How to locate a carrier?

Is there a way to locate a carrier with instruments?

As far as I know there is none 'by default' as the only type of beacon a ship can have is TACAN. Still, for your own missions you can work a little trigger magic to make them broadcast radio messages on an ADF frequency.

I know ADF has had a few bugs prior and am not sure how it is working right now, but I used that method with some success in the past for locating a moving ground vehicle.

Oh, a ship is able to send broadcast messages via trigger tab? ok, I have to take a look at this. Cause its not possible like with e.g. vehicles, which can loop a message while the whole mission is running. Ships dont have that option in the waypoint tab.

So, how is it done in RL?

Only with com?

As I said, I've done that for moving vehicles before and it worked fine (at least back then). In the meantime I gave it a whirl for an aircraft carrier and while I definitely received signals from the various triggers I set up, I'm not entirely sure the homing worked quite as it should, but it might just be because I tried it sitting on the ground.

In real life there is nothing preventing the fleet from broadcasting its own ADF (or FM homing) signal. In fact, it used to be a common practice. Just one of those little DCS limitations, I guess.