Bunny Clark

Yup, the F-16 alignment works a bit like the A-10C. When it says "RDY" it means it's aligned to the minimum level needed to be usable, you need to wait for it to be flashing RDY before it is fully aligned.

When setting a TACAN channel for an aircraft you need to be in A/A mode, not T/R.

If you're talking about the AoA Indexer that's just to the side of the HUD, flashing means your tailhook is not deployed. Yup, pressing the T/O TRIM button resets the trim to 12° nose up, which is correct for an airfield takeoff. From the boat you need to adjust trim beyond that based on your takeoff weight. If you don't you'll get a "CHECK TRIM" advisory on the left DDI along with a Master Caution.

I wouldn't exactly call this a bug. After Shaefer was on the helo and flying off home I figured I may as well blow up the truck - I had a bomb left, there was apparently a cache of MANPADS, why not? I got a voice line from Shaefer saying the truck had quit and a mission failed message, but still a Results 100 score at the end so it didn't actually effect anything. I get it's not something you expected, and I did engage a target without Overlord's permission so technically an ROE violation, but the voice line after he was already off the ground and safe was a bit odd.

As far as I know I'm not allowed to record DCS time in my log book, so it's totally a game. But really, this is a thing we all do for fun, and not everyone finds the same things fun. That's totally fine and awesome. Who am I to tell someone else the way they should be enjoying their game? I really wish DCS had a system where you can set any mission to cold, warm, or air start depending on how you want to play.

It depends what your expectations are. Most computer gamers seem to expect to hit a warship with a missile or two and watch it sink in less than 10 minutes. While that does occasionally happen in the real world it's extremely uncommon unless you're talking about patrol boats. Many ships ultimately survive missile strikes, and many that do sink because of ASM hits do so hours or days after the attack. What DCS needs is a refresh of the ship damage model that allows missile hits to take out key systems such as weapons, sensors, propulsion, and electrical generation and render a ship incapable of fighting even if it doesn't sink. And it should be presented in a way that players are happy to have turned a ship into a flaming hulk even if it doesn't sink before the mission is over.

I've been flying The Enemy Within 3.0 lately which means getting a lot of cold start practice. I've made significant revisions to the A-10C checklist and updated the file, for anyone who's interested.

Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source, and tends to lack substantial technical details. The Super Carrier module does not include the USS Nimitz, but consists of later ships in the same class which are primarily fitted with the C-13-2 catapults.

You can see all planned features for the Hornet here: It does, but not until about a decade after the year our Hornet is modeled.

I've definitely seen it show me datalinked target type before, unless I managed to get an NCTR print on a contact 80 miles away in RWS somehow ...

It's not actually. IFF is a form of radar transponder, it's entirely possible to get a return from a contact that hasn't been detected by the radar. It does need to be within the radar's field of regard, but you can get an IFF return off an aircraft that's too far away or that has too slow a closure rate to be detected as a target by the radar. This is the exact reason civilian airport terminal radars use a transponder system: it allows them to identify returns as specific aircraft, and it allows them to extend the range of a relatively low power radar system.

My understanding is that what you see on the AZ/EL page should match what you see on the SA page, both places should show trackfile aircraft type regardless of if the info source is your own or datalink. I do believe that AWACS systems have more powerful NCTR capabilities than fighters do. This info is also shared out on the network, so if any friendly fighter with Link16 gets a NCTR print off it that ID will go out to the whole network. I have no hard sources for any of this, so I may be off on the details though.

For a modern guided missile warship, you need to throw enough missiles at it to overwhelm its defenses. Exactly how many this takes depends on the exact ship, but usually at least 8, and possibly 16 or more.

Update 2.4 is released! -Added Mission 13 -Fixed scoring in all missions so a failure will reset to that mission rather than sending you to the previous one. -Added ZSU-57-2 to areas around Bandar Abbas. -Fixed game options enforcement in Mission 0. -Added scenery destruction around Bandar Abbas so you’ll see the results of previous missions as the campaign progresses.

You can safely skip a lot of that. The Hornet is a bit more complex to start than the Viper, but it's still one of the simplest planes to start in DCS. Here's the startup checklist I use:

I'm still learning the specifics of the DCS "staged campaign system" which is designed to create a non-linear campaign where you can step forwards and backwards in a flexible set of missions. It's a pretty cool system that isn't often leveraged for campaigns. But by setting up the mission scoring correctly, you can prevent the campaign from ever stepping backwards.

I think what may be going on here is that the Stores page has other SCS actions tied to it in various master modes. We don't seem to have those yet, but the Stores page also doesn't behave like any other page that can't except Priority.

The current ATC system is extremely simplified and not very realistic, but it at least doesn't usually screw things up massively, so I guess that's good? "Inbound" is a call to notify the control tower that you are flying to the airport with the intent to land. This should be your first transition to the tower, and I generally do it between 20 and 30 miles out. The response from the tower should tell you what runway to expect, though it doesn't seem to work right for every airport on every map. "Request azimuth" is a call to inform the tower that you're either lost or have forgotten where to go and to please tell you what direction to fly in.

I have no expectation that a DCS manual would explain how to use a partially implemented feature to work with a mod.

Alright, I have this figured out. There's some interesting nuances to the Campaign Builder I didn't understand before but scoring should be tweaked now so you should never get kicked back to a previous mission. In the meantime, you can cancel out of any mission you don't complete and your failure won't be recorded. You can also change your scores on previously played missions in a campaign by editing the file {User}\SavedGames\DCS(openbeta)\MissionEditor\logbook.lua and reset your progress to where you would like to be in the campaign.

At the moment, other than turning the system on, there's not much to explain. None of the settings actually do anything yet, it's all just for show. This is clearly still very much a WIP, not much point in adding it to a manual until there's more you can interact with and do stuff with.

Oh good point! I was only thinking of pre-briefed threat circles on the HSD, but yes, there is datalink interaction on the HAD page.

In real life, at least for the version of software we have in our DCS jet, it isn't possible to add new threat rings to the HSD display midflight. They're all created by the intel folks and pilots during mission planning based on known threats that are relevant to the flight, and are uploaded along with the flight plan on the aircraft data card. Surveillance systems and other aircraft can send air contacts over datalink, but I do not believe there is a system to send ground threats over datalink.

Hey, you've still got both flaperons, both stabilators, and one rudder, what more do you need? How'd it turn out?

Download from the link in the first post. Or here: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3314231/