New Pilot Saying Hi and Some Questions

[Little Dump]

Hello all,

 

I've been just getting into DCS for the past month or so. I've just finished the training missions and am now just starting to get into real missions. I am also looking for a good list of multiplayer servers that are newbie friendly, and also looking for people in the eastern time zone (ish) to fly with.

 

I have a few questions that have arose since I did my first mission. I started with the WeaponsTraining.miz that comes out of the box to see if I could pull it off, but I had some difficulty.

 

Here is my question:

 

I had great difficulty finding the targets at waypoint 2. I tried to use the TGP, and slave all sensors to SPI (which was steerpoint), but the steerpoint was in the sky, and it seemed like the TGP pointed up to the sky instead of below the steerpoint; is this normal? How many passes should it take to actually locate the targets; it takes me like 10 to find them and I find them visually because I can't get the TGP into the vicinity easily. What is the usual approach to find unmarked targets like in this mission?

[derelor]

Welcome to our forum, Little Dump!

 

Not a direct answer to your question, but an easy mission for beginners is "Hideout". I created a walkthrough for it which can be downloaded here.

[lubey]

Yeah sometimes the waypoint height is not set to be the same as the ground elevation. Perhaps it is done this way if the mission calls for certain altitudes to be flown. My procedure for finding the targets in this case is to manually slew the TGP's "wedding cake" symbol to the steerpoint icon on the TAD. Then use the TGP as per normal (have you tried using the BHOT/WHOT modes?) to pinpoint the targets.

[Crescendo]

I had great difficulty finding the targets at waypoint 2. I tried to use the TGP, and slave all sensors to SPI (which was steerpoint), but the steerpoint was in the sky, and it seemed like the TGP pointed up to the sky instead of below the steerpoint; is this normal? How many passes should it take to actually locate the targets; it takes me like 10 to find them and I find them visually because I can't get the TGP into the vicinity easily. What is the usual approach to find unmarked targets like in this mission?

 

There are a few techniques available to get the TGP to look at the ground directly beneath an elevated steerpoint.

 

Take at two posts I have previously written on this subject:

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1185493&postcount=16 (Two methods of slewing to the ground beneath a waypoint.)

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1230218&postcount=6 (A more detailed description of the "Technique 1" in the first link.)

[wojasos]

Remember to set your TGP to BHOT or WHOT, which very helpful when searching targets.

[Little Dump]

Thanks for the tips. I'm going to give it another go. And I'm also going to try the hideout mission. I like the briefing that you put together for that one. Have other people done these for other missions or is there another way to get a bunch of this information in the sim's mission planner or anything like that?

[jeffyd123]

also I use the "quick view" to bring up the MFD with your pod and make it big. ( I remapped my "NumLock" key to bring up the quick views, then I hit "6" on the keypad... its great and handy)

 

Generally the pod is a lot of work to use and find targets... I tend to use white hot the most. You'll get pretty adept at using your HOTAS buttons while searching... feels like clapton playing a rip on his guitar some days LOL.