Bunny Clark

Here's my go at it. Bit rough as I haven't flown the Hornet in a while, and I end up in a 1v1 guns only fight that I win by running the MiG out of fuel This mission is rough because of the rather silly 2x AIM-120B 4x AIM-7 loadout and the massive number of friendly AIs that make no effort to coordinate anything. So rather than being some kind of coordinated BVR engagement, it just turns into a massive furball with missiles. None of the friendlies survived, just me. Hornet 8v8.trk

Confirmed, this is an issue with the current Open Beta. Only way around it seems to be to change all the AI Hornets to the older non-module variant, or play on Stable.

This isn't a Super Carrier specific problem, it happens with the Stennis as well. It seems to only effect Hornets, AI Tomcats can get in the air just fine.

Thanks for this. I generally don't bother with the mission planner, as I have no need to when I'm testing missions, and hadn't noticed. That will be cleaned up in an update soon. This has been a channeling one to get to work reliably since there's two groups that need to be either dead or ran away. I've come up with a new way of scripting it that I hope will be more reliable. I'll push an update out once I've had a chance to play test it. Well that's weird. It's almost certainly a DCS issue, I'll see if I can reproduce it.

No, we want a US F-16CM Block 52 CCIP, specific serial number and rivet count is unimportant. I'd just prefer not to have a frakenplane that's a USAF F-16CM with wing pylons from an Israeli F-16I and weapons from a Turkish F-16CJ, and so forth. If ED or a third party are willing and able to make an F-16I module at some point which includes all the Israeli specific modifications, that would be fantastic. Until then, I think it'd be weird and unrealistic to have a USAF F-16 with the ability to mount weapons from other countries, just as it'd be weird and unrealistic to have a USAF F-16 with a built-in jammer because some other countries have it.

I believe that the USAF does a lot of its separation testing and load certification with the assumption that the inboard stations will always be carrying fuel tanks. Proximity to the tanks limits TER carriage on the outboard stations, and while I imagine it'd probably be fine to carry triple LGBs on the inboard stations, the USAF hasn't bothered to pay to test and certify this configuration because they know they'll never use it.

You're asking for literally hundreds of feature additions. It would double the size of the DCS F-16 project and add years of development. Different engines, different flight models, different radars, avionics, HUDs, HMDs, RWRs, built-in ECM systems, MWS, MFDs, Towed Decoys, Conformal Fuel Tanks, TGPs, a dozen of new weapons...

That's where you open Pandora's Box. Israeli F-16s have a lot of differences from the DCS F-16. If data is added to the inboard pylons like Israeli jets have, how about conformal fuel tanks too? Moving map display? Elbit HMD? Or the different ICP? Python 5? Where do you draw the line?

HARMs will absolutely disable an SA-10 site, but you'll need more than 4. A volley of 8 will reliably take out the tracking radar if the site does not have any Tor units. If it does you'll need to add about 2 missiles per Tor defending the site in my experience.

Some people's idea of DCS "realism" = every conceivable option, no operational limitations.

The F-16 can only carry weapons that need a video or data connection on the outboard pylon on each wing. This means JDAM, JSOW, WCMD, HARM, and Maverick can only be carried on two pylons: one on each wing. From there things get a bit odd. I'm not sure how closely DCS matches what the USAF has certified the aircraft for, and can only really speak to DCS. Mk.82s can be carried in triples on a TER-9 on all 4 stations. CBUs can be carried in pairs on a TER-9 on all 4 stations as well. GBU-12s can be slant-loaded in pairs on a TER-9 on the outboard stations, which I believe is because of fin deployment clearance issues between a GBU-12 and a fuel tank. The inboard wing station can only carry GBU-12s as singles. I suspect that a 4x3 load of GBU-12s would be physically possible if no wing tanks were carried, but the USAF hasn't bothered to certify that configuration for flight because F-16s simply always carry wing tanks in combat configurations.

In landing configuration, the Hornet's FCS holds AoA, and you set what AoS is held with the trim switch. So long as you're not making any pitch inputs, you will stay glued to the commanded AoA without effort. A simple tip: the trim hat will control the direction the AoA bracket moves - so if the TVV is below the AoA bracket on the HUD, trim hat down to bring the jet to on-speed. You should be able to maintain on-speed level flight with your hand off the stick and just manipulating the throttle to control decent rate.

Good point, I'd forgotten about double-press of TDC for STT lock. This is *not* the preferred way to enter STT, and I never use it. SCS will also command Fast Acquisition (FACQ). FACQ will command acquisition of the track under the radar cursor in STT, and is the preferred method for going to STT from a search mode. It is faster and easier than TDC Depress, and will set you up to better utilize bump acquisition whenever we get that function.

Just be aware that changing the cursor axis saturation will effect slew speed with every sensor, so you'll also be slowing down the radar cursor, Mavericks, HARMs, and so forth.

Finishing JHMCS and DTOS would be my priorities. DTOS is already partially implemented I think, since it's very similar to how the Maverick and JDAM VIS Modes work. Bullseye would also be really nice, along with adding the North arrow to the HSD.

That's a pretty commonly made point when discussing this topic, but it isn't really true. Every modern combat aircraft is limited somewhere between 7G and 9G, not because of the squishy human in it but because of the engineering of the airframe. Loading weapons onto that aircraft decreases the max G loading even further, usually down into the 5G - 6G range. Designing an airframe to be stronger requires more reinforcement, which means more material and more weight. Is being able to pull a few more Gs worth sacrificing fuel or payload capacity? Some day advances in material science will probably allow aircraft to be capable of pulling greater Gs without a significant increase in weight, but for now the tradeoffs just aren't worth it.

The starting condition is set per group in the ME, so the only way would be to make two different groups, one for hot start and another for cold start.

I am a pilot in real life, though I've never flown anything more exciting than a Cessna 172 so I'm not sure that the experience exactly translates. But I was doing quite a lot of flight simming in the 90s before beginning my flight training and I do feel that it helped. An avid DCS player would probably know where buttons and switches are and would understand the fundamental concepts pretty well. It would certainly help. Real life is also quite a bit more complex than even DCS, there's a lot of important things to know and pay attention too that either isn't modeled in DCS or players just always skip over because it's not fun. Also, flying a real plane feels quite different. When the plane is actually moving, responding to your inputs, reacting to the winds and turbulence, it's a very different feel than yanking on a stick in front of a computer monitor. In a lot of ways flying in real life is easier for it, you get a lot of feedback that's missing in a flight sim that can be really valuable (landing a real plane, I can feel if my decent rate is correct, for example). But it's different enough that someone who only has muscle memory from a flight sim would probably be thrown off. Flight simming is the kind of experience that helps a new pilot learn proper technique faster, rather than specifically teaching proper technique. Doing any kind of combat and pulling G I'm sure would be a massive hurdle to overcome for someone who's only ever flown digital fighters though. Humans will be inside combat planes for a long time. Removing the humans from a combat aircraft would require either a reliable jam-proof datalink to a remote human operator who can make decisions, or an AI that we trust to make life-and-death decisions without any human input. I don't see either of those things happening anytime soon. UCAVs like the "Loyal Wingman" concept, which pair unmanned vehicles with manned aircraft that have direct local control make a lot more sense. I expect we'll see that sort of thing much sooner.

How did you move the install? By copying the files or by using the installer? Steam or Stand Alone?

As Frederf mentioned, PP really doesn't have a lot of use in DCS right now. PP targets are something that would be set up in mission planning hours or days before stepping into the jet. While you can input coordinates directly into them on the fly, that's not really what they're meant for. If you have a waypoint at the target point, it's far easier to just select TOO mode, select Waypoint Designate, and then pickle the bomb. You don't need a FLIR pod for this to work, designating the waypoint will assign the waypoint location to the currently active weapon. PP will hopefully become more useful when we get more in depth mission planning features and data cartridge functionality in DCS. Check to be sure the coordinates were entered with the correct elevation. Waypoint and target points are 3D points, if they're not entered at ground level the computer system will reference a spot in the middle of the air. That can cause some very weird things to happen if you're not used to it. It's also possible there was a mistake in converting between coordinates if you were still doing that. The Hornet, like the Viper, handles sensor priority and target designation in a simpler way that is supposed to be easier to use than something like the Hog. There is no slave to waypoint, slave to sensor, or slave to SPI function in the Hornet. It's not needed. The system maintains a single Target Designation point, and all sensors by default will slave to this location. If you switch Priority to a new sensor and designate a new point, everything will switch to that point. When you Waypoint Designate (WPDSG), you are commanding the jet to designate that waypoint location as the designated target. That will cause the FLIR pod to slew to it, just as designating a point with the radar or HMD will. This actually is consistent, you're just misunderstanding the radar systems. In both modes, TDC Depress will command the system to designate the object under the cursor as a target, but will not change the radar scan pattern at all. In A/A, this designates the track file but will not enter STT or TWS. In A/G it will designate a fixed point on the ground, but will not command a change to the radar scan mode. You can think of it as simply dropping a pin at a point on the ground. The SCS Action will instruct the Radar to stop scanning and track only the selected object. In A/A this means entering STT on the selected track. In A/G MAP the radar will enter Fixed Target Track (FTT) where it will attempt to find an object close to the cursor location with a strong radar return (like a building) and track that object. In SEA or GMT, it will command the radar to track the return under the cursor very much like an A/A STT. In both A/A and A/G the TDC commands a weapons track, while the SCS commands the radar to stop scanning and focus on a single object. Yah, this is kinda an annoying thing with the Hornet systems, I agree. On the HSI and SA Pages, the DATA sub-page is exited by hitting the "HSI" or "SA" button that replaces DATA when you hit it. On the Radar and Stores Pages, DATA is boxed when you're in it, and hitting it again returns you and unboxes DATA. Then in the EW Page there's a "RTN" button. I really wish they'd settle on a single convention, preferably the way Radar and Stores does it, as I find that to make the most sense. Like how in the Viper whenever CNTL is available on a page pressing it will enter the Control page and highlight CNTL, then pressing the highlighted CNTL again will exit. One thing at least to remember is that "RET" is a cluster bomb and "RTN" is Return.

Agreed. The FLOOD circle is a missile guidance circle on the HUD, but it isn't an ASE circle anymore than the ACM Boresight circle is. It works more or less the same way as the AMRAAM dashed VISUAL circle on the HUD.

I've always wondered the same thing. It makes sense to me that it would work the way you describe as well, but I have no real world documentation on the CMDS system to back up that hunch. Maybe not though. I generally feel like the way DCS players use expendable countermeasures may not relate very closely to reality, but of course no one with real world experience is really willing to talk about that sort of thing.

Boresight is antiquated, there's a reason on the updated A-10C it was removed from the HOTAS and made an OSB on the TGP page. Why would you lock the TGP to a single fixed point when you can easily point it anywhere you can look? The problem is that the Viper is just missing all of the functions that allow you to visually designate a SPI. Once we get DTOS mode, you'll be able to set SPI with a slewable cursor on the HUD and the TGP will jump right to it. Once we have A/G functions for JHMCS you'll be able to designate SPI with the helmet by looking at a target, and again the TGP will jump right to it. The problem isn't that the Viper itself is clunky, just that it isn't finished yet. Markpoints aren't implemented at all yet. TMS Down twice will command CZ.

Unless I'm mistaken and it doesn't stick out far enough, there should be an edge-on rear fin visible here. It'd be really thin, like the one facing us is, I'm guessing it got cut off in photoshop when removing the background.

At the moment, Stored Heading is always available at mission start. There may be an option for this added later in development like the Harrier has, but it doesn't exist now.