Air Combat Training School (ACTS)

Beeing instructed by rl pilots certainly will increase the amount of students just for the chance to chittchatt with them about their servicetime. Sounds great!

Ells...

This is a very exciting product. You can count me in for sure.

Just a question, will you release a version that is more "offline" or scripted? I see you have mentioned a selection process which I completely understand is necessary for the format you are intending.

My concern is that this might alienate people who would truly love the experience of following an RAF training programme but might require a lot of time to build their skills with offline practice or aren't comfortable with flying online due to connection issues or being checked out by a real person ("stage fright" if you will). Is there going to be something for everyone here?

This is an ambitious project and I will be watching it with great interest!

My final questions is... who's going to make an RAF Valley & Mona for it ;-)

Now do I call you Dot, Chuckles or DotChuckles? lol

Yes certain practice elements will require you to do some "homework" i.e. flying by yourself using pre-scripted missions along what you've been taught, navigation as an example.

Some elements will require you to fly with your class buddies, formation as an example. For these a track submission will likely need to be submitted for IP review or peer review by others that flew with you and vice versa.

Some classroom elements will be done using Flash websites, desktop apps and a multitude of other media and of course tuition via Livestream or other streaming service as well as IP led flights.

Some classes will be available in audio, video / images and hands on flying (audio, visual and kinaesthetic) as we all learn differently and take things in differently.

Some missions will have human ground controllers (thanks for the ATC mod for that one), especially for navigation and some will have air controllers.

We are looking at incorporating as many elements to teach you as possible.

I know for me that if someone starts to talk maths to me; trajectory and intercept calculations based on stopwatch blah blah blah my brain switches off and it doesn't go in.

Therefore it needs to be simple enough for me to understand how to intercept a plane.

Most VFS' have their own training syllabus for candidates and flight officers and this is not meant to replace them. If they chose to use it then great.

I hope that answers your questions.

In terms of Valley & Mona, well we'll see about that later ;)

Cheers,

Chris.

Now that you mention it, my brain starts to already think about how to link the intern training with the one you offer.

Learning how to use the plane we can do internally, no problem. Using weapons also but there are a few things which would be have to be done by the book just because someone else watches. If one of our guys performs a risky manouver we always let it slip or even encourage each other to do some stupid but funny things. But if we would join a server where a real atc and ip is online, watching and guiding the whole mission we might mature in this process. And last but not least it would shape our coms most likely, right now we don't use brev. codes always but only if we feel like it. But again, if there's a real atc managing traffic, there would be no other way than to play by the rules. Interesting thought.

Over at the 74th we used to generally fly without brevity apart from squad night which was always brevity, and no horseplay. and then when TARS was on, you absolutely needed it.

Sometime we even had a member acting as ATC.

I guess it comes down to how much "immersion" you want to have when flying.

And when flying formation, especially close formation, you need strict brevity and discipline.

But let me ask you this, you fly formation a lot I assume. But why do you fly it? What is the real life purpose behind it? How do you join and break away safely? How do you transition from one flight to another in a wing using strict brevity?

Some VFS' go into this level of detail, some don't. Again it comes down to what level of immersion do you want when you fly.

ACTS is not for someone who wants to jump in a jet and blow some shizzle up, I can tell you that. It's gonna be hard work but rewarding hard work if you want the immersion factor.

The ACTS programme was designed several years ago to pitch to the RAF to encourage ATC squadrons and candidate jet pilots to learn some basics before going through the fast jet programme. Due to budgets etc, they didn't take up on it at that time so I decided to put it to the community and that's what we're developing.

Cheers,

C.

For us the formation serves 2 mainpurposes. First is outside the combatarea, to keep the crowd together. Nothing sucks more then ppl flying around cluelessly while others are in combat and you need help of them. So at least at the beginn of any fight we are a combined force. During this time we also fly very close, because it's more interesting, easier to notice changes in heading and to keep track of the whole thing. And it prevents your eyes from closing (allthoug after the game you are a lot more tired, i once flew a sortie with 3h permanent formation + aerial refuelling, without real combataction (smashing some F4 shortly after takeoff in su33 is not what one would call combat :D ) And after this i was more tired then after a normal actionloaded combatmission.

As soon as we enter combatzone we spread out a whole lot. This includes also some heightchanges, the ones in the back are climbing quite a bit, so they have about the same shootingcues as the ones at the lower front have, but can dive down if some enemies pass the first wave and are turning on their tails. We often include some tactics where some are distracting the enemy while others are sneaking in for the kill with eos. With AWACS or good comms it is a nice fungame. (and these multipleplaneengagements are the most interesting thing in air to air combat if you ask me, it is a lot more fun than the 1 vs 1 or random vs 1 u face on public servers, therefore we don't care so much for the actual missileperformance because it just doesnt matter if the RL one can pull more G's or has more range than in DCS, in multiple vs multiple engagements, these things are not that big of importance.)

What we are bad at is the regrouping after such an engagement. We have no real standardprocedure for gathering the group. Its more like scanning the air and giving away hight, speed and heading. But that way it takes a lot of time so we are often in further combats before having regrouped properly so it would be nice to get a hint how fast regrouping is achieved in reallife.

You talked about atc, i also often to this. Its more playing awacs for me though. So i provide our fighters detailed information about heading, distance and height of enemy fighters and also are planing our attackingpatterns, so i often try lo let our guys coming from the flanks, with radars turned off or let them drag the enemys over some sam area. I do roughly the same for bombers, giving away enemy convoi positions, telling them if there is some AA included and so on. (and here it is a shame that the N/E Coord from the F10 map diverts from the ones ingame, so u will always get an offest, so ich cant really let them program steerpoints far away before releasing some gbu31 for example...)

Now do I call you Dot, Chuckles or DotChuckles? lol

 

Yes certain practice elements will require you to do some "homework" i.e. flying by yourself using pre-scripted missions along what you've been taught, navigation as an example.

Some elements will require you to fly with your class buddies, formation as an example. For these a track submission will likely need to be submitted for IP review or peer review by others that flew with you and vice versa.

 

Some classroom elements will be done using Flash websites, desktop apps and a multitude of other media and of course tuition via Livestream or other streaming service as well as IP led flights.

 

Some classes will be available in audio, video / images and hands on flying (audio, visual and kinaesthetic) as we all learn differently and take things in differently.

 

Some missions will have human ground controllers (thanks for the ATC mod for that one), especially for navigation and some will have air controllers.

 

We are looking at incorporating as many elements to teach you as possible.

 

I know for me that if someone starts to talk maths to me; trajectory and intercept calculations based on stopwatch blah blah blah my brain switches off and it doesn't go in.

Therefore it needs to be simple enough for me to understand how to intercept a plane.

 

Most VFS' have their own training syllabus for candidates and flight officers and this is not meant to replace them. If they chose to use it then great.

 

I hope that answers your questions.

 

In terms of Valley & Mona, well we'll see about that later ;)

 

Cheers,

Chris.

That sounds good especially the use of a Human ATC instead of AI will you guys be using any of VATSIMs guys for that? You could add to peoples log books for those that pass a pair of wings etc the same as the RL guys get. BTW this is certainly a better approach than combatpilot, will this be freeware?

In terms of Valley & Mona, well we'll see about that later ;)

Uh oh! That's it you've said it now! ;-) Only joking. I spent a fortnight down there when I was a cadet doing strap ins and helping out. Got to fly the hawk sim too. Happiest days of my early teens right there :-)

Technically it's .chuckles (long story) but Chuckles or Chuck works just as well.

Between this and the Hawk I really can't contain myself. Hearing that distinctive start up sound is going to take me right back to summer mornings, ground mist on the airfield, breakfast at the mess with that strange lime cordial and knowing it's going to be a sunny and hot day spent watching the students come and go in the Hawks.

I always wished I could be on the training programme and sitting in the cockpit for myself. Sadly not to be, thanks to failing the medical. Oooh I'm all nostalgic now lol.

Honestly. These two products have got me more excited about simming then I have been in at last 15 odd years.

Ah that's awesome, well ill be opening up for another round of testers soon so make sure you get your application in ;)

Yeah I love that sound and can't wait to get it in-sim (tech difficulties at the moment).

Cheers,

C.

That sounds good especially the use of a Human ATC instead of AI will you guys be using any of VATSIMs guys for that? You could add to peoples log books for those that pass a pair of wings etc the same as the RL guys get. BTW this is certainly a better approach than combatpilot, will this be freeware?

Well VATsim is MSFS as far as I know. I met some cools guys from there last year at Weston.

Details are still being worked out for integration.

Well VATsim is MSFS as far as I know. I met some cools guys from there last year at Weston.

 

Details are still being worked out for integration.

X-Plane uses VATSIM as well ... :), however these are the guys you want as ATC imo.

Hey Teapot, long time no see, how's things??

Thanks for the info, ill get in touch with them.

G'day Ells, work and family ... the usual ;). Been keeping a keen eye on the forums though, thanks for asking mate! Cheers

G'day Ells, work and family ... the usual ;). Been keeping a keen eye on the forums though, thanks for asking mate! Cheers

Glad you're doing ok mate

It reminds me of this:

"Four RAF pilots have completed the Hawk T2 training at RAF Valley, learning using the latest simulator technology as well as live flying".

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/first-pilots-complete-new-fast-jet-training