ESzczesniak

Any ideas what is necessary to get successful aerial refueling to show up in the log book? I know about the bug regarding mission kills not recording, is this one in the same? I've completed AAR to the "transfer complete" message several times and am not getting any credit for it. Any thoughts? On these missions, I've flown a dedicated AAR mission starting and stopping in the air right behind the tanker.

Not too sure how likely that likely you would be to dodge a single bird. You won't have visual on that bird for very long before the strike at 180+ kts. At 60 mph in a car it can be hard enough.

I think people are getting a little to caught up on the fighter statement. In normal conversational language (the setting of an interview), I feel fighter is taken more simply to mean a tactical/high performance aircraft. Where as bomber is taken to mean something more on the order of a B-52. I think fighter in this context could be taken to mean any F-x, F/A-x or maybe even A-x (not too many of those left though and we already have one of them).

I'm using the latest TrackIR software and the 64-bit DCS A-10C. I'm unable to select any radio command or view option that requires pressing F7, F9 or F12. I have already made a custom DCS profile in TrackIR remapping the precision, center and pause commands to the arrow keys (which oddly enough I don't use in the sim with my nice TM Warthog). However, even after doing this and assigning the new profile, I'm unable to get any use out of F7, F9, or F12 in the game still. The new arrow keys I assigned to TrackIR function for their given roles. Anyone have suggestions? Is there a hidden profile assignment somewhere that I'm missing? I had a similar problem in beta 4, but after reassigning the keys everything worked as advertised. Seems that's no longer the case.

I've been focusing on learning the systems and have gotten a reasonably good grip of these. I'm now trying to broaden to get a firm grasp on employement and combat effectiveness. With this path, I have not done many night flights before, which is one thing I was working on today. I was flying at night (late dusk/early night) carry AGM-65H's. I've had no problem targeting these during the day, however using the same procedures I was unable to lock any targets at night. Now, I'm aware that the AGM-65H is a CCD-TV sensor that is logically going to have problems in low-light conditions. Using an AGM-65D with IR sensor seems much more logical in low light conditions, however I'd love to hear from others if this is correct in the sim and/or real life. Of course, my wingman was able to lock and ripple AGM-65H's at 4 targets in a single pass...he also seems to be superman.

...And they could have been yours firing through the clouds without an ID. I work in healthcare where our party line is first do no harm. I think it applies to battle field encounters as well.

That would be a blast... Of course, so would an F-16, F-18, F-15, even A-6, A-7, F-117...

All F-16 and F-15 types for sure. I believe actually most tactical aircraft have them (A-10 doesn't). They are an emergency backup in case of brake failure to prevent runway over run. They are typically pretty small and puny compared to the naval counterparts.

There are so many aircraft I'd love to see modeled to DCS standards, it's hard for me to pick any one that "I want". However, the logic I see is: 1. F-16C: I'm not clear where the thread is at the moment, but there were some F-16C cockpit renders floating around the DCS forums at one time. These were very early stages, but I believe Blk 40/42. Granted, they may not have ever been further developed. The F-16 is certainly a popular aircraft and enough of a fighter (doesn't really fit the interceptor role) and ground attack aircraft to satisfy all crowds. I must admit, visually it is a gorgeous aircraft. 2. F/A-18C: DCS did ask for detailed pictures of a CVN (Carl Vinson I believe). Just about all that's left in the fleet are Legacy Hornets and Super Bugs. I'd pick the Legacy because... 3. F/A-18E/F: A much more capable (and I think better looking) aircraft, but it is actually relatively new and much information necessary may still be classified. 4. F-15C: A true world class fighter, but I don't know how appealing many will find burning holes in the sky waiting for bandits. The AI model is quite well done and perhaps that could be some hint. 5. F-15E: This would appeal to a large number of people. It's a marvelous mission/aircraft to fly. However, I do worry about the feasibility of implementing a backseat AI for those times you just want to play off line. If this were 5-10 years ago I would be one of those trying to argue for an F-14. As I've matured in my aviation interests though, what I really want is the carrier ops that would come with an F-14. There are other more capable aircraft out there and if it wasn't for Top Gun, the F-14 may have been lost to all but the naval aviation community. Well, an F-15E doesn't have to worry about coming back to land on the carrier. Granted, neither do CF-188's, but the base design did need to take this in to consideration. If you're going to trap at a vertical speed of -6-700 fps at touchdown, your MLW is pretty limited. Work backwards from there (accounting for fuel burn and munitions release) and it just doesn't make a lot of sense to pack large quantities of munitions in to you MTOW calculations. This is particularly true in the modern battlefield where you may or may not expend these on a patrol. Should you not expend your munitions and come back to the boat overweight, you drop those expensive toys in to the ocean needlessly.

There may be an marginal increase in accuracy by lasing manually. In CCRP mode, the release point is essentially that of a dumb bomb and at the maximal fall range for the bomb. The guidance system maneuvering during the bomb's fall uses energy and as a result the bombs have a tenancy to fall a bit short. If I recall correctly, auto lasing starts at impact -12 seconds. If you're initial drop is accurate enough so that the bomb guide and correct to the target in less than 12 seconds, then you can turn to laser on later in the bombs flight. This adds up to less time with the guidance finds maneuvering the bomb and wasting energy. In my my experience, the LGB's in the sim are quite accurate with auto lase and typically I only activate the laser to range a target on the TGP to improve my target point.

For all those who are arguing about these "irreversible process" during a hung store, do you realize you can reload a hung store in the air? If the store is "hung" because you lifted up the pickle button too early, you can reload this store through the DMS inventory page and then reuse it. I haven't needed to use this since beta 4, but it's been built in to the simulator. I can't tell you the exact software details that happen with this...perhaps it essentially reboots the weapon. However, it can be done. Now if the store "hung" because of a mechanical failure of separation, that's another story.

I certainly understand being out of position causing a "disconnect", but that doesn't seem to fit here. I get a series of messages all with about a 0.5 second delay of "contact", "transfering fuel", and "disconnect". After recieving the "disconnect" call the boom does not disconnect. I can fly for another 2-3 minutes with the boom connected and without recieving any fuel. After a couple minutes I back off on the throttles, cycle the door and return to precontact. The whole cycle starts again at this point. It would just seem odd for the "disconnect" being due to poor position when the boom remains in place, often for a couple minutes following that call.

Unfortunately work has been very busy and I'm just getting around to playing with the release version. So far, just a couple of AAR flights. I had done so often with the betas, so I'm not horribly unfamiliar, but two new things I've noticed. 1. The observation: the boom actually has mass! If it hits you or you push in to it a little too fast, the nose actually bounces a bit. Just spectacular! On another note, let's not discuss how I figured this out (at least they were very light taps with very small dents). 2. The question: is the normal position for the tank fill inhibit switches (the one that allows the tank to be filled) in or out? I remember a debate in one of the betas on this, but couldn't find the answer again. I'm finding that I connect to the tanker ok, but immediately get a "disconnect". The boom stays connected until I get out of limits on my position. However, fuel doesn't transfer. The only reason I can think of is that the fill inhibit switches are preventing filling of the tanks. Unfortunately I had to leave for work before another flight to test this theory, but did verify that my default position is down/in.

I just recently picked one of those up myself. It is a 1:1 scale PGU-14A replica round weighing the correct 693 grams. It is a very nice Warthog token and available at www.technoframes.com. I must say that it did initially seem smaller than I had expected as well, but I measured and it is indeed a full size replica

I may have been a bit overzealous including ICAO. These are FAA part 91 procedures, with further stipulations in part 121 (not all of these rules apply to part 91 general aviation). I've only flown part 91/121/161 in the USA under FAA governance, but I've been used to these mirroring ICAO rules in the past and may have included ICAO incorrectly.

I can't speak to military operations. However, peace time operations often mirror civilian operations. FAA and ICAO light operations are: 1. Position/Navigation lights on once the aircraft has established electrical power. 2. Beacon light on immediately before engine start or pushback. 3. Taxi light on immediately before moving under the aircrafts own power. 4. Landing light and white strobe on when entering the active runway. 5. Landing lights on/off when passing above/below 10,000' MSL. 6. Landing lights and strobe off exiting the active runway. 7. Taxi lights off entering terminal gate area. 8. Beacon light off when fuel cutoff established 9. Navigation/position lights off immediately before disconnecting electrial power. These are FAA and ICAO common and mandate rules, so all civilian aircraft will follow these rules. These rules apply in daylight, night, IFR and VFR. I imagine likely modifcations fo the A-10 involve 1. If there is no beacon, this may be ommitted. 2. Landing lights on/off at 10,000' MSL make little difference...the A-10's landing lights are on the landing gear struts and are off once the gear is retracted (most civilian aircraft have a pair of lights on the wing roots). 3. All lights except the slime lights off at fence in and on at fence out.

Been seeding up the patch for a few hours. Still working on getting the full beta 4 myself.

Give it some time.

1. Yes, you need to "run" the Track IR program. This runs in the background while playing, but you need to initialize it first. 2. Just download the "TrackIR 5" program from the link they give you on the Natural Point website. After this the drivers are plug and play and it sets up almost instantly. The program comes with a couple of default profiles, so you'll be able to get up and running instantly. However, you'll want ot customize some eventually. For instance, the default profile limited me to about +/- 60 degrees side-to-side. This was great if flying an airliner in MSFS, but for DCS A-10C, I made a profile that increased the scaling so I got +/- about 160 degrees allowing me to look over my shoulder in the sim. There's a handful of other options you can customize in profiles. 3. You will need something assigned to "reset" and "pause". I don't use a joystick button, as I don't need to use either all that often. I have a TM Warthog that has almost everything mapped to it, leaving my arrow keys open. So I use up and down arrow for these. They default to F7, F9 and F12, so regardless what you do with them, you'll want to reassign them (done through custom profiles) to some other keys or else they'll intercept these keys used in the radio communication menus. I know some insist on having a HOTAS joystick button for this and perhaps others will be able to chime in about assigning a joystick button specifically. I haven't found it necessary because of the rarity of their use. As a side note, Track IR takes a little bit of getting use to...not too much in my experience, but some have claimed weeks. Don't drop it if it doesn't seem natural after your first session with it. It becomes natural quite quickly. The biggest learning experience I had: I swapped out my fancy office chair for a cheap one that didn't recline...if I leaned back TrackIR lowered my viewpointi n the cockpit and it was quite hard to keep the chair from leaning back at all.

No, that is how they advertise it. However, the clip attaches just as easily over to the edge of a headset on top of your head as it does to the brim of a hat.... Yes, you need some type of headset, but you need that with the clip as well. In the end, I just can't recommend Track IR enough for something like DCS. I was just flying around in the new beta and had made a run on an armored column. I missed a couple trucks and prior to Track IR would have spend 5 minutes (ok 20 seconds, but still too long)trying to remember my headings, position, speed, etc so that I could find the column when I turned around. But with Track IR, I just looked over my shoulder, stared at the column and smoothly turned back on the colum for another gun run...all without ever loosing sight of the target.

http://www.amazon.com/TrackIr-Professional-Premium-Tracking-Gaming-Pc/dp/B0029M6VKA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293248159&sr=8-1 $150 with free shipping. I've heard others say that this is still too expensive and that a Track IR equivelant can be built with $25 of material. I'm not that good at computer programming to make a program to interpret such an input. EDIT: beaten to the first reply. I hadn't thought that you were asking about buying the clip as well. I've looked at the clip and foudn a lot of debate. It is very fragile and adds another usb cable coming off your earpiece/headset. It seemed the consensus was that is some high "noise" (i.e., lots of lights) environments, it might help TrackIR, but in most cases it didn't increase the fidelity of the program much. If I were you, I would get the base set first and play with it from there (the base set gives you a passive IR headset that works very well and easily clips to any headset). Maybe you'll want the clip later, but might as well try it first. And I agree, Track IR is excellent. I find that I will not fly any small/light aircraft without it. This includes DCS and some of the small stuff in MSFSX. The only time I don't use it is when flying large commercial jets in FSX and am sitting at the gate pushing buttons for startup. Once moving, I again use TrackIR without exception.

Overall, I like this mission as a nice replacement for the Nevada version. However, is anyone else feeling that this is missing the navigation point "Banks" that JTAC assigns for the IP? I switch from FLT PLN to MISSION points and cycel through everything, but I see nothing for Banks to use as an IP. Simple enought to fix, but I was wondering if anyone else was finding this.

I believe that style points dictate never using rudder to correct aiming. However, my realistic view is that rudder is reasonable for small corrections with the gun, but never so with bombs. The reasoning for this is the gun fires straight along the aircrafts longitudinal axis (pointing straight out the nose). The rudder will change where the nose is pointing and thereby the direction/path the bullets take. However, rudder input has comparatively minor effects on the flight path of aircraft. When bombs release, they travel primarily along the flight path of the aircraft. So using the rudder to change where the nose is pointed will do little to change the flight path of the bomb. Of course, ultimately what you need to be ceratain of is that the release symbology indicates a good release solution for whatever weapon you're employing. Extra points if you do this with solid airmanship, but in the end just get the job done.

You should be able to open the mission in the ME, select the lone A-10 (your aircraft) at the airport on the ramp and then switch the action from "takeoff from ramp" to "takeoff from runway". Save and you should be able to go.

My understanding has been that the A-10C module used by the USAF, which DCS A-10C is based off of, is a procedure trainer. These are about teaching you to push the right buttons in the right order and work the systems appropriately. They are not typically about combat tactics that would require spotting targets easily, nor are they always the best flight dynamics. They are basically button pushing trainers. However, I could be wrong and perhaps the original A-10C module was more, but I seem to recall somewhere people saying that ED has had to make the flight model and graphics all new for this civilian sim.