F/A-18 Chaff & Flare Manual Modes

[Nazgûl]

Hi guys. With the last update on 05/21/2025 (2.9.16.10523) I noticed a bug in the FA-18 countermeasures (I didn't have time to test it on the 16). The flare button (aft) activated manual mode 1 and the chaff button (forward) activated mode 5. Now they activate modes 2 and 6 respectively.

Edited Wednesday at 11:54 PM by Nazgûl

[miguelaco]

I can confirm this issue and also add that cycling through all the programs back to man 1, makes the dispense switch aft to release program 1 as it should. Dispense switch fwd seems to always release program 6 as @Nazgûl pointed out in the previous post.

I made a short track showing the behavior.

fa18c_cmds_step_bug.trk

[KevinAu]

It seems like the cmds programs got shifted up by 1. What I had set as my man 1 in the mission editor cmds file loaded into man 2, while man 2 got loaded into the man 3 spot, and so. My man 6 fell away nowhere while the man 1 was empty.

[Nazgûl]

I did a test using cold start and another in the Caucasus Free fly and another in a mission using the Editor. I think I discovered the Bug (I still think it's a bug ). Pressing the ALR67 button on the MUMI page only changed the Chaff and Flare programming, but not what the Chaff and Flare buttons execute. Being in RWR and selecting the MAN mode (1,2,3,4,5 and 6), the Chaff button (forward) executed the MAN mode 6 regardless of the mode indicated at the top (before it executed 5). The Flare button (aft) executed the MAN mode that was indicated at the top (if MAN 1, it will be this one, if MAN 2, it will be this one). Here is the bug. If we open RWR and select the MAN mode, it will initially show MAN 1 by default. If at this moment we press the Flare button, it will execute MAN 2, and not MAN 1. But we just need to press the STEP button and simply go through all the MANs until we return to MAN 1, and then it will execute MAN 1 (or the MAN we selected at the top, corroborating what @miguelaco said above). So what I think is that now we have to press STEP and quickly go through the MAN modes from 1 to 6 so that the Flare button correctly executes the selected MAN mode, and finally that the Chaff button now executes MAN 6 and no longer 5. Test it later and tell us if the same thing happens.

Edited 15 hours ago by Nazgûl

[Nazgûl]

18 hours ago, KevinAu said:

It seems like the cmds programs got shifted up by 1. What I had set as my man 1 in the mission editor cmds file loaded into man 2, while man 2 got loaded into the man 3 spot, and so. My man 6 fell away nowhere while the man 1 was empty.

That's right. Same here.

[miguelaco]

Reported here and seems related to this: