What is going on with HOT mssiles. They just won't fire. Except sometimes they do!

What is going on with HOT missiles. They just won't fire. Except sometimes they do! Most of the time, they do not.

I don't quite get the sequence that must be followed to fire HOT.

Master Arm ON

Viviene ON in MARCH

Station Selector set to desired station

laser rqnger flip is OPEN

Fire Missile lid is OPEN

Slew to target Laser range it. Fire missile.

Works for 1st mssile. Sometimes.

Then thats it, switching to other stations will no longer fire any missiles.

I don't know if this is a bug or RTFM, which I did, but I hate this. I think its implemented is a confusing way.

What is going on with HOT missiles. They just won't fire. Except sometimes they do! Most of the time, they do not.

...

Slew to target Laser range it. Fire missile.

Works for 1st mssile. Sometimes.

Then thats it, switching to other stations will no longer fire any missiles.

Do you have the "target locked" white rectangle on the TV and Green Bon/OK lamp lit ?

HOT missiles can only fire at targets +/- 3° off the nose.

As well as Auto-hover "Q" and Auto-collective "C" you can set the AI pilot to Auto-slave "E" to the camera i.e. lineup with the camera's direction so missiles can be fired.

You can check the auto-pilot status on the controls indicator "RCtrl+Enter"

Green Bon/OK - Which light is this? THere are lights that are hidden from LOS from pilot seat, and others are not in LOS from co-pilot. ADF is completely buried by collective.

On the TV. When the missile is within launch limits there's a small rectangle launch que that appears in in the right (can't remember if top quarter or bottom quarter) side of the screen.

To get that missile queue, the aircraft needs to be pointing within a couple of degrees of the target in the horizontal plane. The numbers above the crosshairs tell you how far off the TV sensor is pointing off each side of the the airframe.

Chucks guide on the SA342 go further into details as to how to get that lock. https://www.mudspike.com/chucks-guides-dcs/

Edit: Specifically page 77 of chucks guide tells you the shoot que you're looking for and specifically what the numbers above the crosshairs mean.

cool thanks!

OP, could you provide a track or try to shoot with the autohover and the autoturn engaged. Flew it yesterday and did 2 sorties and 8/8 worked properly.

As a few above have said you need to be within a -/+3 degree cone off the nose to get a shoot queue icon on the Screen like below (two squares touching tips), easiest way is to set auto hover and auto slave so the helo slews to whatever the camera points to, also remember to be within 4km of the target as that the max range of the cable connected to the HOT missile

if you want to go for slightly more realism (or if you have a friendly Commander on board auto slew doesn't work iirc??) you turn the dial on knob in below screen shot to select VIV (Viviane) and a yellow flight director line will appear on the ADI, steer the helo to centre the line in the ADI and that is where the Viviane is looking within a degree or two and should produce the 2 square shot queue on the video screen

you can also use said knob to set a flight director line on the ADI for a set waypoint on the Navaid or a set frequency on the ADF radio to help navigate to either

Just to pick up on a few small points regarding terminology used here.

Technically there is no "locking" functionality within the Gazelle / Viviane Camera system. It is a somewhat 'dumb' camera you simply have to manually manoeuvre to the point you want guide a HOT missile onto.

Also the launch cue (little rectangle/'blob' displayed in bottom right corner of camera view) indicates nothing about 'range'.

It only confirms that the nose of the aircraft is pointed in the same direction (heading) as the camera, within the small margin of error (3 degrees either side?) permitted for weapons launch.

I think everyone here knows this already but just to clarify for anyone new still learning.