TACAN station range

I was wondering if the range at which you can receive a tacan signal is too short in DCS at the moment.

Yesterday I was about 110nm away from Groom Lake at 30.000ft in the A-10C, and I had to get to around 60-80nm to get the tacan signal.

I though tacan in real life would have a range of around 200-300nm.

Anyone who can shed some light on this?

I think it's a bit short/weak at the moment. I think you are right, It's supposed to be 200 miles+ range on TACAN stations IRL.

Hmm, I wonder if I should file this as a bug report then, or if this was done intentionally...

Well at 110 NM it could well be simply terrain masking. You must have line of sight to receive and transmit a signal to/from the TACAN station. At that range and altitude there a slant angle of just ~2.5 degrees from the station to your aircraft. Certainly shallow enough for it to be masked by the mountains in Nevada.

The TACAN for the Shuttle runways 15/33 had to range out a minimum of 180 miles on a bad day, but we could sometimes get 280 to 300 with perfect weather (both Earth and Solar). (Retired NASA engineer/manager for Atlantis)

Edit: Texted my Tower/Radar buddy, TACAN maximum official range is 460 nautical miles.

USAF

AFMAN11-217V3 23 FEBRUARY 2009

 

1.3.1. Introduction. Due to the unique requirements associated with military operations, the

TACAN was developed to augment other forms of civilian navigational systems. The TACAN

is an Ultra High Frequency (UHF) omni-directional NAVAID which provides continuous

azimuth information in degrees from the station and slant range distance information up to 200

nm from the station. Like the VOR, the receipt of a TACAN signal is dependent on LOS (lineof-sight)

principle. Therefore, aircraft altitude, distance from station, terrain and obstructions are

principle factors that affect TACAN navigation.

1.3.2. Equipment and Transmission Principles. The TACAN operates in the UHF band and has

a total of 126 channels operating between 1,025 to 1,150 MHz. DME-associated frequencies are

in the 962 to 1024 MHz and 1151 to 1213 MHz ranges. Channels are spaced at 1 MHz intervals

in these bands. The TACAN set may also have an X or Y setting to double the frequencies

available. A difference in microsecond pulse length is the only difference in the X and Y

settings. These settings are normally used in a dense signal environment where it is possible to

have duplicate frequency interference. The TACAN frequency published can be assumed to be X

unless the letter Y appears in parenthesis after the TACAN frequency.

1.3.3. Ground Equipment. The TACAN consists of a rotating type antenna for transmitting

bearing information and a receiver-transmitter (transponder) for transmitting distance

information. Permanent TACAN ground stations are usually dual-transmitter equipped (one

operating and other on standby) and are fully monitored installations. These automatically switch

to the standby transmitter when a malfunction occurs. Newer NAVAIDS may have only one

transmitter due to improved reliability of modern solid-state technology. Mobile TACANs still

use dual transmitters.