AAR not needed!

[Reflected]

Air 2 Air refueling is an essential part of naval aviation, especially during blue water ops, when there are no divert airfields within reach. You HAVE TO make it back to the boat. It's also an every day routine, just like flying around the ship. None of these are easy, but this challenge is what makes it so exciting and rewarding when done right. So if you are a virtual Tomcat pilot, I would urge you to learn how to plug, and how to fly correct CASE I-III landings - that's why we're all flying flight sims, right?

 

HOWEVER

 

Fear the Bones is a fun campaign, and I understand that AAR is hard for some people, lacking many real life visual cues, especially without proper HOTAS. Therefore, AAR is NOT mandatory in the campaign. As long as you're not terrible at fuel management, you can complete the missions without getting fuel from the tanker.

 

BUT

 

You still need to form up on the tanker and follow the instruction messages for the missions to work. You just don't have to actually plug.

 

EXCEPTION:

 

In mission 11 you'll need to get some JP-5 as well as your wingman. That mission, however, offers an option to skip it, and respawn behind the tanker with full tanks. It's up to you.

 

Good luck to all, and remember, practice makes perfect

 

[Jyge]

What about mission 13? I formed up, but there was no guidance afterwards. I refuelled, but did not get quite to the top before disconnect, so I was just thinking that I did not activate some trigger and tried frustrated to connect again and refuel to the full until the mission timeline was utterly screwed. Is there then no acknowledgement and further instructions, just take some fuel and truck on?

[Reflected]

As the message says: refuel and head to wp2

[Rankorn]

@Reflected
I am playing mission 11, and use the option to skip refueling. 
I get the message "Fuel state frozen" with the "you lose" sound  
But, the fuel just continues to drain and I cannot complete the mission.. 
What am I doing wrong? has something changed with this option in recent updates?

Thanks

[Reflected]

9 minutes ago, Rankorn said:

@Reflected
I am playing mission 11, and use the option to skip refueling. 
I get the message "Fuel state frozen" with the "you lose" sound  
But, the fuel just continues to drain and I cannot complete the mission.. 
What am I doing wrong? has something changed with this option in recent updates?

Thanks

As soon as ED will extend the 'unlimited fuel' trigger to the player's aircraft, it will work

[Rankorn]

Bummer..

[Montesco]

In mission 11 how do I respawn with full tanks behind the tanker? Skip mission option? 

[Reflected]

27 minutes ago, Montesco said:

In mission 11 how do I respawn with full tanks behind the tanker? Skip mission option? 

No, currently there is no way, because the unlimited fuel trigger doesn't work for the player, only the AI

[Dragon1-1]

I've been wondering lately if it wouldn't have been easier if the tanker was put in a circular orbit instead of a racetrack. At least then, it'd have a consistent attitude. Right now, in M2 it constantly switches between flying straight and turning, which is annoying. Plus, it's probably an ED thing, but on rollout, it now seems to overshoot and put in opposite bank for a while. Very annoying to follow. If it just circled around in place, it'd probably be easier.

Edited February 18 by Dragon1-1

[Reflected]

32 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

I've been wondering lately if it wouldn't have been easier if the tanker was put in a circular orbit instead of a racetrack. At least then, it'd have a consistent attitude. Right now, in M2 it constantly switches between flying straight and turning, which is annoying. Plus, it's probably an ED thing, but on rollout, it now seems to overshoot and put in opposite bank for a while. Very annoying to follow. If it just circled around in place, it'd probably be easier.

Once you call ready precontact, the tanker no longer follows its WPs, its flight path is all hard coded

[Dragon1-1]

I guess that's another thing that's on ED. It really should be possible to set up custom tanker tracks, including orbiting a point. I hope they change that for DC, this ability is quite critical in planning tanker ops IRL.

[Reflected]

I think it’s fine as is. Imagine, you’re plugged in then the tanker reaches a wp and turns hard 90 degrees. Everyone would complain. Until you call ready it follows the track set up bu the mission designer