Confused with F-18 C Hornet, TACAN tutorial + radio channel to choose.

[Wiggo]

Hi. I have been playing about a year now with DCS. Have flown before only FC3 planes, but alot. Now training with hornet, and kinda everything is understood BUT confused with tacan trainining. In training first it makes you choose channel 2 on radio (why this?,how do I know which is the ADF channel?). Then it leaves ADF + channel 2 on and makes you do tacan stuff. OK i get it perfectly right on that tutorial. BUT when flying later trainers and trying to get to airfield , do i have to set the radio in someway if using ONLY tacan? I cant get it on, in later trainers (think it was the JDAM trainer). Everything else seems to go about right after one week of tutorials. Nice plane, but huge jump from Eagle and Flanker. But nice one. Especially as Finnish. But please help. I have looked youtube videos, everything, and just cant find tutorial that i can get tacan working with. So do I need somekind of special radio channel for tacan, and if so, which one, and why that one? etc.. I even dont get the tacan graphics to HSI before (the tacan  merry go around graphics , in hsi before setting tacan code, that goes over the compass graphics). What am I doing wrong? So with tacan, how should the radio be set? or does it even matter? Trainer is very confusing, because it just tells "just choose this channel" etc + press this button, but in a way i just dont cant apply on other situations. (too much "just press this and dont ask why.. "  It could be great if somebody that makes alot of DCS content in youtube, would make a video where training the noob like me. Usually the biggest ? marks does not come while plaiyng trainers, answers are usually in noobs questions.. I really liked Drewskis and Ralhpieguys SU-25t video, where they trained Drewski together. I learned from that one video more about sead with su-25t than with any tutorial in the game. I just mean those kind of videos would be good, just for pointer to youtubers..  (if you want you can train me ;D) 

Edited December 6, 2022 by Wiggo

[Jel]

How to explain it short without repeating the whole manual, pages 168-171...

Using Tacan, your radio indeed doesn´t matter at all. You should, however, dial the radio freq. of the airfield you´re planning to go - in order to communicate. But for navigation purpose alone, you don´t need to dial any special channel here, also the ADF switch - which as ADF is a navigation method of its own - is just irrelevant for Tacan Navigation.

Press TCN on your UFC once, then press the ON/OFF button once to power it. (UFC shows "ON") Dialing your TCN channels now should give you the corresponding information on your HSI, give you are a) in range of the signal and b) not behind any obstacle making you unable to receive the TCN signal.

I´m not going into detail here but i think that´s quite what you wanted to know

Edited December 6, 2022 by Jel

[Iron Sights]

Let me follow by suggesting Chuck’s guide for DCS. Download the guide for 18 and then go to the navigation chapter. That will explain it all.