Dcs world planes
To work as an air-to-air ranging system, the TACAN mode must to be set to air-to-air transmit receive (A/A T/R). You will want to select a TACAN channel that isn’t being used by other aircraft or ground stations nearby or you might cause a bit of confusion. The X and Y sets of channels represent different sets of frequencies so that similarly numbered channels – like 29X and 29Y – don’t clobber each other.
One pilot in the flight needs to be volunteered as the transmitter (typically the flight or element lead) and selects a TACAN channel (from 1X-126X and 1Y-126Y) to operate on (actually, the transmitting aircraft should pick a channel between 1 and 63, but more on that later). The process is relatively easy, but I’ll warn you ahead of time – there’s a little math involved.Ī transmitting air-to-air TACAN station can support a number of receiving stations. This is because the radios in the aircraft need to be configured directly. When placing a tanker in a DCS World mission, the mission designer sets the tanker’s TACAN channel that pilots can tune in to get bearing and range info, but there’s no corresponding setting for player aircraft.
DCS WORLD PLANES HOW TO
While tools like the TADL and *ahem* F-10 map view reduce the utility of air-to-air TACAN to most virtual pilots, this is another well-modeled system in DCS A-10C that can be put to good use if you know how to use it. When trying to recover a lost wingman (by definition, Lead is never lost!), a steady eye on the range window will indicate whether the aircraft are closing or getting father apart. With air-to-air TACAN, a flight of two or more can takeoff in instrument conditions and maintain flight integrity without ever seeing each other. It’s an actual tactical maneuver that even has its own brevity code: “yardstick” refers to the use of the air-to-air TACAN mode. Knowing the distance to a target aircraft can still be useful, however, such as in low or no visibility conditions, night, or when trying to recover a hopelessly lost wingman. TACANs tuned to these aircraft will be able to get range information only, not bearing. Knowing the bearing and range to a target aircraft, like a tanker, can be really useful, but the equipment used to enable precise bearing determination is bulky and heavy (set of rotating antennas within rotating antennas), so it’s not typically included on smaller aircraft, like the A-10C. Aerial refueling is the most common use of air-to-air TACAN in DCS World. In DCS: A-10C, this is popularly used for finding that pesky and often uncooperative AI tanker, but not many folks know that this system can also be used to get range between other human-piloted A-10Cs. In addition to being able to navigate relative to ground stations (a topic for another time), TACAN has an air-to-air implementation where aircraft can get bearing and/or range information from other aircraft. The IG-88 looking cylinder on top is the TACAN portion of the system. No, not DCS World 2, this picture is of a VORTAC station in Germany. Similar to the VOR (Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Range)/DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) system used by commercial aircraft all over the world, TACAN enables properly equipped systems to determine range and bearing to radio transmitters, facilitating all sorts of navigation tricks – runway approaches, position determination, or even point-to-point route following. The TACAN (Tactical Air Navigation) system is a radio system used by US military aircraft for precise navigation. Special thanks to Wrecking Crew and Localmax for helping me research this article. In DCS World, air-to-air TACAN is commonly used for rejoining with an AI tanker aircraft, but here is how to use the system to locate other human-piloted A-10C aircraft.