Bunny Clark

Huh, it sure does. I just looked and saw that there were displays there and jumped immediately into starting to build a Helios button interface for the Apache without realizing I was looking at the wrong pages! I can't get the pilot MFDs to display at all. Even if I create 4 separate viewports for the pilot and CPG screens, I get two copies of the CPG screens. It should be Cockpit/Scripts/Displays/TEDAC/TEDAC_init.lua but I can't get that to work either. EDIT: Ahhhhhhhhh, it's because I still had LEFT_MFCD and RIGHT_MFCD defined in my monitor config. Looks like the CPG displays draw to the default LEFT_MFCD and RIGHT_MFCD in addition to whatever viewport they are assigned in ViewportHandeling. Removing those entries, and leaving only the 4 customized viewports for the Apache, gives me 4 unique view screens now.

Casmo talked about this in one of his preview videos I think. Or it may have been the Apache episode of the FPP, I can't recall exactly. Sometimes NVGs are nice because both pilots can't use PNVS at the same time and the TADS is not the best night vision system for just looking around. More importantly I think, both TADS and PNVS are thermal camera systems, so they can't see IR markers. If they want to spot an IR laser or strobe from another aircraft or ground troops, they need to use NVGs. You can't use both at the same time. To look through NVGs you fold the IHADSS monocle off to the side.

Both Pilot and CP/G screens default to "LEFT_MFCD" and "RIGHT_MFCD", the same as most of the other modern jets. My setup worked right away without needing to modify anything. But you can change the display name to anything you like in the init.lua file in Cockpit/Scripts/Displays/MFD/indicator under the --ViewportHandling section at the botom.

ED has been pretty good recently about pushing new content updates to Stable fairly quickly once the game-breaking bugs are squashed. It'll still probably be a few weeks though.

The F-16 avionics have a "high vis" mode that can be enabled in software, it turns all the text bight yellow. It seems to have been enabled on a per-squadron basis, starting a year or two after our Viper is modeled unfortunately.

Fly whatever altitude you want to, or check and see if the mission designer has included altitude in the documentation for the mission. The Hornet isn't designed to show you cruising altitudes for waypoints.

Depends on your perspective. I have fairly high confidence we'll see a more modern F-16 (and even an F-35) in a high fidelity combat flight sim someday. It may not be for another decade or more, and it may not be DCS, but someday it'll happen. We just have to be (very) patient.

Absolutely. I dream of an F-35 module some day. I expect we'll be dreaming for about the same amount of time.

Flying low isn't usually helpful, the shallower your attack the more spread out your bullets will be along the ground. A steeper dive angle will concentrate the rounds in a tighter circle. Usually strafing is done at around a 30° dive. Place the pipper on the target, wait for IN RNG to appear when the range bar reaches the bottom of the pipper, then squeeze the trigger.

No, The F-16 does not have the ability to automatically climb or descend to a pre-programed altitude. It can only hold an altitude it is already on. This is generally true for most western military aircraft. If you turn off the Pitch A/P button you will disable the autopilot entirely. Pitch must be set to either ALT HOLD or ATT HOLD for the autopilot to be engaged. That's why the center position is labeled "A/P OFF"

I'm working on a big Syria campaign right now. But it'll be a while yet...

This is a common misconception, but remember that in flight the wings hold the plane up, not the other way around. Loading heavy objects on the wingtip can actually be very structurally sound, as it sits counterbalanced with the fuselage on the other side of the wing. In the F-16 it's more about harmonics than weight distribution, but in other aircraft like the L-39 and F-104 for example, that's the reason for the wingtip fuel tanks.

The Tac manual isn't available, but the technical manual for the radar is. It's not available for free, but it is publicly available.

Good corrections! Clearly my memory wasn't entirely accurate, though I totally remembered reading all that in the -34 as I read your comment

No. Mavericks have two power states: On and Off. The primary reason for turning the Mavericks off, which is also the reason for the cooldown period and the max time on, is cooling for the IIR sensor. Cooling is entirely internal to the missile, and it has a limited quantity of coolant available. Boresighting is done aircraft-side though and is unaffected by Maverick power state (some time is also spent spinning the gyros up to speed, but that's relatively quick). So you can turn on the Mavs, boresight them, then turn them off again and the aircraft will remember the boresight corrections. But when you turn the Mavs on again you will need to wait for the sensor to cool down again.

The Maverick itself has no capability to detect range, so range is going to be fairly approximate with only a rough target designation on the ground, it'll be more precise using the FLIR. You'll notice the range information went away entirely when he undesignated the target point. The nominal max range for a Maverick is 8nm, but a launch at 10nm in a dive from 30,000 feet probably isn't unrealistic. Getting a Maverick lock at 10 miles probably is unrealistic.

You can also range bump with the HSD Cursor when HSD is SOI, just like on the radar page, or couple the HSD range to the radar range.

Some other nations have built-in ECM systems, and they are generally installed in the fairing at the base of the vertical stab. The US doesn't have any Vipers with that configuration though, to my knowledge. There is certainly RWR gear in that fairing, as well as the GPS antenna.

You've got the wrong viewport name and lua file. The F-16's EHSI actually has built-in support for exporting unlike most other module secondary displays, so you don't even need to edit the display script. But for reference, the correct script for that is EHSI_init.lua not EHSI_Pages_init.lua. The default viewport is just "EHSI" - plug that into your displays config and it should work.

From what I understand the new FLIR engine is a new API, so the new system will need to be integrated with every module individually. But, I expect that the Viper will probably see it on day 1 or very soon thereafter. I think modern Mavericks get a little wrongly maligned. The A and B Mavericks were hot garbage, and every horror story I've seen from real pilots struggling to get locks come from those versions. The D sensor is waaaay better than the old vidicon sensors in the A and B. I agree, Mavericks in DCS are still significantly overperforming, and hopefully they get more realistic with the sensor overhaul. It would also be cool if we see the IR Mavs start to struggle in hot desert environments to give the H and K a realistic reason to exist. But I don't expect that they'll become terrible.

That is extremely weird. When I get time I'll test fly the mission myself just to be sure everything is working, though it's such basic functionality that isn't working for you that I don't have much hope I'll stumble onto anything obvious, and all the flags are correct in the ME. From your screenshots everything looks like you should be getting Results=100. I wonder if localization is causing a screwy problem somewhere. Though, if that were the case why wouldn't it be a problem on other missions?

There's quite a variety of training weapons. Bombs come in two general varieties: small training bombs like the BDU-33 and LGTR which are designed to mimic the trajectory of a real bomb and explode with a small smoke marker. They're small, light, and cheap so planes can carry a lot of them. There are also full-up training bombs, basically a real steel bomb casing filled with an amount of concrete that is the same weight as the normal explosive filler. These mimic the trajectories of real bombs exactly, can be fitted with Paveway and JDAM kits just like a real bomb, and give the pilot the feel of a real bomb coming off the jet. Then there are captive-carry missiles. These are missiles with no motor or warhead, and are attached to an aircraft to train with their sensor systems. Examples include the CATM-9, which is a captive-carry Sidewinder used in dogfight training so the pilot can uncage the seeker and get the growl and lock tone. The TAGM-65 is a Maverick with a tape recorder inside it that records footage from the seeker head and an indicator when the pilot hits the pickle button so that targeting and lock quality can be evaluated during the debrief. Air to Air missile live shoots are often done with missiles without live warheads targeting old fighter aircraft that have been converted to autonomous drones like the QF-4 and QF-16. The missile is tracked downrange and the hope is that is passes close enough to the target aircraft to be considered a "kill." Occasionally a missile will perform perfectly and impact the drone, but if the missile only passes close by the drone, it will be usable again in future tests.

This is incorrect. The barometric altimeter should be set up to show your altitude above mean sea level. Since all it can do is measure barometric pressure, any attempt to set it up to show altitude above the ground will only be accurate for that one specific spot. Setting the altimeter for altitude above sea level allows multiple aircraft flying from different areas to all coordinate altitudes using a fixed common reference. If you want to see your altitude above the ground when landing, switch your HUD to show radar altitude, using the ALT BARO / RDR switch below the UFC.

Has this happened more than once? Are you using the most recent version? You should get 50 points immediately at the start of the mission, 5 points for ending the mission with your aircraft still intact, and 45 points for completing the mission.

Does the Viper have GMT yet? I can't remember, but that would probably be useful. You should be able to do a PRE handoff from the A/G radar in GMT directly to a MavD if you're boresighted. Also, make sure you're in narrow FOV for the Maverick, it'll be easier to find the target and they track better that way. Moving targets with a Paveway II are a bit of a challenge. CCIP will drop the bomb on where the target is at release time, and then it will fall to that point as the target moves away from it. I get best results by manually leading the ASL a bit, and then lasing early to be sure to catch the bomb while it's still in the bucket and give it enough time to pull onto the target location. Lase too early though and the bomb will loose all its energy trying to catch up and fall short. I find lasing a moving target at 15 - 20 seconds TTI works best, depending on speed.