Air Combat Training School (ACTS)

What is ACTS?

Well the concept of ACTS is to have a school that teaches pilots essentials about flight dynamics, aircraft systems, flying and combat.

Instructor Pilots (IP) teach Fighter Jet Pilot Trainee's (FJPT) the principals of the RAF Fast Jet programme:

IOT - Initial Officer Training

Common Core Ground School (Classroom)

EFT - Elementary Flight Training (Classroom)

BFJT - Basic Fast Jet Training (Hawk)

Wings (Hawk)

AFJT - Advanced Fast Jet Training (Hawk)

TWU - Tactical Weapons Unit (Hawk / Typhoon)

OCU - Operational Conversion Unit (Typhoon)

We are looking to set up the ACTS along with development of the Hawk and Typhoon and integrate missions, training and campaigns within the modules to reflect ACTS.

Documentation, reference material and videos etc will be produced to aid and assist in the training.

Below is an idea for the syllabus and some misison examples.

I'd like to get your thoughts on ACTS and what you would like to see within it, how you think it could be implemented within DCS, forums, Websites and real life and if you as a virtual pilot would find this useful.

Also if you have experience of similar programme's in real life or virtual squadrons and would like to help out in any way, please let me know.

Thanks,

Chris.

ACTS Syllabus

EFT

Principles of Flight

Lift / Gravity

Thrust / Drag

Rudder / Elevators / Ailerons

Roll / Pitch / Yaw

Aircraft Tech

Power Management

Cockpit Familiarisation

Start up / shut down procedures

Emergency Procedures

Meteorology

Weather effects

Communications

Procedures

Radio Calls

Navigation

Compass

Waypoints

Basic Fast Jet Training (BFJT)

Take Off

Start up procedures

Comms – ATC / Wing / AWACS

Taxxing

Final Checks

Take Off

Basic Flight

Level Flight

Aileron rolls / loops / flat turns

Orientation / waypoints

Landing

Circuits

Landing Patterns

Landing

Taxi back

Shut down procedures

Emergency Procedures

Red / Yellow cards

Electrical Failures

Single engine flame out landing

Stalls / Spins

Initiate / recovery

Wings

Principles

Echelon

Level flight

Turns

Rolls

Loops

Trail

Level flight

Turns

Rolls

Loops

Breaking

Left / right / high / low

Close / open formation

Multiple aircraft formation

Advanced Fast Jet Training (AFJT)

Basic Fighter Manoeuvres (BFM)

Immelman turn

Spilt S

Snap roll

Barrel roll

Chandelle

Skid / slip

Hammerhead

Wing over

Air Combat Manoeuvres (ACM)

Pursuit

Pure

Lead

Lag

Yo Yo

High / low

Lag roll

Scissors

Flat scissor

Rolling scissor

Energy management

Refuelling

Ground

Air

Tactical Weapons Unit (TWU)

Attack

Setting up the attack

Boom and zoom

The chase

Merge

Turns and turn fighting

Head on attacks

Rear attacks

Side attacks

Leaving a fight (bug out)

Radar

Principles / use

Missiles

Beyond visual range (BVR)

Within visual range (WVR)

Guns

Tracking shots

Snap shots

Point shots

Bombs

Setting up the shot

Release

Tracking

Defence

Defensive manoeuvres

Chaff / flare

ECM

SAM evasion

Operational Conversion Unit (OCU)

Aircraft-specific operational and tactical training

Mission Examles BFJT

Mission 1 Basic (4 hours):

Climbs and descents, turns, slow flight and stalls

Mission 2 Ground reference manoeuvres (4 hours):

Turns across a road, rectangular course

Mission 3 Take off and landings (4 hours):

Traffic patterns, radio communications

Mission 4 Basic instruments (3 hours):

Unusual attitudes, flying under adverse conditions

Mission 5 Emergency procedures (3 hours)

Failure recovery, unscheduled landings, night flying

Mission 6 Cross country flights (10 hours)

Navigation, radio aids to navigation

Mission 7 Landings and takeoffs (5 hours)

Crosswind landings and takeoffs, long and short field landings and takeoffs, ILS

Mission 8 Advanced air work (5 hours)

Ground reference VFR, partial panel instruments

Mission 9 Practical test and graduation to next phase

Pilot Trainee must have logged 62 hours flight

Good, i changed my mind , please take my money .

I think that covered just about everything. I also like your professionalism and no nonsense approach.

:thumbup:

I'm gonna need this training so badly. :)

Thanks for the initiative.

Loving the idea, it's been mentioned before that if we get a trainer it should have the usual training missions where we learn the systems (like on A-10C) and then have it come with a campaign where you gotta use those skills and you can get graded on your performance and move on as you go and do harder things.

Either way i would love to get this product!

Just some good tutorials would do me fine. I'm not into the ludicrous amounts of procedures/hoop jumping thing.

just curious, does the Hawk have a radar? weapons? is it more for FLYING and not systems? thanks.

The don't do it.

Theres not much in the way of avionics on the trainer as far as I know. Not sure about the combat variants.

+1:thumbup:

:book:

+1:thumbup:

Absolutely want this, Pretty sure you've covered everything I'd need. Some extensive avionics training would be great too but I guess there's not a lot to work with in that regard in the Hawk

Hi Ells:

From the beginning down to wings, how long would you expect to cover this material? From the end of Wings down to check out ride, how long to cover this period?

Pete

Looks great, good luck with it.

p.s. Where do I sign up??:joystick::pilotfly:

I think integrating your planes with a module and built online training will truly set it apart, even from DCS offerings. I would suggest going piece-meal so that the project is manageable. I myself would pay for early- release beta or or release by sections.

Thanks for your comments guys.

I do have some timings Pete but not with me at the moment as I'm mobile.

I'll post them up over the weekend.

By the way I wasn't expecting people to pay for ACTS. What we can integrate into DCS we will, the rest will be via Flash interactive websites (or an apple friendly version).

Truly excellent plan. I am looking forward to this very much. :thumbup:

Just out of curiosity, what qualifications do you and your team have to "teach" the things you have listed in your syllabus?

I'm gonna need this training so badly. :)

Thanks for the initiative.

Same here... thing is, most companies produce aircrafts and all, but no body wants to talk about specifics of the aircraft, nor teach.. I guess we're lucky!

Great stuff. Very interested! Cheers

+1

but I'd like MB-339 for BFJT.....:D

I'd like to get your thoughts on ACTS and what you would like to see within it, how you think it could be implemented within DCS, forums, Websites and real life and ifkyou as a virtual pilot would find this useful.

 

Also if you have experience of similar programme's in real life or virtual squadrons and would like to help out in any way, please let me know.

[/font]

Hi Chris,

You might be interested in using a LMS (Learning Management System) to host online training modules and then create tests for the players to pass. This can be used to simulate the classroom training whilst the missions simulate the practical flight training.

There are free ones online like cloud.scorm.com.

For the questions they can be all multichoice and can include multimedia or flash etc. So it could be a case of watching a video which contains the question. Just ask your testers to create 5 or 10 multi choice questions each for each subject and you have an online qualifications course. Then players will need to register and sign up to it. The LMS tracks users so you can see who has passed what sections. When they've finished maybe give them a nice set of wings for their forum signature.

An LMS can also randomise the questions so that if you sit it twice it's not the same.

Anyway... that's my idea.

EDIT: I work for a company that makes software that manages chunks of content across multiple documents/formats including SCORM. So if you need help with this I'd be happy to put it together for you in my spare time.

Thanks for your comments guys.

I do have some timings Pete but not with me at the moment as I'm mobile.

I'll post them up over the weekend.

 

By the way I wasn't expecting people to pay for ACTS. What we can integrate into DCS we will, the rest will be via Flash interactive websites (or an apple friendly version).

np,pal. just curios old me. the first section down to wing and including I have taught for 25 years. You can make it all, time consuming or simplify, depending on how much you want to teach and explain. Yes I know ACTS is not a pay for part of the whole picture just helps the learning curve.lol.drop me a line if you get time. Cheers mate.;)

Pete

Hey guys,

This looks very promising. I've been training guys on BFM/ACM for quite a while now at my group. It is challenging and a steep learning curve! To be any good at it certainly requires dedication to learning the theory. The odd tutorial video absolutely won't cut it IMO.

I don't for a second pretend to know everything about it and can't wait to get more experience when the multirole fighters for DCS start rolling out - BMS is my current playground for that :)

My suggestion is that you consider redefining the BFM and ACM section of your course. Most of what you have under the ACM heading is actually BFM whereas ACM is more how to employ BFM as a team (with wingmen etc) to kill the bandit(s) in as short a time as possible.

Either way I am still interested to see how this progresses!

cheers