LTRMcrew

This sounds like bizarre behaviour; can you try on a default mission (one that comes with dcs and f18) to see if it works? Sounds like something in mission may be preventing.

Thanks for the reference... I've never actually delved deep into the manual. So a Patriot will take 3600 secs (1 hour) to reload with an M818; however, one of the examples shows 1x M818 per launcher, will this speed up the process? Will more than 1x ammo truck reload a patriot quicker? or is this just to have more ammo supplies on hand per launcher and reload times are the same regardless of the number of ammo trucks nearby.

quite possible; the s3 is very old very poor model compared to C135 or c130

You can lock them on radar using tws to keep track and distance; then when close they will "usually" flip their nav lights on to you can see the closure rate (how quickly are the red and green lights diverging). Then when ready to put out your probe flip radar off, probe out, and should start lighting the basket up. Always remember to close to maybe 1-2 miles then slow right down to very slow closure.

As above. The F is infrared tracking so pod will tell it hey look in that direction and it will but then the Mav will try and find something to lock onto. Also, you have to undesignate the pod point track in order to slew the mavF reticle.

I certainly appreciate it! This has bugged me for some time and I think I naturally used the altitude per distance 40k for 40 miles but I often descended quicker than 10 degrees. I will try and do this going forward. Thanks for the research and posts!

ah ok good to know, I'll definitely try that, thx.

Hi Everyone, I've found the FLIR lately at night is reaaaaaalllly bad to spot things. I've tried messing with the brightness and contrast knobs but I can only get it to a barely passible stage, where I need to be fairly close (within 15ish miles) and zoomed fully in to discern if target is a tank... or a bush... I remember it being MUCH better. Is anyone else having this issue? Is there a technique to get optimal view? I don't mess with the auto ALG, only the physical knobs. Then they get so messed up that i'm basically blind. I don't have a trk or pictures although I plan on doing some proper investigation... is it related to cockpit display resolution? etc

Cool observation!

Even for commercial airliners they need to be in some seriously heavy precip to flame out, like extreme super duper rare heavy precip, it happens that infrequently. Airframe icing would be an interesting addition similar to the warning we get for inlet ice. Does hornet even have deicing? Or is it not necessary due to it's thrust to weight and can out power it and clear the area? Although you'd still have the ice on the wings even after departing the icing zone.

As a follow up, I did not have the issue over the weekend. Which is bizarre as I'm fairly practiced with the hornet so it wasn't a user error; if I didn't have the DDI SOI at first I'm sure I would've double checked that to trouble shoot. The only thing I didn't try is resetting the GEN's which sometimes resolves bugs in flight. So I dunno what the issue was... bug in the update maybe but it doesn't last? Might just be one of those things that are bugged after update, but after a restart or two it gets settled.

Where are they goin??? They're going DOWNTOWN!

I've found if you cycle between salute in the f10 menu and request launch they come to life. I have not paid attention to what the order is or if I need to salute twice and then request launch or what but there is some comb that seems to work... most of the time.

you will get it... you can see the common theme here, we've ALL BEEN THERE! that's why were so encouraging because we all struggled at first with AAR, and we've all achieved it and can now do it without much effort. Keep at it, you WILL get it!

There was a show on Discovery called Jet Stream about Canadian Air Force training on the hornet, and they too spoke of "walking the throttle" on approach, as a movement would be too much. My throttle movement required on approach is quite large, walking wouldn't do enough.

Hi All, I had an issue last night with the new update with the undesignated button which I didn't have before. When in a/a tws radar and there are contacts that have boxes (don't know the right term) the expected reaction to undesignate button is for the tws selection/primary to cycle through these "boxes"; this no longer happens... nothing happens with undesignate. The second issue which seems to have come up is the locks don't seem to undesignate; I had an aim-9m lock with a friendly tanker while pursuing a mig23, the mig had the box in the hud with triangle, and I realized the 9m was not locked on the mig as the lock circle was off to the side, so I hit the undesignate expecting it to drop the tanker and reaquire the mig which was in the 9m hud circle. Apparently it didn't drop the tanker because the undesignate doesn't seem to react with the radar. So to summary undesignate is not working with the a/a radar. I did verify keybind was correct. I did verify the button works as NWS steering works. Tried on two different servers, same result. I did not save the trk.

I've had run ins with wake turbulence in RL and you do shat your pants. The hornet behind the KC135 is fairly realistic to what happens [although I've never a) flown a hornet or b) AAR in RL], a sudden snap roll and you're at 90 degrees. Fortunately in RL I was able to correct.. obviously. That being said, it was on final behind an already landed airliner (I was in Chieftain). You only make that mistake once, and from then on you ALWAYS stay above their path and hence the wake turbulence. I'm not sure how DCS models it, but in RL the wake turbulence comes off mostly the wingtips in a conical shape and drifts back and down while widening, the further back it gets the weaker it gets. It always drifts with wind, so if there's a stiff cross wind it will blow with the wind, which sometimes makes it worse as the upwind "cone" will blow straight down the runway instead of dissipating to the side. Now as one of the above poster has said the proper approach to a tanker is to form up on the left wing then when cleared in to move behind. Ideally you could avoid the wake turbulence by staying same level as the wing then descend slightly to the basket height when in position. I would imagine the wake turbulence is streaming back quite straight for a time before descended at cruise; but also the wake turbulence is least at cruise compared to slow and dirty on approach. The best advice I received when learning AAR is to make correction half of what you think you should, keep repeating this as a mantra when AAR and it will become second nature. It will help you to not over correct which is what leads to the pilot induced oscillation; that's when you need to pull back, settle, and try again. Also, RELAX, you WILL grip your stick WAY too tight, I still do it and need to remind myself to relax the grip; griping too tight also creates over correction. In RL video's the pilots will literally finger tip the stick to avoid choking it; that's very hard to do with our sim as the forces just aren't the same. It's all about being smooth. It's a hard skill to achieve, but once you get it... you've got it, it becomes a tool in your toolbox and you wonder why it was SO damn hard before. But it's also a perishable skill, like carrier traps, you will get rusty quickly. Technically the very by the book tanker formation is to fly low up to form on left wing of tanker, slide over to your designated basket, once done you slide right again to form up on the tankers right wing. Then when leaving you fly high and away. This whole "loop" creates a clear path for approaching "flight wings" and departing. I recommend using the instant action missions to practice, and stick with it for like a good 30mins to 45 mins (the time will LITERALLY FLY by). Any longer though and your nerves are shot and you need a break before trying again.

ah the wonderful dcs update random bugs...

As bfr mentioned it has to do with the contrast... annoying? immense, but you can always go to area track to hold it in the area, then, again as bfr mentioned, when you get closer hopefully the contrast as improved on target and you can slew once again to the actual target.

Full up elevator is very common practice in RL. I've got 1,500 hours up to B1900 size aircraft and you do this especially when short runway and you know you're going to need to apply significant brake force. Part of it is weight on main gear, the more weight you can press into the main wheels the more you can apply the brakes without skidding. It's also common practice (not sure about NATOPS) to raise flaps on landing, yes you'll lose some aero braking but you want again, to get as much weight on wheels and the flaps act opposite to that. Second is to actually unload the nose gear (or at least try not to load it too much; the B1900 has this long spindly strut you don't want to snap) [also nose gears don't have brakes, I think the only ones are maybe those ginormous Russian cargo planes...]; when you're under heavy braking all the weight goes forward, the nose gear is not as beefy as the main gear... Ok third, full up elevator would certainly add some incidental air brake force. Also, once you're below about 100kts the air brake and the up elevator effectiveness reduce dramatically.

I'd agree it's the same issue; track file was massive as several hour MP session on Syria. Thanks.

Appears DCS is locking up 0 FPS when using A/G Radar; A/G DDI right on A/G Radar = low fps, then designate spot on A/G Radar = less FPS, then EXP2 = ZERO FPS, will not come back. Others have had the issue and they checked their resources: GPU went to 0% useage, CPU and ram 100%. Does not recover...dcs.log

Does anyone know the NATOPS optimum land... landing procedure? i.e. touch down, air brake out, apply brakes below 100kts... or something similar? That's generally what I do, I also raise flaps after touchdown which helps a bit for roll out distances.

I have thousands of hours flying commercial planes up to B1900 (so similar altitude to a hornet normal cruise under load) although obviously way slower! But spotting airplanes is VERY difficult, also at 25,000 ish cars are very small, even semi's (lories) are small. However, what the Mk1's do an exceptional job at is spotting movement. That's basically what you look for in RL is you pick an area of sky (or ground) don't move your eyes for a few seconds and see if you pick up movements, if you do, switch mk1 to that area and re assess. If not move to next block of view. In DCS (i'm flat screen 1080p) it's very difficult to spot a convoy at normal zoom on a highway, this would not be that difficult in RL if you know the general locations (dcs requires super zoom to which some say is a cheat). As above have said, imagine trying to be the team to get this right... I'm not sure why people that enjoy the large dots complain they couldn't see before, why didn't they just turn on tags? I for one like the realism and don't use tags, but it's also frustrating knowing the spot of ground I should see something (thanks to F10... I mean intel) and not seeing it... even though you know it's there. As above sure in RL you'd use camo and what not and not park at the top of a dune in the desert, but there does need to be a balance. I do realize there needs to be options to turn on and off for VR and flat Earthers as there does seem to be a discrepancy. Keep at it ED you'll get it eventually. We need to keep providing constructive feedback and not cry out with whinging for or against.

^^^ Line 42 set to FALSE