Questions about INS alignment

[BlueAngel]

Situation: Upon starting up, I place my aircraft INS alignment knob to "GROUND" to perform a ground alignment. Parking brakes were set.

 

Observation: On the HSI page, in the INS screen, after a brief period of flashing, the quality degradation begins to rapidly reduce. The indicator OK shows up after a few seconds, but the timer continues to move. I waited up to 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, the timer doesn't appear to stop. The OK indicator also doesn't change behavior.

 

Resolution: I turned to NAV mode and it appeared to be fully aligned, although there's no indication of a fully aligned system.

 

Notes: The same seems to happen on a carrier.

 

Questions:

 

1- Is the "OK" indicator after about 10 seconds normal?

 

2- Is the quality counter supposed to be so fast?

 

3- If this alignment is correct, what indication is there to tell me INS is fully aligned?

[Manuel_108]

Unfortunately I can’t directly answer your three questions. However, bear in mind that the realistic INS/GPS simulation has not been implemented yet. It‘s more or less another placeholder.

[dorianR666]

behaviour of INS has changed with every of the last 3 patches, i wouldnt worry about it much as long as it works

[Lancel]

It's all placeholder. OK after 10s isn't normal though may be now. Quality counter is not supposed to be that fast. And so far as the sim goes, you need only trust that it is fully aligned as the INS as currently implemented is always fully aligned. You can literally just flip the knob to NAV and it will work perfectly.

 

Alignment just isn't currently implemented fully and is largely static.

[Firebird1955]

Any input from the ED Team on this issue? Not that I do not believe the gentlemen above, but according to the update from yesterday, it said the INS Was FIXED. Nothing about a WIP.

 

INS set correctly on Autostart.

INS alignment fixed.

 

That does not align (no pun intended) with what has been said above.

[Andrei]

To me it seems like just another placeholder. The alignments gets done in no-time and the A/C page still shows coordinates of one of the Navy bases on the West Coast. Will be implemented correctly at some point I guess. For now just leave it in GND for a minute to be on the safe side and off you go.

[HereThen]

Although INS may not be moddeled yet, and the alignment part is buggy at the moment (even if it is a placeholder) it is still better to do things the right way now. This way you don’t go into bad habbits of doing things differently now and having to “relearn” it again when things do get fixed/implemented.

 

It will be fun times when they ever implement INS alignment and people start complaining about things not working :).

[BlueAngel]

Thank you for your input.

 

I will just skip it to NAV then.

 

But, I must mention that this INS system is pretty inaccurate sometimes. It seems random, but sometimes I see major deviations from waypoint position. This is most noticeable when the map is on the background, very, very inaccurate.

[WOPR]

AFAIK, the OK is flag you pay attention to. It means alignment is "good". I haven't tried just switching to NAV recently.

 

Whatever ED has done to the alignment process recently is not entirely obvious.

Set a waypoint on a TACAN and compare the TACAN azimuth and range to the waypoint azimuth and range. They should be the same. Look at the map, they may both be in the wrong position on the map. The results vary with ground or carrier start I'm told, but haven't checked it out fully. Its difficult to determine if the problem is the alignment, the map registration, or both.

 

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

[sk000tch]

I've recently had my heading tape in hud/hsi geeze, usually online, and can't seem to get an in air alignment or other previous tricks to fix it. Anyone else having this issue? If so, found a fix?

[WOPR]

Just using NAV seems to work. IFA seems liked it is bugged.

 

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

[Zayets]

Around 3 patches ago, I was aligning (CV or GND) for about 2-3 mins until QUAL 0.5 OK marker then switching to IFA. All worked. Now, align (CV or GND) timer appears flashing and then I see QUAL 99.9. In about 10 seconds it reads QUAL 0.5 OK, timer steady and counting. Switch to IFA not working. NAV looks to work OK. Checked on YT, no video showing if there's any change.

[Banman]

IFA is In Flight Alignment. It sounds like you were aligning properly on the ground. From there you should switch it to NAV or navigation mode once alignment is complete. No need to align during flight, that's what you just did preflight. Also keep in mind that INS is not even working right now and never has to my knowledge. You are correct that the time would count and the quality would go from 99.9 down to 0.5 and that let you know it was done, but skipping that step didn't have any negative effects, but it's coming soon and not doing so soon will give issues. Before that last patch at least you literally could crank up and go directly to NAV mode but the procedure you were performing is correct. (At work and have not DL new update) In Flight Alignment is not yet implemented. When it is, you will need to fly straight and level for a long time before the system would get aligned. Like 50-60 miles or more according to a buddy who flys F16's IRL. So you would likely need to set BALT hold and a Heading hold in autopilot. IFA is more of any emergency option but certainly not standard practice from my understanding. The Internal Navigation System should be aligned preflight on the tarmac / deck using either ground or CV depending if you're at a land base or the boat respectively.

Edited April 6, 2019 by Banman

[Manuel_108]

In the real world you switch to IFA after aligning on the boat.

 

However that goes for the GPS jets. I don’t think the DCS Hornet has GPS modeled (yet)

Edited April 6, 2019 by Manuel_108