CBStu

You could also look at sticks w/ twist for rudder. I have this grip on their older base and am extremely happy w/ it. My base is 3+ yrs old and the grip is 1.5yrs old and both are still perfect. Gladiator NXT EVO ‘Space Combat Edition’ - Right Hand – VKB North America (vkbcontrollers.com) I use it w/ a TM Warthog throttle. Another option w/ the FA-18 is don't bother w/ a rudder controller. It really is only used minimally. I haven't looked but if there were a binding available that a button would move the rudder as long as you hold it and release the rudder so it snaps back to zero when you take your finger off the button, that would probably be good enough. Might be a little challenging taxing on the carrier but probably doable.

You could do your change and hit active pause so you can check if the changes actually 'took'.

I have had so little success w/ tpod + MavF that I just use the Mav F screen. I did notice a week or so ago that it seemed significantly easier to lock onto a line of 4 tanks one at a time. Next I will try using the tpod again. Do U prefer Litening or ATFlir?

Well dang, I love to learn something new. this seems to me to be similar to rebooting a PC or other device to get it to do what I was expecting. Thanks Recluse.

I think you are being too formal in your approach. I just started flying all the included missions. If you don't have the Persian Gulf map, get that because you get another batch of missions with it. Get used to Shift-R for restarting a mission. When you have a problem just hit Shift-R and start over. Also get used to Active Pause. That stops your plane but everything else keeps running. Really nice as a cheat when you can't find a ground target. Just yesterday I flew a mission where I needed to find and take out 4 enemy trucks. I hit active pause and 1 by 1 locked them and hit them w/ a MavF. Eventually I will be able to do that w/o active pause, but for now that allowed me to continue that mission and take out a Mig. If you have one wing man he will just circle around you while you pause. There is a key board shortcut to do this but I run DCS in a window so I have that bottom bar of buttons active while flying. Have a problem, hit Pause, go to that bar and go to youtube for a tutorial, or to your saved documents, or to Chucks Guide. I often swap back and forth between setting up bombs and following Chucks Guide steps for the bomb I am working with. To start flying carrier traps download Bankler's Case 1 Trainer mission. He starts you out in the air maybe 12 miles behind the boat at about 1200ft and 400mph. You want to fly by the boat at 800ft and 350. He already has the plane mostly set up for you but I like to use the ICLS so I get that going while getting near the boat. he puts critiques on the screen periodically while you are flying. You were high at the 90, you were low after the break etc. Once on the carrier stop and sit for a minute and you get a detailed critique of the whole flight. then hit Shift-R and do it again. As you work on the FA-18 you will get frustrated trying to do something. Don't beat your head on the wall, you are not a real pilot trying to get qualified. Fly another mission that you can do and enjoy.

Aston that is a good idea. I can try that. Thx.

Marlan I understand that bomb targets can be set up on the ground prior to takeoff. But that only works for stationary targets. Maybe some of the missions for DCS are not realistic, but there seem to be quite enough such as parked planes, mobile SAM launchers, etc that one needs to use FLIR to get the exact location. Then of course there are laser guided bombs using the plane's laser or the JTACs. Phantom is saying similar about only doing A/G or A/A and a few mission creators do comment that this isn't realistic. I remember one mission where one needed to fight through some A/A attacks to get to the bomb target which the creator definitely said is not realistic. Phantom your point about my TDC brings up a question. My joystick (VKB Gladiator NXT EVO ‘Space Combat Edition’ - Right Hand – VKB North America (vkbcontrollers.com) has three possible tdc switches/hats/mini-joysticks. I happen to be using the center one for tdc slewing which I guess is a 5 way hat. I had tried the mini stick but the press function is almost impossible to do w/o also moving it. Also it cycles a small indicator light on and off w/ each press. I have been using it for sensor select since I don't need a press function for that. I had assumed that all these worked pretty much the same electronically and are different physically mostly to give a tactile indication as to which one your thumb is on. Not the case?

Marlan I am not getting your 'they don't set A/G until they attack'. I wanted to check in case my memory is fuzzy so I looked through Chuck's guide. By far, the majority of bomb setup procedures have A/G as step 2-5 which automatically switches radar to surface. This is easy to fix but why should I need to. Let me switch radar modes when I want to please. The coupling switching on it's own to couple w/ something different than I already selected is an annoyance. It isn't too hard to avoid, I just deselect copl, set the BRC and then click couple again. But again why should I have to. Hulkbust I will need to do some checking and can't until Sunday but I will try SCENE and AUTO. To be honest I get the FLIR on screen in whatever mode it defaults to, mess around w/ light and contrast to get something I can use, and then try to look for whatever it is today. Often that mode won't allow slewing so I keep clicking the sensor select switch to get to a slewable mode. I usually don't care what mode, just as long as I can slew. I need to work on this more.

Several things are really bothering me; Why would I want a flir to designate a target every time I release the TDC slew button when there is a simple 'depress the tdc button' function that I thought would do that? If that is all it did it would be bad enough. But when I have the AP coupled to a waypoint and the waypoint has now been turned into a target...and the dang flir has locked onto that spot...and I can't avoid this because I have to let go of right (it locks on right there) to go to down since the tdc button is just a 4 way. Why would I want the radar to be switched from air (which I set it to) to surface just because I hit the AG button while setting up bombs. I am 100 miles from the target, I am using the time to get ahead on some tasks, and I want the radar looking for bad guys IN THE AIR. When I am on the way back to the carrier and have AP coupled to carrier tacan, and I do the 50 mile checkin, and they give me the carrier BRC, and I want to put that BRC onto the HSI screen, why would I want the AP to suddenly decide it should couple to the BRC? In every case the automatic changes actually create more work rather than helping me by making things simpler. Is there any way to turn off all this 'help' the systems are giving me?

Thanks to all of you. A lot of great info, maybe too much. I probably won't do it all, but at least now I know what I should do.

The definition I found is set cockpit switches as appropriate when going in or out of a combat area. Ok? I am thinking Master Arm on or off? AG or AA on or off? Anything else?

Thanks rob10, I got it working again. It is weird though. While flying if I hit ESC I get a screen headed 'OPTIONS" which has 'System', 'Audio', and 'Special' headers. I click 'Special' and get a list down the left side 'Capto Glove, Leap Motion, VR Free, and Supercarrier'. But if I get out of flying and go all the way back to the main DCS page and click the gear icon, I get a similar OPTIONS page but now w/ 7 options (vs 4) across the top and a list down the left side same as above but added to that now are all the planes I own. So click Special and then FA-18 and right there it is, Realistic TDC Slew.

I can't slew the Mav F screen. No pods just Mav F itself. Has the 'realistic TDC slew' been moved? I can't find it anywhere. It may have happened w/ the move to 2.8 but I am not 100% positive of that.

I may be misunderstanding but, in another thread we are told that the 120 needs that long trigger press to send all the info from the plane to the 120. So, if that is true, why would anything that happens in the plane after the 120 is launched affect the 120?

So only a 120 needs this delay? A 9x works fine w/o the delay?

I will have to try it also. I had been thinking the ATFLIR was the more modern and hence better of the two but it is bugging me more than it should.

The recent 120 firing delay is supposedly more realistic. I hope it is because it sure is a drag. I am starting to load more 9X instead.

Deano87 I will check that out. I did look to make sure there were no double bindings but didn't look at dead zones.

I started DCS because I wanted a better FA-18 than another game had. I got it. I flew the missions that came w/ it for a long time and still fly SP only. One thing I have found to help a ton is set up your PC so you can pause DCS and go to a reference. I fly in a window so the banner across the bottom of the screen is always visible. So I can get to info I have saved ( I made a chart of all the munitions for instance), Chuck's Guide, or the web for youtube. My keyboard has a pause button which stops the entire game but will allow you to look at the F10 map. I also set my 'P' key to be an active pause. This stops your plane but everything else keeps happening. The advantage is everything in your plane still works. So you can go through, for instance Chucks Guide section on setting up a Jdam bomb, and pop back and forth between the guide and your plane. Or hit active pause and try to find a target w/ the radar or FLIR. If you have a wingman, he will just fly circles around you. One other thought, this is not easy, it takes a lot of stick time to be really good. So get used to using L-SHIFT, R to re-start. If I screw up or get shot down, I hit those 2 keys and start right over again. Don't let yourself get frustrated. You will find one of the included missions that you can fly fairly well. If you are going out of your mind on something, get out of it and go to your favorite mission and have some fun.

Look through here; User Files (digitalcombatsimulator.com)

Finger lift is the levers that you would lift to go to either ground idle or afterburner. See the right hand picture. I am not sure how Winwig does theirs but Warthog has you pull up on the throttle levers and then the levers will move further. There is also a mod which makes it feel like a detent that you just push a little harder to go through to get to afterburner. BTW I use TrackIR and I find I like the metal clip better than the electronic thing. I just wear an old baseball cap w/ the clip on the visor and head phone over the hat. My headphone is bluetooth and the electronic sensor needed a wire which was a pain. BTW2, I find that I use the rudder very infrequently in the FA-18. I was glad to realize that because it saved the $ and the hassle of another piece of equipment. My stick twists for rudder and that is more than adequate.

I flew a user files mission yesterday where they provided coordinates in a 4 pairs of digits format and reminded to click 'Precise' before entering the new #s. The waypoint was already in the system as a 6 digit #. The coordinates they provided in the text were N 43-26-26.48, E 39-55-59.73. I entered them as two 4 digit numbers. I tried to enter the first six digits but it would only accept four digits, hit enter, the last four digits. I got blown up by a SAM I think before having a chance to release any bombs so not sure it worked to define the target or not but that was the only way they could be entered. I am curious. How is this being used in RL today? Have they dropped all the less accurate formats by now? I assume that the several formats exist because at the time frame of the DCS FA-18, GPS was somewhat new and evolving. Is there just one format finally?

ATFLIR has been bugging me for quite a while so today I decided to do some research and went to Chuck's Guide. Problem I have is the FLIR is constantly designating a TGT on it's own. Then I turn the plane and FLIR goes nuts trying to stay on that target. It also, on the SA page, swaps a waypoint to TGT. Many times all I have done is use the FLIR to look around and try to find the target. So I don't find it, haven't designated it, fly on past it, go 8-10 miles, do a 180deg turn and try again. Now the FLIR is aimed at something like 180 deg, and I have to manually slew it back, or hit VVSLV. So reading in Chucks G and find this, "When either Scene Track or Auto Track is performed, the target point is automatically designated." Well crap, I did cycle through those because many times the retical has changed on it's own and can not be slewed, and I need to get to where I can slew it. For me it is a constant pain in the a-- and often forces me to hit active pause so I have time to get this straightened out. Anyone have an idea how to make this easier?

Any time I load a mission and the jet has 7s on the wings, I hit 'R' and re-arm.

Sometimes I get mixed up on using the longer precise version also. One thing I discovered is that you can only enter so many digits, ie; just a portion of coordinate and then hit enter. It will then pop up some note (that I don't remember right now) and allow you to enter the rest of the coordinate and hit enter again. I 'think' you enter 6 digits and hit enter and then the last 4 digits and hit enter.