Tips for maverick lock on?

[sze5003]

I'm stuck on mission 4 for some time now. I'm not sure what the proper approach should be. Should I let Bug get the triple A at waypoint 4 and then I attempt to use Mavericks in the pop up targets later?

Do I lose points letting Bug take them out?
 
I just can't ever seem to get the Mavericks to hit my targets. Auto hand off barely works. It locks on and says hand off in progress then I see the blinking cross hairs on the WPN page so I fire, mav looks like it's heading in towards the target but then misses.
 
They seem to mistakenly lock on to near by buildings or other objects.
 
Boresighting them is tough because I can't see anything properly on the WPN page. Im flying in VR and even with my quad views focus resolution set to 2.0 it's hard to make out anything on the weapons page.
 
I tend to set the tgp on a target then use the HUD to slew the Mavericks on or near the tgp box, then try to view what I'm locking up on the WPN page, seems to work and I get blinking cross hairs but I fire and of course I miss again.
 
I feel like I'm missing something here but I love the campaign so I'll keep trying as I'm learning a lot.

[ChillNG]

1 hour ago, sze5003 said:

I'm stuck on mission 4 for some time now. I'm not sure what the proper approach should be. Should I let Bug get the triple A at waypoint 4 and then I attempt to use Mavericks in the pop up targets later?

Do I lose points letting Bug take them out?
 
I just can't ever seem to get the Mavericks to hit my targets. Auto hand off barely works. It locks on and says hand off in progress then I see the blinking cross hairs on the WPN page so I fire, mav looks like it's heading in towards the target but then misses.
 
They seem to mistakenly lock on to near by buildings or other objects.
 
Boresighting them is tough because I can't see anything properly on the WPN page. Im flying in VR and even with my quad views focus resolution set to 2.0 it's hard to make out anything on the weapons page.
 
I tend to set the tgp on a target then use the HUD to slew the Mavericks on or near the tgp box, then try to view what I'm locking up on the WPN page, seems to work and I get blinking cross hairs but I fire and of course I miss again.
 
I feel like I'm missing something here but I love the campaign so I'll keep trying as I'm learning a lot.
 

Mavs are tricky at first but the common mistake people make I think is trying to treat the seeker head as a target pod.  You'll always struggle to ID targets on it the way you would with a TGP, so a different approach is needed.  I like to ID the target with the TGP, then zoom the view out and try to mark the target in relation to something obvious, for example the target might now be the third dot left of the road, which is about as much detail as the Mav can make out anyway. 

It's fine to use Bug to take out targets for you, that's what he's there for.  You run the risk of losing points sometimes if you use your wingman, depends on the mission adnd how using up weapons affects your ability to complete later tasks in the mission, but will vary mission to mission. 

[sze5003]

Thanks zooming out does help a little bit. I was able to boresight this way and didn't bother with the hand off modes. I still ended up hitting a light pole instead. I don't think I was able to see the pole before firing.

[Aronis]

Yes, similar issues, as in the Campaign you are more under the gun for time and such.   

I have started taking the time to Bore Sight the Mavericks on the ground first, you have to practice to get to be quick about this as some of the missions are time dependent.  From a 'realism' standpoint it does not seem to matter if you Bore Sight at a close object or a far away object, but surely this should have an effect on the alignment in the real world?

I was wasting time doing the HMCS align, butI am not sure there is ever a reason to align the HMCS as with mine it's always ok for axis and roll, just off bit not he first setting.  I guess if you were using VIS to tag a target this would be more important? Not sure.

Seeing the actual targets via the WPN page is tough, you have to be close enough for a lock (7 nm) and come in slow enough to not loose all your time to align.   I usually make the big mistake of coming in too low, thus get shot down LOL.  Some tutorials on youtube say to aim the plane down toward the target before firing to better align the maverick with the launch site to target path.

There are many learning points, and it can get frustrating, but still fun.

 

Mike

[sze5003]

I heard that boresight on the ground will not matter now due to the parallax errors that have been introduced in a previous DCS update.

Mission 7 which I just finished you did have about 5 minutes or less to lock two targets or 1, fire a Mav and then turn back and go low and come back quick to get the SA6.

Nonetheless I'll try once in mission 8 to boresight on the ground before heading out.

[Gilligan]

Boresight distance absolutely matters with the mavericks. If I can do an air-boresight procedure at 8ish miles I usually get solid correlation between the two. If I do it on a closer object on the ground there is parallax error. I have a couple tricks I do to try and mitigate this error but it is there. 

 

Like ChillNG recommends above, once you ID (and maybe lock) the target with the tpod, zoom out to get a sight picture that is as similar to the view from the Mav seeker as possible and make sure the two match. 

It is a lot to do once you've started your attack run, and it doesn't really get any easier, especially when you're worried about MANPADs and AAA. ID your target outside of 20 miles and above 15k feet. When you turn in, try to be nose on by 15 miles and 10k feet, this gives you five to seven miles to correlate your TPOD and Seeker displays. Lock with the seeker at about 8 miles, and try to rifle and turn off before 5 miles at the latest. I've found that anything closer than 5 miles is not only is it a massive risk but sometimes the maverick cannot maneuver enough to make the hit if your nose isn't dead on the target. 

 

I never use the auto handoff.