Some principles to take into account:
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For the DCS: F4U Corsair, the warming up of the vacuum tubes is simulated. The absence of a signal does not immediately mean something is wrong. If you do not have a signal after 2 minutes, try climbing or seeing if user error is at play.
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The signal for the Essex is currently not adjustable. This has been described as a software limitation. Therefore, Magnitude has made it so that the Essex is always on the lowest frequency that the ARC-5 can tune to, which was not a real world limitation of the system. The advantage here is that we do not need to rely on mission makers to correctly set up frequenties. In any mission, you can use this to navigate to the carrier.
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There are ways to use channels on the ARC2 and to use it to navigate to land-based airports but for now, these are out of scope for the tutorial (they have to be designed and briefed by mission makers).
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The basis of the system is that, in morse, you will be presented by a three-letter identifier and then a letter that codes for a 30 degree angular sector. Note that these provided bearings are compared to north and independent of the carrier direction of travel. In DCS, these codes look as follows:
For clarification, the signal you hear indicates the sector you’re in, compared to the ship.
- In DCS, I have found that the essex always identifies itself with:
-. .- ...- = NAV
For the tutorial, we will be focussing on using the C-38 and C-26 control panels. For these to work, we should have the battery enabled.
On the C-38, set…
- The Receiver A switch to “OFF”
- The receiver C switch to “ON”
- the noise level switch as required
- the CW/VOICE switch is set to “VOICE”
The latter is to make sure the frequency is selected by the ARC-5, as CW would be using the preplanned channels. Then moving over to the other side.
- Set the frequency to 190Hz (currently, the Essex is always on 190Hz)
- Set the selector to CW to make sure navigation is selected over communication.
That is all you need to do!
Scenario
Somewhere in the pacific… Just shy of 40nm and at bearing 070 of me is my carrier. Since I cannot see it yet, I decide to set up my radio as described above. After about a minute, I am greeted with the following morse code:
-. .- ...- ..- = NAV U
With the chart I’ve drawn before, I can figure out that the carrier is due east and at least slightly to the north. I can expect it to be between a bearing of 60 to 90 degrees. I decide to head further due east.
I am now almost exactly south of the carrier. Over the radio, I hear…
-. .- ...- .-. = NAV R
This indicates I am almost south of my ship, it should be north-north-east of my position. I take a peak out of my window and see the boat.
Happy (carrier) landings!
debugging tip: Although I currently don’t understand why, if a signal remains absent against expectations, it might help to cycle through channels on the C-38 until it works again.
Kneeboard page for ingame:
