I hate AAR

[peirof]

hace 1 hora, Rongor dijo:

What I am actually hating about AAR is "return pre-contact" right when I just got so perfectly close to the basket...

 

 

When this happens. What needs to be done? To retry refueling.

 

Sometime, after several failed attempts, the tanker cancels the operation and orders me to return to pre-contact....  But I don't want how the procedure is restarted... (I've tried to re-contact by radio, to walk away, to change tacans,....) but nothing works, the tanker does not extend the probe again

[oldcrusty]

2 hours ago, peirof said:

 

 

When this happens. What needs to be done? To retry refueling.

 

Sometime, after several failed attempts, the tanker cancels the operation and orders me to return to pre-contact....  But I don't want how the procedure is restarted... (I've tried to re-contact by radio, to walk away, to change tacans,....) but nothing works, the tanker does not extend the probe again

 

Can you abort? Retract the probe and call to abort. Then, call to gas up again.

Another thing that happened to me in the past was due to bad mission planning. I had the carrier recovery tanker flying an orbit for a long time, while I was busy with a mission. When I headed back to get some gas, the tanker departed his pattern and headed for the boat. I caught up with him but he just ignored me. This was a small tanker though (S3). The bigger ones should loiter around for a long time.

[peirof]

I continue my struggle to refuel before I run out of fuel.

 

I have set the curve of the axles to 15, with dead zone of 3...

 

How do you see it? Is it enough, or perhaps more curved, for the little ones to be able to move smoother

[Bananabrai]

For reference: I have a WarBRD base with a 5cm extension and Wharthog stick, have that mounted between my legs

 

15% curvature is a good value for me personally, I set the same with every aircraft on roll and pitch.

I don't have a dead zone on the stick but 3 sounds still ok, depending on your setup.

If you have no extension, you could try more curvature, but remember that the change in the higher regimes is more violent then.

 

What others may already mentioned:

- wiggle your toes, sometomes the shoulders maybe, just don't get cramped

- constantly adjust power, but not too violent, my throttles are never still during AAR. little adjustments can also help, if countered directly afterwards

- focus on the tanker, not the drogue

- Don't induce the oscillation but counter it by remembering what happens when you input something. Getting an up-down osciallation is easy, but countering it is not.

There is a trick though, the oscillation is in the same frequency as your input wiggling input before, so if you double the frequency for one time and counter the oscillation really fast but not violent, you will get rid of it.

- Generally, you normaly always have to counter an input directly after making by ~90%, because the system takes time to adjust for the change and if it has too much time (still only seconds) it drifts in a direction where you do not want it.

So say you are 10 meters / 30 feet behind the tanker and you want to close, give 5-10% more thrust (move throttles by this, not the aircraft value), but immediately take away 3-8% again to counter for the excess speed and thrust you have now, and so on, the throttle always moves.

[TimRobertsen]

4 hours ago, peirof said:

I continue my struggle to refuel before I run out of fuel.

 

I have set the curve of the axles to 15, with dead zone of 3...

 

How do you see it? Is it enough, or perhaps more curved, for the little ones to be able to move smoother

Try out different curvatures for pitch and roll, and see what works best for you. I think mine is set somewhere around 30-40. But this differs a lot from stick to stick. I fly with a PS4-stick  It doesn't have all that much range, so I need some curve.

 

But, in my experience, the most important controll, during AAR, is the throttle and how you work it.

When you get a feel that things are about to slide out of control: missing the basket and you want to pitch up/down to catch it, just pull (slightly) back on the throttle, slide back a bit and start over.

 

It might be worth trying to refuel from a KC135 MPRS, it can fly a bit faster at higher altitudes than the KC130. Refueling at 180kts IAS can be sluggish  

Or just set the tankers to fly at lower altitudes, 5000-10000ft.

[Svend_Dellepude]

11 hours ago, zildac said:

11 hours ago, Hobel said:

When I switched to the WarBRD base, AAR was immediately much easier, in my opinion it also depends on the right hardware.

Completely agree. I found it a shoulder wrenching experience on the warthog base.

 

I find this to be true. The WH is difficult to use while AAR without an extension. You can add some curves to help but then you just ruin your ability to dogfight. Best thing to do is to use script editor and program different curves for AAR and general flying if you have a WH setup.

[peirof]

hace 26 minutos, TimRobertsen dijo:

Try out different curvatures for pitch and roll, and see what works best for you. I think mine is set somewhere around 30-40. But this differs a lot from stick to stick. I fly with a PS4-stick  It doesn't have all that much range, so I need some curve.

 

But, in my experience, the most important controll, during AAR, is the throttle and how you work it.

When you get a feel that things are about to slide out of control: missing the basket and you want to pitch up/down to catch it, just pull (slightly) back on the throttle, slide back a bit and start over.

 

It might be worth trying to refuel from a KC135 MPRS, it can fly a bit faster at higher altitudes than the KC130. Refueling at 180kts IAS can be sluggish  

Or just set the tankers to fly at lower altitudes, 5000-10000ft.

HOW!!!, my God... 

 

Do you refuel with a Ps4 pad, dualshock??  Now, you are my hero... 

 

I think I should retire from DCS and play Ace combat or better... Al Tetris

 

 

 

hace 15 minutos, Svend_Dellepude dijo:

 

I find this to be true. The WH is difficult to use while AAR without an extension. You can add some curves to help but then you just ruin your ability to dogfight. Best thing to do is to use script editor and program different curves for AAR and general flying if you have a WH setup.

In hotas warthog.... Can configure 2 curves for axis? One general and one aar and landing, for example? 

hace 33 minutos, TimRobertsen dijo:

Try out different curvatures for pitch and roll, and see what works best for you. I think mine is set somewhere around 30-40. But this differs a lot from stick to stick. I fly with a PS4-stick  It doesn't have all that much range, so I need some curve.

 

But, in my experience, the most important controll, during AAR, is the throttle and how you work it.

When you get a feel that things are about to slide out of control: missing the basket and you want to pitch up/down to catch it, just pull (slightly) back on the throttle, slide back a bit and start over.

 

It might be worth trying to refuel from a KC135 MPRS, it can fly a bit faster at higher altitudes than the KC130. Refueling at 180kts IAS can be sluggish  

Or just set the tankers to fly at lower altitudes, 5000-10000ft.

In these misión, flies at 260 knts

[Barra1]

I try to fly slightly below and behind the tankers altitude and get the aircraft trimmed so she's steady and match the speed. Radio: "pre conatct". If in correct position you will see the hose extend. You will get use to judging the tankers speed but this takes practice trust me. When you feel you are ready, accelerate by only a few knots. You want to have enough closure speed that your aircraft isn't bobbing around and when needed you can drop the extra knots of closure when you are on the hose. Steer so the basket slowly edges towards your probe. Tiny control stick adjustments are required. Once you are connected use auto throttle to hold yourself on the basket and continue to make tiny control inputs to maintain formation with the tanker. The more you do it the better you get. I started out not being able to even connect. Then, gradually I learnt to connect but the bastard would drop off the hose all the time but the more I did it the better I got. Now I still sometimes drop of the hose or miss the connection first go but I can always get connected and even when the tanker is banking. I kind of enjoy it now.

 

The feel you get for the tiny control adjustments (both stick and throttle) required for air refueling will stand you in good stead for Case III carrier landings. I reckon this is the greatest challenge in flight simming. Good luck.

[Shimmergloom667]

6 hours ago, peirof said:

I continue my struggle to refuel before I run out of fuel.

 

I have set the curve of the axles to 15, with dead zone of 3...

 

How do you see it? Is it enough, or perhaps more curved, for the little ones to be able to move smoother

 

Zero curves, always - it's the only linear input which keeps the movement inputs 100% predictable. No matter the hardware, I always fly zero curves - with my old X56, with a Warthog, with my VKB setup.

 

It only comes down to training, a gentle touch, more training, not being so hamfisted and more training. It IS complicated, and great hardware may make it a bit more accessible - but I know people refueling while flying with keyboard, so blaming the hardware is just an excuse.

 

[lmp]

@peirof

 

There is a few things that are challenging about AAR and I don't think you've told us which part exactly you are struggling with?

 

The first challenge is connecting. Can you hit the basket reliably? That's the first thing to work on. If it takes you 10 tries to plug it in, then when you do manage it, your stress level goes up (you don't want to waste your chance) and that makes everything else massively harder. If you're having issues here, I encourage you to focus on just this part. Don't bother with trying to fill up the tanks until you can nail the connection 8 or 9 times out of 10. The trick here is sight picture. There are a lot of ways build it, people line up the canopy frame or hud with different parts of the tanker, basket or hose... I would recommend watching some YT videos of people doing it well and making up your own method. Then keep trying until you're good at it (just connecting). One step at a time.

 

The second big challenge is staying connected, which comes down to precision flying. The tip many people give is that "there is no perfect stick and throttle position", "you need to be constantly correcting" and that is true but it took me a while to actually understand what it meant. The trick is to stop looking for that perfect stick and throttle setting. Killing any unwanted drift quickly is more important than being super precise about it. Let's say your plane is slowly starting to drift to the right. If you give it 1% of left stick, hold it, look if it fixed the problem, give it 1% more left stick, hold it, look again... you'll always be behind the aircraft. Instead of doing that yank the stick 10% (or 7%, or 12%, pinpoint precision isn't what you should be after here) to the left, then almost immediately back to the initial position. You want to kill the drift now. The aircraft can't get away from you. Your corrections should be short but deliberate. The aircraft will probably start drifting somewhere else almost immediately but that's ok, as long as you can stop it quickly. Once you get this down, this method works for AAR, landing taildraggers, hovering helos, any kind of precision flying really.