t have eye cups is so the pilot can look “under” them at the instruments, kind of like using bifocals. NVGs for use by ground troops have eye cups to hide the back glow of the NVGs from observation.

Without getting into specific tactics, I would agree with Stingray that multiplayer is a great way to experience the F5. Lots of threads talk about some of the advantages the AI seem to have in DCS so I won't go there, but suffice to say I some of my most fun experiences in DCS have been in the F5 against human flown Mig21s. It is unpredictable, exciting, and rewarding in a way the AI can't compete with, IMO.

Glad to hear it!

I get where you are going with this Midnight but I think this is apples to oranges. I won't disagree that there can be differences between the altimeter settings at the fields SoCal TRACON covers (even for a single controller). But lets do some math. 29.78 (1008.5mb) to 29.99 (1015.6). Granted, I admit this is a large discrepancy (basically 200 feet) between indicated altitudes of airplanes that might only be 34.2 nm (ONT to VCV, 63 km) apart. However, consider that according to Ahrens' "Meteorology Today" 8th edition a storm in 1998 flipped over trucks and ripped the roofs off houses with a pressure gradient of only 32 mb per 500 km (1 mb per 16 km). Google pressure gradient force and you will find a set of slides from the University of California Irvine that associates tornadoes and hurricanes with pressure gradients of 1 mb per 6 km. Your example has a pressure gradient of 7.1 mb per 63 km, or 1 mb per 9 km. So your example requires something WELL beyond a normal Santa Ana wind and closer to a hurricane to be valid. (1/16 for 90+ knot winds, 1/9 for your example, 1/6 for a hurricane). Conversely, take Centennial airport in Denver and Denver International. They are 19 nm apart and have a field elevation difference of 451 feet. If Denver approach used QFE, aircraft taking off 19 nm apart would have a difference of 451 feet between their indicated altitudes at the moment of takeoff, every single time. Then mix in all the VFR traffic in the area (just like in SoCal) and imagine trying to deconflict that as a controller. Of course, if it is like Bbrz says and a single controller rarely works multiple fields, this isn't a problem, but in your example this isn't the case. Maybe I am missing something here or I have some math or meteorology wrong (please point it out if I do!) but I think Cake has it correct here. Sure there can be some slight variations with QNH across a sector but NOTHING like QFE would create.

Coming right off the rails here, AIM9-P5 functioning as advertised running 2.5 OB with all updates complied with...I know that doesn't sound too constructive without offering solutions but it sounds like you guys probably know all about jettison switch/external ord switch/power to the stations and all that...is it giving tone?

You nailed it with TACAN in this instance. A published TACAN approach is essentially a civil VOR/DME approach and can be conducted without INS/GPS or any of the other avionics you mentioned. (Be careful with a radar altimeter by the way, outside of very specific cases (CAT II and III ILSs that some of the airline guys here could tell you about) radar altimeters are never relied upon in IFR. They are only a situational awareness tool. Also remember the military has the ability to conduct PAR (Precision Approach Radar) approaches in which a controller talks the airplane down laterally and vertically to basically ILS minimums. Here are the 476th vFs airport pubs. If you open up either the Geogia or Vegas books you can find many TACAN approaches that are useful for the F5.