Hornet TACAN question

chipwich · January 20, 2021, 12:59am

I flew the Strike Fighter mission last night for the first time in probably a year. While it still has some problems, like the kitties behaving like they are on a NAVEX rather than a TARCAP, the SEAD flight does a reasonably good job and the sound clips from the real life mission sure get the old pumper going. Overall, it’s a still a fun mission.

However, while heading back to the Stennis, I could not get the TACAN receiver to capture 74x for the life of me. Crossed my T’s and dotted my I’s several times over, but no joy. I also checked the mission waypoint 0, all looked well. Anyone else have this problem?

USMCBEANS · January 20, 2021, 1:46am

I sometimes forget to turn it on on the UFC and make sure it is selected on the MFD.

chipwich · January 20, 2021, 2:50am

Yeah, I use it all the time in other missions, so know to make sure to turn it On and select the mode on the HSI. FWIW, I don’t think that that Course was displaying on the HSI, nor was the ICLS working. It shouldn’t have been battle damage, or there would other indications. Maybe I accidentally pushed the wrong button in the heat of battle and enabled EMCOM Regardless, I called the boat for vectors and had a normal CASE I.

Clutch · January 20, 2021, 4:42am

I’ve had that occasionally. Usually turning it off/on does the trick. I checked the mission and noticed the carrier’s second waypoint does not have TACAN or ICLS activated, so that could be an issue. Except the Stennis shouldn’t arrive at that waypoint until well after 23:00.

jross · January 20, 2021, 5:43am

You know, for a while now I’ve noticed oddities in the Hornet HSI page, for both the TACAN and WAYPT selections; like it just gets all outta kilter.

Mostly with the WAYPT selections (moving from TACAN to WAYPT for instance and I can’t get the lines to show up, nor change waypoints, etc), but every now and then the TACAN just won’t work at al either - more correctly it stops working. Fine on takeoff for instance.

I end up clicking them on/off in no particular order and, usually, but not always, it starts working again. It’s been doing this for months, but of course not enough to make me dig further.

With the TACAN it can’t be me - as it will work for a while then nadda. And it’s not my altitude/range. Jamming?

Clutch · January 20, 2021, 6:45am

Honestly, those little bugs that crop up in the Hornet’s systems is why I’ve shelved it for the time being. There’s consantly something broken with fundamental systems, and ED won’t address a lot of them because “short track required” when the bug doesn’t occur until after a long period of flying.

jross · January 20, 2021, 3:49pm

Someone (on YT) claimed the track recording system “has improved” [lately?]. This was the other day so have yet to test this but; I found it curious that a track file from a system that, to me and others, didn’t work was always requested.

So I turned it off months ago. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps all they’re really looking at are units in place and keyboard/controller inputs; the accuracy of the displayed output may not be significant in this regard.

My hat is off to those that do YT videos; that has got to be a major PITA.

Aginor · January 20, 2021, 4:13pm

It somewhat works.
No long missions, and especially no timewarp.
Some planes are worse than others it seems.

Clutch · January 21, 2021, 12:33am

Tracks are always weird, and vary from plane to plane. The fewer variables the better. A long-haul mission without enemy AI fighters, for example, typically works fine even with time acceleration. Once you add things like AI (which is still “live” AI and not a recording), aircraft carriers, or battle damage, all bets are off. And then there’s some aircraft that are just always broken no matter what, like the Tomcat.

The more frustrating thing is when you encounter a bug, send them the track file, and then they refuse to use it because it’s not short enough–and it’s impossible to isolate only the bugged section of the mission–or they are unable to reproduce it on their machine. I’m fairly certain they don’t test these things on your average consumer computer, and erroneously think everything is fine because they are testing it on their developing machines.

chipwich · January 21, 2021, 12:49am

What amazes me is how well Tacview works. I know that you can’t use it for debugging, but for debriefing, it’s pretty much indispensable. Now with in/out editing.

wheelsup_cavu · January 21, 2021, 1:17am

Really wish Tacview worked with IL-2-1946.

Wheels

Clutch · January 21, 2021, 4:26am

I would use Tacview so much more if it didn’t kill DCS performance while it records the data.

Aginor · January 22, 2021, 1:51pm

Oh dammit I forgot about that. I have it running all the time…

chipwich · January 22, 2021, 2:55pm

I wasn’t aware that it did. I wish that there was to bind a HOTAS button to toggle it.

chipwich · January 22, 2021, 4:24pm

ED forum discussion on Tacview impact on performance. I need to try disabling it in VR to gauge the impact. Could be a version to version issue.

Hoggit Wiki statement on Tacview’s performance impact…

https://wiki.hoggitworld.com/view/Tacview#:~:text=This%20data%20is%20normally%20already,it%20only%20saves%20this%20data.

Tacview DCS User Guide. I have to admit here that I was completely oblivious to the Tacview configuration page in DCS! Some discussion herein about the Profiling Period and Debug mode, but in general, states that there is little performance impact of Tacview.