Bahger

You're on. I will post a track if a test mission I made with an orbiting player a/c and two JTACs tasked on separate targets. Neither responds to my check-in, ever. I'm quite an experienced mission designer, so I'm baffled.

Let me put it more simply: Under what circumstances willl a FAC unit that shows up in the radio menu where it should be, and contacted on the right frequency/modulation, not respond to check-in calls?

I've put JTACs in missions very successfully many times before. This time it absolutely refuses to work. I'm pretty sure I've got the waypoint logic right for FAC/AFAC missions (I always use FAC Assign Target Group). However, regardless of which unit I choose (I've tried Hog AFACs, ground FACs, Predators) although they show up in the comms menu and I can therefore make the outgoing call, they never, ever respond, not even with "No tasking available" ...just complete silence. I'm totally baffled by this. I've tried flying my own jet at higher altitudes to counter any LOS radio reception problems, and/or getting closer to the FAC/targets. I've tried using different targets. No dice. I hear the FAC checking in, so there is no problem receiving transmissions from the unit but he won't respond to my check-in. I have also tried different, FM-only frequencies (I want to keep AM for package comms). This is maddening. What can I be missing??

This is very helpful info, guys. My CH CM settings are exactly as above but I had no deadzone in my DCS throttle axis settings and slider was OFF. Have made the changes and am cautiously optimistic. Thanks again.

I am very experienced getting JTACs to work in missions but the failure of this one is causing me to scratch my head in bafflement. Here are the details: - I have the 2-ship A-10 AFAC flight change frequency at the WP at which it starts FAC-ing in the WP/Advanced menu. This is because I want to monitor the flight on the common package AM frequency before he approaches his FAC target and switches to FM. Does "Change Frequency" not work in these circumstances? - The AFAC flight ingresses and orbits at 20,000ft to avoid local SAM/AAA threats. Surely this is not too high for an A-10 AFAC with a TGP? If the AFAC flight continues not to respond to radio calls I will have to dial in his FM frequency from the start in the flight's own menu and give up on the idea of a freq. change at a nav point, which would be a pity. Can anyone suggest what I might be missing here?

Thanks very much for the responses. I don't think I'm doing anything "wrong", ErichVon; I've been flying this sim since the first day of the Beta and have both many hundreds of hours and a superb CH HOTAS profile. What seems to happen is that the nosewheel casters when the engines come up to idle and idle power seems to be enough to straighten out the nosewheel and set the a/c in motion. I will experiment with engaging NWS before engine start. Bob Church at the CH Hangar suggests programming my W key so that the character is held down until disengaged, i.e. a WB toggle. Of course, this might cause strange behavior when using the W key in other programs if I have CH Control Manager running. It's a brute-force solution but might be my only option, I'm fed up with having to do the start-up one-handed. This mission is a user-made one (i.e. mine) which I'm bug-testing in MP using an a/c parked at either Tiblisi or Vaziani, I cannot remember which ATM.

Thanks latearrival but the problem is that the CH throttle reads zero when full FORWARD. It has almost always worked for me -- i.e. I get no throttle input therefore no forward movement on startup -- except in one friggin' mission.

Unfortunately active pause does not work in MP. This is a vexing issue.

My CH throttle has no detent and when starting up the a/c sometimes creeps forward even with the throttle at zero. This makes the rest of the startup and alignment process very aggravating, as I need both hands for all the switches and there is no way to hold the a/c still without constant pressure on the wheelbrakes. I can't remember, wasn't there some discussion of chocks/handbrake in the upcoming patch?

Looks interesting. Will d/l later and hopefully fly it with a few squadron members today or over the weekend.

Hey Vincent. Glad you like the mission and I wish I could be more helpful in addressing your problems understanding the voice comms but it's just not practical to render them as text, they would take up too much space on the screen, and/or be on screen for too long. The two radio messages do not contain any mission-critical information beyond what you already know from the briefing. The first message is a SITREP from the ground commander requesting support before he moves out from the Phase Line -- and warning you about the SA-19 launchers -- and the second message clears you hot to the target.

This has been satisfactorily tested by my squadron-mates at the 1st VFW (25th "Draggins") but feel free to report any problems or anomalies. This mission consists of three flights of 2 A-10s each, departing from separate airfields in order to link up over the AO. Tusk flight (DEAD) will attrit enemy SA-19 launchers from altitude so that Pig flight can find and kill three enemy armor convoys closing on a town containing a refugee barracks full of civilians that the enemy warlord is determined to destroy. Boar flight has clearance to destroy briefed road bridges with JDAMs in order to hamper the movement of the convoys. This is a strike/interdiction mission. The Red objective is only very lightly defended by a small UN contingent. As usual, this is an intermediate to advanced level .miz that calls for some proficiency in the following areas: - Multiple L/L coordinate data entry into the CDU for use as target waypoints in "Mission Mode" (Tusk) - Using "Mark" to get ground-level target waypoints where flightplan WPs are placed at navigational altitude (Boar). Coordinates for the three Tunguskas have been provided for the DEAD flight. Coordinates for roadblocks north and south of the attackers' objective have also been briefed and should be inputted by all pilots as reference points for the convoys' routes into the town and to protect the UN defenders at these roadblocks, who will not last long if the armor is allowed to make contact. No custom voice comms this time (not much point in MP) but detailed text messages for S.A. and to notify the player of victory/defeat conditions. Read the briefing and good hunting! co6 Burning Bridges_04.rar

I set my CBU-97s to deploy at 1200 ft but got a suspiciously low number of hits from a good drop, combined with an oddly early report of the few hits I did credited with. This has occurred a couple of times in the same mission and to more than one pilot who is pretty competent with CCIP bombing. We each ran in from Angels 10 and were baffled by the results. We think it's to do with target altitude in the CDU and will replay the mission making sure DTS (is that what it is, I'm not near the sim, or the manual) is set in the HUD for WP altitude. But, regardless, surely HOF is set by a radar altimiter in the weapon and is therefore not dependent on MSL target altitude settings, or am I wrong about this? Anyway, there appears to be some anomaly --user-created, no doubt -- in the way CBU HOF is operating in these circumstances. The 97s are either deploying too early and therefore spreading too widely for optimal effect or -- this being my hunch -- too late, possibly even not at all, and the only hit I'm getting is from a direct impact of the undeployed bomb! Can anyone comment??

Right. I'm not aware of any ILS indication in the HUD. If I'm mistaken, could someone confirm?

ooohhhhh... So instead of expecting the TGP to slave to the mission point as it would to a markpoint or a flightplan waypoint, I should make the mission point the SPI in the TAD, i.e. "hook" it...? (Fish, that would be TMS not DMS up long, right?)

I had a bad time today failing to find targets at briefed lat/long coordinates. In each case, the coordinate, outputted from the ME, had been adapted by dividing the seconds value (i.e. the final value of each coordinate) by 60, as I believe the CDU will not accept seconds, only minutes and decimal fractions of minutes. In-flight I used the CDU WP page to copy the current WP, name the new one and enter the coordinates in L/L mode before switching to "Mission" with the nav mode rotary to cycle my new WPs in the HUD. They appeared, and seemed to be correctly placed, but I could not slave the TGP to them as usual and find the target nearby. Am I forgetting something simple here?

It's a great idea, though...less ambitiously, I've been thinking along the same lines, of an ME "module" that could run independently of the sim, i.e. an independent .exe that you could install on laptops which could never run the sim itself. Does anyone think that's possible?

You can bomb very accurately using pre-briefed L/L coordinates but there are a couple of traps for the unwary. You can obtain the coordinates by mousing over the target location in the Mission Editor but the output format is degrees/minutes/seconds. The Hog's CDU accepts inputs in degrees/minutes, NOT degrees/minutes/seconds (DMS) so you need to convert the seconds value in the ME output (the " value) into a fraction of a minute to get a coordinate that will produce the accurate location when you fly the mission. You can obviously also get these coordinates -- depending on whether or not the target is shown -- in the F10 mission map. Once you have these L/L coordinates, you input them into the CDU via Function/Waypoint, starting by advancing the WP value in the CDU screen or CDU repeater MFD screen, then entering a name for the object at the waypoint (say, "Bridge"), make sure you have L/L selected as the input mode, then you enter the coordinates in the correct fields, using the CDU keypad or the UFC. Make sure you enter your longitude coordinate with a zero first; Lat coords are 7 digits, Long coords are 8 digits. Once you have entered these waypoints and -- importantly -- named them, you will not see them in your flightplan. You need to turn your navigation mode rotary knob under the CDU from "Flightplan" to "Mission" and you can then cycle through them as you would flightplan WPs in FP mode. I know this might seem complicated but it's easy after a little practice and important for realistic operation of any air-vs-ground platform.

"A week". Please. 3 months to know every system and fight it effectively in every situation. Includes cold startup, all nav modes including ILS, tanking, all modes of the CDU, all weapons systems, hung stores procedures. "A week". Pull the other one.

Hey squadmate SH: Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. It seems to be the case that both JTAC and recon units are "one trick ponies"; they follow a script and can be made to repeat it, but the AI is not truly dynamic or adaptable. It would definitely be good to be able to call them and ask for a recon update. Sometimes they give a very good impression of being responsive to an evolving threat picture, but from a mission designer's point of view there is a lot of trial and error and you do bump up against the scripting and limitations of the AI more than you'd like to.

One problem (I think) is that they will only call out a target once. So if your flight has a long ingress, you need to set the recon flights to arrive when their data is actually useful (i.e. in range). Can anyone confirm?

Fair enough. I'll wait and see. So far there are no big, can't-resist mods for A-10 that I'm aware of.

You should not see the message at the beginning of the mission if it's triggered by "Group Alive" and you have set the right conditions for the delayed group spawn, including the start-time delay mentioned above. This exact problem sometimes occurs in my mission design playthroughs and 95% of the time it's because I forgot to set the start-time delay for the group.

I don't want Modman. I've always just unzipped the files into a "Dragonsmissionpack" (or similarly named) folder in my /missions/multiplayer file and they work just fine.

Look in your HSI. The bearing range given is not a bearing to the target -- that's what the coordinate and/or datalink is for -- it's a bearing range from which to make the attack, so if you are given "Bearing 90 to 180", for example, you would run in from the south-east. This is my interpretation of how it works. I'd happily stand corrected if I'm mistaken.