CBStu

Markom- good one, thanks for the humor. Bunny- Thanks again. I first looked at the mission planner map and moved the waypoints to right on the MLRS. Then did a re-arm. Not sure why the plane had an unneeded laser but 3 missiles but I dumped the laser and grabbed another 120c. So I flew it and was feeling good.......right til I hit the boat ramp and blew up. Funny though, I killed myself but still got 100 results. Thank you, moving on to mission 5.

WOW Bunny thank you. I think I got the MLRS but will need to check for sure. When I zoomed way in on the mission planning map I saw that the waypoint was not exactly on one unit. I thought it may have been placed between the launcher and the sensor unit but I will need to double check that too. Those L-39s will be tough. I am not at the game PC now but I am not sure there are enough missiles on board to do four L-39s. May need to re-arm. I will try again later today.

Thanks Bunny but I don't understand. How would I know I want to skip a mission if I haven't flown it yet? My purpose for wanting to skip a mission would be so I can advance in the campaign even though I haven't succeeded in one of the missions. There are a bunch more missions available but how do I get to fly them?

Campaign Operation Black Knight mission 4. I've flown this 4-5 times but finally (I know) looked in detail at the Mission Planner and realized that the 4 targets are already set as waypoints 2,3,4,5. Cool, so using the supplied loadout of GPS bombs and the usual Waypoint Designate procedure I nail all 4. And I managed to shoot down 2 or 3 of the L39s that are flying around. Get back to the boat and get this; Score is 270 but result is ZERO. What the h--- do I have to do? I don't know if this is caused by the campaign or the DCS campaign tracking system. I have not been thrilled w/ the tracking system. There have been many instances where it doesn't seem to work very well. Here is one instance w/ this same campaign. This is a shot of the screen when I go to fly the campaign again. Notice there is no option to skip #4. There was an option to skip #2 when I first flew it and did not do well. I used the skip but then came back later, flew it again and succeded. Why can't I skip #4? Thanks for any help you can provide.

I don't use the map. It seems very hard to read to me and as you zoom it gets to a certain point and the entire color scheme changes. Also it is often set so all the labels are at 90deg to the display. I feel like I am kind of cheating (since a RL pilot wouldn't have it) but I use the F10 map all the time.

Here you go. The icon at the bottom of the screen inside the red circle. Over the last few days I have been messing w/ usb ports on the PC. I think I have been using them randomly so went to the user manual for my PC and moved a few cables to different ports. In the initial setup section they show the ports where the mouse and keyboard should go so I set it up that way. There were also some suggestions in the diagrams showing the different types of usb ports so I followed them as best as possible. My mouse, keyboard and audio headset are all wireless so I plugged them in where suggested. Things seem a little better now. Not sure it is 100% yet but certainly better.

But then the Syria has so few tacans listed I usually don't bother to look.

I usually have similar problem w/ MavF and TGP. Enough that I don't usually use the TGP. Using the sensor select switch to change TGP modes and trying to get it to make the change exactly when the moving truck is in the right spot is a crap shoot at best. The problem is though that the MavF display has a very limited zoom so lining up on a truck from 15,000ft doesn't work well either. At this point when I fly a mission needing TGP help for the Mav, I usually do 4-5 attempts, get frustrated, and move to another mission.

Once in a while I lose the tacan display in the hud. Usually if I turn it off and back on it will come back. I think I have also had an incorrect distance like the OP. Glad to know there is a 'sometimes' bug because I thought same as OP, what did I do wrong?

The icon to start DCS which I have along the bottom of the screen. Seems like we used to get the pointer turning into something different so we could tell that there was a reaction to the mouse click. Or the icon changed. My DCS icon gets a green semitransparent curtain going back and forth across it but that starts happening well after I wonder if it is doing anything. That app you use is interesting but my mouse reaction isn't just a DCS problem. I get no/delayed reaction to clicks in other instances too. You and others here have helped me out on numerous occasions w/ DCS problems and it is obvious to me that many are more knowledgeable re; PCs than I am. That is why I thought to ask a kind of general Q here rather than on some windows website. Thanks for your answer.

This is a generic PC mouse question but I put it here on the DCS forum because this is where I notice it most. When I click on my DCS button at the bottom of the screen I often get no reaction for 10-20-30 seconds. The pointer disappears, the clickable button doesn't change color or anything, so I just sit and wait assuming something is happening. Most of the time DCS is actually loading but there is nothing to indicate that. Sometimes I click again and 10-20 seconds later I get a popup saying only one instance allowed. I have looked around in device manager and found the mouse settings page but nothing I see would affect this. BTW it is a Logitech wireless mouse. Any ideas?

Putting a bit of dead zone in my stick has fixed it for me. I often climb at about 5 deg for quite a while to get to altitude. When I see I am getting close to my desired altitude, I hover my mouse pointer over the balt button and hit it as soon as I see 25,000 for instance. As Ephedrin says, it will oscillate up and down a couple hundred for maybe 3 cycles before it settles but I can live w/ that.

Yeah that 'LOST' is a killer. Drives me nuts cause it won't go away. On one mission which I screwed up another way I thought keep flying and use it as a test of how to get rid of 'LOST'. Never did make it go away. Well 'shift' - 'R' to restart the mission got rid of it.

Thanks Tom, I will give that a try.

I have tried a couple of times to learn the Harpoon. The multitude of steps required and the fact that you can't be sure it will hit what you want it to hit keeps me from flying missions that use it. I am probably missing something but basically the huge effort in design and use of super accurate ground target weapons make me wonder why the Harpoon even exists.

I don't aar much because I still have never done it successfully. But I have noticed that the speed and altitude #s provided over the radio by the tanker are never correct. They seem to be + or - 500ft and + or - 30k. I have noticed the same checking the other plane on the F10 map when trying to join on another FA-18 to fly as a pair to a target.

I agree w/ Hiob. With either reflector there is a limit to how far your head can move and the camera can still see it. I use the plane sheet metal reflector because it got rid of a wire that used to run from my head to the PC. I don't notice any difference in performance. Setting up, my first step is to get the camera aimed correctly. See the 3 dots in the top right chart? [url=https://flic.kr/p/2nxDWCs][img]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52210398962_d8bc67614d_z.jpg[/img][/url][url=https://flic.kr/p/2nxDWCs]TIR pitch[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/152454123@N04/]craig stuard[/url], on Flickr Those are your camera alignment indicators. In my pic they are a little off. They should be centered on the cross hair. I may need to aim the camera slightly or I may need to move my chair slightly. Once camera is set than you need to look at the curves. That is the chart in the bottom left of my pic. You have to click the small 'Axis' box so you adjust pitch, roll, yaw one at a time. First of all, I like a dead zone in left/right and up/down. I set mine for about 7 degrees of head movement in each direction before the view on the screen moves. I get that using the green up/down arrows on that chart. Anything that is below the white horizontal line just a tiny bit up from the bottom does not do anything. You can see that both curves come above the white line at about 7degrees. Move the curves up, adjust them, and then move them back down. In my case I move them down like the one in the pic. Then you can play w/ the angle of the curve. For instance I set pitch so I can look down and back a little to see those switches on the side panels. You can see what the effect is on the 4 charts to the right just below the one w/ the 3 green dots. The top three have a head diagram that moves and the bottom is a chart reading degrees. I go to about 100deg down and 100deg up. In yaw I set it so I can see about 185deg left and right. This is a little more than straight back (so I can see a Mig coming on my tail) but my head is turned only 60-70deg so I can still see the monitor. When I first got TIR, I flew the Quick Action called Free Flight. It starts you in the air flying at about 350k. I keep hitting pause, go to the TIR screen, make a change, and go back to fly to see the effect. TIR is not VR but I think it is very, very good. Good luck

No. This is Yaw. The goal is to be able to look straight back out of the cockpit. This is pitch. Original goal was to be able to look straight up, and then I went a little beyond that. I need to work it a little more because I can actually go too far. The second goal was to be able to operate switches (w/ mouse)on the side consoles that are pretty far to your rear. This is roll. It moves just a small amount. I found that I apparently roll my head when I just want to pitch or yaw so it moved way too much on screen.

I use F6. The bomb will come onto the screen at some weird angle, so I left mouse button until I am looking from behind the bomb. And then I scroll some to move me further behind the bomb. This way I get a good view of where it is heading and not just a closeup where the bomb is blocking 50% of the screen.

I just fly the included missions in Caucuses and Persion Gulf to get experience. I also have my screen set up so I can easily pause DCS and go to the web for youtube videos or to Chuck's Guide, or to something I have saved in my 'SIm Flying' documents folder.

I have my sensor clipped to the top of the monitor which puts it 3-4 inches above the brim of my hat where the springy reflector is. I spent most of my time on the chart in the lower left setting the curves for roll pitch and yaw. One thing that helped me a bunch was to set a dead zone for each of 7-8 degrees in both directions. This lets my head move a little w/o changing my in game view. [url=https://flic.kr/p/2ibZo1W][img]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49351118006_0011a66295_z.jpg[/img][/url][url=https://flic.kr/p/2ibZo1W]TrackIR setup[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/152454123@N04/]craig stuard[/url], on Flickr See the green up/down arrows at the top of that chart? Hitting the up arrow will move the curves upward so you can adjust them. I grab one of the small rings on a curve and move it to move the curve. Then I move it back down which will effectively clip off the center of the curve to give the dead zone. If the curve is more vertical you get more in game head movement for a given amount of actual movement. In yaw I have it so about 75-80 deg of my head moving turns the game view to a full 180deg so I can look straight back from my plane. Since it is a curve you can change how much view angle changes for a given head movement at various points in the curve. On the right side of the screen you can see simulated heads showing how the in game view moves when you move your head. The chart below shows the same thing w/ numbers. This pic was when I was working on Yaw. You can see that I have 7.2 deg movement of my head and only .2 deg movement in game because of my dead zone. When I started setting TIR up, I got into the plane in the quick action free flight mission. This way I could fly around anywhere I wanted, hit pause and make a TIR change, then un-pause to go back to flying to see how I liked the new setting. No one shooting me down or caring what I was doing. I adjusted TIR a lot in the first month that I had it then a little here and there for a month or two, but haven't touched it since.

I solve my problem with 7s by re-arming and swapping to 120s.

There are a couple of ways to do this but I set up my screen so that the standard windows border across the bottom of the screen is still there when flying DCS. So I can hit the pause button, then I can go either to the web or to my 'sim flying' files, or to Chuck's Guide. This way I fly until I have a problem, hit pause, do some research, and come back to DCS. Especially when setting up weapons where Chuck has a 30 step procedure, this really helps. In that case I will use 'active pause' which stops my plane from moving but leaves all buttons and controls active. I have even made DCS take up just half screen and sized my reference to take up the other half. Once I get the weapon set, I go back to DCS on full screen, un-pause, and then use the weapon. I am 2+ years at flying the FA-18 and still have plenty to learn, but I am having a blast.

Probably a month ago I bought Syria and couldn't get it to download. Honestly it began to look like my lack of PC skills was the problem. I contacted support and went back and forth w/ both Alexander and Mike. Quite a few things they asked me to do I simply did not have the knowledge to do but they both stuck w/ me. I am retired so time is not a problem but I want to explicitly say the fact that it took a month to fix was all on me. I asked if I could get a credit to use later to buy a plane or something, and there was some other check I was asked to do. Did that and frankly I just gave up and didn't think about it for a while. Then Mike sent me another email. Gave me instructions and provided an attachment I was to add in the root DCS file. Did that and started the download about 9 this morning. 12- still going, 130-still going, and I did a separate house project so was away from the PC until about 4pm. Yeeehaw, DCS is open on the screen, so I quick check and WOW, there is Syria. Got everything hooked up and flew the supplied Blue Angels mission. Boy I suck at trying to be a Blue Angel, but thanks to Alexander and Mike I can now fly in Syria. Thanks guys for putting up w/ my lack of skills and getting Syria running for me.

I have seen a few crosswind carrier traps in various missions from the user files. I assume there is some nuance in the mission editor that sets something automatically but doesn't make that fact very obvious. I have always managed to stick the landing though so never bothered to try to figure out why it happened.