paulca

There are multiple parts to this question. Finding the general area of the targets you are meant to kill. This will usually involve your waypoints. If you are not following and/or not aware of how to follow waypoints for the mission you need to do a few more training flights and start there. Note the name of the waypoint often (not always) gives you clues. TGT for example, or IP / FENCE. Fly to the IP, circle using the autopilot, select the TGT waypoint and china hat aft long to point the TGP towards the target. The second part of this question is, when you know the area and have the TGP pointing in that area, how do you spot targets. The answer is, with difficulty. It's a long standing issue with DCS that the TGP and IR cameras don't work right. A tank sitting in the middle of a road or field should be easy enough to spot, but anything in a built up area or forest is impossible. You can turn labels on and see with your eyes were the targets are but still spend 5 minutes trying to pick them up on TGP. Switching between Low Light, IR Black Hot and IR white hot repeatedly can draw your attention to somethings, but it's still not easy. Adjusting the gain can sometimes help, usually not. When all else fails, use lablels, boresight the TGP and HUD and fly at the target, with the HUD as SOI slew the target data cursor onto the target and set it as SPI, then slew the TGP to the SPI. Or with TGP as SOI move the TGP view cursor around on the HUD to be over the target. Sometimes the target will be behind a building or under trees and you still won't see it. Have another look or just chuck an area weapon in, like a CBU. Hopefully this new IR system will not be too long in the making as the current TGP is terrible. In 2.0 we currently have white hot cacti in the desert!

The A10 isn't difficult to fly. The learning curve comes from the high level of detail in the system's simulation. Basic flight however is pretty easy, much easier than, say, a 737 model in Prepar3D for example. Where it becomes tricky is learning to fight. This will require you learn at least the basics of the systems and weapons. The hardest part, I found, was remembering all the key commands, particularly for the HOTAS functions. That said, I had thousands of hours of flight sim experience, but virtually zero combat experience. I started in the Su-25T and while it has simpler systems and simpler weapons it was much, much harder to learn to fight in. Only being able to target things directly in front of you on a crappy low-light TV camera and only really having about 6nm range meant I got shot down almost 100% of the time. The A10 provides you the ability to scope out a target area from 15-20 miles away. To orbit at 10,000ft for half an hour picking targets and then run in, launch mavericks at 5-7nm or drop JDAMs from 14,000ft is much easier. The two biggest game changers for me and the A10 were getting the Worthog HOTAS and TrackIR. Made it a completely different ball game. Much more immersed and to a great degree easier.

Yea, that's pretty much what I did for the bunkers. They were easy to spot on TGP. To look for the SAM and other stuff would require I get heads down, but it was dark. Couldn't see the terrain under the clouds so couldn't locate myself somewhere safe enough to spend time in the TGP. It must be a setting I'm missing as when I originally played the mission is was well after dawn and well light by the time I got on target.

The pedals are plugged into the Mobo USB. Usually the pedals don't work until I unplugged and replug them. Tonight I did this straight after boot up anticipating it, but when DCS loaded I had to unplug/replug them again to get them to work. Toe brakes. They are set individual axises(sp?) I just don't seem to be able to apply the two pedals evenly enough. Flying the A10 or the F15. I tried to apply both feet at the same rate, but invariably one brake 'catches' first. It's okay taxiing it's more braking on landing at 80 knots or so, it causes a nasty veer to one side. I can quickly 'pivot' my feet or try and steer against it or both but... it's not easy.

Just replayed this mission tonight. I think I need to tweak a setting as my DCS is loading the seasons, including dawn/dusk based on the system clock time of year. This mission was hard when it was daylight. I just tried it in the dark. It didn't go well. Almost flew into a mountain, twice. The bunkers were easy with a single dual JDAM pass, but the SA9 and ZSUs I just couldn't find a safe location to orbit without being able to see the terrain long enough to properly scan the area. Tried a few run ins using labels aiming the mavericks at the red labels, took out something but received a SAM in response. No missile launch warning just BANG, master caution and no engines. Still fun though. Challenging and frustrating, probably next to impossible but still fun.

Hi guys, I finally invested in a set of Saitek Combat pedals, now actually sold by Logitec. The odd thing is, they don't work after a fresh boot of the PC. I discover once in the game and do a flight control check that I have no rudders. I have to climb under the table, unplug them and plug them back in. Then they work fine until I reboot. Has anyone seen similar issues and is there a known solution? Googling revealed many people have similar problems, but as usually few fixes. Machine is Windows 7. I installed the drivers from the Saitek website, but oddly they are branded "Mad Catz", so I'm a little suspicious. On a totally different point, are there any suggestions to make toe braking easier? I find it quite difficult to apply the brakes evenly and tend to wiggle my way down the runway. I envision some form of control mapping to link the pedals and only allow differential braking once there is a large differential in the pedals themselves. Cheers, Paul

Didn't know this, thanks. Will it lock while being moved via the TGP SPI?

This kind of stall is not a function of speed at all. It's purely a function of AoA. A wing stalls when the AoA exceeds the point at which the laminar flow of air over the wing detaches from (usually) the upper surface and the wing, produces a turbulent flow and stops producing lift. That can happen either by trying to maintain level flight when too slow which requires a higher and higher AoA or it can happen at any speed by pulling the stick back aggressively and pitching the aircraft away from it's direction of travel. You can get the stall horn to sound at any speed if the aircraft is suitably agile. I believe it's called an accelerated stall or high speed stall. The wing dropping is usually caused by there being minute differences between the airflow over each wing. This caused a tip stall on one of two wings first. The moment this happens the wing drops as it has stalled. This usually induces a yaw towards the stalled wing which actually helps to prevent the other wing stalling, at least initially. This is why stalling aircraft often results in a spin. Note that aircraft are often "tuned" at cost of performance to be nose heavy and the tail plane is set up to stall after the main wing. The nose heaviness gives them much more roll and pitch stability helping to prevent the wing drop tip stall and impending spin characteristic. The wings are often "washed out" with the wing twisted to lower the AoA at the tip relative to the root to prevent tip stalling. The tail stalling after the main wing produces a distinct pitch down as you begin to stall automatically correcting the issue. The A10C however is designed to be highly agile and less stable, even requiring electronic stability systems.

I believe in the real world you would feel the 'edge' of the stall in the controls and with your ass and be able to modulate the stick pressure like you do the clutch in a car.

I believe I did. It's been about 2 weeks since I flew in DCS. Shame on me. So yes, you can ride the beep, beep, beep but it's a very, very fine margin and you do have to "pick a wing up" from time to time. Personally I like the A10s instability. It means you can spin it and ever snap roll it (to a fashion).

If by the chopped tone you mean the Beep, Beep, Beep. I 'ride' that all the time. The solid tone you can also ride, but you need to correct the odd wing twitch. Typically though after a few seconds you don't have any energy left and it gets harder and harder and more and more pointless. If I had an RC plane that dropped wings at high AoA (and I have had RC planes that did this), I moved the weight forward a little. ie. moved the CoG forward about 0.5% usually stabilises things at a slight cost of "flickability".

I believe he is asking for a way to plot a flight plan using the TAD as opposed to having to type in the coords of each point on the flight plan. So create markpoints using the TAD, then convert the markpoints to waypoints of the flight plan and then fly that plan.

Some people need to learn the difference between "loading" and "displaying" from memory. Unless people have too little RAM for all needed textures in memory stuttering should be limited to the first time the texture loads. Most of them load in the first few minutes before take off. The only time you should notice any major stuttering after than is if you view a unit miles away and there are textures to load. The point is you would be better off buying more memory than an SSD. An SSD is still going to be 1000 times slower than RAM. Further, does the TGP use different textures or just modify (B/W) the existing ones?

I found if I land right I don't need the brakes at all! Just roll out to the end with speed brakes and flaps and turn off.

Just double check it's not the gear horn. There is a separate silence button for that beside the throttle. If it's the gear warning horn the gear knob will light up red. Sometimes it goes off if the gear is damaged.

Sorry if this has been reported before, but... if I use F6 to watch a missile at first the missile makes the normal rocket motor sound, but when the motor cuts there is a brief silence and then suddenly a loud pearcing hiss of white noise is produced until the missile hits it's target. To me it sounds like the sample is being played from the wrong part of memory or the sample file itself was corrupt. However a part of me worries that this is the noise that DCS actually put for the missile aero noise. Note... this has been the same since I originally installed Black Shark back in 2012! The problem still persists in DCS 1.5 with the A10.

Thanks Stronghold. I had a thread recently about this too as like BalticDragon I went 21:9. As with your thread there was a lot of people not really understanding the problem. What 'should' happen is that when you adjust the default zoom with RAlt0 the centre detent should update to that view also. This doesn't happen. I think your adjusting the axis curves is about the only way as technically it's a control issue, not really an issue with the view angle itself, just where on the slider it corresponds too.

It's odd if you look at the number of "Modern" fighter aircraft there are in the world today. ie. There is about... em... one. The F-22. The F-35 (to my understanding) is the cut down, cheaped out export version of the F-22. That's an awful lot of eggs in one basket. I'm from the UK and from what I can gather the next most modern fighter is the Eurofighter / Typhoon. Compared to the number of fighters born in the 60s, 70s and maybe the 80s the last few decades have seen very, very few.

Guaranteed you will have an SA-3 or SA-6 spike you the first time you take off without an ECM.

Thanks a lot dude. Glad to give feedback. I really like the campaign. It's an interesting take on things to play Anti-Insurgency after the wall-to-wall armor busting of the default campaign.

As a suggestion. A small bit of tactical reassurance in the mission briefing letting pilots know that at low level the ZSUs (not being radar guided Shilkas) will probably not fire on you. You should continue low level and use the night vision googles. Some illumination rockets might be cool too.

I found this mission a little odd. The proceeding mission "Training" somewhat prepares you for a low level valley flying mission, it might mention it will be at night even through training is in daylight. However the mission Wizardry itself doesn't appear to tell you if you should be low level or not. As the target was a ZSU-23 and Manpads at an enemy outpost I figured to attack that flying down a tight valley at low level ... at night ... would be suicide. The next puzzle was that the JTAC requested I use Mk82s against a ZSU emplacement... at night. No illumination rockets available. I suppose I could use the NVG. I got the TGP lined up on the road block after the JTAC gave me Data, which to my surprise turned out to be two ZSU-23 emplacements. Double suicide. So I CCRP dropped 1, then 2, then 3 Mk82s on the emplacement. Of course from the 15,000ft safety alt due to terrain and MANPADs I missed with all 3. I did take out all the infrantry and MANPADs, but I had to use GBU12s on the ZSUs. I messed that up and wasted one GBU-12, so ended up taking out the final ZSU with a maverick. As it turned out attacking this stuff from high above was difficult as everytime my orbit started to come round on target the TGP would lock onto the top of a hill and move my SPI. EVEN when I was Maverick view. Took a while to work out why my SPI was jumping around. Figured out I had to use INR mode until I was lined up with clear LOS. Now... I scanned the outpost for 3 orbits and there were no targets left. Both ZSU were smoldering and all infantry were lying on the ground dead, Yet the JTAC said the target was not destroyed. I fired all my rockets into the area to make sure all the infantry were dead and I hadn't missed any behind a building or something. Still not destroyed. In the end I put the NVG on and went in for a look... nothing. So I switched labels on and went back for another look and there was one target saying "Road Outpost". Now what exactly is that? What am I meant to shoot to kill it? I opted to spray the area with gun and finally the JTAC said it was destroyed. Without labels I would not have been able to figure out what or where that target was exactly. I found the convoy and loitered around. Yet, confusion from the mission breifing was creeping in. I kept hearing "To be clear your only target is the ZSU-23" and I could see a ZSU 23 in the convoy. My trigger finger began twitching, so when one of the other units started shouting about taking AAA fire I rolled in on the convoy and put a 3 second burst into the trailing ZSU-23. Turns out that's not the right ZSU-23 and in attacking the convoy I failed the mission.

The problem with this is that the pilot will obscure many things in the cockpit. If you look at a number of cockpit videos you will see that the pilots knees are often obscuring things. His elbows and arms will be obscuring things. In the real world the pilot can move his arms and legs to see things obscured by them, but that would add a whole bunch of unnatural controls for us. With TrackIR you can I suppose lean your head around to look around the pilots legs/arms/hands. Personally I just think it's a childish feature that might impress kids with big imaginations but personally I would find it a gimmicky and silly bubble gum feature.

As a simulator pilot of some 20 years I would agree... to a point. Personally it was only recently that the "world outside" the cockpit was anything more than randomly generated dynamic scenery, with very few recognisable features. Thus navigating VFR is next to impossible except by major coast lines, some rivers or mountain ridges. This tended me (and I'm sure others) towards IFR flying as it's much, much easier to simulate radio and RNav. Similarly in civil aviation space I tend to enjoy flying difficult low visibility and overcast approaches as it adds some form of tension and challenge to the flight. In combat sims things are somewhat different and the military tend not to fly IFR all too often due to the nature of combat and being able to see what you are fighting. However, things are changing and have been for a while. FSX with OrbX scenery and a whole stack (circa £300) add-ons you have been able to VFR navigate via roads, railways, towns and many real world visual reference points. DCS does a good job too for VFR navigation, but do appreciate that is a lot easier to achieve for a few 1000 square miles than for the entire planet or at least a whole continent like FSX or P3D.

Possibly one of Jeppesen's apps like the airlines use. http://ww1.jeppesen.com/aviation/mobile-efb/