CBStu

I would jump right to the FA-18. I have the P-51 and wow is it a bitch to fly. Takeoff and landing is very difficult because that huge engine blocks you view. I have never tried VR but I expect it would be really great. However I read here that VR does not have as fine resolution as a standard screen. I have Track IR5 and am really satisfied w/ it. One thing that has helped me is the pause button and easily accessed web. I often pause my flight and go to either Chucks guide for the FA-18 or to youtube to find a tutorial. Then I come back to my flight. Trying to get something set up may take 4-5 swaps back and forth web to DCS to web etc. Oh, there is full pause and active pause. Active pause stops you plane in mid air but keeps all the buttons functional.

Do you have button on your stick set to adjust trim? If not I 'think' there may be keyboard buttons you can use. I suspect you just need some right trim. Also be sure you have a small dead zone in your stick settings for left/right and up/down. As I understand it some sticks will put out a very slight signal even when you let go of the stick and it centers itself. So a small dead zone gets rid of that problem. I understand that you want to be sure you will go further before you spend more $ but I will say that once I got TrackIR5 my flying world went to another level. TrackIR5 - In Depth | TrackIR (naturalpoint.com) BTW you do NOT need the TrackClipPro. I have both the standard reflector and the clip and I prefer using the standard reflector.

Aston, I just noticed the mission is using the Litening pod so maybe my comments are not valid, or should be in another thread. I am not sure how to provide a link. If you go to User files search for; single mission, English, DCS 2.7, FA-18, scroll to find 'Convoy Strike' by GazAce. I like the mission but sure am not good at it at all. Thanks for looking.

I spent 2 hours yesterday flying a user file mission using flir and MavF to take out tanks in a convoy. Still don't have it right though. One thing I learned from a tutorial was that the target diamond has to be in the main HUD window for the Mav to lock. The flir seems to have ability to look down at a steeper angle than the MavF. So, if you get too close to the target, the flir can still see it but the Mav can't so you need to dive toward the target so the Mav can lock on. At least I think that is what is happening, but there is also the limited Mav distance capability too. I also have a hard time getting the flir to lock. Push the sensor select right is flaky. I lock the flir onto the road a short distance ahead of the tank, start right pushing and sometimes the flir reticle changes super quickly and sometimes it needs 1-2 seconds. Since you need the reticle to change twice, it is a huge guess how far ahead you need to start out. I often lock onto the second vehicle. Then of course I unselect and the flir moves way back up the road which makes re-trying to get a lock a pain. This particular mission doesn't have much in ground defense weapons so I tried a few runs w/o the flir. I actually had better success using just the MavF targeting system. I am going to fly this some more but so far Flir + MavF I am not impressed.

Don't neglect single missions. I have been downloading them from the user files. Some I haven't cared for but most are fine. They usually give a pretty good description of what the mission is, what map it is on, what skills you need, etc so you have some idea before downloading. One thing I like is, since they are a much smaller file than a campaign, many come as a miz file so you just move them from your download folder to the mission folder. That is way easier for me than having to extract zipped files.

Flying the Hornet I see a little of that. I use ICLS and it used to be that the ICLS glide slope was a little off vs FLOLS. But at this point I don't use the FLOLS anymore. It is too much of a cartoon for me. I do laugh at Bankler's mid flight grading sometimes. I will be told I was high or low at the 90 just a few seconds after the glideslope line appeared and told me I was perfect. Oh well, it is still excellent training.

I haven't flown this mission in a long time but generally I refuse to use 7s. I re-arm to all 120Cs. The other day I was flying a mission and happened to check the F-10 map right after launching my own 120C and then hearing a missile launch warning. The enemy missile was moving much faster than the 120C so yep, we are at a definite disadvantage.

Badger that might be worth a try. Now I just turn the volume down but worried I may miss something since Com 1 channel 1 is usually used by other sources besides the wingman. ED are you reading? This is at best aggravating, and at worse, bad enough to stop flying certain missions.

I agree, I like to use the speed as a 'secondary' reference. Particularly when I have screwed something up and realize I am way out of wack. We know that once you have the E bracket centered you can make some throttle change to change rate of decent and the E bracket will stay locked. But at some point a throttle change will affect the E bracket. So, if I look at the E only, I might decide to change trim to center it, but, if I also note that I am doing say 145k (and my typical is 135k) then maybe I should fix the throttle/airspeed first.

As a point of reference I use the 3 position switch on the TM Warthog throttle for flaps and have had no problems.

I run into this in quite a few missions/campaigns and it drives me nuts. Why does the wing man keep calling out contacts? Often it is the exact same 300 for 120 (or whatever) repeated over and over w/ maybe a 5 second break between each one. Sometimes he makes the call 4, 5, 6 times and then changes the heading a few degrees, or the distance by 5, and starts all over for another 4, 5, 6 times. Sometimes it is 120, 180, 200 miles. WTF do I care about a plane 200 miles away? A lot of times I turn done the radio 1 volume so I can barely hear it. Yesterday I was flying a mission and this problem was so bad I just exited the mission and made a note to never fly it again. Is there any edit I can do to a user mission to stop this stuff?

Is pushing a button 3 times that difficult?

I was just using the mouse to click the switch. Then I thought I'd try a switch. I use the momentary push button just above the autopilot switches on my Warthog throttle. Toggling it works fine although of course it is less realistic. In general the switch actions in DCS suck. Some a left mouse will move a switch up/forward and right mouse click will move it down/backward. The next switch moves like a toggle w/ left mouse click moving it to whichever position it is not in now and the right mouse does nothing.

You guys are way over my head on this but I think it may be a DCS problem. I use my mouse to run the wing fold switch. Scroll moves it in or out and right or left mouse button rotates it. I see that the park brake seems to need similar action based on the labels on the panel. But nothing I do will make it rotate.

I use that button as my sensor select switch.

That makes sense lmp and M1Combat. The mission is in the Marianas and has you take off from the boat armed w/ AIM9s and fly to a nearby island to finish arming your plane w/ bombs or AG missiles.

Pete I havn't tried that one. I will look now. Thanks for the recommendation.

Thanks Pete. Rob10 sent me a PM which got me straightened out. So I installed the new version and all is well. I don't know exactly what went wrong. I had installed the campaign maybe 8-9 months ago but somehow never got to mission 4. I had forgotten about the campaign. The new DCS campaign tracking system made it real obvious I had missed 4 so I tried flying it. I was just getting into downloading and installing campaigns at the time so I suspect I had done something not quite right.

Tholozor, thank you very much. That all makes sense. This is a great thing about DCS and this forum. I enjoy learning about the tech and the 'why do it this way' almost as much as the how to do it. I always just use TOO mode so the PB mode from longer range is very interesting.

Guys help me understand here. What is the point of looking at a SAM w/ the FLIR? I love HARMs exactly because they are so simple to use. Also I am curious why the concern about the size of the TOO box. As I understand it, a HARM is following the outgoing signal from the SAM. In other words it is not like a long sniper shot where the aim must be precise because, once the bullet leaves the barrel, there is no more guidance. I thought that it follows the SAM signal all the way until it hits? Is my assumption incorrect?

Rob10 I was hoping that is the way it would work. Warboss, that's a good Q also. OTOH I suck so badly at CCIP it probably won't matter.

If I set up four 84s to hit waypoint X and set them for 100ft intervals where does the first bomb hit? Will it hit WP X and the other three hit 100ft, 200ft and 300ft beyond WP X in the direction I am flying? Or does the first bomb hit before WP X and the rest WP X and beyond it?

After finally getting through missions 1-3 I tried to fly mission 4 and had problems. Tried to access the google drive documents and the website given in the game can not be highlighted to copy/paste. Tried to type it in and got a 404 error. I went to the user files and realized there is a newer version available and a link to the documents that appear in blue type so should be a good link. Decided to delete my old version and download the current version (Dec 2021). Got it down and clicked the doc link and it doesn't work either. Crap. If I can't access the documents there isn't much point in installing the campaign. Help.

Can you change your bindings. I use the mouse to fold and lock wings. When I unfold them, I look to see when they are fully down and then lock them so no way to have your problem. I generally start them dropping while taxing to the catapult. Once stopped at the cat, I double check visually and then lock.

The video is great. Thanks for posting it.