Select Tunes Radio and AM/FM switching in the Warthog

[sthompson]

I recently started flying the Hog. I've been going through training on the old version but the issue/question reported here seems to be common to both the A-10C and the A-10C II Tank Killer modules. I've been flying with Easy Communications OFF but with "Select Tunes Radio" and "Instant Select" both turned ON. In one mission I wanted to use radio 3 to communicate with Batumi on 40.400 MHz. So I manually tuned that radio to 40.400 and called Batumi for taxi permission. No response. However if I then gave the command "Batumi, Select" and then called for taxi permission it worked fine. At first I thought this was a failure of Instant Select to select Batumi as the recipient.

 

Upon further investigation I realized that the problem is actually with "Select Tunes Radio" together with my improper use of the radio. The Select command was causing radio 3 to tune to 40.400 MHz AM. This is a bug because that radio is an FM only radio and so such tuning should be impossible. Batumi ATC should not be reachable on that radio, and if you try to reach it using the Hog's Mic switch aft command Batumi does not respond. Or perhaps I should call this a feature because it lets you do something that DCS ordinarily does not permit.

 

In any event, I don't know whether the behavior is intentional in the design of VAICOM, and thought I would report it here in case Hollywood sees it as a bug instead of a feature.