bfr

So the Razbam FAQ implies, they're going all the way back to A (but obviously not doing the Navy/USMC 'exclusive' variants along the way). Although you'd assume the ones that don't exist in the game already probably won't be any time soon.

From experience then one's virtual butt has usually been gentle enough in its placement as to not disturb things during an alignment. I don't think any system turned on from the back seat is going to reasonably cause vibration anyway?

I'd gladly take having a .lua in the user folder (just so it doesn't get nuked every update) as a stop-gap if putting a full-blown DTC mechanism & UI into the game itself is a lot of work and won't happen soon.

How long did you give it? I forget what the exact timings are but the transition from OFF to ON can take a few minutes to complete and you should see the messages change as GrEaSeLiTeNiN described as it starts up. STANDBY to ON should just take a few seconds. If you're still having problems even after giving it time then stick a track file up and we can maybe figure out if you're missing a step somewhere.

What is going bad for you? I find it quite easy to get down in one piece and its the best behaved module IMHO under braking. Although one thing that has come up a few times is people forgetting it can carry a lot of weight in fuel and then struggling to land it with very full tanks and the high approach speeds that go with that.

The TPOD isn't automatically active. There's a 3 position switch in the rear cockpit somewhere on the left for the pod that is OFF-STANDBY-ON (much like the F18). The switch that controls the laser is next to it. If i'm cold starting I normally hop in the back and flick it to STANDBY, then have the transition between STANDBY and ON (which takes just a few seconds) mapped on my throttle. I think if you start in the air its already at STANDBY (and the laser is normally in an armed state).

Which i'm not actually opposed to. I just wish it were consistent.

Happy for it to be moved and I did ponder which to put it in, but as it appears to be inconsistent behaviour with some other modules (I don't own every single one so can't say whether that inconsistency is universal) i'd say its reasonable to say its as a grey area.

I'd noticed the crosshairs drift from a stable designation a little during all but the most gentle manoeuvres but it then normally drifts back for me to the originally designated point once you've returned to stable flight.

Yes, I came to a similar conclusion and I think someone noted that even closing the canopy mid-alignment can knock it off. Throw the switch, back away slowly and then go and make a cup of coffee or something.

50% gas is still quite a lot of weight in this bird. I tried some scenarios against a Mig-21 a few days ago and didn't really feel like I had the edge in a tight dogfight unless I engaged at about 20% full. Above that I was able to usually keep it from getting on my tail but we were basically flying around each other getting nowhere fast and waiting to see who ran out of gas first.

Its in the original release notes under Known Issues that changing it from the kneeboard doesn't currently work.

Fair enough, didn't realise both options were available.

I get the idea from an immersion point of view, but i'm not convinced it'd be universally popular given there are text elements in it that are/will be useful (e.g. initial coordinates when the INS is more fleshed out) but would be a pain to read off without something like a snap zoom function.

Welcome on board! (managed it at 2nd attempt. although the pilot blacked out briefly on touchdown). For reference I started about 10 miles off the boat with 10% fuel at about 5000ft. And onto Part 2 of my 'can you land a non-naval jet on a carrier' challenge which was getting back off the deck and recovering to terra firma. Got back off the deck with a full length run-up (refuelled to 20%) without much drama but it turned out I had broke something in the landing when I tried retracting gear. So a leisurely (< 280kts) recovery to Dubai and extra-gentle on touchdown.

So is consensus that this is a bit broken at the moment? I only tried it for the first time yesterday but was a complete bust. I tried tracking a moving tank i'd set up on one of the target range 'lily pads' on the Nevada map and it was hard work just picking it out on the TPOD, never mind getting it to track. I got the highlighted MPD button text to suggest it was sort-of working but no matter what I did it wouldn't then track and follow the target. Admittedly this was in daylight conditions so that might not help with contrast, so I might try again in twilight/night and see if that does any better.

As an enhancement they could a lot worse than tweak it so it does trigger a capture just as a weapon you launched impacts. As I found out in my own little experiment, its blind luck whether the capture cycle coincides with your weapon's time of impact. Its definitely a feature with potential though.

To be fair, it is far from well documented in the SE manual currently (one mention for 1 MFD page and no implementation details added).

Try a flight with a low sun at your rear and those smudges pretty much render the MFD unreadable. I agree a factory-fresh clean cockpit looks weird and I like that they usually looked a bit 'lived in' but maybe they could tone it down a little. Although i'm kind of curious how they get there that bad in real life as don't the pilots tend to wear gloves? And its not like the screens are touchscreens so surely you'd only put your fingers on the screen itself by accident? The ones in the SE look worse than my 6yo son's tablet screen.

I just tried myself and it does seem to work, but there are oddities. I set up a mission with me started hot on the ground. Made left MFD active (default A/A Radar) and hit RCD, it started writing a file every 10s. Hit RCD again a minute or so later, it stopped. Hit RCD on the right MFD (default HSI) and it started writing a file every 5s. Repeated with MPCD (default ADI), also every 5s. Starting RCD on one display starts recording of that screen, and then hitting RCD on any of them stops the one that was recording. You also don't appear to be able to record >1 display at once. Not figured out what the significance of the counter that comes up for a bit after hitting RCD is yet though unless its literally how long it has been recording for. You'll probably also note the filename denotes the screen captured (left MFD all start mfd_fcl, right MFD start mfd_fcr and the MPCD starts mfd_fcc). EDIT: figured out the discrepancy I think with the A/A RDR writing a file every 10s and it must be per full completed radar sweep/full redraw of the display. If I change the radar settings to a very narrow search area it'll suddenly write 1 file pretty much every second. EDIT2: More playing and I thought it'd pretty sweet to see if you could capture the TPOD and it seems you indeed can. Only downside if you're planning on getting some shots of hits is it seems to be stuck to a rigid 5s capture cycle so if you'll need luck to get a bomb hit on cam captured. Hah, and at the 2nd time of asking I actually did get lucky and it screenshot at about the B of Bang.

There is a RCD button on some of the MFD pages. Perhaps its that. EDIT: yes, there is reference to it on page 174 of the manual

Probably important to also not assume that because E can be configured to perform roughly the same role as C (which by the sound of it is mostly just air patrol/interception work) that E must be at least the equal of C in all aspects. Sure, it can probably do a perfectly adequate job of the task in hand but even the article suggests they are being pressed into this role because the C has too many miles on the clock rather than because the E is 'better'.

Yeah. I think I just found what was possible a bit confusing. I'd initially set up 3 push buttons (one each for MRM, SRM and GUN) and didn't realise you had to step through them. I'll probably change it to either two buttons with Forward/Aft or 1 button to loop through as you suggest. Part of the battle working through available bindings on new modules is knowing what you can do and how the different options behave, so thanks for that bit of education.

Agreed and having the discussed 'b can only be selected after a or c' constraint seems unnecessary if you did actually have a 3 way switch to map to. And its not like offering alternative ways to map things and/or change behaviours hasn't happened in other modules.

Flying back to base pondering how popular i'll be with the ground crew when they see this