KA-50 laser burning out prematurely?

[Topgun505]

I've been flying the KA-50 since it was just Black Shark, before DCS even existed.  A couple of days ago was in Blue Flag Syria and one of my squad mates was in a 50 and was saying that half way through his flight he was no longer able to lase his targets to employ the ATGMs.  I figured he may have mistakenly flipped a switch mid-flight so didn't think anything of it.  And, on reflection, I do recall in ages past that the laser can and will seemingly burn out but it usually took 2 or 3 reloads (so between 24-36+) ATGM launches before that was likely to happen.  It was happening to him on the first sortie.  A day or so later I was on the same server in a 50 ... and sure enough after about the 8th ATGM launch my laser was done.  All electrical was on, Laser switch was on, tried a reset, Master arm was on, ATGMs on.  But nothing .. could no longer fire the missiles.  Has anyone else experienced this recently?  Has there been a change in the laser behavior that maybe I just wasn't aware of?  

[okopanja]

There was a bug report about not being able to repair it by crew. That got fixed in last update.

Your laser was on only during the guiding?

Are you sure the target was not destroyed already?

[Fastbreak]

I can share your experience. This error exists, as far as I remember, for years and was discussed here before. Nowadays it is less likely that it happens (obeying the intervall rules of use for the laser*), but sometimes there is definetively a mess with it yet. Just a guess, maybe the activation of optional damages in the ME  (Set Mission Options/Random System Failures) makes the laser by coincidence burn out too early? Or it might be quite a different bug ...

* Laser rangefinder operation mode for one flight, series: 5    Each serie consists of 16 cycles of 10 seconds with 5 sec interval between the cycles.     Interval between the series, min: 30 Manual 13-4

Edited February 21, 2022 by Fastbreak

[Yurgon]

On 2/21/2022 at 2:16 PM, Topgun505 said:

And, on reflection, I do recall in ages past that the laser can and will seemingly burn out but it usually took 2 or 3 reloads (so between 24-36+) ATGM launches before that was likely to happen.

I haven't flown the Black Shark in ages and am nowhere near current in it, so there's a good chance something changed.

But as far as I remember from when I flew it a little more extensively, laser burnout was a matter of target lasing and laser ranging, and if memory serves laser ranging was actually causing the laser to overheat faster than target lasing did. I made it a habit to have the laser off and only ever turn it on for intentional ranging, and of course for guiding Vikhrs. Afterwards, I set it right off again to make sure I wouldn't accidentally range while trying to lock a target.

In other words, if nothing changed in the module itself, it would be perfectly valid to overheat the laser before even the first 12 Vikhrs have been launched by locking up (or trying to lock up) targets all over the place.

And of course, one should always be very mindful of the cooldown periods between ranging and guiding and not fire the laser before the guidance timer counts down to 0 for example.

[Kappa-131st]

There's a real subject with the Kamov's laser. It's as if there was a counter which, after a certain number of lases, automatically burns it out.

You can be careful not to make lasers permanently and perfectly systematically respect the cooling countdown, the laser will end up systematically burning past in the vicinity of the 24 Vikhrs fired.
Which imposes as a constraint to make a repair every 2 supplies (You can even go to do it for all the supplies if you want to be quiet) so as not to be indisposed in the middle of a mission. It's a shame.