Bouncing of the boom while aerial refueling

Hey guys,

Recently, I've started practicing on how to refuel the hog in mid-air. However it seems I bounce of the boom with an incidence rate of a bit over 50%, sometimes leading to a collision or a KIA pilot for me or the tanker, can you look at my track and tell me where the mistakes lies? The track is for DCS 2.0

Thanks in advance

bounce.trk

Press your pinky switch after a disconnect to reset. You should see "Ready" on the indicator light in the upper right, not "Disconnect"

yeah I forgot about it the first time, but after that I reset on each disconnect.

I can't get your track to show up on my replay menu. Not sure why.

If you are bumping into the boom my guess is you're closing too fast into it. Just keep stationary in the right spot for a second and it will connect to you.

I made this tutorial recently. Watch how I have a bit of trouble making the first connection, that's because I'm not stationary long enough. Don't fly into the boom, hold still and let it connect to you.

However it seems I bounce of the boom with an incidence rate of a bit over 50%, sometimes leading to a collision or a KIA pilot for me or the tanker, can you look at my track and tell me where the mistakes lies? The track is for DCS 2.0

Thanks, good track. You're really patient -- I'd have killed the tanker after half the time. :D

If I had to point out one thing specifically it's that I think you're approaching the boom from too far below. Almost every time the boom bounced off your nose, you couldn't see the part where the tube extends out of the boom, and your vision (aka "picture") of the tanker was mostly covered by your canopy frame.

You need to anticipate that, in DCS, the boom will be held at too low a position until you get close. Once you do, the virtual boom operator will raise the boom a fair bit. When he does, don't try to make contact quite yet. First, climb so that you have a good view of the boom and the tanker's fuselage and wings, and only then gently accelerate towards the boom in order to make contact.

I recorded a new track from your mission: 2016-09-18-no-bounce.trk (DCS 2.0, runtime circa 9 minutes) where I try to illustrate that (I actually got one bounce as well in the middle of it ;)).

Second, I'd say your closure rate was too high most of the time. Try to be a little more gentle when approaching.

BUT it's really necessary to point out that refueling is pretty much bugged right now. Your track illustrates perfectly how the boom operator actively tries to kill you on several occasions.

What I've taken away from several threads about AAR in the past couple of weeks is this: In RL, boom operator and pilot have a contract. The pilot just gets his aircraft into position (within an "envelope" rather than in an exact spot). The boom operator then connects and makes sure the receiver gets the desired amount of fuel. And the receiver just makes sure not to kill anyone. ;)

In DCS, the envelope doesn't really exist. In some cases, the boom doesn't move at all, in other cases it'll try to follow your nose, but might be slightly off, and then could cause a boom-to-nose collision as seen in your track.

I guess the trick is to fly the receptacle into the boom, or to get the aircraft stationary, mere inches away from the boom, until it's magically connected all of a sudden. This is much more difficult than it should be, but it's what we've got for the time being.

Ultimately, though, it all comes down to practice. I think if you can manage to refuel the A-10C in DCS right now, it should feel real easy once ED implement a more realistic boom operator (that is, if they do so :music_whistling:). :smartass:

Yurgon, Sharpe, thanks for the great feedback! Hopefully I have a chance to try it again before the weekend and put your tips to practice.