N22YF

Hm, I meant to imply that you should "leave them off to the side" by these instructions: I will revise these instructions to make them more clear in the next update!

Here you are! Not a perfect flight by any means, but reasonable enough:

Hello! Did you remember to press [1] to activate the navigation mode? Otherwise, I'm not sure what might be the problem - can you upload a video?

Thank you - glad you found them helpful! Yeah unfortunately the helper gate functionality isn't fully documented: when you use the "show helper gates for unit" action and the player flies through a gate, the value of the flag you specify will set to the waypoint number of that gate. (For example, if you choose flag 5, then when the player flies through the gate at waypoint 1, flag 5 will set to the value of 1.)

I would suggest trying the F-15C, which has some pretty stark advantages over the Su-27: TWS mode, which displays the heading and altitude of all detected aircraft (in addition to their positions) AMRAAMs, which are fire and forget and can be launched at multiple targets simultaneously The radar display (which is high up in the instrument panel like the Su-27's, and not low like the Mirage's) will indicate the altitude range your radar is sweeping at a given range, which makes it much easier to tell what altitudes you will and won't be able to detect aircraft at with your current antenna elevation If you're close enough, your radar will identify what type of aircraft you've locked onto, so you can tell, for example, which bogey is a harmless Su-25 and which is a deadly Su-27 When you fire a missile, you get timers until it goes active and until it hits (or doesn't), so you don't have to guess how long you need to keep supporting your missile with a radar lock The RWR shows you the radar types being detected, so you can tell what's friendly and what isn't, and also exactly what sorts of radars are where (which can take some guesswork with the SPO-15 in cluttered environments, when you have many secondary threads of different types) A velocity vector on the HUD Not that the Su-27 doesn't have its own stark advantages over the F-15C (some notable examples being datalink, the navigation map display, a full autopilot, and the helmet-mounted sight), but I still think a case can be made for the F-15C as an enjoyable A2A alternative to the Su-27.

Thank you! In the interest of not over-inundating new pilots with information, my thought was to mention just the K, [, and ] kneeboard commands, but now that you mention it, since it's not in the manual anywhere, it might be worthwhile to mention here I'll update the supplementary notes!

Thanks again for everyone's great feedback! I have released v1.1 with some minor updates. The biggest change is that I added written notes for the material covered in the lessons which is not in the DCS F-15C manual, for easier reference: http://dcs.alexstoll.com/F-15C Here is the changelog for v1.1: Mission 1 (Introduction and Basic Controls): added info for changing HUD brightness and color Mission 3B (Cold Start, Taxi, and Takeoff (Advanced)): corrected explanation of the "Climb 300" ATC instructions Mission 4 (Navigation, Autopilot, and Fuel Management): adjusted AI F-15s to hopefully avoid collisions, and removed note about autopilot caution lights (which function incorrectly and are better off ignored) Mission 6 (Instrument Landing System): added approach diagram and clarified where to park Mission 7 (Instrument Landing Challenge): revised name and description to emphasize the optional nature of this lesson Mission 9 (Deployment): revised briefing text to clarify mission intent, and added a warning from your wingman if you fly too close to Turkey Mission 13 (Intercept): revised briefing text, and moved start location for a slower pace Mission 14 (Close Combat Radar and Missiles): changed "RTR" to "Rtr," and "press" to "hold" for the weapons release command

The MiG-29G HUD displays distance to the next waypoint in kilometers, although the speed and altitude on the HUD are in knots and feet, respectively. However, the HSI waypoint distance indicator, which is labeled "KM", displays the distance in nautical miles. This is pretty confusing, and I suspect incorrect - the book Luftwaffe Fulcrums: The MiG 29 - From the East German People's Army to the Luftwaffe says that the indication of all instruments was changed to feet, miles, and knots as part of the upgrade from MiG-29A/UB to MiG-29G/GT when the MiG-29s transitioned from East German to Luftwaffe service. If that's true, many other cockpit indications in our MiG-29G should also be changed, but the waypoint distance is the most confusing since the HUD and HSI disagree and the HSI is mislabeled. The radar range, target range, and target elevation are also given in kilometers, which is confusing because the units for these aren't indicated, so it's not apparent what they are. My understanding from that book is that these should be in Western units instead (which would be more intuitive since it would be congruous with the other HUD indications); if so, that should be changed, and ideally mentioned in the FC3 MiG-29 manual to avoid the ambiguity. Here's a screenshot to illustrate - the HUD reads 18.5 (km) and the HSI reads 10 (nm):

I am experiencing the same bug! (Version 2.5.6.59625.1)

Thanks a lot! I hope this is able to be addressed. If fixing this wake problem turns out to not be in the cards, then this campaign mission really should be adjusted, since it's unreasonably difficult with the current state of things.

Thank you for your feedback! The instrument landing practice (#7) is intended to be extremely challenging, and air-to-air refueling is, by its nature, extremely challenging at first, but the other missions weren't supposed to be too bad - could you elaborate a little on what you found challenging? What is giving you trouble on this mission? Are you getting shot down, or just having difficulty preventing the strike package from damaging the airbase?

Are you talking about a bug report for the wakes being way too small? If so, I posted a bug report for that a couple years ago, with unfortunately no acknowledgement or response. (Maybe I posted it in the wrong Forum section? )

Hello sir! That's my mission you're referring to! My intent with creating this mission was for the pilot to simply avoid threats rather than trying to defeat them with countermeasures, but as others have also pointed out to me, that wasn't apparent enough, so I'll try to make that more obvious in the next update to these missions. The point of the defensive aspect of this mission is to get practice with using the RWR to steer well clear of all threats - if you do this, you won't even need to worry about ECM or chaff/flares. Apologies for making this more difficult than it should have been! I hope you've been enjoying these training missions and that they've been helpful for you - please let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions! There is a discussion thread here:

Thank you for your suggestions! For #2, I'll try to rework that mission and/or add some more instruction to make it easier. Basically, all you need to do is use your RWR to steer well clear of any air or ground threats, so I'll try to make that more apparent. Apologies for the difficulty!

Ah you're right! Maybe that behavior is a carryover from another FC3 aircraft in which the indicator is passive.

Some of the analog gauges are passive and don't need electrical power to work - I'm not sure if the AOA gauge is supposed to be one of those, but I wouldn't be surprised!

Glad to hear you found them helpful! Ah, the intent was just to park anywhere you want (outside of runways or taxiways, of course) - sorry that wasn't more clear! I'll try to make that less confusing in the next update of the missions. Thanks for the suggestion! I'll keep it in mind! Well the MiG-29 operates very similarly to the Su-27, which there are already training missions for, so I'm not sure it would be worth the effort to create a whole new set of training missions for it - the only real important difference (in my opinion) is probably R-77s and the СНП2 (TWS2) radar mode with the MiG-29S, but maybe I could do a single training mission covering these. Also, our esteemed colleague @Rudel_chw has already created a great set of MiG-29A practice missions, although I suppose they're a little less noob-friendly since they require the Persian Gulf map.

Gracias! Yes, that sounds great - thank you for asking! I'm going to try to release minor update within the next month, so you may want to wait until that before starting the translations, if you're not in a rush.

Yeah, if you're at close to 0 airspeed, then any air movement around the aircraft that's not exactly head-on can result in very large AOAs (e.g., even a small tailwind when at 0 ground speed will be 180º or -180º AOA), so in any aircraft the AOA measurement isn't really useful at very low airspeeds.

Thank you! The Hornet, eh? Is there anything specific you would like to see in new Hornet training missions compared to the included training missions?

That's great to hear, thank you! Is there any chance we could get animated waypoint buttons/lights on the navigation control panel, like on the Su-25? While anything would be better than nothing (which is what we have now), it would be really nice (would enhance the realism/immersion) if these buttons/lights were animated, at least to the extent that they are on our Su-25

Just about! The option name is "Radio Assists" in the gameplay settings.

Thanks for the correction! I did some more research and it's a bit more complex than I thought. My understanding now is, if you're starting in LRS, then the auto acquisition switch behaves as you wrote. However, if you're starting in STT, then the auto acquisition switch forward or rear enters different TWS modes (HDTWS and regular TWS). From LRS, TWS can be entered by pressing the castle switch up, or pressing the throttle boat switch aft. Since supersearch and HDTWS aren't modeled in DCS, I would suggest the following mapping of the auto acquisition switch (a.k.a. "weapon select switch" for the F/A-18C) as a stab at approximating the real thing: Forward: boresight mode Rear: vertical scan mode Down: BVR mode Left or right (or use a control on the throttle instead): Return To Search/NDTWS and then map the Radar RWS/TWS Mode Select command to a control on the throttle and/or the castle push button. (This actually may apply to just the APG-70 radar and not our APG-63(V)1, but if I had to guess, I'd suspect that TWS is controlled similarly for both.)

Here is the stick in the F-15C MSIP (what we have in DCS): The castle switch can't be used exactly like this in DCS because the MFDs (VSD and MPCD) aren't modeled as fully interactive. However, I imagine this is how the pilot would adjust radar parameters such as display range and scan azimuth width, so I would map those controls there. (Radar on/off and PRF setting controls appear to be on the left console instead of HOTAS.) My guess is the auto acquisition switch functions as: Forward: cycle between boresight (BORE) mode and long range search (LRS) mode Rear: cycle between vertical scan (VS) mode and track while scan (TWS) mode Down: return to search (target unlock) I haven't found anything public about this, though, so that's just conjecture. If you want to set up the presses to alternate different commands, there's a thread about that here: Alternatively, you could approximate this behavior by using a throttle button (for example) as a modifier, which would let you determine which mode is selected by a forward or rear press depending on whether that modifier button is held down (e.g., forward press without the modifier held = boresight mode; forward press with the modifier held = BVR mode).

Thank you for your kind words! I was hoping others would appreciate these touches! [Right Alt + Right Ctrl + L] will toggle the anti-collision lights on and off, and [Right Ctrl + L] is a three-way toggle between off, navigation lights (which are excessively dim), and navigation+anti-collision lights. Starting with all lights off, if you press each of these key combos once, you should end up with both anti-collision lights and navigation lights on. I just tested this on both stable (2.5.6.55960) and OpenBeta (2.5.6.58125) and it worked for me, so I'm not sure why it wasn't working for you (The behavior of arbitrary combinations of presses of these key combos is a little odd and is discussed in the thread "Lights Broken in Patch.")