Check us out at CSG-1, VMFA-122. We have guys all over the country and are active almost every night.
Our dedicated flight nights are Sunday and Tuesday nights at 2000EST. Dedicated missions are PVE centric but sometimes contain a few human red air adversaries. We'll frequently jump on public PVE and PVP servers in addition to flying on one of our 4 private servers.
The atmosphere is an easy mix of mil-sim and relaxing fun. The goal is to be proficient in all the Hornet's mission and have fun doing it. Most of us fly other modules including helos on "off" nights but we keep the 18 as our main.
Jump in our Discord and say "hi."
They're two different lasers and with this pod you can't operate both at the same time.
The laser designator uses a pulse repetition frequency i.e. a specific "code"
The IR sparkle does not but it purposefully emits within the EM spectrum visible by NVGs and not your eyes.
There are unique reasons you'd want to use both simultaneously but you can't. Wizards.
You're not crazy. I don't select the mav until I point track the target in narrow field of view.
I'm not sure if it's a bug. If not someone smart can tell us why it's a feature.
I see why you'd want that. The caged sensor is pointing straight ahead relative to itself as a default fixed position. I'm not sure if the LITENING does this IRL but it would need to be constantly adjusting for yaw and AOA if it were pointing to match the VV. While useful this would be less than ideal compared to using JHMCS which it actually does. Then you could put your HMD crosshairs anywhere on the ground and cue the sensor to that point. It'll come.